King's casino in Prague Day 1. 50,000 chips to start, 30 minute levels, no shuffle machines used. Tournament starts at 4pm which is early for Prague.

Day 2 will be next day at 3pm in Rozvadov which is 1 1/2 hour drive from Prague. If I can rent a car (for like $40 per day just not sure if they are open Sunday morning). It is 3 1/2 hours by train. Or possibly $180 per person from King's casino in Prague by bus which would be ~2 hours. I'm saying all this because I don't want to just make it to day 2. I want to have a substantial number of chips or not have to go. Min cashing would be like not cashing at all.

I'm down to about 23,000 chips when I start turning things around. I 3-bet from the SB or BB three times with AK/AQ and have taken it down pre-flop and on the flop once. I now have about 55,000 chips.

CO has about 45,000 chips and is probably the worst player at the table. He is not particularly aggressive but he does play a lot of hands. I wouldn't call him a calling station at this point but I would be wrong about that...

SB has not folded basically pre-flop when he is SB or BB. At first I thought he was bad but he reminds me of a cash game LHE player at FW who played way too many hands but was an incredible reader of people and situations and was a winning player (turns out he was a paratrooper in Korea so on his way down he had to know exactly what was going to happen and how to maneuver even when he had been dealt a bad hand)

Blinds are 400/800 BB ante. CO limps, BTN folds, SB completes and I look down at A6. A6s has become part of my 3-bet pre-flop range to balance my strong hands but I have never used it and this isn't a 3-bet situation. Still I decide to raise to 4,800. CO calls SB folds.

Flop is QT7 monotone. I bet 4,800. CO calls. I'm thinking I'm done.

Turn is J. In the past I have realized that if I take any real time before I jam then I will more likely be called. When I jam quickly I get folds more often. So without thinking about more than I could have AK and he can't, I jam quickly. I want to make it not worth calling on a draw for him and if he has a flush then so be it I am drawing dead. After I jam I think that I also have QQ/JJ/TT a lot here and CO doesn't. Even AA/KK with a spade. So I am not really mad at myself. Also, I would rebuy at this level and have basically the same amount of chips.

Thoughts?

I am sad nobody has responded to this.

It could be the single best play I have ever made in my life. And it could also be the stupidist thing I have ever done following a hand where I accidentally put in a 5,000 chip instead of a 1,000 chip (I am not color blind) on a preflop raise so instead of 1,800 it was 5,800 where blinds were 400/800 and I lost 11,600 after I bluffed on a flop miss. So emotionally I may have been slightly tilted and it was against the same ridiculously bad player who had called 5,800 pre-flop when he wasn't even in a blind...

I almost never bluff all in unless I have multiple draws. So I wondered if this was potentially a good play or really a longshot. I was hoping Eggs would call it a money printer.

First, the different locations so far apart between days sucks ... especially given your transportation situation. So if I knew this ahead of time, I probably would not register -- especially since that factor will skew your play at the end of day 1, so it's not poker optimatl, but poker + travel time optimal.

As for the hand, I like the raise with A6s from BB in a limped pot, only if you think there is a good chance that CO is going to fold. Your sizing might be a tad too big for a squeeze here, as this hand is going to miss a lot of boards and will be hard to continue with OOP when you miss. I think if CO is going to fold to 6x, he is going to fold to 4x. So, I'd probably invest less in the squeeze and bump it to 3200.

Once that flop comes after CO calls. I'm done, unless I know that CO is very straightforward and I think I can steal after a check back on the flop. Otherwise, it's check, check, check for me (and fold to any bet). I don't like the stab on the flop, as you obviously don't block any spades, and you have no range advantage against a late position limp call. I think I check my entire range OOP on that flop.

As for the turn, I actually like it a lot better than the flop c-bet. V has a lot of draws, so I don't mind the bluff trying to muscle them out. But with an SPR under 2 and rebuys available, V will probably be calling with a lot of pair + draw hands.

Thank you for your post!

My sizing is standard for me. At this level of blinds (where I have ~70) I'm basically at 2.8x + 1x for each limper + 1x for being OOP. So 5.8x here. I could have made it slightly less than 4800 but I liked that it was a 4000 chip raise for each of the players. My experience is that 4x OOP vs 2 players won't get many folds.

I am basically always c betting on a QTx flop, even though its monotone, vs 1 player who had limped pre-flop. There is >50% chance he doesn't have a flush or flush draw and the QT hits my range so much harder than his. Before I knew him I thought there was a decent chance he would fold. But once he called I had given up completely until the J came. I thought with a flush draw on the turn he would fold to my shove unless he had the A and a pair but then why hadn't he raised preflop?

He actually called with K8 lol. But you are 100% correct that he would have called with any pair and a flush draw. I think he might have called with any pair and no flush draw as it turned out. Which if I had known I wouldn't have jammed. Well maybe I would have.

As for the tournament and why I played, the first time I played in one of these I didn't know Day 2 was in Rozvadov until after I had bought in. But there are so few decent structure tournaments in Prague for more than $250 that I didn't want to pass it up. Like today I played in a 10,000 Crown (~$460) progressive bounty tournament with 25 minute levels and we started with 100,000 chips. Sounds good but the blinds start at 500/500... It turned into a turbo pretty quickly.

Hi mate
I’m not posting much these days coz work but after such a sensational OP I just want to know more about the paratrooper
The PFR on that action is fine but I’d size down the cbet on the monotone because it scares the s out of everyone with huge+s in your range
Once it’s called you have a couple of options, either check or size up to a milking type sizing ott. But I’m not jamming. Ever.
As for the tournament structure, jhc. Either don’t play it with the ridiculous commute to day 2, or commit to the commute and play it like any other tournament and accept the travel cost as part of the mtt expense. Most of the best mtts in Australia are played in Gold Coast QLD atm and I have a two hour flight and accom expenses just to enter the series. Just accept that overhead and play the best mtt poker you can. Travel 2.5 hours with 1.5bb on day 2? Google some amazing thing to do in city 2 for maximum life EV even if $ev is laughable.

It was over ten years ago when I was a regular in the Foxwoods 20/40 LHE game (the biggest regular LHE game at FW). It was close to if not the best 20/40 LHE game in the country. There were so many fish. On Friday and Saturday there were at least five full tables through the night. Flops were often 4 to 6 way after pre-flop hit the 4 bet limit (only 3 raises allowed per round multi-way).

The paratrooper was one of the 190 or so regular players in the game (and I knew all of the regs). There were rarely any new players. He was egregiously bad stats wide. When I played online I used software that analyzed each type of player I played with and he was in basically the 2nd worst category. Loose passive preflop and loose passive postflop (the symbol for the player type was a fish). The worst category was Loose Aggressive pre flop and loose passive postflop (whose symbol was a pair of dice - gamblers who tended to lose more than the fish because they were playing bigger pots and in LHE it makes it harder to fold postflop because you are getting a statistically decent price on long shot hands but you are going to lose more than you win over time).

But the thing that killed me was that he was a consistent winner. Like 80% of the time he had a big stack after playing 10 to 12 hours (I used to play from 10am until 2am to 5am because the massively tilted players who were down were always there and he was never there late).

I couldn't figure it out from a strategy standpoint. He called about 70% to 80% of raises in the BB. He called a ton of raises pre-flop in late positions (HJ+).

Until one day I decided to emulate his play. And I got in a hand with him where he had raised in EP and I called OTB with like T7s. I called his flop cbet. I called on the turn and I bet the river with some middle pair and won a decent sized pot vs AK I figured. I thanked him after the hand for teaching me how to do it and he exploded. He started yelling at me that he had been a paratrooper in the Korean war (50 years earlier) and he would be damned if he would let me get away with taking him down. And that was when the lightbulb went off for me. He had spent at least 2 years being dropped out of airplanes in either enemy territory or in neutral zones typically at night where people on the ground might be able to see him but maybe not. Maybe he was invisible. Gliding down into danger in so many forms.

Being shot at while in the air (raises pre-flop after he had called a limp or raise). So he had to be able to dodge bullets without firing back (he never 3-bet or 4-bet pre-flop)

Hitting the ground attached to his parachute and not being able to run immediately (making pre-flop calls from the SB or BB where he was out of position but paying more attention to what other players were gearing up to do while he scoped out the competition).

Then blending into the darkness so nobody could tell he had landed (calls on the flop like he was just going to see another card, never raising and never calling attention to the strength of his hand).

During the day he worked his way to positions of cover but also of strength. He took the high ground. Whether it was in trees or high up on a hill behind rocks, waiting for the enemy to show themselves so he could kill them at ease (this is why he often called raises in position so that when the original raiser showed any weakness he would pounce. Also because he was a regular he knew everybody. Really well. His reads were like he was back in life and death situations where he never made a mistake. And he never made a mistake post flop).

When his mission was done (he had made $1,500+ for the day) he got back to his base and safety (he never played tired or unable to respond quickly and accurately).

This is basically what I most loved about watching Daniel Negreanu. He would talk in a very friendly way to people about their lives as if he cared. Amusing, polite, kind and always interested (listening for details of what they had done and how that would characterize their play). And in that moment when the paratrooper got enraged with me and spilled the beans I knew that when he was in a hand with me I always had to play exactly the same way regardless of the strength of my hand. Never firing at him first.

I started checking every flop after my pre-flop raises had been called by him IP to see what he would do. And he never bet himself because he didn't want to come out of hiding. So we checked it down a bit. When he was in a blind I tended to bet only when the flops favored my range vs almost ATC. He almost always bet the turn if the flop was checked through when he was in the blinds. So I made him come out first.

Truth was he still was amazing. He could read me anyway. Most of the time. But I was now losing less money when he won hands and sometimes winning more when he lost (bigger sized bets on the turn and river where I would have checked before because he had called my flop bet).

If the paratrooper had asked me why I cared that he was a paratrooper I would have told him that as a child I grew up in an alcoholic home. My father's rage was always one step away from ruining my day. I had to know what kind of mood he was in when he came home from work at night so I would know whether to stay in hiding or not. I did not know he was an alcoholic (until I worked as a kitchen bartender for him in his restaurant one summer and served him at least 3 vodka tonics from 10:30am through 2:30pm my shift) but I did know what mood he was going to be in by the sound the key made when he was unlocking the door to our apartment. So even though I never served in the military I had basically learned how to remain hidden until it was safe to come out. Just like the paratrooper had to do. And I respected him (the paratrooper) for being so amazing at his job that he not only survived but that he used his experience to be a solid winner at poker at FW. I always had really liked the guy but up until that moment I had been unable to figure him out. But yes I would have let him know because why not I was already an open book to him and what I love most about poker isn't the winning but having a good time with the other players regardless of the outcome.

I have started jamming. Double pot size on the flop or turn. Its a GTO thing and not that I am a GTO player I just want people to think I might be. Because in order to do that in a balanced way (to print money) I have to be bluffing a lot which is unlikely for me.

I have done it 3 times that I can remember.

Once this hand which is a bluff. A value bluff yes (because I was actually ahead) but nevertheless a bluff in my mind. And somehow I managed to win the hand. Which meant that I would have been destined for Rosvadov if only my KK had held up vs AK in a 160,000 chip pot (he 4-bet all in pre-flop when I had 3-bet as BB) and/or if QQ had held up vs AK in a 140,000 chip pot (same thing different player, he 4-bet all-in preflop after I had 3-bet in the SB)... But apparently I had used up my luck in this 67% spot vs K8o...

Once in a tournament that I wrote about here where I had AK that I had 3-bet with and it remained a 5 way pot and the flop came AKT two clubs I think and I didn't want any QXs/JXs to call a relatively small flop bet (any other sizing would have been pot committing for me but implied odds perfect for them) so I jammed the flop. And everyone did fold. One guy hesitated awhile (ATs/KTs probably though it could have been AQ/AJs because he had cold called my 3-bet in the SB pre-flop)

And then there was a $600 Venetian deep stack where I had AA OOP on Q987 board with 2 hearts and 2 clubs. By the time we got to the turn there was about 75,000 chips in the pot. I jammed ~150,000 so that any draws or double draws wouldn't be getting the right price. I also had a read that he would jam any 2 pair+ hands and I would have to call because he would also jam some but not all double draws. And yet he called with KTs which was mathematically very wrong though he probably thought he had 3 extra outs if a K hit. I lost that one (6 on the river). Knocked out. I basically would have been close to chip leader had I won that 67% shot.

But you could be right. And I should stop doing it. I guess its the paratrooper in me (OK the Adult Child Of an Alcoholic). I'm taking action before I have time to think it through. I'm trusting every ounce of my perception in the moment. Though to be completely honest my hands are moving my chips all in before I know what is happening really.

Yes, the children of abusive parents often have a natural ability to strategise very effectively v aggression. I would expect, though without empirical evidence, that this translates to an advantage in live poker - especially if the abusive parent is intelligent.

I’m surprised the paratrooper became angry when you won that hand. T7s flat pre isn’t standard but it’s hardly wild.

I’d be careful about taking a wide brush on my ‘never all in’ comment. There are times like 76s on a 754 flop facing a lead with an appropriate SPR where an overbet shove makes perfect sense. You want some combination of substantial equity and/or substantial blockers. So As5h could be a candidate to shove here, but I’m not feeling any love for A6dd

My father was very intelligent so I did have to carefully strategize as a child. But I also subconsciously forced myself to lose to him. It started when I was 7 years old and beat him at chess. He knocked all the pieces off the board in anger and never played with me again. So I learned (the hard way) that in order to be with my father I had to lose.

As to your surprise about the paratrooper, I didn't explain it well. It wasn't about the hand that beat him. It was about what I said to him. When I thanked him for teaching me how to beat him he took offense at it and started defending himself like we were at war and his life was in danger. Or something. I think my exact words were something along the lines of finally being able to see how he won so many hands that he shouldn't have been in. That's when he told me about being a paratrooper so I would have some respect for him. He had never discussed that at the table in the years I had played with him. And believe me I always try to get people to talk about what they have done in life and where they have been. On the bright side when he came at me it was not an issue for me because nobody will ever get to me like my father did. So I just deflected and let him know I meant no offense. And that I was very impressed with him and how he had done so well at poker at FW. So we got past it pretty quickly.

As for your advice I totally get it. I had really never gone all in on a bluff on the flop or turn unless it was a semi bluff. And I get that my A high hand with no flush draw was really not a valid semi bluff (3 clear outs don't count, especially if I can have no outs). And that having a top two flush draw would block the chances of getting called (even though nobody should be calling a double pot sized jam on the turn with just a draw even if it is a double draw). But I am starting to look at how the turn card could in theory give me a very solid hand. In this case yes I would lose against a flopped flush, but I felt strongly (in that nanosecond) that because of my pre-flop OOP raise that I could have AK a lot and with AK would always jam there. Especially if I could have the A or K for a flush draw as well in case he had flopped a small flush. I felt pretty strongly that he wouldn't ever limp first in from the CO with any AXs hands and similarly thought he would likely raise with any KX:s hand. So I thought there was a greater likelihood I could have either card with my AK. Of course I was wrong as he had the K in a one Broadway hand. I just had no idea at the time how bad he was.

I'd just ship pre

As played smaller flop; AA, KK, QQ don't really like that sizing I think

As played yeah ship turn why not think we'll get some folds even from two pair; SPR is only a .5 right?

I'm envisioning more overfolds with a tiny cbet (2k), moderately small barrel (6k), triple all-in line (10k into 27kish pot) line.

Think AsJx, AsTx, KQ, Q9, Q8 all need to find calls sometimes and people just might never do it. Plus you might still get folds from QJ, QT with that line.

Don't take my word for it though. My strategy computations have been ****, pure **** recently.

The reason I didn't respond is that I didn't know what to say. I don't really have a low-equity bluff like this in my playbook, and it's so read and situation dependent that I can't really offer any advice from a theoretical perspective. Do you think it works against this guy? Sure, then do it. That's really what it comes down to.

Against GTO?

We have 1.5x SPR left at this point ott right?, it isnt a situation where i would simply jam anything, atleast not anything good, even if i had a pot size jam behind i would still fire 30% or 50%
I dont mind our bluf with our hand, i do like it, but i dont like the jam, it's a big assumption people will fold two-pair when you could be doing this stuff with AA and KK or AQ. I think we do better overall by sizing smaller and jam rivers.