Sunday Special #18 "A Tornado of Reads, Pot Odds, and Concepts"

Another submission from "Lion King"

My (Sam’s) thoughts are included in the footnotes. If you reading this via e-mail, it might be an easier read on Substack where the footnotes require less scrolling back and forth. Click here. On to the Sunday Special where we have a first time submitter.

The submission has been lightly edited for content and clarity

This week we have another submission from Loris aka Lion King, who introduced himself to POTD readers in Sunday Special #15

My name is Loris, I am 27 years young and I play mostly low to mid stakes online and I plan for my poker dream to soon become reality

After finishing the German equivalent of high school I decided to go to a German state police, because I always had a strong sense for justice and honestly I didn’t have a clear plan for my future with my young age of 18. In my college years I got into poker and in a fateful night while I was sitting in my student dorm in the middle of nowhere (the police college was placed in a very small, isolated village) I asked myself, if there is more to ask from life. I decided back then, about 8 years ago, that I at least wanted to give the poker dream a try, so I won’t regret it later on when I look back at my life. Because I have to work the usual 40 hours with shifts and I only play tournament poker, I do have much time to study poker and only so many days I can actually play poker. So when I don’t have obligations to fulfill my day starts with a Club Mate drink and around 1 hour of poker study before my actual day begins!

Mid Stakes Online-Poker (SB/BB/A). 8 Handed.
30$ Big-Field GG Poker on a Sunday. Registration still open
Hero opens from HJ and 16.44bb to 2bb w Q♣️J♥️, folds to the BB, a player with aggressive stats (forgot the flag) – looked like a regular – who called and covers.

Flop (5,38bb) A♥️K♥️4♣️: Hero c-bets 2.3bb, BB raises to 6.6bb.

Turn (18.57bb) 8♠️: BB bets 7.84bb effective, Hero tanks 2 timebanks,
calls and is all-in.

River (34.26bb) 3♠️: BB shows A♣️4♥️ and wins while already tagging me as calling station (probably).

What I Was Thinking:

Preflop
As HJ with 16.44bb I was the shortest stack on the table left to act. The only non all-in size this short I do play is 2bb. Against a field that plays more passive than it should, preflop and postflop, I do mix preflop between shoves and minraise.

That is because: I can call a three-bet more often with more speculative hands preflop because I’ll face less reshoves and more three-bets non all-in. Many middle of range hands gain more EV by shoving – because they don’t get the extra EV from weak hands bluff shoving as regularly as they should.

I expected BB to be the best player left to act, also making it slightly less attractive to never play open jams. The only value hands I do raise probably raise in this lineup are JJ+, AKs, AQs maybe AKo the rest are bottom of the range hands like QJo.¹

Flop

Writing is easy when you can just copy/paste: “This flop hits my range very hard. We have all sets.”² He probably has none as I expect him to reshove pocket pairs, we have AK while he has none, same for the best Ax hands.³ Therefore I felt a bigger c-bet size was appropriate – already putting pressure on everything beside flushdraws and top pairs.⁴ I think I can also mix with a bigger size, like 3.5bb⁵ and play many double barrel all-in’s.⁶

But BB had other plans and decided to raise small. As the clock ticked, different exploits and concepts rushed through my mind, trying to bring order in an already chaotic hand. Let me give you a quick recap of my thoughts:

1. My c-bet size looks strong, his c/r and size looks even stronger

2. I have to continue with something, against a value range I have 4 clear outs with QJ what makes it more appealing to continue than a pair that’s not top pair

3.Is the J♥️good or bad for me?

4. What are his bluffs and do I have enough equity to continue?

As poker players we have to prime ourselves with the most important thought. I am not playing LlinusLLove in this hand, therefore I rank the most important thought here 4>1>2>3.⁷

In hindsight the big question to me is: Is he only playing AT+ this way or does he mix in gutshots and flush draws?⁸ I read him as an aggressive player so I gave his range gutshots and flushdraws. Gutshots are bad enough that they don’t mind check-folding the turn. Maybe gutshots even see a river against a check and flushdraws are good enough to stack-off on the flop and are still happy to take their chance and get some fold equity on the turn. As thought (4) cleared my mind I decided I have enough equity to continue.⁹

Turn:
The driest turn I could imagine. My opponent put me all-in rather quick
so I went into my 2 timebank tank. Multiple concepts hit me once again, amongst them one of the scariest – a misapplied hero call in the form of POTD #149.

I was pretty aware that I was pondering something heroic, so I reached deeper into my thought process. First: pot odds: I estimated that I needed to be good here around ¼ of the time (accurate 23%) to break even.¹⁰ Second: Does he have enough bluffs? I still give him flush draws, I am not sure that he plays them 100% this way, but once again, I only need to be good here every fourth time.¹¹

Third: Against value (AT+) I always have 4 clean outs, that’s more than Ax has, so my hand is a better call than a top pair. So I called. Looked at 2-pair. And was out of the tournament.¹²

Afterward analysis:
Even though I was aware of me being on the edge of misapplying a concept and hero calling myself out of the tournament, I couldn’t help myself and listen to the siren’s song of my “third” thought.

I realized pretty quick that QJ hero call is a much worse call than any Top-Pair, Top Pairs still win when a mere flush draw just hit’s a pair on the river and they do block, well A4 and also a sneaky slowplayed AA – although it’s unlikely that BB will play it this way. ¹³

I do also look pretty stupid with QJ when I run into 43fd that may plays this way.
So at first I was convinced that I punted, hard, but I wasn’t done with the hand yet and looked into Flopzilla – an equity calculator (not sponsored 😉). And what I found surprised me.

When BB does c/r all flush draws and AT+ on the flop (plus some gutshots that fold on the turn) we do have 32% equity – 9% more than we would need to call in chip-EV enviroment!¹⁴ A4s isn’t in the range, I expect some preflop shoves.¹⁵

I do make this equity calculations pretty pessimistic to not talk a bad play good. Can I be sure that he plays this way? Not really, but am I sure enough with a 9% margin for error, maybe 7-8% with ICM involved? I guess yes, I do!¹⁶

Types of Errors

Misapplying concept
Underestimating pot odds

Final Thoughts and Grade

Thinking about this hand I went from call, to fold, to call.
I liked all my decisions in hindsight, but at the same time the hand looks like I should just have gone with thought (1) on the flop – and folded.¹⁷
Ultimately it’s always easy to think you are the sucker in a spot where you only need to be good ¼ of the time. Only enough showdowns (and maybe Sam Greenwood) will tell if I see enough missed flush draws in this spot to make it a true hero call.

C+ for +EV calling station and probably the right play for wrong reasons¹⁸

If you made it to the end of the post and are interested in being the subject of a future Sunday Special, let me know. Do not be shy if you have a lack poker skill or accomplishments. No solver analysis is required from you and I’d much rather have hobbyist poker players, who are good writers that can produce clean copies and clearly articulate their thought process than editing the writing of 99% of accomplished poker players.

1. I think this is too tight. As a short stack one way to maximize EV with a hand like 88 is getting dead money trapped in the middle of the pot and you want to increase the probability people put money in the pot preflop and end up folding to your jam, especially in multiway pots. Also if the best player at the table is in the BB, they also might be the type of player to make loose reshoves or loose 3b-folds, so minraising into his BB might be the best exploit.

2. I’ll repeat my note from Loris’s previous submission, which is having all the sets is nice, but having second pair or better ~half the time is even better.

3. If he has a set here, it’s AA that is trapping preflop.

4. A bigger size might even get some Kx to fold the flop, but with this size you’re trying to fold out 4x, which should be easy, and gutshots, which could be harder.

5. This size is designed to get second pair to fold, if you don’t think your opponent will fold Kx, don’t pick this size with a bluff.

6. No need to double barrel all-in. You can pick a smaller non all-in size that will still put pressure on second pair and doesn’t risk your entire stack.

7. I don’t think your c-bet size looks all the strong, but I think at most stakes checkraising on AKx boards looks very strong. I think 4 is by far the most important question here.

8. I think the other thing to note here is what is the worst top pair he’s playing like this? If he will raise stack off A2 here, you need to find a lot of bluffs to make continuing QJ reasonable.

9. It seems very close it looks like QJ/JT/QT of clubs always call the flop, fold without a heart, and mix continues with a heart. Which I guess answers question 3. You want a heart.

10. The problem with this thought process is his bluffs have a lot more equity vs your hand than his value does. 53o has 10 outs than and you have 4 outs vs a hand like A4. So even if he’s bluffing 1/4 of the time, I doubt your have 23% equity.

11. Once again his bluffs are more likely to river your hand than you are to suck out vs his value so you probably need him to be bluffing closer to 40% of the time.

12. A hand like A5 has three outs to beat A4 or AT, but also has 6 outs to a chop. They also block a huge chunk of his value range, while the Jh is a card that should be in a lot of his bluffs. So random top pair is a much higher equity hand, this is especially true if your opponent is someone who might fastplay weak top pair on this board, which is not impossible at all.

13. Correct

14. I think these assumptions are optimistic, you need to be playing someone who is very aggressive with their bluffs, but not aggressive with their value and you have a pretty bad blocker vs the opponent with the Jh in your hand,

15. Some potential value hands like A4o or ATo, could easily shove preflop as the bb.

16. I’m beating a dead horse here, but I think the real problem here is you’re willing to get very flexible with his bluffing range, but seem very inflexible about the idea that AT is the bottom of his value range. I don’t know your exact Flopzilla sim, but I’d guess adding something like the 12 combos of A9 into his range already makes this call pretty dicey.

17. I think it’s very hard to think calling the turn is good and calling the flop is not. Either he’s bluffing too much or he’s not. If he is bluffing the flop too often you will hit a turn card you can call a shove on (Q,J,T, heart, total blank) often enough that you can call the turn shove and that’s not even accounting for the fact you might be able to bluff on some runouts. Over DM Loris clarified that he just felt he should have folded the flop because he thinks his opponent is underbluffing on the flop, which is fine, but that’s even more reason to fold the turn.

18. I don’t like grading the Sunday Special submissions. I want more of them and don’t want to scare people off, but my grade would have been closer to Z in the alphabet than this one :).