Some hands and the plan

As promised i'll post a few more of my favorite hands, these a bit more recent than the others.

2-4 HU NL: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1448393

This was probably one of the biggest calls i've ever made just in terms of relative hand strength, game flow, etc. Muppet was pretty solid and hadn't been getting out of line often, but i started imposing my will a bit and tryed to get the pace of the match to be more intense (this would be to my advantage). Nontheless, like I said he was playing me fairly tough which made this call super difficult and sick. Preflop is standard this deep and he can be 3 betting with relatively wide range. Flop is also a standard call. The turn is where it gets interesting.

In hands like these if I call turn it should not be because I still have outs, but rather because I believe I may have the best hand. I need to have logic backing up every single decision I make. This seems obvious but it's easy to get lost in the game sometimes. It's vital to go back to prior streets and work off the information gained from them to help with logical deduction/decision making. Additionally, it's obviously very important to understand game dynamic (history, current play style, his perception of you) between you and your opponent. You should be totally focused on constructing the best range for an opponent given all the factors available to you. This was a bit jumbled but the process of hand reading is one that i'm still trying to improve upon (thus writing it out should be good for me) and one that is difficult to articulate easily. But anyways, getting back to the hand and why the above concept is relevant to it, ill give some of my thoughts on the turn.

Bet sizing was a big part of why I decided to call the turn. His bet stuck out to me as one that didn't seem like an overpair; I felt at the time he would make a more defensive (smaller) bet if he had JJ+. Also, there was some definite timing tells involved as well. That being said, at this point in the hand by no means am I highly confident I have the best hand, simply because there is still a ton of hands out there he could feasibly have that are crushing me. However, I definitely thought given the circumstances there was enough reasons that I should call and see a river then evaluate it from there.


He instapushed and I wanted to throw up at first/punch myself in the head for calling turn. But, the river was actually a great card for me in a wierd way. I knew this guy wasn't good enough to value push JJ-KK here, especially instantly. So I could now rule those out. He never bets the turn with Ax (except maybe A10) like he did so aces up are out of the question. His range was now narrowed quite a bit, and combined with the information I gathered on previous streets and timing tells it seemed like a call. On top of all this I realized that the line I took was an extremely passive one. He is observant enough to realize I pretty much always have a one pair hand here (I tanked turn a bit) given the fact that I had been playing so aggressively. Everything sort of came together and I clicked call before the timer ran out. From a longterm perspective i'm not totally sure this call is +EV. Obviously he can show up with a set here very easily and maybe even two pair sometimes.

All in all I still think this probably is a great/correct call, but to me it highlighted some of my handreading defecencies. Perhaps defenencies isn't the best word, but defenitely lack of experience in tough spots like this and the fact that my mind wanders sometimes and has difficulty bringing it all together. But I love the fact that I've developed my game to the point where i'm starting to get into some deeper thinking, as most people never get past level one or two (those being first level thinking of just your own cards, and second level of putting your opponent on a hand) in their poker career's.

I'd like to write more about this particular hand and the concepts that it breeds, even if only to help in better figuring it out for myself. But i'll stop here for now and post two good follow up happens that are a great example of how a huge call like this or simply LAG play in general (I did both this match) can several tilt your opponent and increase your edge significantly.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?1448894

This hand was satisfying on so many levels. Value betting nearly full pot with third pair on this board vs. a normally solid player is pretty incredible. Given the way the hand played out under normal circumstances he just CANNOT call me with worse here. However at the time he was defenitely tilted as a result of the huge call I made and the several overbet/PSB bluffs I had shown him throughout the match. It was fairly easy to determine that the likelihood he had me beat here was small. I knew he had a hand with highcard showdown value. What sets this hand apart from others is that I made a bet that should seemingly never get called (primarily due to the size of the bet) by anything that I beat. Most people take the route of a smaller bet or possibly even a check because that river could possibly hit a small part of his range and because of the aforementioned implausibility of getting called. This is why I love this type of stuff though, because I knew he was tilted and capable of calling here with Ace (and apparently even king) high or a smaller pair.

Some people may debate that from a longterm perspective this is just a bad bet no matter what and that I got lucky he called with worse. I mean theres no doubt its an extremely thin bet and a delicate thing to be attempting. But I disagree with the assertion that it's a bad play. Theres so much more 'in the now' type stuff in HU, determining whether he has it at this given time or not. This type of stuff is a great testament to the beauty of heads up play because the avenues for obtaining the necessary information are readily available to you and your opponent. The type of edges that can be pushed far exceed any other format of poker.

This last hand was a cool one and it is particularily important to me because of something I realized while the hand played out: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1449027

On the turn it seemed like an easy check. But then I intuitively realized I was giving up way too much by checking and stopped myself. I'm not quite advanced or polished enough a player to have specifically made this bet as a bluff inducer, but that was sort of subconciously included as well, which i'll elaborate more on later. Betting this turn is just great because it really looks like a king or nothing. Most players at this limit will always check behind on this turn and as a default thats absolutely correct. But, once again, given that he was tilted I knew I could value it and should because checking is letting him get off easy. What I wasn't quite prepared for was a raise- and in retrospect I realize now he will defenitely raise that turn a lot more with his speculative holdings rather than just call it, thus effectively turning my hand partially into a bluff inducer. When he doubled I sort of instacalled (something that was bad and I should work on) because it didn't seem right and also mostly because I was disconcerted by his play (great reaction, I know, lol). I was a little uneasy with the calling down like I said but it was clearly the correct call in retrospect, (he played it totally strange. he like, never has a king her cause he instadoubled. he just wouldn't play it like that.) I just do not like making decisions on a whim without being sure that what im doing is based on something sound. Impulse decisions are a huge leak. Anyways another cool follow up hand IMO.

enough for now, kind of a rant.

P.S I hate limit heads up