the weekly whinge

I love to see people look back on hands and think “I played that really well” whereas in actual fact they played like a weak donkey.

Nick Schulman’s post on full-tilt is the perfect example. He raises with a middling hand, gets reraised and decides to call anyway. He then misses the flop – there’s an overcard to his middling hand – but calls the bet on the flop. He then proceeds to give his opponent two opportunities to hit a card that beats him, assuming that he wasn’t beaten by the queen on the flop or indeed before the flop.

In almost every situation this is just rubbish. He’s then giving himself kudos because he won the pot but that’s just results-orientated thinking. If he’d reraised all-in he’d have won much more, was that a better play?

IMO he played the hand badly from start to finish. Thoughts?

Tags: full-tilt.

The gist of this full-tilt post from Jay Greenspan is fairly simple: if you can’t decide whether to fold or raise, calling should not be the default action.

Simple, but very well put.

In these cases, the call isn’t a strategic choice; it’s a sort of compromise between raise and fold that has none of the advantages

It’s something I’ve found in my own game is a great way of leaking chips – calling on the flop when I’m not sure where I am – because (unless the turn hits me in a big way) I still won’t know where I am.

Tags: full-tilt.

So I’ve criticised the last couple[1][2] of Full-Tilt howtos that have dropped into my inbox; I thought I should redress the balance and say that Aaron Bartley’s discussion on early-aggression in MTTs is a good read. The content may seem obvious and I’m sure it doesn’t say anything that’s not in a thousand poker books but I think it’s always good to crystalise things like this.

Tags: full-tilt.

Today’s state-the-bleeding-obvious award goes to Jordan Morgan in the featured tip in this week’s Full Tilt newsletter.

One of the keys to making money at the poker table, however, is being able to interpret when the three-bet means what it’s supposed to mean, and when a player is only representing a big hand and making a move.

The next tip in the series is “only bet when you think you have the best hand or your opponent might fold”.

Tags: full-tilt.

Howard Lederer’s post on full-tilt yesterday talks about S&G bubble play.

You’re second in chips with 3,000, the blinds are 100/200, and you’re dealt Ad-7d in the big blind. The chip leader is on the button and raises to 600; the small blind folds and you call the extra 400. The flop comes Q-8-3 with two diamonds, which is a pretty attractive flop for your hand. You check, and your opponent does exactly what you didn’t want him to do: put you all in for about double the size of the pot. You’re getting slightly better than 3-to-2 pot odds on a call for your tournament life.

Is it just me or is the correct thing to do with the nut draw there never ever ever ever to check??? Move all-in yourself and put the decision on your opponent.

Admittedly we don’t have a lot of information about the relative chip-stacks; if your 3000 is a decent proportion of the chips on the table and the fourth-place guy is short then clearly you can pick a better spot, but if everyone has 2000 or more then I don’t see the value in folding there.

The only way your opponent can call is if he has AQ, AA, KK or QQ, which is possible given the preflop raise but four-handed a button-raise could have a much wider range of hands than that; otherwise I don’t see how he can possibly call and – even if he does – you’re about 45% (?) to the nuts and pairing your ace may still be good.

Of course the real mistake Howard hasn’t talked about is much earlier on in the hand: if you’re planning on checking that flop you should have folded to the 400 bet in the first place – what on earth were you hoping for – AA7? Did you really expect the chip leader not to lead out and bet at any flop on which you’d checked?

Thoughts?

Tags: full-tilt.