Hand of the day 10/12/09
Posted Monday, October 12, 2009 by bparis
This hand comes from the first level of the Sunday Warm-up. Titantom32 is a fellow high stakes MTT reg, and we know each other fairly well. I perceive him as psycho aggressive and he perceives me as a very tight player. This was like the third or fourth hand of the tournament, so there wasn’t much of an established table dynamic yet, and all players have roughly 200 big blinds.
PokerStars Game #33905916086: Tournament #200311723, $200+$15 USD Hold’em No Limit - Level I (25/50) - 2009/10/11 13:13:18 ET
Table ‘200311723 369’ 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: AK SHOVER (10700 in chips)
Seat 2: lojo131 (10475 in chips)
Seat 3: Titantom32 (9700 in chips)
Seat 4: z0di@c (8975 in chips)
Seat 5: alexandrapau (9850 in chips) is sitting out
Seat 6: Manta_Rays (9511 in chips)
Seat 7: RuberbandMan (10400 in chips)
Seat 8: petula 99 (9775 in chips)
Seat 9: bparis (10000 in chips)
lojo131: posts small blind 25
Titantom32: posts big blind 50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bparis [Kc Ad]
z0di@c: folds
alexandrapau: folds
Manta_Rays: raises 70 to 120
RuberbandMan: folds
petula 99: folds
OK, so we have AK, time to 3 bet right? Well, let’s think about it for a bit. Three-betting AK is obviously the standard play for a ton of reasons - you can get him to fold hands that you’re flipping with, you can flop a higher top pair than somebody and you get to build the pot pre, and you’re more likely to isolate and get a headsup pot. What are the upsides of flatting? One obvious one is that you disguise your AK - it’s such a common three-bet hand that people will rarely put it in your range if you flat. Another less obvious one is that you get to achieve a more optimal SPR, or stack-to-pot size ratio. If you 3-bet to 375 or so and he calls, the pot will be 800ish with over 9000 behind for both players. This results in an SPR of 12, which means it will be fairly difficult to stack your opponent postflop, especially since he’ll suspect AK as a possibility if an ace or king comes and we keep betting strong. If we flat, on the other hand, the SPR will be closer to 40 (assuming an HU pot), which means we’ll have to give up our prospects of stacking him with one pair but also means we’re more likely to get paid off on multiple streets after the flop by something like AJ or AT which might fold to a 3-bet pre. Finally, titantom is behind us and he loves to squeeze. If he squeezes, we’ll be able to be in position with a disguised hand and an SPR of around 8, which is close to our ideal situation.
bparis: calls 120
AK SHOVER: folds
lojo131: folds
Titantom32: raises 360 to 480
Manta_Rays: calls 360
Bingo, there’s the squeeze, and our first raiser has called. We could be super tricky here and go for the back-raise, but I think with the stacks behind still being so deep, we’re more likely to get all of our money in behind than ahead if we reraise. We’ve achieved our ideal spot with an SPR of 8 in position and a disguised hand, so let’s just take a flop and see what happens.
bparis: calls 360
*** FLOP *** [9d 3d 8c]
Titantom32: bets 650
Manta_Rays: calls 650
Looks like we missed. We have the Ad for a backdoor flush draw and two overs, but our hand doesn’t have nearly enough value to call here. That leaves folding and raising as options. Folding is of course the obvious play, but let’s look into raising a bit. We know Tom has a wide range, and we can be fairly sure the other guy’s hand isn’t too strong, as he didn’t take the opportunity to four bet preflop and he didn’t raise the flop. We also know that Tom perceives us as being fairly tight and uncreative, and will likely assign us a strong range (88,99) if we raise on this flop. In addition, we have the Ad, meaning that our two opponents are less likely to have an AdXd hand that they could feel comfortable pushing on the flop with, and if someone calls we have additional draws.
Since Tom tried to put the squeeze on us pre-flop, let’s put the squeeze on him post-flop. Raising somewhat small will put both of the other players into a really ugly spot, and the whole line would be fully consistent with 88/99. I’m going to make it only 2220 here, and with the pot already being 2800 that means our play only has to work about 4 times out of 9 to be effective. If we get called by either player, we’re likely giving up on most turns, but our play should look strong enough to work fairly often. While we’re only risking 2220 here, it implies a bet of the rest of our stack, making it a very strong post-flop leverage play.
bparis: raises 1570 to 2220
Titantom32: folds
Manta_Rays: folds
Uncalled bet (1570) returned to bparis
bparis collected 3415 from pot
bparis: doesn’t show hand
While this was a small pot that generally won’t wind up being the difference maker in a tournament, it nicely illustrates the different issues that come into play when you’re 200 BB deep. Rather than thinking about what your cards are and what you generally do with those cards, think a few steps ahead. How big do you want the postflop pot to be? What class of hands do you want to represent? How can you threaten your opponents with huge bets in uncertain situations? These are the types of issues that commonly arise playing deep stacked cash, and the types of spots that many tournament players find difficult.
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