Killed by quads

Pots won: 20%
At showdown: 53%
Without showdown: 47%

A few months ago, when I played differently, I was winning 22% of my hands, with a higher percentage without showdown, I forget how much but it was probably like 45%-55% the other way. I’m winning more with a showdown, in other words. And overall I’ve been winning more than I was back then. But more recently, in the last couple weeks that I’ve been playing, suddenly players are calling my post-flop bets far more often than they used to, and I haven’t changed the size of those bets, so I’m at a loss as to what it is – either the entire site has shifted its play style and is calling in that situation more, or people are onto me. But I don’t think that many people pay attention to individual players – perhaps I’m wrong about that.

In MTTs, most don’t, but there are a core group you will see over and over, and a lot of them do. Win too many hands with junk and they will call you down from then on.

This is amplified with SnGs. You will see the same players a lot, and more of them will notice what you are doing. It all comes down to persistent table image.

If I was in your shoes, I would get new shoes! Tighten up… a lot, and forget about bluffing for awhile. Play your strong hands hard and don’t waste chips on junk.

Bluffing no longer seems to be working for you. When a wise man finds himself in a hole, he stops digging.

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Thanks, I’ll give it a shot.

Update:

Raised AKs, 2 callers, flopped 3 of the wrong suit, they both check, I bet pot and take it, but I feel dirty.

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/496526127

Limped QX, flopped top pair, 3-card flush draw min bets, I raised overbetting the pot, they called, Turn was another Q that would have filled their flush if they were suited, they shove, I call, they only have the Ace and four-flush so I knock them out. Still don’t feel very good, but I observe that I can’t get a 3-to-a-flush draw fold with an over-pot sized raise. Oh well, I’ll take those odds. :wink:

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/496526302

Then, this happens:

22, slow action allows me to call min-bets to the river, I finally hit a set of 2s, bet the pot, am called by TT, the min-better who filled his set on the Turn, who takes me, set over set:

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/496528019

AK. Re-raised from 120 to 1000, didn’t buy the pot. Vs. 99, Blanked the board, got my opponent all-in tho. They hit set on the flop, so well of course. Another bad bluff. When will I learn.

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/496528517

Sometimes there’s just no getting out of the way.

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/496541553

So much for the 3-barrel bluff. Guess I should have either upped my bets post-flop, or given it up and not tried to take this hand at all.

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/496543216

Well, my last two SNGs I finished 3rd and 1st. I should have taken 1st in the one I finished 3rd, but the one time I tried to take a hand with a 3-barrel bluff, it was my undoing. I didn’t bluff it well at all, I can see in retrospect (see previous post in this thread), lost most of my chips, and couldn’t recover, went out 3rd.

The next SNG, I played all the more honest, and did much better. Didn’t feel any need to take risks in this one, didn’t feel like I needed to win every hand I was in, didn’t feel like I needed to bet every time the table showed weakness. I did take a few hands with nothing made, but they weren’t situations where I was putting myself at undue risk. I like the way I felt throughout this one, patient and calculating, and measured. I’ll see if I can continue to maintain this discipline and rack up some more wins.

This rings true. I’m at 73/27, playing mostly ring games. [quote=“puggywug, post:18, topic:13023”]
So it’s looking like I need to:

  • Open less often, tighter range, preferrably from better position
  • Bet bigger when I do open.
  • C-bet the turn and river if I have to when I miss and feel I have a good chance to bluff.
  • Not bluff too much when I do miss a flop.
  • Consider the pot odds I’m offering when I size my bets.

Basically, just go back to fundamentals, in other words
[/quote]

The only part of this with which I disagree is betting turn and river when you miss. This is going to cost you a lot of chips when people call you down light and you have air or a weak hand. In general, you win far more chips by getting people to call you when you have value than by getting them to fold to your bluffs.

On very dry boards it may make sense to c-bet with your full range, but on wet boards it is suicide. If you’re multi-way, this is even more true, since more people will have caught at least a piece of the flop. Narrow your c-bet range to your stronger draws and made hands, particularly when you continue to barrel. By the time you reach the river, if you’re firing a third bullet, you should be able to name the hands that you are betting as bluffs, and which you’re betting for value, using the ratio of the two to calibrate your bet size.

Of course, it may not be possible to fly do that given time constraints, but it’s a good exercise when you step away from the table and analyze your play. An example of a hand review in which I did this can be found here: Triple-Barrel Bluff - #9 by WannabeCoder Of course, it may not be possible to do all that given time constraints, but it’s a good exercise when you step away from the table and analyze your play.

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More of the same rag junk calling station BS today.

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/496700035

Ace-suited, I buy the pot at the flop, late position, am called by 23s, they flop 2 pair, I chase a flush to oblivion and lose almost all my chips. Bad move to do that, admittedly, but again here I am losing a hand I should not have been in. WHO CALLS a 360 open bet with 23 suited? At least one person at every table I’ve been on for the last 3 weeks, that’s who.

I went on an extended rant in the chat to see if I could get any kind of answer, and the justification is, “no big deal, it’s free poker, I like to gamble. If I miss you win”.

OK, great so why are people doing this over and over to me and winning? Where are the hands where I take them for a huge pot because they called so dumb? Where is the balance to the variability?

Puggy, check my current story at the blog. You’re supposed to eat THEIR lunch. If your opponents are seeing you as their potential dinner,maybe there’s a reason.

Meant for large field tournaments but good advice for all tournament formats. Pay attention to the bits about c-betting too frequently. 2 parts:

I gather that! Trying to understand why, tho.

It’s probably not just one reason, I’m thinking.

Some players may have enough experience against me that they’ve found something they can exploit. There’s definitely such a thing as being too aggressive, and trying to take too many pots with no action ahead of me, and too many bluffs generally is something I’ve identified I need to eliminate from my game.

Some are just donks who are calling too often with weak hands they should fold, and either coming from behind to take it, and/or I’m missing more than my fair share of draws lately.

There’s also just badly sized bets that don’t offer poor pot odds to continue, which I think is a useful insight from earlier in this thread.

That’s the best I’ve been able to come up with so far. What else could it be, do you think?

Peoploe call too much. You have to adjust for that. Less bluff, more value.

If you bet the pot, you give them 2-1 pot odds. Some people know that, 4 to a flush or an open ender, they will hit by the river about 1 in 3, which is 2-1 against. I think a lot of people miss the “by the river” part and don’t factor in that they will have to call another bet on the turn if they miss.

A lot of people also don’t have a clue about the odds, they only know they have a flush or straight draw. No amount of chips will get them to fold. Flushes are good, they have a flush draw, let’s go!

If you are deep, you can bet enough to make these chases incorrect, and you will profit long term. In multi-way pots, however, you could be facing several different draws. Yeah, you might be ahead of any one of them, but you have to see them as a collective, not several individual hands. You are against the field, not any one person in isolation.

In such situations, you might actually be behind statistically. Why throw chips at it? Of you have to bluff, save it for the river if it looks like everyone missed. Yes, checking gives everyone a free card, but it gives you a free card too. If they are going to call anyway, and if you are behind statistically, why not check?

Tournaments are about survival. You can’t throw away chips on moves you should know won’t work. Why are you betting? To fold out better hands or get paid by weaker hands. If you have air, you can’t count on there being weaker hands, and if nobody folds, you won’t accomplish that goal either. You might as well keep those chips in your stack and see what happens.

This is a form of pot control. If you get to the river cheap, a pot sized bet won’t bankrupt you. If you bet every street, you might not have enough chips to make a meaningful river bet, and if you do, it will be a much bigger chunk of your stack.

You have to adjust to the players at the table. It’s starting to sound like the players are adjusting to you, but you stubbornly stick to the same old game.

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A few questions about this hand that might help your play.

Are you comfortable playing A8++ as a bluff out of position? Because bumping it up to 12BB with that hand is basically a bluff in that spot. And what are you trying to accomplish with that bluff? I understand the logic of stealing, the action was pretty passive, but there is relatively little money in the middle (I think <8 BB). Is inflating the pot so early for relatively little money in the middle worth it at this point of a SnG? Dead money/blind stealing is more successful in later rounds.

Once you are min-raised on the flop - what hands do you think you are beating there? No, I wouldn’t have expected the two-pair either - I would’ve guessed he’s flopped a set or he’s slow-playing a big pocket pair. He’s probably not min-raise bluffing. I mean the min-raise is a bit like the f-you bet, you kinda have to call it b/c you can’t let anyone bluff for that cheap, but it’s pretty unlikely it’s a bluff.

Why did you donk-shove on the turn? Was it mostly a result from over-inflating the pot so much that you felt you had to chase and hope for the best? Or did you think it would work to end the hand there?

I think it would be helped if you asked yourself why you were taking certain risks / what you are trying to accomplish at each point of the hand in general. And also thinking a few steps ahead - if I inflate the pot pre-flop, what are you going to do on the flop-turn-river etc.

1 Like

Good questions, helps me think.

I play out of position quite a bit. It seems my very best cards often come UTG. This is a curse, or something, but at least in the BB I’m last to act preflop, which is something. It gives me some opportunity to try to buy the pot right there. If I end up in a hand, maybe the big raise gets me isolated, and then position may not matter so much as does being first to act and making an aggressive bet. Since we know any random hand will hit the flop only 1/3 of the time, heads up you’re 2/3 likely to bet into hand that’s holding nothing at the flop, and if the flop is scary – suited, paired, or 3 to a straight, that can often work, in my experience.

Now, if you’ve really hit such a board, it’s smarter to check and then raise, but (I guess not anymore, but for a while it seemed this way) people wouldn’t call without feeling like they were ahead in the hand, and when they’d miss a flop they’d let it go. That would mean that, especially if I made a pot-sized bet, that people would fold unless they were holding top pair, good kicker, or better. So it was profitable pretty often. Suddenly, it seems everyone has realized that it can work out well to call, and if the price of admission to see if you hit a draw is to go all-in, hey great, more chips to win, how can I lose?

So the pattern that I run into is, I’ll bet at the flop, I’ll get a call. Now I have a choice. Slow down on the Turn, in which case – invariably – I’m looking at a pot-sized bet or shove when I check, or continue to bet, in which case maybe they decide to fold, or maybe we continue.

In this hand, on the turn I hit a 4th club, and was 1-away from a nut flush. I didn’t figure betting my remaining stack here would get a fold, but I figured regardless of what I did, I’m going to have to put all my chips in to see the next card anyway – if I check, he raises to put me all in to continue, and so I can either decide to walk away from the possible flush, or continue with a 25% chance of making the flush on the river, or maybe I’ll pair one of my cards, which gives me 6 more outs for another 24% or so, and maybe I don’t have the best hand if I just hit a pair, but maybe I do, it’s not completely unheard of for players to take a pair all-in on this site, and so that’s pretty close to 50-50 odds to hit something that could take the hand. By the Turn, in other words, I’m pot-committed, and I’d rather bet all-in for whatever chance it gives me that it fold my opponent than I would to call all-in.

So, I got to the problem of being pot-committed by the Turn because I called a raise on the flop. My 1/2 pot bet got raised, which again isn’t too uncommon for the way players have been playing me lately. Players seem to want to test my flop bet. Maybe I’ve displayed this pattern to too many players too often for too long: bet with air, gotten called, check the turn, fold to any pressure. So now players know that they can just raise and I’ll fold a flop bet a decent amount of the time, and so they’ll do that, often with a hand like bottom pair. So in response to this, I’ve started to push back some more.

To be sure, if I don’t see a club on the Turn, I’m not betting again, unless I pair my Ace. Once the club hits, I reason I’m about 50-50 to make a hand that could win, and 25% to make the nuts. I’m alright with shoving there. I’m alright with getting beat there if I don’t make the hand. But what galls me is getting beat, and seeing that someone called my pot-sized open with 23s. That sets me off, not the losing. How does a player call a raise that size with 23s? He could have showed me AA, that would have been fine, I would have understood. But 23? So do I need to bet 750 to get him to fold here? Do people just not care what they’re holding at all here? What gives? Or was 360 too big of an open, because it put me in the position of getting pot-committed by the Turn? Well, either way, betting fewer chips here doesn’t fold 23 in this player’s hands, and I’m not getting away from a 3322 hand too easily. Maybe I shouldn’t have bet the flop at all here – that was a bad bluff but given my thinking about 2/3 of the time a player miss the flop, and I just have to get one player to fold, it seemed reasonable to try to bet an amount that would get someone to fold if they had no hand, and it was a worse idea to call their raise here because I just shouldn’t have, even knowing that I’ve apparently developed a table image of being soft against raises. That’s the problem I get for bluffing more than I should, and having to fold to raises as a result, I know. But again, I don’t mind the beat, I’m flummoxed by the calling to 360 preflop on 32s.

I wish I could go back over the last 48 hours and count up all the OESDs that I’ve had. It’s sketchy to try to estimate it, but I feel like I’ve missed a lot more than 2/3 of them. Perceptions and memory are a notoriously unreliable way to tabulate statistics, I know, but I’m sure I’ve missed more than my share. It feels virtually certain not to hit. I know I’ve hit a few straights, but usually they’re unintented hands where I’m already all-in before the flop and a pocket pair turns into a straight. I’ve also flopped straights. But after the flop, I’m not sure I’ve made even one straight that I wasn’t already all-in on, or didn’t have at least a pair made before it hit. So, a naked OESD is trash, completely not worth chasing no matter how good the odds are. Zero bets? Fold that trash. Bad advice? Sure. But that’s Replay.

Yes, a lot of people have no clue about the odds, but there are quite a lot of situations where the odds are not really relevant, or where you just have to think on your feet in a particular situation.

For example, early in a tournament when everyone wants to get off the mark and away to a good start, it may be more helpful to think in terms of what percentage of your stack you are putting at risk, than of the pure odds, because it is impossible to calculate how many players will stay in a multiway pot, or the potential value of the implied odds, should you prevail at the river.

Here is an interesting hand from the early stages of a tournament, or interesting to me anyway.

I picked up 22 and limped in hoping to hit a set. The flop came JJ4. Early players minbetted and I raised the flop to 3BBs to see how the land lay and determine whether anyone wanted out. One player called my flop raise (what did they have, a flush draw I would think, but it would have been moot if I had what i was representing).

Turn comes another 4, giving everyone 2 pairs and completing the full house I would have had if I was for real, but counterfeiting my pair of twos so that I was playing the board. River comes with a 3. It is checked to me, I bet half the pot and the only survivor instafolds, although with two pairs and a 3 kicker on the board, there was literally NO HAND at all that I could have beaten, although I could have split the pot with 2-3 or 2-2.

At this stage of a tournament with low blinds, players will get into pots with just about any hand. Later on, they are more likely to have hands, although that is not always the case.

Later in the same tournament as soon as the bubble burst I committed a faux pas and was completely fooled by a player who called a preflop raise with King rag and then slow played top pair and took out my pocket Queens. Why he called preflop, I have no idea, but perhaps he just decided to go for bust since the bubble had burst and hit paydirt. When people are not playing for real money and perhaps have other things to do, it is impossible to accurately predict what they will do.

Once the bubble has burst in tournaments, you might as well play shove or fold, because you simply lose fold equity by raising anything other than your whole stack.

Even in the early stages of tournaments, I find it quite effective to just instashove if I pick up AA. I may indeed make everyone fold and just pick up the blinds, but as often or not someone will call, which is the situation your really do want to be in, with AA and all your chips in and a very strong chance to double your initial stack. What you don’t want is to slap in a massive preflop raise of 20% of your stack and still get called by 4 players with suited cards and connectors one of whom will probably mow down your Aces.

By comparison just picking up the blinds and mucking your cards is a better result, plus it gives opponents the idea that you are a bingo player and not to be taken seriously.

This is true.

4-5 months ago, it seemed like the vogue thing to do in Astral SNG play was to go all-in on the first hand. So many games I would see this, some jackhole would all-in the first hand. Maybe they’d just steal 45 chips from the table with AA, or maybe someone would call them with 83 and knock them out, like you do, or maybe the Aces would take them, and they’d double up. Sometimes this would go on for a while, and usually they’d flame out and go bust pretty quickly, things would settle down, and be fine after that.

I also would see some escalating re-raise wars ahead of the flop, where two people would raise until all-in ahead of the flop, and go at it. This was slightly better poker, but it made me wary for the time about entering into any hands until I’d seen an orbit or so, unless I had QQ+.

There are also plenty of times when people will get all-in on the very first hand by the river, and then either chop or someone gets an early double-up and dominates the table for a while. Those are “fun” but about half the time the lucky winner plays too loose with his windfall and comes back down, and can be an easy mark to get chips from since they might think they can bully you, or can withstand a beat and don’t mind the chance to gamble for some more chips.

Whatever goes on in the early stage, things do settle down by the midgame, especially once it’s down to 6 players remaining. It’s very common in the games I play that 1-2 players go out pretty early, before the blinds even hit 40/80. On a table with all good, high ranked players, on the other hand, I’ve seen first knockout happen as late as 40 minutes into the game, which usually by that time it’d getting down to 4-5 players.

In any case, it seems to be good advice to avoid early disasters by playing extra tight for the opening few orbits. I think it’s very good strategy. It helps you stay out of hands, so you can just observe. When you do get into a hand, you’re more likely to win it with that tighter range. And it establishes your table image as a player who plays only the best hands, which is very helpful for the middle and late game when you need to open your range up more.

Since the bingo-fest of a few months ago seems to have subsided, it seems more players have picked up on this and are playing this way. But the early few hands especially are still somewhat wild and hard to predict. Less so when there’s familiar faces at the table.

On the other hand, I totally disagree with your reasoning here.

After the bubble, there are two possibilities: Either you have a big, healthy stack, or you’re close to being eliminated. Or maybe you’re somewhere in the middle, with a healthy stack, but not near the top of the leaderboard. Let’s say the three cases are: 100K+ stack, 25-40K, and <20K, especially 5K and lower.

By bubble time, you’re about an hour, sometimes hour and a half in to the tournament, depending how big it is, and the blinds are getting very pricey.

You can ride this just fine if you’re on a very big “group A” stack. Continue to play a more or less normal strategy, and you can wait for cards, play them, as you would, and grow your stack. There will be a lot more shoving from the small stacks who are about to get blinded out anyway, but these are fine, they’re like min-raises to you when they go all-in, and you can sustain being beat by them. It’s also fine to take on the mid-sized stacks, although you do want to be more careful about it. But engulfing the 20-40k stacks is a great way to bloat yourself up to a nigh invincible lead for the final table.

Most of the time, you won’t be so lucky, and will be playing a more middle of the road “Group B” stack. In this case, the small stacks are getting eliminated so quickly that it’s quite profitable to let them knock each other out, and stay out of anything except when you hold a very nutty hand, or are in the BB and happen to hit a good flop. You can still fold out smaller opponents by betting 50-80% of their stack when you need to, or just put them all-in, but you don’t have to go head to head against the other mid-tier stacks and risk everything. If you do get into a hand with another stack similiar in size to you, or bigger, you want to be very careful not to get too committed until you feel you’re definitely ahead.

If you’re a small stack, you want to shove any time you’re in a hand, yes. It’s pointless not to, you’re going to be put all-in by a bigger stack if you don’t get them in ahead of the flop, but by that point they’ll have enough information to know that it’s going to be profitable for them to put you there. You won’t have enough power behind your shove to fold anyone after a flop, either, whereas you might if you shove preflop. There have been many times when I’ve been down to my last 3000 or so chips, started shoving, and before I knew it had collected enough blinds at 400-800 or higher that soon I had a nice healthy stack, was ahead of everyone at my table, and could start thinking about placing at the final table.

As for insta-shoving AA, I don’t like it as a general rule. For one, you have an 15% chance of losing to any random hand, which is too much variance for me to want to do it every time. But mostly, it’s going to lose you a lot of chips if you make everyone fold, which is what will happen a lot of the time. Depending on position and stack sizes, I’ll do it, but I like to do it after the rest of the table has gotten theirs in first. I’d rather raise just enough to encourage a re-raise, then take them all in, because that’s more likely to work. But you do have a point, in that re-raising is super rare on RPP, at least at the stakes and games I play in, and also there are an awful lot of players who’ll call an all-in open with stupid hands like 55 or KT or AXs.

With AA, I’ll call anything, pretty much, anyone shoves and I have AA, they’re getting to see a showdown. But they can hit trips, 2 pair, a straight, and it happens about 15% of the time. And I’ll raise just about anything, but I am unlikely to go all-in on AA. If I’m the big stack, and I’m raising, I might raise enough to put the smaller stacks all-in to call.

I’m not saying I won’t shove with AA, but I’m not insta-shoving it every time. The players who do are usually pretty easy to get away from. Situationally, if it seems like a good idea, then yes. Then again, I overthink these things. But I think in tournaments it is good to be cautious and not to put your tournament life at risk unless absolutely necessary, or unless you’re about to be bled out of the game anyway, and you’ve got something playable.

Well, today has been going much better for me. In the money in every SNG I’ve played today. 3rd, 2nd, 1st. I could have done better in the first two games, but I’m not going to beat myself up over calling a shove from KK with 88, or the donk who kept beating me with baby flushes that he had no business playing, taking an early lead from me where I had more than half the chips at the table with 5-6 players left in it.

If you’d like to see a great heads-up battle, check this sequence out, starting with this hand. grandpales played very tough, and nearly got me. https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/496961932

Well, yes, but AA is a tricky hand. If I have an 85% chance to double up, I am good with that and will take it in most cases–unless I am tournament leader or close to it, in which case it is much harder to double up, and you have a lot to lose.

However, while AA is 85% to win against a random hand, AA is not 85% to win at the flop against one hand with a flush draw and another hand with a straight draw, and in the late stages of a tournament, you cannot really afford to get shoved off your raised pot when opponent playing K 5 flops 2 pairs and makes a bet that looks like top pair or a bluff.

If you are a monster stack after the bubble and pick up AA, then you want to get one smaller stack all-in, so you may want to size bets to get the small blind and/or big blind all in if they call, or if someone limps in ahead of you, scare off the rest and make the limper pay a lot to see the flop, then put him all in if the flop looks dry. If the flop comes 22K, then you are probably ahead. If the flop comes with an Ace, then you want to give opponent a chance to bet if he has an Ace, before you squash him like a fly, because if he does not have an Ace, and cannot beat a pair of Aces, he is not probably not going to try to bluff you.

It’s not an 85% chance to double up, unless you get called, and get called by a bigger stack. And if this is your move every time with AA, then it’s going to be too obvious, and players will tend to let you buy the blinds. I want better value from my Aces than that.

If you’re down, and your stack is so small that you’re very likely to get called by someone, then absolutely, you want to shove AA preflop.

If you’re shoving a stack that is actually intimidating, much of the time you’re just going to buy what’s in the middle. In late position, if there’s a lot of limpers or someone raised 2-3BB and there are 3-5 calls ahead of you, that’s a sizeable pot and worth stealing even if no one calls. So a shove there is a pretty good move.

If you’re UTG, shoving AA is going to get you the BB and the SB, and maybe once in a while some donk will call you and you’ll get to double up or knock them out 85% of the time. If you’re in early position, and the table has “good” players who can be relied upon to open raise, not a limpfest table, then check-raise, or maybe min-raise with the intend to 3-bet if someone raises on you.

If your stack is dominant on the board, then just betting enough to get the smaller stacks all-in can work every bit as good in terms of getting folds, while putting you at less risk.

Dumping AA if the flop is scary for a pair isn’t the worst thing. It’s better than getting beat when you’re all-in.