Sunday Special #19 Flopping Top Pair at the Feature Table

A Second Submission from Sid Sudunagunta

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 second time submitter.

The submission has been lightly edited for content and clarity

This week we have another submission from Sid Sudunagunta, who introduced himself to POTD readers with Sunday Special #14

Hi, I’m Sid Sudunagunta, a recreational player based in the UK. Around 6-7 years ago I started playing online and became increasingly obsessed with poker. It’s my main hobby and I tend to plan my holidays around trips to various series and festivals. Over the last 2-3 years my focus has shifted away from NLH and more towards mixed games, though I’m always conscious that I don’t want to fall hopelessly behind in Holdem; to that end, Punt of the Day has been an invaluable resource. Most mornings start with one or two POTD articles over a coffee, while my cat Dorito bats my coloured pens off the table. I then go to work and try not to forget the lessons I’ve learned.

Today’s hand is from day 2 of the Party Poker Sheffield £500 main event in January of this year. It was streamed and the video is embedded below (hand starts around 6.00.40):

31/273 remain and 41 paid. $31st gets £1000. The next pay jump (£1150) 27 players
(8k/16k/16k) (SB/BB/BBA)

Aleksandar Georgiev (810k/51bbs) a pro and a regular on the Party Tour, raises the HJ to 35k off 810k. I defend the BB with A♣️5♥️ (328k – 20.5bb).

Flop (94k) A♠️Q♠️T♥️: I check, he bets 35k, I call

Turn (164k) 2♦️: I check, he bets 85k, I call

River (334k) A♥️: I check, he puts me all in for 189k, I call and beat 6♠️5♠️

If you like the Sunday Special and would like to see my keep writing them, please become a paid or unpaid subscriber and consider submitting hands yourself.

What I Thought

Preflop: I thought I could jam A5s, but offsuit I wanted ATo/AJo. I could jam A5o against a BTN open.¹

Flop: I flopped top pair, bad kicker and was torn between check-jamming and check-calling. I hadn’t played much with villain but I thought he was aggressive and capable of bluffing, I thought it was better to check-call and keep in his worse value and bluffs.²

Turn: I didn’t love this spot, this is the part of the hand that I feared could be the punt. I know calling down with top pair at SPR ~2 is rarely too heinous, but I’m behind a lot of value (could be dead) and I expected to face a shove on a lot of rivers. That said, I thought I was fairly high up in my range (the commentators also said this)³; I do have KJ but otherwise I don’t have sets or 2 pair (except a turned A2)⁴, so I thought I would need to call with Ax. Also some of my Ax check-raises flop? I didn’t think about this in game but I wonder if the 5 kicker is good, not blocking his bluffs (K9s, J9s, etc?).⁵

River: Trips is a good hand and while I could still be dead I called quickly and was pleased to see a bluff.⁶

What I Learned

I looked in GTO wizard at chipEV 20bb effective (single size). If Sam’s footnote says that’s useless please feel free to ignore this next bit⁷ . Oh. 65s isn’t in villain’s range and there’s barely a sliver of 76s. I wonder if I can pretend he had 87s.⁸

My possibly useless GTO wizard findings are as follows:

Preflop A5o pure calls. My jams come from pairs 22-QQ, A7o A6o (not sure why it’s not the suited wheel Ax⁹ ), AJo-AKo more or less pure and some mixing of AQs, AJs, K9s. I also have a polar 6bb 3b range: AKs and KK/AA pure and some AQs, QQ. This is balanced by AJs (I assume this is a bluff?¹⁰), JTs¹¹ and a smattering of various low frequency crap (A2o, Q5o, J7o, etc).

On the flop I check range and HJ bets range (GTOw likes b47¹²). I’m at a huge range disadvantage, HJ has 60.9% equity here. My strategy is interesting: I call 19% and jam 10%. All my Ax jams at some frequency (except A7o and A5s for some reason, pure calls. Oh and A7s and A6s because they heavily prefer to shove preflop but if I have them here they pure call).¹³ ATs pure jams. With the offsuit Ax, if I have a bad spade (AX6s or worse) it jams, if I have 8s or better it mixes more and prefers jamming the combos without a spade. I imagine this is something to do with the spades in villain’s range.¹⁴ My exact combo is a pure call. I also shove QTs/o pure and mix with KJs/o. My bluff jams are flush draws with a broadway card (K8s, J7s, T4s etc).

Turn is a pure check from me and facing b49 I mostly call with a small amount of shoving.¹⁵ Regarding being high up in my range, A5o has 49% range vs range equity and is in the top 33% of my range. On the river I mix leads with all my Ax, plus things like KQs/o, KJo, QJs/o, plus some goofy bluffs like 9s3s, 3s2s. Facing the shove I call.¹⁶

I think my main takeaway from this hand is the flop strategy is quite interesting and should be easy enough to execute: I can essentially check-shove any Ax, but not all Ax, so having a spade blocker with a bad kicker is helpful.¹⁷ And the bluffs are intuitive: flush draw with a straight blocker. Finally, I think against a villain who is opening two pips wider on the suited connector front my call down is even more justified.

One reason I wanted to write about this is that after the hand the villain told me my turn call was really bad, so I wanted some reassurance.¹⁸ So I asked some friends, who told it me it was fine. And GTO wizard has told me it was fine. Now I want Sam to tell me it’s fine.¹⁹ If you’ll permit me a brag²⁰, I did go on to win this tournament.

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. Under ICM pressure you often jam suited aces, but for chips you mostly stick to offsuit ones and A5o is a fine hand to bluff shove here as are AT and AJo.

2. The main reason you can’t jam is his c-bet size is too small. His small c-bet size means your shove is around 1.7x pot, which is too much to shove. His small c-bet size should also be a stronger range that has more hands like top set and KJ, which is not an attractive range to shove A5 into. Even if that c-bet size is just the size he picks in this spot, the fact that it’s such a larger shove should deter you and calling is best.

3. You and the commentators seem to concerned about where you are in your range and not enough about the fact that he should be playing any top pair combo like the nuts and you block all those top pair combos and have a lot of chop equity vs a hand like A8.

4. Some Q2s and T2s as well.

5. Not blocking those hands are fine, but this board is so good for his range that he should be bluffing with basically any hand with two cards lower than nine in it, including the pocket pairs, hands like 6d5d, etc so your kicker isn’t particularly meaningful. The lower kickers are preferred because he has fewer of them in his opening range. He has 98s, but does not have 94s. What matters sf that you have an ace that blocks top pair. If you were only allowed to play one card on the turn, you’d probably need to call down here.

6. You need to call on a river A especially since you now chop with a lot of value.

7. Ideally you’d run a sim that gives him an opening range that is unique to this stack alignment. You are 20bbs deep, but he’s over 50bbs deep with 2 of the players he’s opening into, which means he might be able to getaway with opening hands like 65s. However a wider opening range with hands like 65s just makes your hand an even clearer stack off.

8. We are analyzing your play, not his. If you see something non solver approved in his play, you want to think about if it makes your play higher or lower EV than the solver baseline. In this case I think him opening looser than cEV clearly your calldown higher ev.

9. The suited wheel aces don’t jam because they have more playability postflop and can call c-bets or checkraise bluff on more boards. A5o does mix shoves in the multi-size postflop sim with equal stacks. The general idea here is you want to shove a polar/bluffing range that targets folding out stronger kickers. The HJ’s worst offsuit ace they pure open is A8o, so you shove A7-A6 to target that A8.

10. Not a bluff at all, a very happy three bet call, that is making around 4bbs to call a shove.

11. This is also a three-bet call and I tweeted about this play here and described to someone over DM the following way. When you don’t play preflop reshoves all-in. Your three bet call range is pretty linear, so you three bet call say JJ+ and AK, if you want to add more hands you add TT, then 99, then AQs, etc.

Okay but let’s stay you are shortstacked and three bet call JJ+, AKs but you just go all-in with AKo or TT or 99, but you want to add some more hands to your three bet-calling range so you can three bet bluff more and also have some hands that can bluff postflop if your opponent calls a three bet. Adding a hand like pocket fives or t9s makes sense.

However part of the reason the solver three bet calls hands like JTs or T9s is because the in position solver player recognizes your BB three bet as being very polar. If you have QQ and are facing a three bet calling range of JJ+/AK and bluffs with hands like K5o or J7o you should always trap in position. So they trap QQ+ and shove hands like AJ+, 88, some bluffs with hands like A5s or whatever and JTs does okay vs that range.

If your opponent doesn’t play a solver strategy in response and shoves QQ+, obviously three bet calling T9s becomes less appealing

12. Again there is a difference between shoving for a raise of 170% pot and 140% pot and sometimes that extra 30% makes all the difference.

13. The general shape here is the stronger your kicker is the more often you shove, but it’s not flawless. I am not entirely sure why exactly A7 and A5 slowplay, but it shouldn’t matter much.

14. It has more to do with the fact that Ax8s might want to keep a hand like 6s6x in the hand, but Ax6s might want to knock out 8s8x. 20bbs even on a board like this top pair is so good it needs to stack off, but Ax8s is good enough to trap where Ax5s is not.

15. With more money to play, facing a trappier c-bet size against a wider preflop range with more potential bluffs. I think calling is the way to go.

16. This is a river lead that’s likely unnecessary to implement, but knowing OOP does lead the river here means that versus many opponents you can profitably give up and check the river with zero equity hands.

17. Even at 25bbs when the shove is for 165% A4-A2 with a spade frequently shove as does A9 without a spade. So the same shape holds, but the threshold changes a little as the stacks get smaller. I’ll also note you don’t want a “flush draw blocker” here, you want a backdoor flush draw for yourself when you shove and are called by better.

18. Folding the turn would be very bad here, it looks like it starts being a play 35bbs deep vs an 125% pot turn barrel. You are getting far too good a price to fold.

19. It is

20. I really wanted to make this footnote “I will not” and end the blog post here, but I’ll let Sid brag. I think this is an interesting type of hand for a Sunday Special because it’s a well played hand where he could have taken alternative routes that would have also meant the hand was well played. However in writing down all his thoughts he showcased some things he did not know that I could write about and expand on, which is why I will continue to encourage readers of POTD to send submissions. They continually provide fodder for me to write about things that I might not touch in the main blog because they seem automatic to me.