First of all, hello, long time player, first time on a forum. I was involved in a hand the other day at the local casino and wanted to see what folks thought.
Background: 2-5 table with about 4 regulars and 5 randoms. In the 5 hands since I sat down, I had watched a guy to my left stack off 2 times in 5 hands. He had reloaded for $200 both times and was down to $80. I had $470 on the button and was dealt AK off.
The tilting (IMO) player was UTG and pushed his $80 all in.
The guy 1 seat to his left, who I knew to be a pretty solid TAG player reraises to $170 of his $650 stack and it is folded to me.
I pushed $470 all in. Right or wrong??
My thinking was this:
I have mostly nothing to worry about from the tilting player. At the very worst, he has an underpair and I am a coin flip. More likely I am a huge favorite. I calculated a positive $180 based on a giant range heads up against the tilter.
The way I see it there were about 45 possible hands the other guy raises with there, AA (3) KK (3) QQ (6) JJ (6) TT (6) AK (9) AQ (12). Of those hands, I figure he will call with AA, KK, probably QQ, and MAYBE AK, but lets ignore AK for this discussion. So he folds 73.6% of the time. 26.3% of the time he calls. Of that 26.3%, I am a 9:1 dog a quarter of the time, a 7:3 dog a third of the time and a 3:2 dog half the time. So I lose on average $390, but that's only 26% of the time for an expected loss of $100.
Put with what I calculated from above that's +$80 or so. Of course, I didn't fully run all of these #'s while in the 90 seconds it took me to push, but I had a good idea it was a +EV play. The full analysis came later, but is it a correct analysis? I understand that that $80 takes a ding because its a 3 way pot and not a heads up pot if he calls, but not enough to bring it into the red right?
Incidentally, the tilter had A7 off, villain called with QQ, and the board came 47TK7. He and another couple of players at the table berated me for making a terrible push.
Definitely agree that it's a high variance play, but rarely a bad push, especially if you can learn to use the image that this play gives you, especially against those who think that you made a bad play here.
The regular who I crushed probably knew it wasn't a bad play, but was just angry. The other ones who were vocal about me being a donkey aren't regulars so it won't help me much. The other regulars who saw it most likely already have an image fixed in their mind, and I am sure this alone won't change it.
But, it does bring up an interesting point I had never considered. I wonder how many players equate high variance play with donkeydom?
Just as a heads up for future hands you post it's generally better to leave out results to preserve the integrity of the responses you get.
I don't think your push is terrible at all as long as you don't mind the variance. Facing the reraise, you should be weighting the reraiser's range towards more high pairs since the early all-in makes for a protected main pot, so I would expect reraises with AQo and 99 or even TT from some players to be rare in this spot.
Still, if you're committed to playing the push is fine since you hate folding to a cbet if you miss the flop so you def want to see 5 cards. I'm not sure what to make of your FE vs the reraiser's range but as long as it's not the crux of your decision and you're more just pleasantly surprised when he happens to fold then that's cool
