Sunday Special #10 Mike Goodman Three Barrels with Eight High
ITM of a big field $20 6-Max tourney on GG
Taking a 20-year break from poker and then picking it back up again in the solver era has been a really fun and unique experience. It’s a completely different game. What’s interesting though is which aspects of new poker have been easier to pick up, and which have been just totally undiscovered country stuff for me.
Relatively shortstacked preflop poker is a completely different game, but the contours of it have moved along lines that I can absolutely understand. Preflop raises have shrunk which means defending your blinds wider, which pushes the threshold of hands you need to bluff in a polar range lower. Three-betting and four-betting ranges are much more precise which means some classes of hands switch buckets. A5s is a thing now. But broadly, if you understood why you were making preflop decisions twenty years ago (as opposed to just memorizing 10BB push-fold ranges), you’re well on your way to having a decent set of fundamentals today. And that’s an important building block.
But there are some building blocks that are new. For example, no-equity bluffs. It’s not that these weren’t a thing when I was good at poker. There’s no such thing as poker where you don’t blast off from time to time; it’s just that the situations you chose were entirely circumstance-based, and the idea that you would build a range that included specific hand types to make up those bluffs was basically unheard of. And it’s really nice to have a slice of hands that you just know you’re gonna be bluffing it and not wasting too much brain space trying to figure out if it’s the right call. I am just starting from absolute scratch in learning them. But I’m here now, and I’m trying to figure out how to pick my spots more precisely. In today’s hand, I was just inside the money with about 150 players left in a $20 6-max tournament and a below-average stack, and decided to run a three-streeter with air for my tournament life.
Let’s dig in to see if I picked a good spot
GG Poker - 2000/4000 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
BTN (BTN): 14.9 BB
SB (SB): 33.55 BB
BB (BB): 18.19 BB
UTG (UTG): 57.1 BB
Hero (MP): 18.72 BB
CO (CO): 19.49 BB (VPIP: 18.18, PFR: 9.52, 3Bet Preflop: 11.11, Hands: 22)
6 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB
Dealt to Hero: 8s7s
fold, Hero raises to 2 BB, fold, fold, fold, BB calls 1 BB
Flop (5.25 BB, 2 players): Qh2d4c
BB checks, Hero bets 1.3 BB, BB calls 1.3 BB
Turn (7.85 BB, 2 players): Kc
BB checks, Hero bets 3 BB, BB calls 3 BB
River (13.85 BB, 2 players): 9d
BB checks, Hero bets 12 BB, BB calls 11.77 BB and is all-in
BB shows: Kh6d
What I thought during the hand
Preflop:
Seems a little close with my stack size? But opening 87s suited can’t be too bad from the hijack basically ever. Maybe I can fold, but we’re early in the money and I’m not trying to duck marginal spots. Big blind defends, seems fine. Let’s play a hand.1
Flop:
Dry and undynamic board, I’ve got range advantage, I bet a quarter pot. I suspect this isn’t a range bet, range bet spot and there’s a class of hands I can check with that has real marginal showdown value (AK/AJ/AT type stuff, maybe some suited wheel As that are either a pair or gutshot) and top set and maybe AQ sometimes along with the occasional give up because stacks are such that I can basically go pot, pot and get it all in when I want to on turns and rivers. But I imagine those are all marginal options and this is a flop where I’m betting a lot, so I bet small. He calls. Sure, he’s supposed to do that a lot.2
Turn:
Behold a king! King good. Me see king. Me bet king.
In a deeper stacked spot, if I decided to bet, I’d probably choose a nice big polar turn size here, assuming I’m getting called by lots of queens, but otherwise getting lots of folds3, though I’m not sure what the bottom of my polar value range would be, to be honest, maybe QJish.4 Here, I sort of figured I had one size, a value size that sets up a river jam.5 So, I used it. He calls. I have eight high. No problem, we’ve still got one more street.
River:
Well, it’s not a complete brick; it fills JT, which, I suppose, it’s not totally totally impossible for him to have, but it’s mostly a brick.6 Also, I have eight high. Also, not only do I have eight high but it’s easy to see the range of hands and he can have here I need him to fold, including pairs below a Q, wheel draws, overs to the 4 that peeled with a backdoor flush draw and turned their draw, etc etc. Sooooo, all-in we go. Amusingly, he tanks, which is a great fake because now I’m rooting for him to fold a Q, turns out he somehow has K6o. Ah well.
Study Session
Preflop
Looking at 17x 8-handed on GTO Wizard 87s gets top open. It’s one of those weird spots where Mr. Computer wants you to have a real limp range, and basically nobody has that limp range, myself included. This hand mixes limp and raise, however, so in my head I adjust that to mostly raise and occasionally fold. Sounds good to me7.
Flop
Oh, this is actually a pure range bet according to the solver. Turns out I wasted a bunch of brain space overthinking my options.8 Better than underthinking them I guess. I could probably even go a little bit smaller on this board. Also, for the record villain in this hand is not supposed to call with K6o, in case you were wondering. It does bring up an interesting question of how to adjust if we knew he was calling too wide,9 but my default read at this kind of level is not that I’m getting called too wide, but that villain won’t find the right number of check raises and will probably overfold to boot.10 Especially if their resume doesn’t read as good reg-ish. And sometimes even if it does.
Turn
Mr. Computer offers both 55% and 33% as options here for firing that second barrel. At some point, I aspire to reach levels where I need to worry about that complexity. For now, splitting the difference and having one bet size seems fine.11 Also 87s without the club draw is a pure second-barrel. Turns out see K, bet K more or less gets the shape of this spot right. You’ve got a good range advantage, you bet lots of stuff for value, check back marginal made hands. Cool. It does seem to me that in this spot playing balanced turns your hand a little bit face up, but I suppose it’s very hard for BB’s range to exploit that.12 If he leads the river after you check you call with your correct set of bluff catchers from the group of marginal made hands. (Figuring out what they are is easier said than done, and also beyond the scope of my totally rad three-barrel bluff hand)
It is worth noting here that BB is never ever folding a Q and really only folds a smattering of 4s here, and some A high wheel draws. It’s a barrel because he has a wide range, not because you fold decent hands out.13
River
Bombs away is right. BB is never supposed to fold a Q and is supposed to hero with some 4s but that leaves enough stuff that you get to make him fold. And, like that board, with a HJ range, you just have a lot of good hands! So you need those three barrels for balance.14
In summation, this hand made me feel good about correctly figuring out this spot. I’m old, but I can still learn things. Also, at these stakes I really think people aren’t finding enough calls when you fire these and would not be surprised if bad players find folds with a Q because the K is scary, and good players find folds with some Qs because the population doesn’t three barrel with no equity enough. All in all, seems like a pretty sweet spot. I will now return to being annoyed that this goofball somehow had K6o.15
It’s a mix with a full BB ante, which means it might be a fold with 0.75 antes, but it’s a fine open.
It’s a pure c-bet. Q42 are just so disconnected and it’s too hard for the BB to find enough continues (apparently your opponent felt otherwise). Q54 you can start checking, but not Q42.
Shallower stacked he has very little Qx because he often check-raises the flop with it and his most likely defends are hands that turned a flush draw or Kx that floated the flop.
Bingo
I’d probably bet a geometric size such that the turn and river bet are ~ same percent of pot
It’s also not a brick for you. Now you can’t bluff JT/T9/J9, so you need to reach deeper to find more bluffs.
17bb equal stacks you play some limps, but you limp less often under even mild ICM pressure and with less dead money in the pot (0.75bb in antes compared to 1bb in antes) and with other deeper stacks at the table— granted here the other deep stack at the table folded UTG so that part doesn’t apply here—. Either way I think playing minraise or fold here is best.
We’ve all been there
It would make me more inclined to barrel the turn, he might have these king high hands, but he’ll also have too many ace high hands. Whether or not it would make me more inclined to bluff the river is close. The type of player who calls K6 on the flop here is not always the same type of player who calls J2 on the turn, but given you bet pretty small on the turn. I’d be willing to bet he has too much 2x and 4x on the river and would bluff.
That is the default population read and I think it’s reasonable.
This is actually a case where one size might outperform the solver strategy. When I ran a sim it looks like the solver wants a size in between 33% and 55% and doesn’t really have one so it splits. When I ran a sim with 33%,40%,47%,55% and 64%. Almost all the volume goes into 47% and 55% and 33 totally phases out.
With less than 2x pot to play it’s not ideal, but sometimes you can just call your opponent with pocket eights or TT or AJ high or whtever. The BB mostly checkraises top pair on the flop so it’s not like he has a ton of potential value bets either.
Similar to the simple thought of “Me see king. Me bet king.” He started this hand with 18bbs, he’s not looking to fold flopped top pair to a turn barrel.
We are talking about a preflop mix. So while it looks like a big square of the grid, we’re talking about maybe 1-2 combos of actual combos you’re bluffing on the river, depending on how often you check 8c7c on the turn.
Rightfully so.