Play though a hand with me here....

[Assani Fisher]

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I suppose Ill take a serious crack at this thread although I feel like its a long extended joke and assani will jump out of my closet and say I been punked.


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Not at all, thanks for the serious reply. I've gotten so many joke replies that its nice to get the discussion back on track.

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Pre I dont mind the call especially live where you likely have a much better feel for your opponents tendencies and can exploit them more easily than multitabling online.

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agreed completely for all the reasons that I've already said. Even if this is a mistake, its a small one at 400 chips.

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flop Check seems like the best play by far. With the LP playre being the only left to act and the fact that you have labeled him weak tight, it seems that two good things can happen. 1.he checks behind and you get a chance to pick up a big draw on the turn. 2. He bets, everyone folds and you are presented a very good oppurtunity to bluff. Given your description of him, he would have reraised pre with QQ+ and maybe TT,JJ. He also is very likely to fold to your check raise on the turn with one pair such as AJ because he is a player that sees monsters and will decide you have an overpair or a set, he cant put you on a draw as there are no real draws on the board. He wont have two pair here given that those combinations are not hands that he would call pre with. This leaves your play working everytime unless he has 22, 77, or JJ, which overall is pretty unlikely. All this equals a profitable bluff oppurtunity.

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Wow, I love this point. I don't think we've discussed checking with the intent of check raise bluffing on the flop, but it certainly is an interesting option. Would you still try it if LP bet and one of the other guys flat called? If he bets 1/2 pot, then how much do you raise?

I'd love to hear some others' thoughts here.

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Turn Seems like a terrible spot to bet. Just check and pray LP checks behind so you get a chance to hit that gutterball.

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agreed. I think pretty much everyone has agreed here too.

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River game over, the pot isnt yours to win. Given the action a bet here will get called pretty light. For example UTG easily could have KK here. Betting here is spewwwww.


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You really think he checks the flop with KK?

[Austiger]

I just read this for the first time and my first reaction was "ZOMG THIS HAND HAS TAKEN 2 MONTHS!!!" ...then I realized it was started in March of '06.

[Assani Fisher]

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I just read this for the first time and my first reaction was "ZOMG THIS HAND HAS TAKEN 2 MONTHS!!!" ...then I realized it was started in March of '06.

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Yeah, thats correct. So do you care to actually comment on the play of the hand?

[kniper]

i think more people would be interested if there werent 16 pages of commentary spanning over a year.

its kinda your fault; maybe you should post a summary to let us all know where we are in the hand now.

[Austiger]

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I just read this for the first time and my first reaction was "ZOMG THIS HAND HAS TAKEN 2 MONTHS!!!" ...then I realized it was started in March of '06.

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Yeah, thats correct. So do you care to actually comment on the play of the hand?

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I dunno, just seems like a speculative hand that completely bricked against multiple opponents so you should just be checking and folding every street.

[IcarusJam]

fold

[Assani Fisher]

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i think more people would be interested if there werent 16 pages of commentary spanning over a year.


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Yeah I really do hate how the conversation has gotten sidetracked so much. I've tried repeatedly to get people to just comment on the hand.

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its kinda your fault; maybe you should post a summary to let us all know where we are in the hand now.

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Ok, will post that all in the next post....

[Assani Fisher]

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I'll be posting this hand in steps. Once discussion about a particular decision has died down I'll say what I did next and what else happpened.

$4000 buy in MTT, about 300 entrants, 40 spots pay. Start with 10,000 chips.

Play has been going on for about 2 hours. Blinds are now 100/200. I have been at the same table the entire time, but quite a few people have busted and new people have been shuffled in. I have 17,000 in chips, which is slightly above average in the tourney but is slightly below average at the table.

I'm in EP with 4-5 of diamonds.

UTG is a tricky player who limp with monsters and many times will slowplay too much and get himself in trouble. He will also occassionally make moves that are simply weird and pretty unexplainable. He looks at his cards, takes a longer time than usual to act, and min. raises to 400. I have never seen him min. raise or raise from EP.

I'm next to act.

I do have reads on several of the players behind me...Generally speaking, several of them are very loose with their calls. I will give more details on specific players as they become pertinent to the hand.


Even though I'm out of position, I decide that the stacks are so deep and theres a decent chance that he has a monster that maybe I could take his whole stack here. I'll take a gamble and call. Thoughts on this? Too loose? I'll stop here for now...



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So I call. As I already explained, I thought that the min. raise of a tricky player combined with an EP call of a good player was enough to scare anyone from raising without a monster, so I was essentially doing the same thing as calling from LP since I didn't really fear a re-raise.

Guy in LP is probably one of the weaker players at the table- not because he is reckless, but because he is very predictable. I talked to him before the tourney and found out that he had won his way in through a sattlite and had never played at anywhere near these stakes. And it showed. He was pretty much playing straightforward ABC poker. Pretty much you could believe his bets for what they represented, and you could push him off a marginal hand easily. He called the bet of 400.

Everyone else folds to the SB. SB was just moved to the table, so I have no reads on him. He calls for 300 more.

BB was a guy who mixed up his play a lot. I thought I had a read on how he acted when he bluffed. Twice I saw him make big bets in fairly standard bluff situations, and both times he would do the classic increased blink rate tell. Once, he was called and it was indeed a bluff. The other time, the guy didn't call him. Now I'm not that great at reading tells, so I don't rely upon these too much, but it was somewhat noteworthy imo. He called for 200 more.

Flop comes 2-7-J rainbow with one diamond.

SB checks. Now as I said, I hadn't seen him play. But I was 90% sure that the flop missed him and that he was pretty much through with the hand now. Can't really pinpoint why, but it was just a quick "I don't care" check that didn't seem to be acting to me.

BB checks...no real read on him still.

EP raiser checks! I have absolutely no clue what he may have. I think he is one of those guys who may be too tricky for his own good type of people, so I'm still not ruling out AA or KK here.

LP guy is still to act behind you.

Your move.


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Ok, so I check the flop. LP checks fairly quickly behind me. I don't think he has much at all.

The turn is the ace non-diamond giving me an inside straight draw.

SB checks, continuing to show weakness. The BB thinks it over for a while. As he is thinking he takes a sip of his tea, and I know this is going go sound weird, but he suddenly throws up all over the floor. Luckily he missed the table and cards. I had not seen him throw up ever before, but I did see him burp heavily and kinda throw up in his mouth a little bit once, and on that hand he was slowplaying a monster. So its a bit tough to say exactly what info to take from the throw up. Anyway, he checks.


Now folded over to the initial raiser who almost insta-checks. He could possibly have just hit trip aces. He does slowplay a lot...but man thats a weird way to play them.

Well now for the second time this has been checked to me. I'm 90% sure that the SB has nothing and that the LP had nothing on the flop. Not sure about the other two. Now whats your move?


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Stack sizes are approximate due to my fuzzy memory, but they were somewhat close to this IIRC:

SB- 14,000
BB- 25,000
EP- 21,000
Me- 17,000
LP- 15,000

Board: 2h-7d-Jc-As

My hand: 4d5d


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Ok, so I decide to check the turn. I don't want to be check raised and I have a draw, so I'll gladly see a free card if I can. And I do! The LP guy sits there and thinks for honestly a good minute, which was pretty strange to me. But he then checked.

River is another ace. The board is now: 2-7-J-A-A with no possible flushes.

The SB checks. BB presumably was still feeling sick from the tea. He mucked his hand and ran towards the nearest bathroom. UTG then checks yet again! No real reads on either of them at this point other than what I mentioned on the flop post.

So now its up to me. The guy who I thought was the most feared player has just mucked. Two opponents have checked the river including the UTG preflop raiser who I'm completely stumped about right now. LP quickly checked the flop, which made me think he had nothing but then he took forever to check on the turn. Theres 2000 in the pot. I have absolutely nothing.

Do you bluff here? If so, how often? And how much?

In case you don't feel like going back, here was my analysis of LP:

"Guy in LP is probably one of the weaker players at the table- not because he is reckless, but because he is very predictable. I talked to him before the tourney and found out that he had won his way in through a sattlite and had never played at anywhere near these stakes. And it showed. He was pretty much playing straightforward ABC poker. Pretty much you could believe his bets for what they represented, and you could push him off a marginal hand easily."


Thoughts?


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[Assani Fisher]

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fold

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[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

It was checked around to me.

[Assani Fisher]

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I just read this for the first time and my first reaction was "ZOMG THIS HAND HAS TAKEN 2 MONTHS!!!" ...then I realized it was started in March of '06.

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Yeah, thats correct. So do you care to actually comment on the play of the hand?

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I dunno, just seems like a speculative hand that completely bricked against multiple opponents so you should just be checking and folding every street.

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Fair point. I guess this hand is a good showcase of when certain people like to bluff, why so, and how comfortable they are doing it? Personally I don't mind throwing out a small bet if nobody else shows strength. In addition to the chance of winning the pot here, it makes you harder to read and more likely to get paid off later on with your big hands.