A friend of mine who I've played a lot with and who has been my mentor for some time took me to a poker club I've never visited before to play a $115 deepstack freezeout with a starting stack of 30,000 (I don't have much live experience, have primarily been an online player up to now). I knew nobody there except for him, and the clientele is made up of serious players, some of them full-time pros and high stakes regulars.
We ended up at the same table, with 2 others (arrived just after the start of the tournament). With the blinds at 50/100, I open for 500 from the button with KJ. The SB folds and my friend in the BB re-raises me to 1000. I call.
Flop: 5h5d6d. He leads for 1100. I think about it for a second, consider our history, my tight rep, and the possibility that he's trying to test me and steal an early pot. As he without exception checks flopped trips a 5 is totally unlikely and 6es are plausible at best. Two overs strike me as a real possibility, and KJ high could well be the better hand, or he could hold any A 8 or 9+. I opt for the call.
Turn: 9s. Once again he leads, this time for 1500. I'm imagining he can't hold anything better than possibly a pair of 9s, maybe A9. Once again I call, hoping to hit the river or bluff a diamond.
River: Jh. Booyah! I hit it. He checks to me, I'm confident he either missed, or he has JJ, AJ or KJ. At this point I'am almost totally convinced I have him beat, so I dunk 7000 into the pot. He calls, I confidently flip over my KJ, he shows his AJ to the amazement of me and the others at the table.
For the next 50 hands or so and two hours I play extremely tight, only playing (and taking down) one pot where my medium-sized 3-bet pre in the SB with QQ got folded all the way around by 3 limpers and the button raiser, and seeing some bad flops with low pocket pairs.
Then, after lots of waiting and endless trash hands, I wake up with AQ in the cutoff. With 4 limpers and my tight image in mind I min-raise to 1200. It gets folded around to my friend in early position who calls, along with another player on his left.
Flop: Ad3c3s. It gets checked to me, and I bet 3000. Once again taking my tight image in mind I don't want to scare off the action, believing I'm way ahead of any hand on this board. My friend calls and the last guy folds, and we go heads up to the turn.
Turn: 7h. He checks, I think about a bet again, but the seemingly dry board and thought that I either have him massively beat or he's yet again slow playing a 3 puts me off.
River: Qs. Yet again he checks to me, and I carefully think through what my bet size should be. Ideally he's hit a Q, or he holds a weak ace, maybe A7. With roughly 12000 left I bet 7000, he snap shoves and I snap call.
End of story: He held 77 and of course he busted me.
I went home, and when we met the other day he said I had some massive bad luck, but that I could have done one thing better: With a bigger bet pre-flop and particularly on the turn he would have folded, while I could still get called by worse hands like pretty much any ace.. This still puzzles me a bit, as with my extremely tight image I'm afraid I would get no action, and here I did get called by worse, only to hit the two worst cards possible on the turn and river...
Is there anything I could have done better in these two hands or are these two just bad beats?
i think you need to ask yourself whether you are betting for value or as a bluff....seems as though you are a bit unsure of your motivations, especially with those large river bets.
also if you are a tight player(...and the table knows it), you should be pretty cautious if an opponent hangs around until the river and does anything other than check/fold. you need to ask yourself whether people are really trying to run bluffs against the player with the strongest range of hands or whether they are trying to extract value from you because they think you have a big enough hand to pay them off.
hope this helps. keep your head up, poker is all about making mistakes and LEARNING from them.
get a new mentor. his limp call with 77 is bad and c/c on Axx is horrible. his min 3-bet sizing to 1K out of the BB with AJ is awful as is his check on the river, losing value against your checkback range dominated by small-mid pairs that got stubborn.
as for your play in both hands, a 4 bet to 2.5K is a much better defense to a suspected light 3 bet than calling and hoping to hit. you may not end the hand there, but you have all the momentum leading to the flop + position + now your friend has to hit, not you. and don't be timid with the c-bet, make it 2/3 pot like you're protecting QQ on a low board.
AQ hand is just a cooler. V limp/call range can certainly include worse Ax. doubt I'd go for 3 streets here and given the paired board, seems like a good spot to check back turn and bluff catch rivers.
you need to ask yourself whether people are really trying to run bluffs against the player with the strongest range of hands or whether they are trying to extract value from you because they think you have a big enough hand to pay them off.
Emphatic +1
Early on as a tighter player, recognizing and taking advantage of the answer to the above was a major boost to my results. Perfectly stated.
get a new mentor. his limp call with 77 is bad and c/c on Axx is horrible. his min 3-bet sizing to 1K out of the BB with AJ is awful as is his check on the river, losing value against your checkback range dominated by small-mid pairs that got stubborn.
as for your play in both hands, a 4 bet to 2.5K is a much better defense to a suspected light 3 bet than calling and hoping to hit. you may not end the hand there, but you have all the momentum leading to the flop + position + now your friend has to hit, not you. and don't be timid with the c-bet, make it 2/3 pot like you're protecting QQ on a low board.
AQ hand is just a cooler. V limp/call range can certainly include worse Ax. doubt I'd go for 3 streets here and given the paired board, seems like a good spot to check back turn and bluff catch rivers.
Well, oldsilver's advice is certainly good!
But considering the AQ as "just a cooler" is a little misleading in my opinion. The preflop action and the river action are certainly debatable. Preflop OP min-raises after there were 4 limpers. Even with the tightest image in the world, you won't get many folds and the raise is just a "pot-sweetener". Especially against tight players, peeling with good odds can often have very positive impact...
On the river, OP snap-calls villain's check/raise. Like merginhos pointed out, a river all-in raise against a very tight player is very rarely a bluff. In this context, the only hand we are beating and that villain could get as excited with (sometimes) is A7. Admittedly, we don't know how deep the all-in is compared to our river bet, but unless those are really good odds, I think a fold can be in order.
Anyways, "changing" mentors may be a big word here, as he is probably your friend. But you should definitely take his advice with a grain of salt, start reading and get to the point where you become the mentor. Because yes, sticking only to your "mentor's" wisdom will not get you very far I am afraid.
Also, do 110$ deepstack tournaments really have pros and high-stakes regs around? I guess there can be a few sometimes. Some of them just register in those as a change of pace between two cash games. But I would be surprised if it's a significant portion of the players.
The sizing on the river with KJ it's good if you think he has a lot in his range he can call worst with, I would put a 4800 bet there to both make sure I would get a call and to save myself some chips in the cases where I was behind. The AQ hand was played good post flop imo but preflop the minraise doesn't accomplish much. GL OP
