Hey Here are two hands from borgata 400 with roughly 22-25 left and 18itm.

I have 270k at 4/8 8k and semi snug image due to not playing many hands late at new table for couple of orbits. 7 handed I have AsJs from utg+2 and open to 16k. Bb calls and is a solid tourny reg I recognize. Flop is 10-5-4 with two clubs. Bb checks, I check back. Turn is a 5. He checks, I bet 15k and he min raises to 30k. I call after some thought and the river is an A to complete no flush draw. Villian bets 51k. I call. Anyway to play this hand different? I thought he could check raise turn light if he thought I had air and 5 turn doesn’t hit my range I feel. . Not sure if I should just fold river or ez call?

Hand 2- I have 170k at 5/10 and snug player opens to 30k on prolly 400-500k from cutoff. 22 left and 18 paid. I have a-10o on button and decide to rip 7 handed. Is this a solid spot to take? I feel we have to take it but maybe I’ll wise I should fold? He had AK and we don’t get there. He was snug but I felt he didn’t have many hands to play. Feel he should be opening slightly wide from cutoff so that’s why I jammed. Thoughts?

Explain why you bet turn in Hand 1? From where I'm sitting, it appears to accomplish nothing.

Fold pre Hand 2. Tight-ass 3x from CO means he has has strong hand he hates (AK, AQ, JJ, TT, etc.)

FWIW in Hand 1 I think we're either supposed to be barreling most of our range on this texture OR splitting our range into barrels and 2-checks

What's your opening range look like in H1?

BTW, V's defend seems awful even for the price (minopen is standard in these live events as it is online, no?)

Yea you are righht. I have a high and I feel 2 checks on hand one is ready to pitch and fold. Is calling the turn raise terrible? Looking back I feel it’s bad and I should obv check turn. Is it wrong to Cbet here also? I felt the flop hit his defend range a lot more than my range. I don’t see him folding to one bet honestly looking back if I did Cbet. I felt if I Cbet, I prolly barrel turn and lose much more but can’t be results orientated.

Hand 2- I could see guy raise folding here with small pp or hands behind me. A good player should be raising kx/ax here from lp and a lot of chips in pre with such short stacks (avg was maybe 35-38 bbs?)

I feel min open is kinda weird in these events. A lot of live players that are meh open for 2.5-4x late I feel. 4x not common but older players will do it. I tend to stick to min opens for big hands and speculative hands.

Btw is it wrong to rip AK utg with 17 bbs 7 handed. I did that and got all folds. I thought it would be semi awkard to play pf if I don’t hit a or k.

Hand 1: Check back turn. Betting the 5 really doesn’t make sense. Idk why you leveled yourself into calling down after that.

Hand 2: definitely folding against a snug 3x open near the bubble.

Hand 1: What was the offsuit card. I think this is defnitely worth c-betting if the offsuit is a spade with 2 overs and BDFD.

But the turn seems like spew. With that board and your checking range on the flop, you probably shouldn't be betting anything. Just have a check/call and a check/fold range. You should only have a couple 5Xs hands in your check flop range, so the 5 almost never changes the value of any of your checking range.

And after he raises, you have to consider where you are. If he is good, I'm sure he's done his work with his ranges to not be bluff heavy here. If anything, turn raises tend to be value heavy, in spite of the circumstances. As one poster already mentioned you leveled yourself here. You came up with a reason that he could be firing with a wide range and those reasons may be valid in theory, however, in practice, players do not raise the turn all that much.

Hand 2: This is not obviously clear. In non-bubble spot, I would say it's a good shove.

However, here near the bubble, your ICM pressure is probably somewhere around 50%, which means that the chips your are risking are worth 50% more in value than each chips you would win.

So if he folds about 60% (25% estimated open range) and calls down about top 10% and adjusting for ICM pressure:

55K * 60% + 40%[(365k * 40%) - 255k] = -10k ICM adj. cEV

On the other hand, what if his call off is snug as well. Now if he overfolds and only calls of with the top 7%

55K * 72% + 28%[(365k * 31%) - 255k] = 0.2k ICM adj cEV

So him being snug and overfolding only makes it a break even shove at best and not worth the risk.

Hand 1 is interesting I don’t think betting accomplishes too much with this exact hand but I expect to get value sometimes from worse Ace highs. A lot of players, even the good regs, play somewhat face up after check check flop and check turn which makes me like betting a little more. You just mis out on value when river is a J or an Ace. As played though I’m somewhat okay calling AJ after betting. If you consider a solid delay range and somehow have this in it, it’s not the worst hand in our delays to call. River I’d call after calling turn and improving.

Hand 2 ATo I think is close without considering icm and with icm I think fold is mandatory vs a snug player and a 3x.

In live play, you can't make much of the 3x. Especially Borgata players. Many of the Borgata regs are about 10 years behind online in terms of bet sizing. On a typical day you might see 3 players playing small ball, while the rest still use the 3x - 5x standard still.

And the Winter Open tends to draw from the other casinos in the area where the players are even weaker, like Ballys and Harrahs or players might drive in from the Philadelphia area. In the Philadelphia area, more of the Parx regs splay small ball, but Sugarhouse and Harrah's Chester the regs are really bad and their raises are all over the place.

Think the besg line in H1 is b25%/f-b25%/f

This isnt the wettest board in the world nor does it really smack either player's range. If he's defending essentially ATC here we gotta rep our range advantage

maybe go b33% but I think for sure we cbet and also barrel on what is supposed to be the driest card in the deck

Thanks. Sounds like a dream after playing exclusively online the past 8 months

Hi Cons: one tabling, slow action, travel time/costs
Pros: soft fields, large payouts, live reads, fun conversation, opponents that still think you called because they had a tell as opposed to the fact their betting made no sense...

Yup. The pros way outweigh the cons IMO.

Hand 1 on the turn is a check, in fact I think we want to check back with all of our range.

Hand 2 I would fold but I bet it's pretty close and a jam certainly isn't a disaster

If he has 53o it's bad, 53s is a completely standard defend

Yeah let’s play range check on T54 in a 400$ live mtt lol

Oh I agree, couldve sworn there was an "o" in that spoiler

Ya on second thought this was a screw up by me, we should have some 5s in our range and it would be silly not to bet them.

In hand 2, what type of range should we be shoving? I’m thinking maybe aq+ 55+?

Also with 17bbs utg 7 handed, AKo. Do you prefer jamming or min opening and playing postflop? I just ripped as I don’t see light 3 bets ever here.

Range seems a bit tight, I know you described villain as snug but I think its really rare to find a villain so nitty from the cutoff that you don't do well shoving AJ.

Shove > induce AKo IMO. This is a spot I've probably ****ed up a million times, I tell myself that they'll shove light and I can trap, in reality though these guys rarely 3bet jam 17 BBs light.

i dont see anything wrong with the turn bet, it can be a standard delay c beet which actually on average works very well, i wouldve made the sizing bigger, now as played, we cant ever fold t the min raise. im just paying them off here. just a cooler. Should c bet the flop also sometimes. which there still calling with bottom pair here

A weird approach for someone who states pure gto strat would absolutely crush

Hadn't run this spot. I'm not the all-knowing GTO mastermind, at least not yet.

And when I made that post I couldn't think of a single hand that wants to go b-x or x-b. I thought perhaps mid PPs can barrel for value and protection vs a wide BB defense range, Two-over bwys can barrel because they have SDV and also need protection (I also thought perhaps they can x twice--I was wrong about that), overpairs can certainly barrel, SCs can barrel to bluff V off his own bwys, air like Jh9h can barrel because we have a huge range advantage and there isn't much V can do about it.

Now having run this spot I see Hero isn't supposed to have a x range on this flop and can x back turn with some broadways and mid PPs and also A4, which I suppose makes sense for the former having SDV but never really getting worse to fold on this texture, and makes sense for the latter blocking V's draws and no longer needing much protection on this texture. Otherwise, hero has no hands that want to go b-x and for that matter none whatsoever that want to go x-b (or x-x like I wrongly hypothesized). But I was partially right

I agree 100%. I use this as a delay cbet vs most of population that won’t exploit this. Sure if you’re playing a 3k+ buyin you might get punished more often here for using this in your delay. But in small-midstakes I would say it’s unlikely. I would consider cbetting as well with a backdoor flush draw or something. In theory On ten high boards mp v bb pio likes to play big bet or check and AJ doesn’t feel like the right candidate to start off with a big bet as it doesn’t accomplish much. My betting range otf that isn’t a made hand already would consist of all my wheel aces plus my broadway hands that can turn open enders. If you have 76 in range I like using this one as a check because when you do hit your straight on a 3 or 8, these are cards villain is likely to probe turn with and potentially bluff river on this texture.

Eggs you rather study btn vs bb deepstacked pio sims to improve flop strategies bc generally tighter mp range 30bb deep will cbet range on majority of textures vs wide bb defence.

I am!

Actually focusing on BvB now though

Hand #1 not sure why we're not c-betting flop 1/3-ish with entire range. As played fold turn BB has tons of 5x here that will check flop/raise turn and we should have enough hands with more equity that we can call instead.

Hand #2 is probably a fold vs live tight reg but probably close enough that jam can't be that bad.