[sirgasleak]

I think your explanation for your turn jam is just trying to rationalize what you realize was a terrible play. It’s a classic spot where you will only get called by hands that have you crushed. There is simply no reason to jam 3x pot there.

Flop I like a small lead because you will get called by all his overcard combos.

[sirgasleak]

I think you have to play this as a 3b pre. His range should be relatively strong and I don’t like the risk of playing AQo multiway if you get callers behind, especially if some of the players in position decide to come along.

Flop I agree with fivebyfive. When you shove there you fold out all the stuff in his range you beat (worse Ax that didn’t connect, other Broadway combos) but you will get called by the strongest part of his range. You have outs against that range but you still don’t want to shove into the top of someone’s range. And as FbF pointed out, your shove looks like exactly the kind of hand you’re holding. Even a very rec-level player is going to think this looks fishy (“If he had a flush, why would he shove? Wouldn’t he slowplay?”).

[sirgasleak]

Ugly spot. I know 100 hands is a pretty small sample, but it would be helpful to have some sense of his postflop tendencies. Some players like to be aggressive and 3b widely preflop, but then shut down with the weaker part of their range post.

Assuming we don’t have good info in that regard, it’s hard to see how you’re good in a spot like this. The flop smashes your range, so unless he’s a maniac I can’t see him pounding away with missed hands or pairs like JJ here. Maybe hands like A2ss-A5ss? If you’re in villain’s position, do you fire away with Qx here?

[sirgasleak]

Although both villains have very different tendencies, I actually think their ranges will be pretty similar given how they played from their respective positions. I see both their ranges including lots of small-medium pairs, AXs, and decent suited connectors (with some unsuited Broadways thrown in). So I’m not overly concerned about made hands here, because the only strong ones they can have are sets and those make up a small portion of their ranges. It would be a very different story if villain 2 called in the BB because he can have 2P and straight/straight draw combos). Neither of these guys have hands like 63/32/54 in their ranges.

I’d probably be inclined to CB large, and then shut down and try to see showdown. I’d CB large because in a three-way pot I wouldn’t mind folding out all the Broadways and suited connectors in both their ranges. And you have outs against all their weak made hands (pairs and hands like A6s/A3s/A2s). Because you have position you can control the pot on the turn if you get called by one (or, gasp, both) of them and they check. Betting large also increases the likelihood of folding out one villain and getting heads-up.

[sirgasleak]

This is an old strategy that was common in the “feel” days before solvers and GTO. Play a certain way, develop an image, then take advantage of that image. I think it probably still works very well in most live settings below the stakes that are dominated by pros.

[sirgasleak]

I don’t play live $600 tourneys myself so I can only answer based on what I hope I would do, but I would (hopefully) have a hard time folding QQ there. This isn’t “old man coffee” you’re up against here. The guy busted a $1k and then ran over here to max late reg and has managed to spin up his small stack pretty quickly, which gives me the picture of an experienced player who either got hit hard by the deck since he joined or plays pretty aggressively. I think it’s going to be difficult to run deep in big tourneys if you’re not prepared to commit with less than the nuts in a spot like this.

[sirgasleak]

Sounds like there are two separate issues you need to sort out:

1) Not having enough time/energy to put in the volume (and whether paying for training sites is worth it given your limited volume);

2) Your lack of motivation

The unfortunate thing about online poker is that it is targeted to people who are younger, single, and don’t have full time jobs. I was in the same boat as you for many years and only started to play more MTTs in the last few years as my kids have gotten older and I don’t have to spend my weekends driving them to all their activities and birthday parties. The key is to find games you enjoy that fit with your lifestyle. In the old days I built a bankroll on Stars playing the 45-man turbos almost exclusively because they only took 90-min start to finish. Now I play MTTs, but I exclusively play turbos because I just don’t have the lifestyle that makes it easy for me to sit in front of my computer for 10-12 hours.

There isn’t much you can do about being too tired, except take a look at your sleep habits and see if there are changes you can make there. It could be that you just can’t fit tournament poker into your life at this point in time. One of the things I did during my earlier years when the kids were young is I spent a lot more time reading about poker than playing, which helped me stay interested in the game and helped me develop my skills while waiting for my opportunities to play.

[sirgasleak]

I wouldn’t read too much into the bet sizing because of this: “Seems like every time they play a hand, they’re betting and betting big.” You also have evidence that he donk-leads when he flops a pair. So he sounds like one of those unbalanced aggressive players who defaults to betting, and with larger sizing.

Also, his sizing isn’t that polarizing. If my math is correct, he bets 1/3 pot on the flop and then sizes up on the turn but only to 70%, and then he actually sizes down to <60% on the river.

It’s difficult to read much into the behaviour. He could be nervous because he’s bluffing, or he could be nervous because he has a hand like JJ and realizes how scary the board is. If he is going to play overcards like this, he has a lot more combos of those than he does bigger pairs.

In spots like this I think back to what Andrew Brokos said in POP: when you’re playing against an opponent who deviates from equilibrium by betting (and bluffing) too frequently, the exploit is to call with all the marginal value hands you would normally fold to a more balanced opponent (to paraphrase).

[sirgasleak]

I like your play and I play it the same way.

Like you said, your actual hand equity is irrelevant – if you think your hand is behind his range, all that matters are your outs to the nuts.

[sirgasleak]

I actually agree with Misclick. Larger 3b pre and smaller flop bet. We have to consider the fact that he’s raising 2.5x from UTG and calling a 3b OOP, so his range should be pretty strong. You’re not getting any better hands to fold to a flop bet, and you don’t need to bet so much to deny equity to his AK/AQ/KQs stuff. Plus, you don’t really want him to fold his 88-TT either.

[sirgasleak]

I think I play it exactly the same way you did.

Flop is perfect spot for a x/r. You’ll get value from lots and lots of worse hands and bottom 2 is vulnerable and benefits from equity denial.

You can’t fold that river. You’re getting like a million to one odds so you don’t have to be good very often. I haven’t run the combos but you probably only need a few combos of Ax and busted draws from villain to make this call.

I hate leaving myself with such an awkwardly small stack on the river so there might be some bet sizing changes we can make on earlier streets. Maybe a smaller flop x/r and less than half pot on the turn.

[sirgasleak]

You can make some basic assumptions about villain based on population tendences. At $1.50, the two most common mistakes players make are:

1) Playing ranges that are too wide

2) Not playing positionally

So it wouldn’t be surprising at all to see a villain at $1.50 flatting in UTG+1 with hands like KQ, KJs, KTs…even AK if the player is passive or just trying to be “tricky.”

[sirgasleak]

Thanks for the response. I see your point about ranges, I was just using the hands as representative examples. But I think the range is built in to the analysis when factoring in both sides – ie, betting big with certain made and certain missed hands.

Your point about the high card is a really good one, though, and I think it captures why was struggling with the large sizing 1(a) category. Those are spots where I should be betting small, not large, precisely because villain will often connect in some way and call a CB, so they won’t actually be elastic in calling.

The non-BTN/BB spots are really interesting because I’m running into those spots way, way more than I did before moving to a ring-fenced population. It’s not uncommon at all to have several players at the table all running stats like 40/10 or 28/5 and doing a lot of limp/calling. The most bizarre stat I’m seeing is people who play “reverse-positional” poker: running laggy stats in EP/MP and then tightening up in LP/SB. It’s really strange.

[sirgasleak]

The reality is, this is exactly the kind of spot you should be avoiding: you’re chip leader on the FT with big pay jumps, 3 stacks with <10bb, and a potentially bloated pot with the one stack that can cripple you with a borderline hand against what is likely a strong range.

Maybe I’m not as confident in my postflop play as misclickdonkey is, but you’re facing a 3.3x open and if you call you’ll be going to the flop with an SPR of about 1.5 (villain leaves himself with only 600k behind and a 455k pot on the flop). There’s very little room to use your postflop skill to outplay villain here, and unless you get your 9xx flop you’re not going to be very happy about putting more money in on pretty much any flop. So calling makes little sense to me.

I also don’t like shoving because running into a strong range here would be a disaster. Even flipping against AK is ICM suicide. You’re basically praying he’s willing to raise/fold hands like TT/JJ/AK/AQ.

I don’t think you have to play the hand given the situation. Folding seems gross but the ICM implications are huge here.

[sirgasleak]

Assuming they’re opening much wider than they’re calling. But I’m questioning whether the $150 live tourney population is opening anywhere close to GTO in this spot. I would be curious to see the solver analysis if you give the raiser a tighter opening range.

[sirgasleak]

This is a live $150 tournament, what % of players there do you think are playing GTO ranges?

[sirgasleak]

Agree 100%. Learn the equilibrium strategy, then deviate to exploit. The reality is, even if we don’t have any info on an opponent, population tendencies won’t come close to GTO.

I’m not suggesting there isn’t value to discussing the GTO solutions in the hand discussions, but it should just be a starting point. I see so many threads in poker forums where the poster asks about a situation, and someone inevitably responds with a solver output as though that is the end rather than the beginning of the discussion.

[sirgasleak]

I think this UTG range is way too lose. Factoring in the ICM considerations, this guy is raising 3.3x from UTG for about 15% of his stack. Do we really think he’s doing this with A6/A7, K5s-K8s and all that stuff? I don’t.

[sirgasleak]

Yes. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think we’re in a phase of poker where people are putting way, way too much faith in solvers. It’s become a kind of crutch – it seems that we’ve moved away from analyzing hands and just relying on the solver answer.

[sirgasleak]

Exactly. When you x/r that flop, you’re basically value-targeting exactly AA and flush draws. Everything else you beat folds, and you lose to better Kx and are behind 66.