Am I making good decisions?

[DesertCat]

Here are three key hands in my most recent B&M tournament. I haven't made the money in forever, so I'm wondering if my decision making is sub par or not.

1) I have 1700 with blinds at 100/200, still early, over 100 left with 20 paid. Player to my right limps, he's incrediably loose and lucky, has about 12k in chips after hitting all sorts of lucky flops with any two cards. I've already decided I'm going to double up through him.

He limps. I'm CO, and have K9o. Blinds are loose passive. I push.

2) I have 3500, short stack raises to 400 UTG, he has 500 left, I make it 800 from MP with black kings.

3) UTG minraises to 400. Super loose to my right cold calls. I have 2500, I make it 1000 with AKo in the SB intending to push any flop if called.

[Semtex]

1. This push is good only if you know people on your left will fold. With your read of them being loose passive this play gets worse.

2. Raise more to ensure you are isolated against the preflop min raiser. I'd make it 1200-1500. From his min raise as a shortie I'd guess he had something pretty strong.

3. You do not have enough chips to be playing games like this. With 1100 already in the pot and your stack at 2500 your only option is to push preflop.

[Landlord79]

K9o hand, probably good w/ 8.5BBs.
Looks like in 2&3 your reraises are very weak. A reraise should be around 4x the size of the original raise or bigger, a min raise is inviting trouble especially multiway. AK gains its power from fold equity, min raises have no such power. Truthfully, I don't understand why anyone would min raise, I usually punch people in the mouth with some junk hand when they min raise me. Then they whine about getting sucked out on. I just want to scream at them, "Make a real bet/raise when you have a hand and protect it!" There's nothing worse than having your own trap catch you in its clutches. Fix this and you will have plugged a major leak!

[EMAC]

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Truthfully, I don't understand why anyone would min raise, I usually punch people in the mouth with some junk hand when they min raise me.

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By this do you mean you re-raise them or you call for the implied odds when you hit your hand?

[DesertCat]

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1. This push is good only if you know people on your left will fold. With your read of them being loose passive this play gets worse.

2. Raise more to ensure you are isolated against the preflop min raiser. I'd make it 1200-1500. From his min raise as a shortie I'd guess he had something pretty strong.

3. You do not have enough chips to be playing games like this. With 1100 already in the pot and your stack at 2500 your only option is to push preflop.

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1. I didn't think I had enough time to wait for a better spot to get heads up with this guy. This tournament runs 20 minute levels. With only three players to my left I figured this would be the best spot.

2. I knew I under-raised. He didn't have a strong hand, he called with ATo.

3. I was looking for a spot to double up again so I didn't want to push, thinking I'd only get called if beat. I wanted to get more money into the pot. Is there a middle ground, say 1200-1400 that makes sense?

[Semtex]

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3. I was looking for a spot to double up again so I didn't want to push, thinking I'd only get called if beat. I wanted to get more money into the pot. Is there a middle ground, say 1200-1400 that makes sense?

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Not really. Adding 50% to your stack is almost as good as doubling up. With A-A or K-K or something you can get more creative, but the last thing you need is to give people an excuse to see a flop when you have an iffy hand like A-K, then call a push because they will be priced in with any piece or draw.

[Solitare]

From these hands it would appear that you have the habit of betting your weak hands strong and your strong hands weak. This is a pretty easy pattern to spot and something weak players do regularly.

On hand 2 I'd raise 1200 and I push hand 3, for the same reasons as above.

Hand 1 requires further analysis. I think you are far too focused on the guy to your right and not sufficiently considering the players left to act.

You say the blinds are loose, so lets say that the three on your left will call with their top 15% hands, a range like 22+, A6s+, KJs+, A8o+, KQo.

Let's say the guy on your left limps 45% of his hands, but will call with the same top 15%. So he will call your all-in 33% of the time. This is a simplification because many of the 45% of the hands he'll raise instead of limping. But the simplification makes the analysis much easier.

So you win the pot uncontested 85% * 85% * 85% * 66% = 40% of the time. The EV is +400 * 40% = +160

60% of the time you are called. Against that range you will win only 34% of the time. Your EV on this showdown is 3700 * 34% = 1250 or -450 from your current stack. (Note the 3700 figure is actually a range from 3600 to 3800 depending on who calls you)

So your final EV on getting called is -450 * 60% = -270.

So your EV on this move is 160 - 270 = -90.

Based on these assumtions, this is an EV negative play.

The reason for this is that you are pushing a marginal hand into 4 players. Even though the odds of each of these players calling you is small, their combined odds is quite large. You cannot ingnore the three players acting after you.

Now the negative EV is small. Change a few assumptions and this could be an OK push. If the three after you are a little tighter, this is probably OK.

The point is that you can't ignore the other three players. Targeting someone just because they are loose, lucky and pissing you off, without considering the other factors at play, can get you in trouble.

[Landlord79]

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By this do you mean you re-raise them or you call for the implied odds when you hit your hand?

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Usually going on implied odds because I can call knowing what their hand is. Why would I reraise someone with AA? I mean, the might as well be playing their hand face up.

[DesertCat]

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From these hands it would appear that you have the habit of betting your weak hands strong and your strong hands weak. This is a pretty easy pattern to spot and something weak players do regularly.

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Nope, I bet them the same. I would have pushed with KK in the first example. My underbets in the second examples were simply mistakes. I would say I tend to underbet all my hands, it's a leak but not a detectable patter.

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You say the blinds are loose, so lets say that the three on your left will call with their top 15% hands, a range like 22+, A6s+, KJs+, A8o+, KQo.

Let's say the guy on your left limps 45% of his hands, but will call with the same top 15%. So he will call your all-in 33% of the time. This is a simplification because many of the 45% of the hands he'll raise instead of limping. But the simplification makes the analysis much easier.


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Your math and assumptions are wrong. First, there is 500 chips to win, not 400, one limper and a small and big blind. First, when I say the blinds are loose passive, they are also not much deeper than me, I doubt they are calling with 22+, A6s+, A8o+, more like 66+, ATs+, AJo+.

And the guy on my right limped almost all of his hands, the others he raised (I said super loose, I meant super loose). And he calls with them all. He called me with 92s.

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Now the negative EV is small. Change a few assumptions and this could be an OK push. If the three after you are a little tighter, this is probably OK.

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Redo the math and I think it's clearly OK.

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The point is that you can't ignore the other three players. Targeting someone just because they are loose, lucky and pissing you off, without considering the other factors at play, can get you in trouble.

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No. Where did I say I was pissed off, or targeting this guy because he was lucky? I was targeting him because he was in every pot, the table chip leader, and he was terrible. But he was also a nice guy who I enjoyed watching play, he may have put other players on tilt, but he hadn't gotten lucky against me.

I pushed knowing he would call with 80%+ of his hands and that I'd be ahead of most of them. With the dead money, easy push. How would you play against a guy like that? This is not a deep tourney, so I probably only had 20 or so more hands before one of us were out or the table was broken. I was trying to take advantage of a gift from heaven