Excellent point. And if the BB calls a bet of 3BB with unpaired cards, 2 times out of 3 he will miss the flop and have to fold to a continuation bet, and that can get very expensive when the big stack is two or three seats to the right. And if he overcalls, then the big stack can jack the raise up to 4 or 5 BB or more.
If he has a pocket pair and bets the big stack may fold, but if the BB checks, that is just giving the big stack a chance to suck out. A check raise may work, but even if it does, the big stack will be back hammering away at the blinds. If the big stack does raise and then show garbage cards, it just acts as cover for when he does have good cards, and remember that big bullies pick up aces just as often as anybody else.
Of course the BB can shove on a bluff and force the big stack to fold, but since the BB with a smaller stack stands to be eliminated if the bluff is called, that is also a risky strategy.
Stack size is everything. Early in tournaments hands like AK are devalued a bit, because it is difficult to get one on one with an opponent without raising the pot so high that you are at risk of becoming pot committed.
Here is a sample hand. You have AK0 and raise 4x BB, button calls with QTs, and BB calls with TT. What are the chances that you will have the best hand after 5 cards are dealt?
Preflop you are actually 38% to win, but you are not a big favorite and when the flop comes everything may change. If any Q or J comes on the flop, you are down to 25%, any T and you are toast, and if two cards come of the same suited as the buttonās cards, you are down to 13%.
Even if a K comes on the flop and the K is of the same suit as the buttonās hand and he has a flush draw, you are only 57% to stay ahead at the river.
So you may be best to mix it up. Sometimes limp AK and when an ace comes on the flop and a player with an inferior ace bets the pot, you can reraise him and take down the pot, or his stack.
The strength of AK is that one on one it is only a small underdog to any pocket pair and dominates all unpaired hands, especially hands that might call a raise like AQ, AJ, KQ, KJ, AT, or KT.
When it comes to the final table, and there are 5 players left, the blinds are very high, and 4 will get the money, then AK becomes a very powerful hand with potential to win a big pot, especially if you are first into the pot and if you raise and get called by an opponent who cannot fold AQ, then you are sitting pretty, and if you are called by TT, you are still in with a 43% shout in an all-in situation.
So limp sometimes with AK if the situation demands it, and raise 3BB or more with some other hands to keep your opponents guessing. That way you improve your bluffing abilities. For example you raise from early position with 9 7 suited, and I call or reraise from the BB with 99. If an Ace falls on the flop, I am not going to like it and if I bet half the pot and you put in a large raise, I may have to fold and you win 6BB even though your hand is dominated.
On the other hand, perhaps I have seen you pull this cr*p to many times before, so I shove my 9s and discover that you do have AK after all.
Warning: Bluffing is inherently risky and this post is provided for educational purposes only. RP can accept no responsibility should players lose pots or even their whole stack on bluffs. But when you have no cards, you are entitled to pretend to have a few. In this tournament I made it into the second hour in a plausible position with a chance to win, although I eventually ran into a pair of kings. However in the first hour I did not pick up a single āplayableā hand, but was able to stay afloat with many bread-and-butter hands like this:
Would you like some cheese with your whine? Let me tell you about a whole year of my life in Vegas with real cards and real people. Or maybe about September when I was new to RP and finished 75th for the month at ohl. My specialty in case you want to send a few more triple-digit ranked holdem players to my arena. Waaaaaaaaaah Waaaaaaaah Waaaaaaaaaaah!
Yes, but my observation is that in so many of these hands, V hits the board while already ahead, for overkill.
When theyāre behind, they hit the board for a suckout, when theyāre ahead they hit the board so Iām drawing dead. Very often on the very next card to be dealt. First card of the flop, or the turn card, but if neither of these, then surely the river.
For example, last night I had a hand just before the 1 hour break, Iām dealt TT. V raises holding KK from the seat behind me. I 3! from 450 to 1700, V shoves in response, completely reasonably. But since shoving in response to a 3-bet is the only way everyone plays on this site, itās meaningless, I call. He flips up kings, and backdoors the other two Kings for quads, completely gratuitous. Obviously I canāt complain about the result, as itās completely expected that KK dominates TT. If it were reversed though, the typical board runout would be Iād hit trip Kings on the first card of the flop, but then the board would run KJ98Q, giving V a straight to beat my trips.
Not that I never win underdog hands. Earlier in the game, Iād opened hands in my range, only to run into giant 3! that I wasnāt about to call. After the fourth or fifth, I had grown sick of folding to it, gave up, and suicide shoved A8s into what turned out to be AQ, and the board paired my 8 on the Turn, and I ended up crippling the player who had raised me, and he busted within the next orbit.
Itās not like I can count accurate statistics, and thereās probably plenty of cognitive bias, but it seems like Iām only about 50% in situations where I should be 60-70% according to the odds calculator, and when Iām behind Iām about 10-20% where I should be 30-40%. Hitting flushes about 1-in-10 after flopping 4 suited, for example.
Puggy,
Plz explain ā¦ you 3! a 450 call to a raise to 1700, only to call the 4! shove.
( And not knowing blind levels @ all or stack sizes )
It was āraisedā to 450, Iāll guess from 60-120 ishā¦
Iāll also guess you and V had 3k ishā¦
Since any 2 paint, especially suited, will make that raise preflopā¦ your 10s arenāt lookān too powerfull. Do you want a coinflip against " 2 overs " ( or worse ) ?? Why not flatcall the 450 and see the flop 1st. Since we know he had KK, lets say the flop is A6Aā¦ now you will act before V does so you can rep the Aces. Not sure KK can call a bet in that case against prolly trip Aces. Even if the flop is just Axx and of no help to KK, its still hard for those Ks to bet behind an earlier bet after the flop.
Your 3! to 1700 prolly pot committed you , so you were already basically AllInā¦ yet you call his 4! both reasonable and meaninglessā¦ wasnāt yours then Aslo ??
My point is that too many players overbet preflop. Also, I think there are (2) posistions usefullā¦ ( 1st/last to act ). From what Iāve seen, sure top players make you pay to see the flop, they just arenāt playing allout Aggro.
If youāre UTG after the flop, then you have insurance to missān the flop, you can (bluff) and rep whatever the flop is. By forcing ppl AllIn preflop with an overbet, you give up that possible advantage post flop.
Iām just fine with KK Shoveān against you, and Iām ok with your call in that situation, just not a fan of the 3! Who cares if the board was gratuitous, most of the time you do lose TT vs KK anyway. Iām not even sure if that was preflop or postflop.
I do find it halarious, on a site where soo many ppl talk about bingo ( just full on aggro ) ā¦ So many ppl are willing to overbet preflop and give up postflop play. We also know if 2 big hands tangle, usually its for all the marbles. Certainly thats what I see on the MTT side, prolly SnGs too. Rings are thier own animal, all depends on the buyin level.
You say the +/- is 10-20% on both sides, but both are slanted to the center. I can say I know where alot of that comes from but that was another thread. Why then donāt you just play it like what you have observed ??
This was the final hand before the hour break, so blinds were about 75/150. Iām about 9th of 18 on the tournament leaderboard out of an original 31 players. From memory, I think I was up around 7-10k, from a starting stack of 6k. Blinds must have been 75/150 for the initial raise to be 450. And this table was seeing a lot of 3-bet action preflop, and I decided to try it out.
Youāre right that I shouldnāt have 3!, and I would have been better off flatting. I wasnāt worried about my Tens not being strong enough, and I should have been. I was counting on the 3! inducing a fold, and wouldnāt you know it, Iām up against one of the 2 or 3 hands that should absolutely not fold there. I wasnāt committed, but I didnāt want to lay down after throwing in 1700 chips, pairs are supposed to be strong heads up, and my puny imagination couldnāt conceive that there was any better pairs out there.
Of course he should have shoved the KK. My history on this table was that Iād raised 3-4 hands in the opening minutes and gotten 3! off them, and there was generally a lot of 3! action happening preflop at this table, most of it ending the hand pre-.
What do you suggest? Tighten my range by 20%? Call to the river so I can collect my fair share of suckouts, no matter how many times it loses me my stack? Call every inside straight? Bet smaller? Bet bigger?
I just assume that the algorithm favors those players who pay real money for fake chips. I donāt. Even if itās just a conspiracy theory, it helps me shrug off my bad beats.
Ok, either way if you had 7-10k, tough as it is 1700 is better than your stack. Since its last hand before break, Iām deff flattān the 450 with TT. Iād rather come outta break strong, than cripple myself now. I can get away from the hand for 450 here, and its ~3bb so why not take a look, just play smallball.
Instead of playing like its ++70% vs --40%, then just
play it like its ++50% vs --20%, whatever that is ā¦
So maybee thats a Yes ā¦ heh hehā¦
Sassy