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A risky all in
This was at the beginning part of a £100 deepstack. Even though the cards went my way i'm not sure I played it right. But still looking at it even if I had called the outcome would of been a all in by the end. Any suggestions on a better way to play it or pick it apart would be great.
| Action | Cards | Amount | Pot | Balance | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| superjo | Small blind | 30.00 | 30.00 | 13065.00 | |
| chriscor05 | Big blind | 60.00 | 90.00 | 11265.00 | |
| Your hole cards |
| ||||
| NotAPrayer | Call | 60.00 | 150.00 | 4220.00 | |
| limmy01 | Call | 60.00 | 210.00 | 5800.00 | |
| pikeesDAD | Call | 60.00 | 270.00 | 4990.00 | |
| TAEFMAN | Raise | 180.00 | 450.00 | 5170.00 | |
| superjo | Call | 150.00 | 600.00 | 12915.00 | |
| chriscor05 | Fold | ||||
| NotAPrayer | Call | 120.00 | 720.00 | 4100.00 | |
| limmy01 | Call | 120.00 | 840.00 | 5680.00 | |
| pikeesDAD | Call | 120.00 | 960.00 | 4870.00 | |
| Flop | |||||
| |||||
| superjo | Check | ||||
| NotAPrayer | Check | ||||
| limmy01 | Bet | 960.00 | 1920.00 | 4720.00 | |
| pikeesDAD | Fold | ||||
| TAEFMAN | Raise | 1980.00 | 3900.00 | 3190.00 | |
| superjo | Call | 1980.00 | 5880.00 | 10935.00 | |
| NotAPrayer | Fold | ||||
| limmy01 | All-in | 4720.00 | 10600.00 | 0.00 | |
| TAEFMAN | All-in | 3190.00 | 13790.00 | 0.00 | |
| superjo | Call | 3700.00 | 17490.00 | 7235.00 | |
| superjo | Show |
| |||
| limmy01 | Show |
| |||
| TAEFMAN | Show |
| |||
| Turn | |||||
| |||||
| River | |||||
| |||||
| limmy01 | Win | Four 8s | 17490.00 | 17490.00 | |
Comments
If you could provide a summary of your decision making and any reads you have on your opponents, that would be helpful. Without those, people will make assumptions about your reasoning which may be incorrect. You will gain nothing by people simply saying "Do this" or "Do that" without analysing your decision making.
That said:
I don't like the limp pre-flop. You'd have to explain to yourself why this is better than raising. I've just written out a long post on another thread on exactly this topic but to summarise; your aim is not to see a flop with these small-medium pairs, it is to win the pot. The best way to win the pot is to raise pre-flop and give yourself two ways to win. When you limp, you cap your range at weak and marginal hands and you limit yourself to only being able to win when hitting your set. You may not win enough on the occasions you hit your set to pay for all the times you miss. It also makes it really obvious when you have a big hand because you limp in when you don't.
Obviously once we have limped, we have to call the raise when it's made so cheap for us and stacks are so deep.
On the flop, as played, I like leading. We don't want to leave it to someone else because we can be called by more hands than would bet themselves. Somebody holding an Ax hand might decide to check behind and draws are very likely to check this board, given the opportunity, but they will call a bet.
One thing I would say is that you should try to avoid using the "Pot", "3/4 Pot" and "1/2 Pot" buttons. The reason to avoid this is that it will force you to give more consideration to your own bet sizing. For example, what makes 960 better here than 1000 or 900? Using these buttons also risks creating particular, unpredictable dynamics at the table - Some players view an exactly full-pot bet as being always a sign of strength. If you bet 7/8 of the pot, let's say, they know you're not just clicking buttons and are giving some consideration to your sizing.
Obviously, having hit our set we have to get the rest of our stack in. So often our opponents will be playing big draws, big Aces or two-pair hands. We want to get it in now, when we believe they're not going to fold, before a scare card can come. We will have the best hand here a large proportion of the time.
Don't question the logic of getting it all-in on this type of flop with a set. Failing to get it in here would be a mistake because we beat most of our opponents' ranges. Think about the play pre-flop and the logic behind limp-calling instead of raising.
As I say, try to provide more information about your opponents and your reasons for making your decisions. Having your thoughts challenged, dismantled or reinforced as appropriate is how you'll improve most quickly.
The thing is, we shouldn't be assuming that we're going to be 3-bet and if we are, we should have some idea of what it's likely to mean. We don't mind playing a big pot if it means we can win a big pot.
So let's say we raise here to 200, are 3-bet to 600 and everyone else folds. We're looking at calling 400 to win 950 in the middle with 5.6k back. Depending what we think of our opponent's range, this looks like a great spot to set-mine. It would be nice to be in position but you know the score on that...
Alternatively our raise may simply get one or two callers and give us the chance to take the pot down with a c-bet on the flop. Having raised pre-flop we can continue representing a strong range. That's not just the blinds, it's going to be perhaps 7BB or more. Limping means capping our range while raising doesn't.
If we do take the pot down pre-flop, yes we've only won the blinds plus the limp but that's not a bad thing. We don't mind denying a raggy Ax or Kx a chance to outdraw us for nothing. If our raise gets through, it means we're only folding out weaker hands so our implied odds for set-mining by limping would have been poor anyway.
The problem with set-mining in limped pots with deep stacks is that when we get it in, we know we're not getting it in against a big overpair most of the time. We're much more likely to be getting it in against big draws or other big made hands. Sometimes we'll cooler someone with a two-pair but a lot of the time we're going to find that we're getting it in against a hand with good equity against us like flush or straight draws.
So in limped pots there's less chance of getting paid for our set than in 3-bet pots and when we are paid we're likely getting it in against hands with better equity than a mere overpair.
Basically, we can still set-mine in 3-bet pots when we're this deep but we shouldn't be assuming that a 3-bet will come. Usually it doesn't, after all. If we limp, it's tough to get paid post flop when we hit our set and we don't have much chance of winning the pot if we miss. We cap our range at weak or marginal holdings and we unbalance our range in relation to the occasions that we have a big hand and do raise.
If we raise, we can still hit our set but when we do it's in a bigger pot against a stronger range. If we miss, we don't have to give up on the pot as we mostly would if we'd limped.
My tells on other players is the next stage I need to work on my concentration, this game didn't help as I was also in the prem warm up , so running two tables at the same time didn't help me. I do try to raise but I get caught out when the flop has nothing and they get a little pot committed , this had happened already in this mtt with pocket J. So I went on a stage where I would only call these instead of spewing my chips away if this makes sense
Addendum:
In the blinds with multiple limpers I wouldn't raise a small pair. In that situation, I'd say it is best to take the flop. If you raise you know you'll have to play a marginal hand in a bloated pot OOP to, possibly, multiple limp-callers. You're also looking at a table full of players who are limping in, so you know you can wait until you have position and punish them rather than taking such a high-variance spot.
In position I'd always be raising when we're this deep. I think it's much the better play. I'd also be raising out of the blinds against a single limper or possibly more against weak, predictable opponents.
limmy01, we need to take a long-term view of all our play. If something doesn't work out the first two or three times you do it, you shouldn't necessarily think it's bad. If you think about what you expect the results to be across a sample of a thousand hands in the same situation, then you get the "right" answer. Even if it goes wrong ten times in a row, it's still the right answer.
So if you raised that JJ hand and lost but most of the time you'd profit from playing it that way, that would be good play. Keep doing it.
The way I'd play this hand, I'd be going broke too. I think almost everyone would, however they played it, and they'd be making a mistake if they didn't. The point is; the way I'd play it would be more profitable across a thousand hands in the same situation. That's my opinion, at least. I hope you think I've justified that opinion but I'd be happy to be challenged on that.
Lets look at what opponents could have based on the action. So Taefman after seeing you pot bet on the flop 5 way decides to min-r you. This looks insanely strong, and if I were to give a range of hands he could be on it would be something like AQ, AA, QQ and maybe KJhh/JThh. When the 2nd player flats his range is something similar minus the AA and could potentially have A8.
If we plug them ranges in an equity calculator (which I don't have handy atm) we could see how well we're doing against that range, and I don't think it would be too great. Of course, this assumes that we know that both players are good/not fishy. If we don't have such reads then it would be a big mistake not to get it in here as their ranges could be much wider, but against good opponents then you can consider just flatting on the flop and deciding what's best when the turn comes. Saying that, it can never be a big mistake to get it in with 88s here but in future deep stacked tournaments it's something to bear in mind if you do flop bottom set and the action is still really crazy!