Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeStarr
I got into an very long text discussion/debate with a friend of mine yesterday. It started when he sent me a HH played by an acquaintance of mine who is a very good friend of his. This guy is literally one of the best players in the country. He plays the biggest games played anywhere. The hand was from a tournament and went like this.
Blinds are 150/300
MP opens to 700
Button calls
Superstar player defends the BB with KcJc
Flop AcAh5d. BB checks. MP bets 650. Button folds BB calls.
Turn 7c. Check/check
River 3c. BB bets 1000. MP raises to 2500. BB reraises. Not sure of the amount. MP calls and mucks.
Now the BB is the superstar player and I can confirm that this guy is an absolute beast. Hes won more money than you can imagine in the past couple years. He plays 100/200 NL, massive stakes mixed games, 50/100 PLO and games even bigger at times. Hes won tournies with $100,000 buy ins.
Maybe Im not qualified to critique this HH but to me is totally jacked. Floating OOP is never a good idea. The villain obviously had a big ace or he could never call a river reraise. If I had a big ace here, Im betting the turn so what was heros plan if vilain bets the turn? A big check raise? If he check raises me on the turn Im shoving (not sure what stack sizes were). The fact is that hero floated OOP and caught a miracle runner runner flush against a donk who had a big ace and tried to get cute.
This HH led to our debate about playing cash games. My friend insists that we fold to often, dont defend the blinds often enough...ect. He started quoted articles that talk about calling raises from the blinds and continuing with bottom pair.
The exact example given was calling a 3x button raise from the BB with 75s. The article goes on to show that its correct to call a flop bet with bottom pair because you have X amount of equity vs a button raisers range.
I can guarantee you that my friend is about to go on a losing streak.
This is a different example but heres what happens when you call with bottom pair. This is a hand from yesterday.
You are villain and overlimp A5s in MP. We go 5 to the flop of 9s7c5h. I bet $10 into a $10 pot from EP. You call with your bottom pair and we are HU.
Turn ($30) 5d. I bet $20 and you raise to $60. Im going to fold most everything. You will win $40 in total. You risked $10 on the flop to win that $40. So you got 4:1 on your money, but you hit a 5 outter which was 10:1 against on the turn. Thats a losing call already.
BUT...heres what really happened. I shoved on him and he called. I had 77 and he lost his stack. So hes going to get crushed now and then when he hits but even when he wins, hes not making enough money to justify the call in the first place. Theres only 2 ways he can make this profitable.
1) he bluff raises the turn when the bottom card pairs and he doesnt really have it...and very very few people do that.
2) Hes playing a bad player.
There was a lot of other garbage quoted in the article he sent me, but Ill talk about that another time. I told him to print the article out and stick it up 'all over our poker room so we never have to complain about lack of action again. Thats how the discussion ended.
There are rather significant differences between a low stakes cash game going 5 ways to the flop and a high stakes tournament player defending the BB heads up (or 3-way). In the tournament situation, if the PFR is any good, you have to defend pretty wide and call the flop with a lot of hands on a board like AA5 to make the PFR indifferent to bluffing ATC. In multiway pots the obligation to "defend" in order to prevent profitable C-bets with ATC is split up among all the players. So you don't need much to defend heads up, not a ton 3-way particularly if the second player will give easily, but by the time you get to typical low stakes cash game situations and it's 5 ways or 6 ways, you need a much stronger hand to continue.
So x/c with KJcc is standard heads up or 3-way against a competent tournament player on AA5, but would probably be a disaster 5 ways to the flop because it's much more likely someone has a real hand.
Last edited by Shai Hulud; 09-30-2017 at 04:24 PM.