This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I won the pot (which was HUGE at this level)- but I am more interested to learn if I played it correctly.

On one hand I think I should have bailed- my TPTK couldn't have good against such a large field showing lots of agro.

But the pot quickly got so big that I felt it wrong to fold. "Luckily" I was saved by the River A.

PokerStars 0.10/0.20 Hold'em (10 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: 2+2 Forums)

Preflop: Hero is Button with K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img].
<font color="#666666">1 fold</font>, UTG+1 calls, UTG+2 calls, MP1 calls, <font color="#666666">1 fold</font>, MP3 calls, <font color="#666666">1 fold</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero raises</font>, <font color="#666666">2 folds</font>, UTG+1 calls, <font color="#CC3333">UTG+2 3-bets</font>, MP1 folds, MP3 calls, Hero calls, UTG+1 calls.

Flop: (14.50 SB) K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], 3[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], T[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(4 players)</font>
UTG+1 checks, <font color="#CC3333">UTG+2 bets</font>, <font color="#CC3333">MP3 raises</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero 3-bets</font>, <font color="#CC3333">UTG+1 caps</font>, UTG+2 calls, MP3 calls, Hero calls.

Turn: (14.25 BB) 5[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(4 players)</font>
<font color="#CC3333">UTG+1 bets</font>, <font color="#CC3333">UTG+2 raises</font>, <font color="#CC3333">MP3 3-bets</font>, Hero calls, UTG+1 calls, <font color="#CC3333">UTG+2 caps</font>, MP3 calls, Hero calls, UTG+1 calls.

River: (28.25 BB) A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(4 players)</font>
UTG+1 checks, <font color="#CC3333">UTG+2 bets</font>, MP3 calls, <font color="#CC3333">Hero raises</font>, UTG+1 calls, UTG+2 folds, MP3 calls.

Final Pot: 35.25 BB

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

3:14 on turn ... usually fold this i think

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

I would cap it preflop.

You're winning on the turn here like one time in a million. The rest of the time you're basically drawing dead.

The river play is also bad, IMO.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I would cap it preflop.

You're winning on the turn here like one time in a million. The rest of the time you're basically drawing dead.

The river play is also bad, IMO.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks. I thought as much.

I had very mixed feelings as soon as I one the hand. Chuffed I won over $7, but dissapoointed that I'd played it like I did.

I don't plan on making a habit of it.

Ian

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

*grunch*

This looks like an example of people getting caught into thrill of action more than anything. There was never a time you should have folded this hand. UTG+2 cap for example on the turn was just pure silliness. You capping would have made sense but are we to believe he 3 bet a pot with pocket 5's?

One of these idiots could have had pocket aces or pocket kings of course and the river could have actually been a bad card for you but you still had the odds to go to the showdown.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

Wow. I wonder what your opponents had.

I'm not sure about the flop, but I wouldn't call the turn getting 20:3. You are drawing dead here almost always.

Also, you should not post results here. People tend to change their answers when they know who won.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I would cap it preflop.

You're winning on the turn here like one time in a million. The rest of the time you're basically drawing dead.

The river play is also bad, IMO.

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

[ QUOTE ]
3:14 on turn ... usually fold this i think

[/ QUOTE ]

He should have capped it and the odds were not 3:14 but 3:20 (6 new bets in the pot before him) plus implied odds of 4 more bets with the likelihood of the two other raisers calling the 3rd bet. 8 to 1 to call, 6 to 1 to cap....not much wrong with either, but folding? Not a good plan.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
3:14 on turn ... usually fold this i think

[/ QUOTE ]

He should have capped it and the odds were not 3:14 but 3:20 (6 new bets in the pot before him) plus implied odds of 4 more bets with the likelihood of the two other raisers calling the 3rd bet. 8 to 1 to call, 6 to 1 to cap....not much wrong with either, but folding? Not a good plan.

[/ QUOTE ]

what do you put his opponents on?

his hand does not have implied odds to bank on here. his 'draw' isn't strong enough when it hits to assume victory and profit.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

This is one thing I don't get with you guys, there are 4 idiots in the pot maybe one player who has me beat. I put these guys on bad draws or lucky flops, and feeding the pot with dead money. Hell I could put them on pocket 10's, 7's, QQ's and JJ's, it doesn't matter.

I bet the action on this pot was lightning quick. No one thought on these hands. It was a pissing contest.

Am I going to win 1 out of 6 of these babies, with top pair and top kicker? Yeah I am.

The ev on this is so positive its a joke.

With a preflop tightness of 20%(and I guarantee these guys don't have that much preflop selection sense) I am a 50% favourite to win after the flop. 60% after the turn and 73% after the river.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

[ QUOTE ]
This is one thing I don't get with you guys, there are 4 idiots in the pot maybe one player who has me beat. I put these guys on bad draws or lucky flops, and feeding the pot with dead money. Hell I could put them on pocket 10's, 7's, QQ's and JJ's, it doesn't matter.

I bet the action on this pot was lightning quick. No one thought on these hands. It was a pissing contest.

Am I going to win 1 out of 6 of these babies, with top pair and top kicker? Yeah I am.

The ev on this is so positive its a joke.

[/ QUOTE ]

lucky flops beat us. any hand drawing to more than one pair is not dead. are you actually putting one of them on A9o or worse?

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

Let's see if I understand equity or not. I think I do but I have been wrong before so here goes.

When I have pot equity I don't think about putting guys on specific hands. It will eat me up. What if he has pocket aces? What if one of them hit a set?

Then I lose. But those worst case what if's based on flops happen so many times over so many hands that we can actually calculate their chances. There are several hand evaluators out there which do it and I suggest its worth taking a look at.


I know that in that situation no matter what they say they have by their bets, (People have been known to lie once in awhile in poker) that my hand of AK suited with that particular 5 cards community hand wins 73% of the time against 3 players with a preflop selection bias of 20%.

It wins 55% of the time with a preflop selection bias of 2% against 3 opponents.

And it wins 86% of the time with no bias.

I am the favourite. I am the guy to beat. I am very happy.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Let's see if I understand equity or not. I think I do but I have been wrong before so here goes.

When I have pot equity I don't think about putting guys on specific hands. It will eat me up. What if he has pocket aces? What if one of them hit a set?

Then I lose. But those worst case what if's based on flops happen so many times over so many hands that we can actually calculate their chances. There are several hand evaluators out there which do it and I suggest its worth taking a look at.


I know that in that situation no matter what they say they have by their bets, (People have been known to lie once in awhile in poker) that my hand of AK suited with that particular 5 cards community hand wins 73% of the time against 3 players with a preflop selection bias of 20%.

It wins 55% of the time with a preflop selection bias of 2% against 3 opponents.

And it wins 86% of the time with no bias.

I am the favourite. I am the guy to beat. I am very happy.

[/ QUOTE ]

um, yeah, if you put your opponents on random hands despite this turn action, AK has good equity.. unfortunately they don't have random hands.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

If I put them on the top 2% of the hands I have good equity... 55% of the time I win.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

After your oponnents show lots of aggression you need to limit their holdings and I think 20% is a VERY optismic assumption. I do not think they are raising like crazy with something like middle pair here.

Plus, you have an opponent limp raising witch usually means a very good hand, but this is questionable.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

Grunch:
Cap preflop, flop is good, turn is an easy fold.

You're getting 20:3 minus reverse implied odds. Given the action you're behind and you can't count all of your outs as good. You're likely against a set and maybe against a flush draw, so you may have 1-2 outs.

Why do you raise the river?

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

Bizarre. By the turn I'd be convinced someone had a set or at least two pair (e.g. KTs). Assuming the turn is capped (which as it happens it was) and everyone stays in, your odds will be 26:4 or about 6.5:1. You have 2 K's and 3 A's, but you need to discount the A's to some extent because Ah may make a flush draw and more importantly you may still be behind with 2 pair and a K pairing the board could give someeone a FH. So if you think you are behind you just don't have the outs to call the turn.

Someone got critised for an analysis which assumed 4 random hands. Judging by the results, he may not be far wrong!

OP: Don't post the results - it inevitably influences the comments you get.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

[ QUOTE ]
If I put them on the top 2% of the hands I have good equity... 55% of the time I win.

[/ QUOTE ]

After the flop and the turn action you can't put them on the "top 2% of all starting hands." You have to put them on hands that somehow justify the action. What hands would raise the flop, call a cap and then 3-bet the turn? I think you definitely have to include a set into the possible holdings of you opponents with a large probability.

To the OP: Make good notes what they did this with. Since you won the hand their play is probably very far from sane.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

Don't tell us you won this hand in your initial post. It can skew advice.

I have nothing more to add to the general advice of cap pre-flop and fold the turn. Lots of times here you will be up against something nasty that has you reverse dominated. That river raise is bad because of this. Notice how an OESD has just possibly been completed there. Someone with pocket aces still beats you. Any other set still beats you, etc. The best you can beat is 2-pair, and that's questionable. The ace is not a good card for you on this board.

As for the advice flying around that we should cap the turn because the players here are idiots (and we have no reads supplied to justify this), that's being results oriented. The OP got lucky, normally this won't happen. You normally won't win even 10% of the time here. But, let's do some EV calculations for the turn, and assume after the Hero's action, we're all-in.

20.25:3 for calling. Given action, we're better only about 10% of the time here, even with the assumption one of the players in the pot is a complete maniac.
20.25 * 0.10 + (-3)*0.90 = 2.025 - 2.7 = -0.675

So what if we cap instead? Assume all players behind us will call cap. With cap, pot would normally be 30.25, but as we see, the rake has played a role here, so I'll use the river value of 28.25. Once again, we assume to be all-in after hero's decision.
28.25*0.10 + (-4)*0.90 = -0.775

So, capping is an even worse decision. Now, if you estimate yourself to be good 20% of the time, our decisions become +EV, but given the previous action, I don't think you can be that generous. Most of the time, when you're caught in this situation, you're way behind, probably having two outs at best. Replay this hand with different villians, but same action. You can't be sure that they're bluffing here, and it'll be quite expensive if you constantly look them up.

About a year ago, shortly after I had read SSHE for the first time, I remember having a similiar mind-set of "fish can't have the hands they're repping, so blast them out of the pot!" I was raising hands I shouldn't have raised, and went too far post-flop. For a week or so I met with success, but then the cards evened out and I lost what I had won with my poor play (and then some more following that), simply because in situations like these, I thought my opponents were so stupid that there's no way my top pair could ever be bad, and that justified me playing like a LAG/maniac. And all the while, I thought I was applying the SSHE concepts properly. After some review and messageboard reading, I quickly saw I was very wrong, and that I needed to clean up my act.

I'll get off my soapbox now for the time being. The moral of the story is, fish can have good hands, and being results oriented = bad.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

[ QUOTE ]
There was never a time you should have folded this hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't focus on your own two cards so much.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Why do you raise the river?

[/ QUOTE ]

Because he saw that he "improved" to two pair without realizing that it really didn't help his situation any.

Re: This hand got out of control: Was I right to stay in?
 

[ QUOTE ]
But, let's do some EV calculations for the turn, and assume after the Hero's action, we're all-in.



[/ QUOTE ]


Many thanks for taking the time to look at this and do the calcs. I have copy &amp; pasted your reply so I can go through it in my own time.

But what I would really like to be able to do is to work out these type f EV calcs for myself. Where is the best place to learn about this? Is it in SSHE, or TOP, etc???

Many thanks

Ian