When people talk about "pull" hands in O8 (hands that want to pull inferior hands into the pot with them), they are almost always talking about opponents in the field, not in the blinds. Regardless of your hand type, you would almost always prefer that the blinds fold because any equity edge you would have over them is smaller than they immediate edge you get from them leaving dead money in the pot.

In this situation, when you are on the button facing a single raise, you can't pull any additional hands in the except the blinds. I would much invest an extra bet to have AJ83r fold from either blind than allow that hand into the pot for a single raise. This hand is almost exactly even in equity against your hand! And the range of hands that are going to call a single raise, at least from the BB, is much much wider than that. I would prefer all of these hands to fold.

The important consideration here is not whether folding to a 3-bet is less profitable for the BB than calling a 3-bet. It's that both folding to and calling a 3-bet are less profitable to the BB than the opportunity to call a single raise.

Yeah pulling in the hopes of making it a 3 way pot and trying to win half of a tiny pot really is not enticing to me.

Think this is a "push" situation to make it headsup, exponentially easier to win without a showdown, and promotes chances of winning the high with more marginal hands.

I do not pull when I'm in CO, BU, or SB and only one other person in the pot.

In addition smooth calling makes your hand somewhat face up. If you say no its not you also flat high only hands the combos of them that you would not reraise (e.g. unpaired cards mostly A-9) are way less than other low hands you would be calling.

Very good point. I believe I intuited this in thinking I can get it HU, but it's worth considering. If for example Matusow is UTG and I'm UTG+1, pulling might have a bit more merit.

In a $4/8 cash game, you hope Granny calls with her 32xx and then drunk guy calls with 9754 and then somebody else says Pot Odds! and calls A4xx and we're off to the races. In day two of a WSOP event I can't see anything worse than a good A3 cold calling me here.

Much better explanation of what I was trying to explain above re: sunk costs of the blinds and the Fundamental Theorem.

By the way Philip Long, who won the whole tournament, was the BB here. (So many good players named Phil[ip].) Maybe I should have made the thread title about him. Matusow finished 16th.

The HJ never showed up in the 30 minutes I was at this table and may never have shown up, not sure. We were the lowest numbered table so I presume his stack was giving free chips to everyone else until he blinded off.

There I think a fold may actually be in order with your holding.

A few quick thoughts:
1. How could you fail to do 10 minutes of basic research on your opponents? Especially the 2 players to your left?
2. MM was almost certainly not “pretending” ... I played a long session of mix with him and his behavior was erratic the whole time (though his poker was fairly solid
3. I agree w others re value of tournament life vs cEV gained from possibly knocking out blinds. Plus, as already mentioned your hand is a classic pulling hand that does better multiway than HU. With your stack you should be looking to isolate with hands that have lots of high value that easily continue on most flops.
4. Folding preflop should be seriously considered, especially if you knew that blinds were aggro. MM rates to be a tough customer postflop in O8 and has a stronger range here than many villains. You’re likely to find better spots than this one imo.


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i would raise pre

This is day 1; he's not going to know who his opponents are, unless he immediately recognizes them or asks their names. It's not like the guy in the BB who turned out to win the event was a famous player.

Most of the rest I disagree with also, but I've already stated the reasons.

First line of OP: "$1500 WSOP 8 game, Day 2"

I Googled them and found that Philip Long (who eventually won the tournament) who was the BB was like the 500th most monied player in England. Not sure what that tells me about LO8 skills so I didn't mention in the read but OK.

I didn't have a lot of time because I'd had insomnia, saw the tables posted at 4 am, and I had a personal religious commitment the next morning before the 2pm restart. Not that it matters, just giving a taste of what the schedule looks like for those not familiar. But I was a little lazy, yes.

I continue to disagree pretty vehemently about flat calling pre but appreciate the arguments pro and con. I learn a lot from people challenging my assumptions

Ha, that was dumb of me. I guess I just concluding this was late Day 1 without looking back at the OP since they were still far from the money. These tournaments must have better structures that I remember them having!

In this case, I would certainly look these players up beforehand. But I think looking up Phillip Long would peg him as an pretty typical player in that field.

To be clear I do totally advocate doing basic research on your opponents and should have done everything feasible to learn about them. Like I say my sleep schedule was messed up but I should have been Googling them more intensively on my phone over breakfast. So appreciate the actionable feedback.

Do the raise pre folks have any cc in this spot? Do you have a cc range in but v co in cash but not here? What about A279r in both?

I would 3bet in both and have no cc hands

I don't think I would cold call any hands in this spot in a tournament.

In a cash game, whether I would have a flat calling range would depend on my read on the blinds. I would be inclined to flat call both some hands I would otherwise 3-bet and some I would otherwise fold if I knew one or both of the blinds was very loose passive and unlikely to fold much to a 3-bet.

Against a tighter player like MM I don't like a 3! That much, if we have more chips I'm more willing. Rest of the hand seems ok.

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But do you think a strong player (with at least some reputation from NLHE tournaments although he has one or more LO8 bracelets) is playing a tight range

• from the CO
• in a $1500 O8 tournament
• approaching the money
• against a complete unknown on the button with half his stack size?

Amateurs play tournaments really weak tight once they get close to the $, this is the first hand, and for all he knows I'm just trying to sneak to a $2250 payday. (Apparently some good players ITT would be focused on trying to sneak to a mincash.) In his spot I'd probably be attacking with all kinds of As5xx and KK-middle-middle with a suit and big-big-32 and other hands that play just fine HUIP against the big blind, expecting the unknown on the button to fold something as strong as weak A3 hands.

Hard to say if you're closer to truth than I am. There was no showdown but he claimed he had A2KQ, which to me would be the absolute top of his range here.

Yes. But more than that, I just think this is a weak a2 hand and putting in a 3rd bet will often be incorrect. I probably have a wider range than many players in this spot though and I think being able to flat hands like this is very good for balance and range considerations

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Mike is a nit. I would NOT 3b him with this hand.

Agreed, esp in all the limit games

If he’s a nit and from what I’ve seen he has tendencies, there is money to be made from isolating them. That’s one of the main reasons for the 3B, ability to win without a showdown.

What is the concern about the 3b? Are we concerned about getting one extra small bet in with 45% equity against a 10% range? But we have position and most of the time dead money from the blinds. And he's certainly opening more than 10%, we have 49% against a 30% range. So just extrapolate to anything in between to what you think he's opening. And since we hold A2 it's slightly less likely he's holding AA or A2.

And for the most part even premium ranges in O8b have to hit flops and turns in order to continue. If he's a nit and stack protective pre he's going to more or less play postflop the same way, right?

Also to add it doesn’t really matter at all what in theory we would flat and if we were balanced. MM does not know this.

As a practical matter this is not a consideration in tournaments. What matters is what most players will do. When we flat most players are doing it with hands similar to ours.

A focus on equity makes it easy to overlook how poorly a bad a2 hand like this plays postflop. 7 and 9 are both bad cards and we are drawing to a non nut flush. Moreover, a nit will often be more likely to play incorrectly in a small pot than a large one.

Finally, managing heroes effective stack size at this stage of the tournament is important, if we judge a narrow to non-existent equity edge we don't need to push fractional CeV.

There is even a case for folding this particular a2 hand here preflop, even though it would be nonstandard

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Getting the pot heads-up makes it much easier to play the hand postflop and easier to manage our stack size. 3-betting is the lower variance play (relative to calling of course, not folding).