Sunday Special #3 Goodman Makes a Good Hand

and folds?

As I’ve started to look for interesting hands to write about for POTD, I’ve tried to keep a couple of things in mind. First I want hands where I’m genuinely unsure if I’ve played them well or not. I’m not Sam, I’m not supposed to have the answers, even after studying, the whole point is getting stuck on interesting questions. Second, and relatedly, they shouldn’t be “simple” solves. Generally I want something to be harder than “the solver says X, so adjust a little bit from what the solver says for Y and we’re done here.” Third, if I can, I’d like them to be different from each other. So far, I wrote about a hero call in my first hand, a 3-bet spot deep in a tournament for my second hand, and today I’m going to write about a multiway preflop pot n a progressive knock out tournament where I ended up making a pretty big fold on a gnarly river. Let’s do it.

Registration is closed in a $15 GG Poker PKO tournament with a whopping 8000 runners. It was some festival or other. UTG7 opens, he has a little under 40BBs, we see KdTd in the CO, and then things get complicated. Tournament context is that registration has closed and something like 60-70% of the people left are gonna cash. Also I’ve got about a 1.25 buy-in bounty to collect for busting me if that ends up mattering. All the players who see the flop in this hand are above average chip stacks, except for the opener who is just below.

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GG Poker - 600/1200 Ante 180 NL (8 max) - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

UTG (UTG): 104.29 BB
UTG+1 (UTG+1): 40.29 BB
MP (MP): 12.01 BB
MP+1 (MP+1): 22.68 BB
Hero (CO): 58.54 BB
BTN (BTN): 113.25 BB
SB (SB): 31.28 BB
BB (BB): 53.43 BB

Dealt to Hero: KdTd
fold, UTG+1 raises to 2 BB, fold, fold, Hero calls 2 BB, BTN calls 2 BB, fold, BB calls 1 BB

Flop (9.7 BB, 4 players): 7s 3h Tc

BB checks, UTG+1 checks, Hero bets 3.2 BB, BTN raises to 9.35 BB, fold, fold, Hero calls 6.15 BB

Turn (28.41 BB, 2 players): Ks
Hero checks, BTN bets 14.56 BB, Hero calls 14.56 BB

River (57.52 BB, 2 players): As
Hero checks, BTN bets 42 BB, fold, BTN wins 57.52 BB

Ok, so this is fun one. As always, let’s start with what I was thinking during the hand, then we’ll go to the study portion. Though, honestly on this one that’s mostly going to be me thinking really hard.

What I thought during the hand

Preflop:

Open from UTG7 and I have KTs in the CO and well cover, this seems like an exceedingly mandatory call. For pure chips I know KTs gets in there as an occasional 3-bet, but that seems bad in a PKO where folding to a 4-bet seems worse than a normal tournament since you lose the chance at a bounty.¹

Button calls, which is a little bit tricky since he covers. In theory he’s supposed to have a pretty tight calling range at 40BB effective, but that’s in part because he’s got a decent squeezing range. Certainly possible lots of those squeezes get bumped down to overcalls for the same reason I’m probably raising KTs 0% instead of 10% or whatever. I also take this time to give Button the ol’ mouse-over and see he’s got six-figures of winnings on GG. That means either he’s a reg or he’s a higher stakes average buy-in player slumming it in a giant field $15.² His stats over 50 hands aren’t indicative of a guy who’s messing around much though, not that that’s definitive in any way.

BB calls. You’re supposed to call tighter than you think there, or at least tighter than I think. Probably especially when of the three players already in the pot in this PKO two cover you. Anyway.³

Flop:

Flop a pretty good top pair pretty deep, that seems ok to me. Preflop raiser checks, he’s often doing that with range, so keep it in mind. Still, I’ve got a good hand on a dry board in a multiway pot, I assume I want to bet and I assume I want to bet on the smaller side so I bet a third pot.⁴ Button raises and BB folds as does preflop raiser. Don’t like this at all. It’s a small raise and I‘m obviously calling now, plenty of hands I’m ahead of and everything. But button is going to have a really easy time of getting money from me when he’s ahead and not losing very much when he has the hands I’m ahead of like JTs and QTs. And like sure there’s some bluffs and some draws, but not a ton.⁵

Turn:

Well then. Suck it AT. Though how much AT does he really have anyway…probably the two combos of ATs, but ATo isn’t really supposed to be overcalling preflop, though maybe in a PKO where he covers both players it does? Though even then that seems like the wrong kind of way to expand a range at these depths.⁶ Anyway, I have top two pair, I’m going to check and if he bets small I’ll raise and if he bets big I’ll call. He bets medium. Crap. I’m kind of frozen by this bet. It feels really strong to me for some reason I can’t quite articulate.⁷ Anyway it seems better to call than to check raise. He’s probably folding one pair hands to a check raise I’d imagine? And he isn’t really supposed to have worse two pair than me. I’m gonna be annoyed if I call and the river checks through but what can you do exactly?⁸ I call.

River:

Well that card sucks. That feels tooth suckingly bad. My general impression of the state of things had been that heading to the river his value range was 77/33/KTs/ATs more or less, and ATs sometimes checks the turn and more often gets dropped in a smaller bet size bucket. And then balancing that out were 89s some backdoor nonsense flop raises that could then continue when they picked up equity on the turn.⁹ On a blank river, that’s an easy call, especially if he’s trying to value bet thin with AT to pick up my bounty, is that a thing that happens in this spot, I don’t know.

Now though, I’m not only behind ATs and ATo if it’s in his range, I’m also behind basically everything in the raise flop and continue on turn when we pick up equity nonsense bucket (not absolutely everything though, more on that in a minute). QJs? Got there. Qs9s? Got there. QsTs/JsTs that decided to bet the turn with a plan of shrug-calling a jam? Got there. It feels like the number of possible value hands ahead of me went way up and while there don’t need to be a ton of bluffs here to make it worth it, we’re playing for three-quarters pot here, I still need to find more than three. I can’t really (spoiler: I found more than three later….maybe), not without suspecting this guy is wilding out in a way I do not suspect him to be. So, I fold. I really don’t like folding though.

Study Session

Preflop:

My decision is easy, but the situation is a weird in ways that color the rest of the hand. Opener has 40BBs, I have almost 60BBs and the button has over 100BBs. So, as the hand progresses me and the button are playing 40BB deep preflop ranges. Well, more or less, adjusted for PKO, however one does that. And that kinda matters.¹⁰ My range is somewhat tighter at 40 than at 60, and the button’s range, while not extremely different is kind of substantially different. When you’re 60BB deep you can justify being the third man in with a lot of stuff that cracks big one pair hands. This is all true of me in the CO, but even more true of the button.¹¹

At 60 BB deep me and the button could have the kinds of low suited connectors that offer a gutshot on a T73 board, at 40 BBs we’re really not supposed. For chips at 40BB stack I can come along with 87s, and stuff like 89s, T8s, J9s is well within my range, but the button is supposed to begin mixing a lot of folds with those hands, and is folding 87s and T8s north of 80% of the time. All of which is to say that, in theory, the button is hitting this hand with a tighter range than we’re used to 60BB deep, as am I.¹²

So, even if we widen somewhat because PKO, still fairly tight ranges here, which is mostly what I intuited. Great, let’s hit that flop.

Flop:

The flop is where this hand goes pear-shaped for me. Not so much because I’m confused about my hand. I have a pretty good hand against three players, obviously I bet, but because I’m confused about my range. I can have lots of one pair hands, how far down the list am I supposed to go? 88? A7s? 78s? 66 even?¹³ Etc etc.

Betting a lot of pairs kinda makes sense because the button shouldn’t have very many tens¹⁴, I’m ahead of the BB’s range pretty comfortably, and if it folds back around to the preflop raiser he maybe isn’t folding two good overs to a small bet, even into a crowded field. But how far to take that concept?¹⁵ I don’t know.

And given that, while KTs is obviously high enough up in my range to defend against a raise, I don’t know how much range I’m supposed to have here, so I’m not sure how wide my opponent’s value range¹⁶ is here and how wide he then will be reaching for bluffs?¹⁷ Like if my betting range is wide here, it’s more likely he gets to mess with me with QJs nonsense, and that’s especially true, I’d imagine, in a PKO where you are more incentivized to try and turn multiway pots into big pots against one opponent who you can knock out, rather than get extra bets out of multiple opponents.

Turn:

All that stuff I was blathering about on the flop matters on the turn, because I have no idea how many tens are continuing to bet for value (if any).¹⁸ Like it’s super reasonable for him to be raising the flop with JhTh.¹⁹ Is it reasonable for him to be betting the turn? Well. It depends on how far down my range I’m supposed to defend against his raise on the flop, and therefore how sticky I’m supposed to get on the turn.²⁰

If we’re in a world where we’re both relatively wide ranged and I can sometimes get looked up by JTs or T9s or something on the turn, then jamming is obvious.²¹ I don’t think we’re in that world, I think we’re in a much tighter world where this line feels like sets or total nonsense but there can’t be that much total nonsense.²² But I really don’t know. In the moment my best guess was kinda, I still have a bluff catcher but he can have some 10s that he’d fold to a jam. So just call.²³

One thing else to note here that I somehow haven’t hit on previous streets is that I can, in theory, have TT obviously, but also a decent amount of JJ and QQ here while those are pretty pure 3-bets from him. But that also cuts both ways, because it means the K isn’t supposed to be a good card for me, in that in the absolute sense it makes a lot of my very good hands weaker. That said…it’s not like it’s supposed to help him very much after a flop raise. So, again, I dunno.²⁴

This is what’s defined in poker as not knowing where you’re at. I didn’t. I don’t think calling can be too bad here though.²⁵

River:

My thinking at the time, as I said above was that a lot of stuff just got there and that left only 89s as bluffs. If that’s the case, I probably can, in fact, fold. But I can think of a handful of other bluffs in the cold light of day. The major one is J9s which turns a double gutter.²⁶ Backdoor flush draw wrapping the T seems like exactly the hand you’d try and get frisky with. Then you turn a double gutter but half J high, seems like a decent hand to barrel off with. Then you get to the river, you block QJ²⁷, it’s very hard for me to have the backdoor flush since the A and K came in, I’d need to have precisely QsTs or JsTs really, and it’s a great spot to fire (I think).

Even if we give him those though. We’re looking at six bluffs against six combos of sets of 3s and 7s,, an ATs, QsTs, JsTs, all four QJs. It’s a narrow call. Two combos of ATo though and it’s a fold. And man I have no idea how to weigh all of that.²⁸ J9s isn’t an automatic call preflop, ATo isn’t supposed to be at all, at least in a non-PKO format. How often are they in his range. How often is he blasting the combos with showdown on the turn, or J9s? How often is he supposed to? Conversely, how often am I doing an insane amount of work here drilling down into combinations when really this is just 77/33 the vast amount of the time?²⁹ I have zero idea.

With a significant fog of war I resorted back to a bed rock belief that players, even good ones, simply don’t bluff enough in spots where it’s hard to find a lot of bluffs. Was he really raising the flop and firing barrels on the turn and river in this spot enough? The world will never know. But I kinda doubt it. So I folded.³⁰

1. Occasionally three betting here is fine, but I agree with you that in a PKO you should three bet a more polar range. Another minor detail here is since he minraised, your three betting range should also be a little more polar. I like the flat.

2. The other telltale sign here could the location he is playing from. Is he Brazilian?

3. He should be tighter being covered in a PKO, but also approaching the money. In PKOs more tends to go in the post flop, which means your most marginal VPIPs lose a lot of EV. Good luck making 98o a profitable peel if you need to x/f middle pair a bunch.

4. These assumptions both seem right to me, but checking the flop also seems reasonable.

5. He is mostly repping a set here, but can raise some Tx/7x/3x/straight draws for protection and as a bluff. You’d rather continue top pair that has more backup vs sets and want a backdoor flush draw, but kicker strength matters. If the board were say KQ3 rainbow I could get on board with folding KT without a backdoor, but not on a disconnected ten high board where both of you rarely have two pair.

6. It’s not a great hand to go bounty hunting with. It’s a pretty good hand to call on the button for cheap and try to use your chiplead and position to win small and medium pots with.

7. To me it just feels like a natural bet size that comfortably sets up a river shove, the thing that feels strong to me is his flop raise, which when coupled with the turn bet seems very strong. I doubt he’s raising top pair for protection on the flop and betting it on the turn.

8. I agree that he’s rarely bet calling worse, maybe exactly T7s. Or he has a hand like As3s that bluffed the flop and turned a flush draw that will bet-call, but it does seem like have 20% vs his bet-calling range and there is no real reason to shove, except … big pot and we have top two.

9. The main bluffs you are missing are 7x, which could start raising the flop and bluffing the turn immediately and maybe some 3x if he calls 53s or 43s because of bounty stuff.

10. Another PKO factor is you cover two stacks behind. While that wouldn’t be enough of a factor to get me to flat AA. It might make me a little more inclined to flat JJ/AQs type hands. Getting the SB to squeeze shove and the opener to bounty hunt light is often a very profitable bounty play. It’s too tough for me to comment on specifics without knowing all the value of all bounties in play this hand.

11. It’s also linked. The more 65s type hands you call, the more 98s type hands the button can call.

12. Once again, I’ll note the minraise. Facing a bigger open, you might fold K8s and 65s, vs a minraise you might call K8s and 65s, which allows the button to call wider because they are getting a better price vs a minraise and because they have more pot equity.

13. My guess would be you can bet some 88, but never 66, which loses to 7x. Any hand you have with a pair on board, including 3x should so some betting and overall you’re constructing your betting range a little too much around linear hand value and not enough about the properties of a hand. 7x has a set blocker and 5 outs vs top pair and will have a backdoor flush draw 2/3rds of the time. That’s a much better hand than a pair of eights.

14. His range is pretty narrow to begin with and while the solver often three bets the suited tens here, if he does not, he can easily have a fair amount of Tx.

15. In multiway pots everyone plays tighter everywhere. I’d expect UTG to fold hands like AKo and A9 with a backdoor, if you bet and it folds back to him, but continue all hands with two overs and a backdoor.

16. I can tell you how wide his value range is supposed to be [null] it’s rare on any board to raise in position with the BB and the preflop raiser still to act.

17. Even if you are stabbing too often his bluff needs to get through two other players so he can’t go to nuts trying to bluff you.

18. Betting a ten for value here would be insane. Maybe if he had T8 or T9 he can start betting it as a merge to fold out better Tx, while also getting called by some combo draws.

19. It won’t lose much EV, but it’s not a reasonable play. You’re folding 88 to a raise and he has two uncapped players behind to act, raising bad top pair will not work out well in the long run.

20. Nope. It doesn’t depend on your flop calling range. You would need to be the type of VIP that people fly around the world to play for betting half pot on the turn with JT to be a reasonable play here.

21. It’s a four way pot featuring an UTG+1 raiser and a bet and raise on the flop. You do not have wide ranges.

22. I agree with this. Maybe T7s, but a lot of sets for him.

23. I agree with this. Even if it is a bummer that he has Js9s that you end up not stacking.

24. You each more or less have one hand that the K improves and you’re holding it.

25. Even if you “technically” don’t beat value. I’d need a lot more information on someone to start folding now, even if I was confident he wasn’t bluffing. Top two is just such a strong hand and I don’t like folding strong absolute value hands to total unknowns, even when they’re repping a set.

26. 7x is the major bluff that even now in hindsight, you’re missing. Taking 76s or 87s and just blasting off with them seems like a reasonably high frequency bluff.

27. Blocking QJ should not matter much here, neither of you have it, apologies for beating a dead horse, but do you know what hand does block a lot of your calling range … 7x.

28. What matters more than counting combos here is weighting combos. It’s much more likely he plays 3c3s like this 100% of the time than he plays 9c8c like this 100% of the time.

29. Even if he has a set 60% of the time, you still need to call, but I agree that vs some opponents in a four way pot that number might be creeping closer to 90%-100% of the time.

30. 30(!) foot notes later and I can say. I would probably end up shoving the turn in game, but as played I liked the river fold. I think the flop bet is fine, but it’s easy to always bet top pair here and over do it. I think calling the flop raise is thin, but at small stakes people love making linear protection raises with bad top pair, so I’d never do it. I think this starts off with a thin and fine flop bet, where you could fold most turns, but not this one and you’d need to call most rivers, but not this one and overall the hand is WP.