Episode #441 - December 7th, 2016

Live from the Two Plus Two Studios - On this episode of the Pokercast: Ryan “Protential” Laplante is the newest Run It Once coach and joins us off of a tournament win to talk about the strategy for re entry tournaments. To kick things off Terrence schools us on password protection from his sick house and we get into the news. This week: 10 US Attorney Generals petition to hurt online gaming, Trump blocks Doyle Brunson on twitter, The GPL Finals and a new poker tour in... China! Ryan Laplante then joins us from Vegas after a long day grinding at the Bellagio to talk about his latest tournament win, and the benefits and drawbacks of re entry tournaments. We have a bunch of mail this week including some strat questions, bacon scented dryer sheets, a new riddle and more. We also get into the best of poker twitter in “140 or less” before we wrap things up.

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Erster Platz.

yeth

Is the "Sick house in Thailand" clip floating around on 2+2? I used to love that advert. Pretty funny that he was playing 4nl before duecescracked. That always made me smile.

Thanks for the show guys. Always appreciate the effort!

Statistical bronze?

Quick follow-up to the poker riddle you described in today's pokercast. I will add one wrinkle to make it more interesting.

Heads-up holdem hand. Neither player has a pocket pair.

After the turn is dealt Player A is ahead (meaning that if the variant only dealt four board cards Player A would be awarded the pot). However, no matter what card comes on the river, Player A cannot win the pot (he may tie or lose but cannot win the whole pot).

What are Player A's hand, Player B's hand, and the four board cards dealt so far?

P.S. Loved the show!

Edit: thought I had the answer but was wrong.

Fun puzzle

Got it now I think:

@Adam

http://www.target.com/p/rave-sports-...t_adv_xasd0002

^This comes in under budget for a Secret Santa (*hint *hint)

About GPL:
I remember Terrence making a point on an earlier show that we really should all be rooting for it to succeed and I completely agree, but Doug Polk has an hilarious take on the GPL finals on his channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW5mIipz9uA

Haven't read the above puzzle solution yet. Here's my idea:

In order to make the puzzle more "interesting", ITT we require that neither player has a pocket pair (excluding 22 as being part of the answer). Your answer was excellent by the way.

I love the framed posted of Phil Helmuth inhaling a burger in the background.

I enjoyed the most recent podcast as I always do. It brought a great smile to my face when you discussed the "Sick house in Thailand" and "The Micros". Poker was more fun back then.

A late e-mailer talked about the math of poker. I thought it would be in the spirit of Twoplustwo to mathematically analyze the bluff decision of the early e-mailer, Nick from Antelope CA. (And in the spirit of Twoplustwo, I expect my analysis to get ripped to shreds.) When Terrence first analyzed the bluff, he said there were way more bluff combos than value combos. This is what I wish to talk about.

Hero KT diamonds 13,000
Villain 16,000

200/400
Preflop Raise 1,000
Villain Calls
Pot 2,200

Flop comes A clubs 2 clubs 5 hearts
Villain Checks
Hero bets 1,200
Villain calls
Pot 4,600

Turn is 9 Diamonds
Villain Checks
Hero bets 2,200
Villain calls
Pot is 9,000

Nick says he would play the following value hands this way;

AK 16
AQ 16
AJ 16
AT 16
A9 9
A5 9
A2S 2
55 6
99 6
96

If he did there would be 96 combos. His bet of 8,600 is very close to the size of the pot - 9,000. For arguments sake, let's make it the same. The hero is then betting 9,000 in hopes of winning the 9,000 in the pot as well as an additional 9,000 from his opponent. If he is playing unexploitively, the hero should have 1 bluff for every 2 value hands. (A hero does this so the villain cannot exploit the hero's play over time. If the villain sees that the hero bluffs too much, or bluffs to little, he will exploit that. In this case the villain must call 9,000 to win the 18,000 in the pot, thus the 2:1 ratio.) There are 96 combos of value hands the hero says he would play here. That would mean that he would have to have 48 combos of hands that are bluffs. It is hard for me to think of what these cards could be because his river all-in range is so large. Still, it should only consist of 48 combos, which if you just kept to non-paired hands, would be KQ, KJ, KT, and sometimes QJ I guess. Maybe he will play KK this way? It does block AK? Under most circumstances the hero only has Clubs in this situation, and I would hate to be in a position where I would have to bluff all missed flush draws. Yikes. Nick bluffs KTs in Diamonds here, which is a combo he should not have at this point.

I think the flaw in this hand is Nick's assertion that he would play all these winning hands this way. I think most players would slow down, even with AQ, after two cold calls. Nick did not mention AA, which he probably would not play this way on earlier streets. Possibly the same with 55 or 22. I would guess that buy the river most tournament players have these hands;
AK 16
A9 9
A5 9
A2 6
55 6
22 1
47

As played AJ is pretty thin value betting, and reckless to go all in. Probably AQ too. AA probably checked the flop to allow the other hand to catch up. It is too easy to say that since Nick could beat A8 with AT, then AT was in his range.

Nick is really representing AK or better with his river raise. There are 47 combos of these hands, so there should be a corresponding 23 bluff hands. This would leave approximately one combo of bluff hands, which I would have as something like A8. You may add KQ, KJ and QJ of Clubs, since it blocks some AQ, AK and AJ combos. The bluff should be determined by the cards and not on what you have, meaning if the cards tell you that you should bluff with A8, and you have A7, don't say to yourself that that is close enough. In this example it is tough to bluff after a failed flush draw because many players do that.

The villain in this hand may be looking at this. He may have an idea of the hands that Nick plays. On the river he may think, "Would he do this with AT? No. Would he do this with AJ? No." after thinking about it, he would say "This guy either has AK or he is bluffing.", and when he gets to that point, he calls because the story doesn't make sense.

Another point would be did Nick instantly shove? If so that should eliminate most thin value bets. Most players need to think about it before making a thin value bet.

Another factor is Nick's image. If he is perceived a rock, he may get away with this bluff. If he is perceived as a maniac, he will likely get looked up.

This is an example of the math for unexploitive play. A player playing exploitively will make more money than a player playing unexploitively. Still, when a player decides to play exploitively, he should understand the unexploitive play to gauge how far he is getting out of line.

I think you're right!!

Nice job

Overall your analysis makes sense but you made a mistake with counting the combinations of different hands we can hold:

Since one ace is already on the flop, there are only 3 left, thus there are only 12 combos of AK, AJ, etc.
Similarly, having one 5 and 9 out there leaves 3 and not 6 combos of 55 and 99 in our hand.

Thanks for this edit. You are correct.

Sure you said channing was going to be on, then I didnt hear him.

He slept through it the bugger!

Caught up on this one late. The "turning KT into a 3 barrel bluff" hand was classic old school vs. new school discussion. TChan comes out and explains that our poster has completely screwed up his bluffing frequency because even if he value bets thin with TPGK, he's still bluffing way too often. Adam points out that you can't bluff live villains off top pair. Both correct. Both say OP should give up after the flop. Yet the path there is completely different. Fun.

Was shouting at my radio with middle card /8 hand. Fold pre!!! Then you guys came to the rescue with the hand.

Enjoyed the chat with Ryan. I thought he worked harder than he had to justify that he was mainly doing HH reviews for his content. That seems reasonable. Wondered if maybe he was thinking ahead during the conversation, and then doubled back, accidentally remaking his point.

Congrats on the score, Ryan. Always enjoy you on the PC.

Please, don't let Ryan Laplante get stuck in a monolog again. He needs help to get out of it.

Where in Thailand were you guys talking about with the "MMA retreat"? Thinking of going backpacking in SEA, but this sounds like a lovely place

Soi Tad Ied (also Ta-ied, Ta-led, Tad-led and about a million other transliteration variants from Thai to English) in Chalong, Phuket. Really recommend a few weeks here if you are at all interested in getting a little more healthy.

Random links:
http://theworstpossibleidea.blogspot...1_archive.html
https://yolobjj-blog.com/soi-tai-ied...ands-fat-camp/
https://www.ft.com/content/893bdc42-...3-00144feabdc0
http://www.expatliving.sg/bootcamps-...long-thailand/

Just getting to this episode now.

Ryan is really talking in circles in the re-entry discussion. This is supposed to be a strategy discussion? He is trying to grasp at anything to say that re-entry are just as good for amateur as pros. LOL at saying just ask the amateurs who entered the 10k Bellagio re-entry tourney if they prefer re-entry or not. Talk about a tainted sample of recreational players.

Thanks for this TChan,

It all sounds very interesting and something I would love to consider poker in Thailand, however, I am just getting started with playing poker. With the direction online poker is heading (from what I understand, high rakeback, software/bots), do you think it is too late for me to consider playing poker in Thailand?