I flew out to Vegas for a few tournaments with my main focus being the $1500 Monster Stack.

This specific hand occurred on day 1b and was by far the most interesting spot I encountered on my trip.

Blinds = 400/800 + 100
Position = BB
Hand = AJo
Stack = 32k

We are in Level 10 (60 min levels) with 10 minutes remaining before we bag for the day. Play had just been stopped and we are in hand for hand play with 5 hands left.

The chip leader and Villain in this hand at our table is a 20 something Asian male, sitting on roughly 75K and has recently taking advantage of the table passiveness in this last level. Players are clearly tired and the table is heavily tilted towards recreational players who are clearly set on sitting back until day 2. The Asian has played very well throughout the day. Not making huge mistakes but balancing his play very nicely with bluffs, value bets and aggressive play.

The Asian kid has been opening extremely wide from LP as the day has progressed and specifically in this last level (roughly 75% the time it folds to him in the LJ, HJ or BTN he has opened). He has also been aggressive with 3-betting those who open to his right. One hand he happily showed 92s as a 3-bet bluff from the SB following an open from a passive player on the BTN.

Action folds to the Asian kid who is on the BTN. His normal raise size at this level has been 1800. He has been throwing out 3 - $500 chips and 3 - $100 chips. The $500 chips and the $5000 chips that are in play are very similar in color. The villain just won a pot and was racking/stacking up his chips when he decided to open again.

Villain throws out $15,300 instead of $1800. He threw out 3 -$5000 chips in combination with 3-$100 chips instead of 3-$500 chips like he had been doing.

As soon he did this he tried to grab the chips back without saying a word. Dealer ruled the chips had to stay. I have seen angles shot like this before, but I made a judgement call in the moment that this was not an angle attempt. Now, there is always a possibility that an angle was being shot, but I figured it was 95% not an angle.

Action folds to me in the BB.

Instead of discussing whether or not this is an angle, let's assume our read is that it is not an angle and we are very sure that villain made an honest mistake.

There are 5 hands left before we bag and we are coming back to day 2 which starts at 500/1000 level. Currently there are 2,000 runners remaining out of 6,000+ and only 900 get paid.

What do you do?

Pretty easy jam. You are well ahead of his range, you probably have at least 58% against it. I don't see how the fact we are about to bag has anything to do with the decision, other than if you want to tell your friends back home you made day 2. The money bubble is still pretty far away.

By the way, the 5s/25s were even worse.

Fold...no FE on a jam...+minimum % u should assign to an angle (when villain is Asian) is 25%*

Full disclosure I'm 1/2 Asian

*you sound caucasian...if u can specify the Asian nationality then I can give u a more accurate angle probability

OP said assume no angle. Does that change your answer? I agree if there is some live chance of an angle this is a fold

I would fold here, but it does not matter. What I wanted to say is I really like the writing style of this post. I would buy a book consists of such stories! Keep writing :-)

Snap shove if 0% angle. With angle odds who knows. Prolly just fold and move on.

Easy jam if no angle. The question is what % of the time does villain have to be angle-shooting for this to be breakeven.

Assume his angle range is KK+. We have 21% against that. Assume his non-angle range is 30-40%. We have 57-59% equity against that.

If villain is angle-shooting here about 30% of the time, we're breakeven.

Honestly, I think I find a fold here. As mentioned above, you really have no FE vs a competent player. He'll be getting better than 3:1 on his call - 16.7K into 48.6K if 9 handed. Plus, even though you say don't assign any % to it being an angle, there is always a non-zero assignment.

BTW - are these the stupid blue 500 and dark purplish 5K slick chips generally used in the dailys? If so, then it is more likely to be an honest mistake BUT I have seen this angle a few times simply because of the chip similarities. If this were the regular blue 500 and orange 5K then it is almost certainly an angle.

Did he just win a pot that large that he had over 15K in unstacked chips? How meticulous had he been in handling his chips for the past hour?

There is always a chance that an angle is being shot, so I hate to say there was a 0% chance. A few things led me to heavily weight this towards it being an honest mistake.

1. Last level of the night which means it is more likely villain is tired.

2. Yes, chips were similar in color. I can't remember the exact color, but the blue and purple seems to make sense. We were also in the Amazon room with the darker lighting.

3. Villain immediately pulled them back and did so in a quiet manner without saying a word to bring attention to it. Unlike other times where I have seen this angle and the amount of acting is over the top.

4. Villain had just knocked out an opponent who held roughly 25bb and when he was raking in the pot he knocked his large stack of 5k chips over, I assume on accident, which made his chips scatter. They were still slightly scattered and he was stacking them when he made his raise.

Not only was he still stacking chips but he looked at his cards while he was stacking them. Making me think that he had little time to plan an angle.

5. His overall body mannerisms at the time just led me to believe it was a genuine mistake.

As I mentioned in the OP, I wanted to get responses that were more based on the read that this was not an angle. Sometimes I think you just have to weight a read in a direction and go with it. That is what I did here.

OK serious reply...

These estimations are pretty close to what I got when I ran it in HRC.

I made the following assumptions:

1. Vill opens ~50% otb.
2. Vill only angles KK+
3. Vill never folds* after misclicking (getting almost 3 to 1.)

*you can see in the sim BTN calls his entire range vs BB shove.

Here's the cEV output with Btn's range locked at 50%:



AJo wins 10.3bbs shoving vs the 50% opening range.

Here's the output vs an angle:



AJo loses 21.3bbs shoving vs the angle.

So if villain angles 33%:

10.3*.67=6.9
(21.3)*.33=(7.0)

So BTN would have to be angling > 33% of the time for this to be a fold.

Thanks for running and posting the sim's erc007.

I agree with your assumptions as well.

10bb's is huge.

I think the mistake that people make in situations like this is that they make a binary call on whether it's an angle shoot or not. In reality, you have no way of knowing with 100% certainty whether he's angle-shooting. Better to think about it with a probabilistic framework.

If you're super confident, go ahead and assign him only a 5-10% probability of an angle-shoot, but I find it helpful to think through the breakeven probability independent of your read, and then ask yourself where your read lines up.

This applies to any type of live read as well.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Here are the results for those interested:

Hey that’s poker. Tough beat.

You got it in good, and would have had a great stack if you had held. GG

Good read, bad variance result. Next time.