No worries, it was more of a theory question!

"Fortunately" is what I would rather go for

Played a nice session in hotel with Euro. He came 2nd in 109c and 3rd in 320 6max, I just finished 2nd in $600 on 888 for $15k, pretty happy with the result, really played vg.

This is pretty sick hand 5 left,

Dealt to pads1161 [ Kc, Ks ]
JustGamblin folds
phaplap folds
lepunt raises [$21,250]
pads1161 raises [$63,333]
OMGmadafaka folds
hellohellooo folds
lepunt raises [$328,856]
pads1161 calls [$286,773]
Dealing flop [ 5s, Ad, 5h ]
Dealing turn [ 8s ]
Dealing river [ 9c ]
Summary
lepunt shows [ 4s, As ]
pads1161 shows [ Kc, Ks ]
lepunt collected [ $722,712 ]


Stacks are
680
350
200
200
130
180

Payouts

21
15
11
8
6
5


He is literally burning money jamming JJ/TT here vs my actual range, its crazy that he can really punt this in with A4s, I'm not being bitter btw, I came 2nd, thats a great result, just find it crazy high stakes crushers can do this kind of thing. I think tis exactly the kind of thing that happens in live tournaments, way, way too much ego and people petrified that people are "going after them"

Here is if I'm going after him a little bit (12.8% of all hands) I would be flatting a tonne here in these positions so that means I'm vpiping against him extremely wide..



Even if I 3bet 15% (+ peel an additional v wide range) he still doesn't have a profitable jam



I think its a very clear limp pre for him anyway with his whole range here anyway.

Anyway, whatever, math is idiotic. Wasn't ranting I promise, was actually really intrigued in the results after because at the time I was like wtffffff and then in game I thought, hey perhaps it isn't THAT bad because he is v good reg.

Was also my first 3bet vs him so far on this final table, if he did think I was going absolutely bananas with a 20% 3bet + a peeling range, then he could raise and 4bjam almost every single hand.



The thing is, this is not super unrealistic range and in certain spots people will be even wider, so there will definitely be spots 4bet jamming A4s will be good, but you're literally just guessing or gambling on big big pay jumps simply on trying to "own" and "out level" people, I think you basically have 2 options, raise and decide if you think he's ****ing with you and go all in and risk all your chips if you think he is, or.. create a very good limping range and take him to the streets.



This crazy range has all the KQo, KJo, QJ, QTo etc that are preeetttyy easy flats, so the range is obviously extremely exaggerated.

Booked a flight home to Budapest for tomorrow, not sure if I will get it tomorrow or if I'll stay and play the 10k high roller on Thursday, really undecided right now, lets see how I sleep.

V v interesting, thanks for sharing!

Quite surprised that it's actually that bad.

If he decides to limp his whole range here how would your adjustments look like? What part of your range would you iso, overlimp and fold? If I'm asking too much here can you simply give a hindsight on what to consider vs his strategy?

Hey why would you be surprised? Because you expect me to be wider or? He's 2/6 and very deep and quite a big difference between him and all the other stack sizes.

Put it this way. If he limps and I have j2o I'll always fold, if he raises I may 3bet right? Same with so many hands, I'm likely to play a lot more passive vs a limp than vs a raise because when he raises I can dramatically decrease then spr this leveraging stack sizes and thus putting tonnes of pressure making him make a decision whether I'm going after him or not which simply is very tough/impossible to do. Next phase of this would be secret tells about how to know they are going after you, timings, Sizings etc but don't want to say toooooo much

I don't really study tournament play too much, so just a kind of general question. But does the benefit of having a balanced limping range in this spot and prevent you from going after him, outweigh the benefit of fold equity attained when opening into 2 x <20bb stacks?

if he thinks I'm going to go after him enough to justify a huge icm punt like this, then yes absolutely.

Cool, figured that was the case since you were advocating it. I've done very little icm study, so bit of a fish at it.

Given that villain in the hand is very likely not to have a fully developed limping strat (wrt to flop ranges) do you not think he's often going to make large mistakes making something up on the fly?

I'm surprised that you construct your actual 3betting range so value heavy (you even say KJo,QJo, etc. are easy flats) and that you prefer peeling wide way more than 3betting wide given that you open the door to so many squeeze shoves behind you esp when your flatting range is really weak then.

I thought u'd actually 3bet rly wide there so that 4betting A4s wouldn't be that bad.

For that reason I'm wondering if not having a 3betting range is superior than your strategy (grinding atm, will give this some more thoughts later on).

Oh and I think u missunderstood me on the last part. I can get why he should limp his whole range there. I wanted to know how you adjust to his limping. Would u overlimp 89s or would you iso? Etc?

I meant to comment on this earlier when you wrote something about short stack calcs elsewhere mentioning specifically HRC but I forgot and now I can't locate the post anymore. But anyway, those numbers in HRC that everyone thinks represent how many BBs you make with each push/call, do not actually represent BB values. It's not really explained well in HRC and has many people confused. I'm sorry if you already knew this, I could swear there was a post earlier that really made me think like you don't but I can't find it.

But ya, when you shove T7s bvb for 20BB at 500/1000/120 you are not making 0,52 *big blinds* as per hrc, etc. I don't even know what the correct terminology would be to describe what exactly they represent but it's like % of prize pool or something ******ed like that. I think the correct BB numbers are roughly 1/3 - 1/4 of what HRC says, so in the above scenario like 0,15BB.

Sorry for derail, this is a really cool blog and I wish you the best.

Hey, yes its very important to understand exactly how everything is working. Stuff like equity realisation is extremely tough to establish. For example lets see if you want to look at the ev of 3bet/calling KQs sb vs co vs flatting pre, with certain stack sizes, if you get your equity realisations off then generally it can really skew results, and knowing how to calculate your equity realisation is close to impossible in a lot of spots. I remember there is a good video from lefort on runitonce about it.

But yeah in general, if you're using things incorrectly then it can have a really big impact on you. A lot of my guys in the stable started using Piosolver, but its really tough to use 100% effectively, and once you start misinterpretating information then you can start making really big mistakes.

Thanks for nice words and gl with the book

Just wondering if you have played with any friends in the same Venue and actually made a same final table together. Would be wierd wouldn't it

Nice try, PokerStars collusion police!

No I meant that there would be like live tells in place too, lol. Not accusing that they will collude because they wouldn't need too given how baller/good they are

How do people prefer my updates, the hand by hand or longer paragraph stuff? Playing the $10k tomorrow so was wondering what people thought. If I wrote 30 hands is that really too much? I will write them anyway, think its a very good thing for my game, but wondered whats the easiest way to digest as a reader, any other info to add etc?

The hand by hand stuff is good Pads. Too long of a poast with too much info is hard to digest and fully grasp i suppose.

As a player who work alot on my MTT game these days and the past few months i find that final table hand (KK got jammed on with A-rag) really interesting and your thoughts about it.

I dont know if you would eleborate anymore of it, but if you dont mind:

1) Is the fact the regs can play back at you light an argument for tightening your 3 bet range so you a bigger portion of the time are able to face the heat of a 4 bet/jam? I guess so?

2)What are you doing with lets say AQ/1010 there or a more marginal hand than KK in a final table scenario regarding ICM?



I have been reflecting alot of this stuff on the final tables i have reached and its for sure complex stuff. Have done some serious laddering in payout jumps just by folding alot and letting other players cannibalize eachother.

Yeah, understanding who is on your table is really important. If its a really tight table and you are 3/8 and UTG it can be really good to raise A2o, on other tables with guys you know are spewy it can be good to fold AQ and potentially even AK.

The thing is, the ev you gain from raising and playing a pot will be pretty low, if you fold then you allow people to battle. Every time you fold it gives somebody a chance to RFI, if he will RFI a lot then it means somebody else will have an opportunity to 3bet a lot, even if they 3bet once and its A9o vs AA (a9o r/f) then at least a slight dynamic is built, if he 3bets again (TT vs KK) maybe somebody makes huge icm suicide against a perceived range that is very far from an actual range, and the reason he perceives this is because you folded AQ one orbit ago.

Hope this makes sense?

I prefer prose tbh, I don't generally bother reading MTT HHs because the ICM type stuff is irrelevant to me and very mathsy and the stuff more analogous to cash is usually quite simple.

Sometimes you make it hard to guess whether a post is a level/image post/2017 poker

fold AK must be a level

this

Yeah for sure, thanks for going even deeper into that thinking process. Ive done some of the same reflections on my own, but you are better than me when it comes to getting it down "on paper" and explaining it in words.

Its quite interesting to see how incredibly bad ICM decisions alot of players make at final tables. When it comes to skill level in 2016 online poker that single aspect is probably what surprises me the most.

Several times i have seen top 2 stack when we enter the final table bust out in 7. or 8. place: just because of overaggro stupid plays and uneccesarly gambling against the other big stacks. When they basically could secure a top 5 or top 4 finish with close to zero risk by attacking the smaller stacks and stay away from dick waving contests against the other big stacks.

not at all, there will definitely be times where folding AQ would not be absolutely terrible. Take from my posts whatever you want, people look at things in different ways, thats completely fine to disagree. People win in the game for different reasons and people lose in the game for different reasons. People who do really well usually try to learn and understand plays that others make that they wouldn't (and even continue to not) ever do.

I was just trying to reply to Gilmour. He said that he was looking more into final table stuff, looking at how thin to get things in, when to fold, etc etc, i was just showing him that doing something unconventional for a reason definitely has a lot of merits.

Look at the guys who are the biggest winners, the people who everybody knows are the top regs, they close out final tables or get top 3 substantially more than weaker regs, its absolutely huge to be good at final tables.

exactly, and if you open the AQ utg as the 3/9 guy often they will go after you and you will be in extremely tough spot.

Hence the 2017 part