Thanks for the feedback @SunPowerGuru! Much appreciated!
-Marc
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By the way, i love your motion graphic intro.
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Glad you liked the intro! I had decided I wanted these episodes to look a little more professional and figured an intro was the best way to go.
-Marc
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Just spent the last hour recording a new episode of Marc’s Hand Review! I think this is the best episode yet! Planning to upload and publish it early next week! Can’t wait for you guys to see it! 
-Marc
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thats what I call a harley hand,
Hi everyone,
I just uploaded the newest episode of Marc’s Hand Review! You can check it out below!
I hope everyone enjoys it! I will be busy these next few weeks so their might not be another episode for a few weeks.
Question for Review: Would you have raised, called or folded the river bet and why?
-Marc
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I could offer some advice on how you played the hand, and your analysis.
First, KTs in the BB isn’t a bad hand to start with. I disagree with limping to the flop here. Your cards are both high, and suited. A 3BB raise might have convinced 33 to fold, as 1200 is a lot of chips here. You might even take the hand outright.
Even though you want to build a pot, the way you do that is not checking. If people fold, good. You got as much as you could out of them already, and now they’re out of the hand, no longer a threat.
Hitting the top pair, Tens, is ok, but not great. There are four pair hands that can beat you, any two pair or better is ahead of you, also. You’re probably ahead here, but might not be for long. The min bet to build the pot isn’t the right play. You want draws to fold right now, not after they hit (which is impossible, unless the board strongly suggests an even better draw was possible, and you’re representing it with your bets). Bet bigger, and win the hand now. If you had raised preflop, folded 33, and gotten a call from someone else, the pot is already big enough to close early. If 33 is still in the hand when you bet big on the flop, of course they call. But that tells you something, which is to proceed with caution from here, because they wouldn’t call with nothing, and all you really have is a pair.
As is, you’re already in deep trouble, with 33 hitting their set. Ordinarily you wouldn’t think about that 3 in the flop, but that’s why limping small pairs and making sets that no one suspects is a great place to be. I doubt the big stack is desperate enough to play 33 into a big raise. But once they hit the set of 3s, they won’t lay it down for someone who just limped from the BB.
The other news on the flop is that you completely lost any chance of hitting the flush, and that’s significant. Your best draws now will be to three of a kind, two pair, or possibly full house. Keeping a flush draw here wouldn’t have mattered in the showdown, but it was significant at the time that you lost a draw to a powerful hand, and that should be considered.
You stated that you bet 2000 on the river to scare away straights, but it’s too late for that, if there were any, they were already made, on the Turn, and would LOVE to call your trip Tens. If you are betting trips made on the river, it should be a value bet, not a bet to get folds. 2-3BB might get a call from weaker hands, and if you’re beat, you’re not losing as much if they call with better.
Of course, you could get raised off a small value bet, and then you have to rely on your read of the table to know whether it’s likely your opponent has better. And the 3s Full is very well disguised here.
In the end, it’s a disaster from the flop that you don’t realize until the showdown, but it was made preflop when you didn’t raise enough to get 33 to fold. In fact, your hand was behind the whole time.
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- J-To is awfully light to be going all in against players with much larger stacks. Do you really want to put you life in jeopardy here? Perhaps not. Calling was the right move.
- Postflop, you hold 2nd pair and a two-way straight draw. Both opponents have checked to you, likely indicating weakness–which doesn’t mean they won’t play if you bet, just that they didn’t want to take the lead. Your min bet of 6000 on 2nd pair + draw might’ve been a trifle light, but makes sense in view of both building the pot without over-committing or, alternatively, letting the table draw for free.
- When the second heart falls, you should’ve bet at least the minimum again. You speculated about the possible flush draw, but then allowed it to pass for a check. How would you have reacted if that river card was a heart?
- When the river puts a J on the board, your reaction should not have been to wonder about raising. That possibility of a straight with either 8 or K should be scary. Your decision should’ve been between calling and folding, not calling and raising. The good news is the bet was small enough that calling and losing wouldn’t have killed you. What would you have done if he’d bet your stack?
- The opponent may have figured you to be betting on position alone (with air, in other words) trying to buy some chips, thus his cheap bluff. If he’d really had the straight, he’d have left you crippled at best.
- You were right to call, but mostly because the situation forced it on you.
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It’s hard to tell because at that point I only have 36,850 chips on the river which is about 6 big blinds and I’m the shortest stack at the table. If It was a heart on the river one option would have been I could think about bluffing a flush by going all in and just hoping no one else has the heart or I could have folded the river bet and hoped for a better spot to get it all in before I’m blinded out. More likely then not I’m probably folding if a heart hits the river as I really don’t have enough history with the opponent to tell if he is bluffing or has it in that spot.
If he had bet my chip stack I’m probably folding thinking that he has the straight. Based on the fact he only bet 4k more then what the big blind was he made it more likely for me to call which would have been a good play for him if he had the straight. I admit looking back at it I got lucky that he basically priced me in to call the river bet. If he bet’s for my chip stack it probably would have been a fold on the river.
-Marc
This. Once it gets to the river, what would you hope to accomplish with your raise? You’re not getting called by worse hands, and there are few better hands that might consider folding. A raise had little upside, and lots of downside (getting knocked out of the tourney), so a call was much better.
Even before that, I actually like jamming on the turn here. It would deny equity - most straight draws and flush draws would have to fold - and you have plenty of outs against top pair hands that might consider calling. It also saves you from getting bluffed off your hand if the flush draw comes in.
Finally, I’d recommend viewing bet and raise sizes with respect to the amount of chips in the pot, rather than compared to the big blind, especially post flop. That would put your river decision in a different light - needing a roughly 20% chance to win the pot (Calling 10k to win 50k, plus an ICM fudge factor) is a more useful metric than whether to call 1.7BB.
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Hi everyone,
Just wanted to post a quick update. I’m hoping to be able to record more episodes of Marc’s Hand Review and post them sometime in May. I’ve been busy with other stuff which is why I haven’t recorded or posted new episodes for awhile. Thanks for the support!
-Marc
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Hi everyone,
I wanted to provide a quick update. I know it’s been awhile since this thread has been updated but I wanted to let you know Marc’s Hand Review has not been abandoned! I’ve been busy since April and was away on vacation last month.
I’m planning on recording new videos within the next 2 weeks or sooner if possible (I have family on vacation visiting) I have selected a few hands to review and look forward to posting new content!
-Marc
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Hi everyone,
The newest episode of Marc’s Hand Review has been released. I review a hand that has me facing a possible straight. Check out the episode below!
I used a new microphone that I just got today in this episode. I didn’t realize it until I saw the playback in editing but the audio is a little jumpy and sometimes cuts off. My apologies for that. I will research a solution to this problem so it will hopefully be fixed before I record the next episode.
I hope you enjoy this episode!
UPDATE: I think I already found out the problem with my mic. It was a default setting in Windows 10. My microphone boost setting was set at 10 by default. I raised it to 20 and it’s an instant improvement. I’ve ran some test in Audacity and it’s seems to have fixed it so the sound will be better in the next video.
-Marc
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Thanks for posting this with your thoughts on the hand.
In my humble opinion, if you are trying to bet someone off the pot, you need a bigger bet than 1/4 of the stack.
I don’t get your opinion that the opponent was bluffing. He is passive all along and never tries to push you off the pot. If he was floating all along, had he shoved on the river, you would have had to fold.
You don’t seem to consider anywhere in your discussion the fact that he might have a Ten in his hand, which seems like the most likely hand he holds, until he folds to the river bet, and it becomes clear that he has no Ten and he fears that you have a Ten.
So what does he have that enables him to call down to the river and on the river? Well in these low-entry games players will call with absolutely anything, but he could have something like KJ or Q9 or J9 and is calling hoping that he can make trips or 2 pairs. Or he may have a small pocket pair, 4s, 3s, or 2s and is hoping to make a set. On RP players will often call all the way with an underpair. In fact when someone keeps calling small bets and does not check raise that is a definite flag that he has a pocket underpair.
Overall, my bet would be that he had J9 or J8 and was hoping to make a second pair or trips, but gave up on the river. This would explain his non aggression, as he was playing more as if he had a draw. If he had J9 of clubs, the turn would have given him the flush draw, but the river missed. Had the river come with a club, you would have had to consider whether he had a backdoor flush.
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Thanks for your thoughts @MekonKing
I should have focused on the fact he was passive and wasn’t betting aggressively. If he did have a ten in his hand I think he would have definitely been aggressive.
Thinking about this hand more I’m thinking he was worried I had the straight because I was the one betting throughout the hand.
I think my raise preflop was fine. I didn’t want to scare everyone off their hand right away as I wanted to get some value. However I think I should have bet more on the flop and turn. Looking back my river bet probably should have been around 20k since at that point I was basically representing a straight and had the bigger chip stack then him.
Thanks for your opinion and advice!
-Marc
I don’t know. With river bets I like to strike a happy medium so that opponents cannot quite decide whether I want to be called or not.
Quite honestly, I think I would have checked the river with that straight looming. In this case I think I would want to keep the pot small and wait to see if he bet to decide whether to call. But then I am a coward and don’t like to bet on the river too often unless I can beat top pair. If he did not have the straight, then he also would be happy to check down the hand and the result would presumably have been the same. If he did have the straight, you were going to lose a lot of chips, but if he did not have the straight, would he dare try to bluff? If I was him and had the straight, I would probably make a smallish bet on the river that looked like a Hail Mary, hoping to be called.
On the flop I would have bet more to try to finish the hand then and there, especially with a somewhat weak hand like KQ. If he called a larger bet, but did not reraise, I would try to check the hand down.
Preflop I do not see the point of your raise as it was too small to knock anyone out of the bidding and you ended up with three callers. This also doubled the size of the pot, making it harder to make a flop bet that would offer poor odds to opponents without putting a lot of your chips at risk. KQ is more of a drawing hand with the additional appeal that if you make a pair on the flop, it will probably be top pair, second kicker. A miniraise preflop does not give much information about what opponents hold.
Although I did not consider this before, your opponent could have been holding A9 of clubs, or even A8. This would fit with him calling the preflop miniraising, but not reraising. With second pair the flop bet was not enough to knock him out. The turn would have given him the nut flush draw, and then the river left him with second pair and not enough to call a bet when there was a King and a straight on the board.
It is really so difficult on RP to attribute any rational behavior to opponents, especially at the lower buy-ins, so it is all guesswork.
In the higher buy-ins, 250,000 plus, opponents are much more likely to fold if they are behind at the flop or do not have the odds to play draws. In the lower buy-ins hope often overrules probability.
In the 1-million chip tournament I played yesterday, I spotted a player who was ranked at over 500,000 in the RP rankings, which is quite unusual in these games. I guess he put all his chips into the buy-in. Of course someone could be ranked at 1 million and be a pro getting in a little practice with the proles, but I noticed that this player was calling down to the river with next to nothing on several hands, winning some of them fortuitously, and guessed that he was not very experienced in playing this type of game. When I made top pair, top kicker against him when I called his 5 x BB raise, I did shove, and he called with top pair lower kicker and was almost eliminated and I doubled up. I was a bit lucky, I suppose, but when you have a good hand and are up against a very loose raiser-caller, you mostly have to push the advantage, shut your eyes, and hope for the best.
What do you think your opponent had? What would you have done if he had reraised you on the river?
I think he had somewhat of a weak hand considering how the hand was played. He could have had something like AJ, QJ, or maybe 4,8 which would have given him a low straight but perhaps he thought I had a better one. Honestly It’s difficult to put him on a specific hand in this situation but considering he didn’t try to re-raise me and just called every street I didn’t think he had a strong hand that could beat my pair of kings.
If he re-raised me on the river I would have had a difficult decision to make. He had about 27k chips when we got to the river and I had roughly about 39k I believe. No matter what I would have had some chips behind even If I made a bad decision and called and I was wrong.
I think if he were to re-raise me on the river he would have had to go all-in to get a fold from me. The way he played the hand throughout just made me feel I had him beat. I think if he was drawing to a straight throughout the hand he would have played it aggressively like you said earlier he played passively which as a result gave me a good sense I had the hand won.
-Marc
This actually raises a point that I have never really seen commented on. The conventional wisdom is that late position gives the advantage as you bet last on the flop, but often in RP tournament games, because of the steep blind structure, it is impossible for a late player to call a large bet from an early player unless they are very strong, so the blinds have a greater than expected chance of pulling off bluffs when the late position raiser misses the flop, and a semibluff on the flop when the player in the blinds has a draw can be a very profitable hand with a high probability that late position player will fold added onto the possibility of hitting the draw on the turn being greater than 50%.
The same will apply in spades to the late position limper, who is not even strong enough to raise.
Bingo Bango Bongo! Good eye my man!
Marc, you actually had trip tens on both flop and turn - two on the board, one in your hand. Not sure if it’s possible to re-shoot adjusted commentary that accurately captures the strength of your hand on those streets…
Also, if this is Omaha High-Low, it would be good to note on the flop that no low will be possible since there is no card 8 or lower. Just a thought.
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