Daily Hand Quiz

It is irritating that we bet and no one went away. Juicing the pot while not increasing your chances of winning is not good. The only way to get max value out of this is to bet hard one last time, and see who comes along. I cannot imagine we don’t have the best hand here, I’m sure if someone had better we would have heard on the flop instead of going 4 handed to the turn. There are a ton of cards we do not want to see come out on the river, any K, Q, T, or clover. It seems as if all of these guys have gotten some kind of piece, but the only one I’m really worried about is the guy to our left. He called our UTG raise, and he himself is in awful position. Then he called us again. There’s no way he has AA, or JJ, and if he had KK, he wouldn’t have played it this way, no way. The other guys are dead money in my eyes, they called with a good price and/or position, and after just calling the flop, I think if we saw their hands we’d see a lot of KQ, KJ, QJ, maybe JT. All of these hands would see a turn, and also call pre flop with a decent price. Any hand that is better than ours, I am positive would have let us know on the flop. So, I’m thinking the only way we can get any more value out of this is to charge heavy right here, cuz a river will either kill our action that we never would have gotten anyway, or it will give us a losing hand. I don’t see us getting any callers or value on a river, after betting here.

We’re gonna have to bet hard here. We want to go high enough to get B to come along, but we also want it to be high enough to get the others to fold, if we go to low they will come along again at a good price. We cannot have this 4 handed. But it is going to look goofy if we fire hard here, and we have about 8k left, and a pot of about 24 if we get 1 caller. I think we need to shove here. I’m not sure how much more value we can get here, without going to low and allowing too many people to see a river. I can’t imagine how we don’t have the best hand here, and I’m content with shutting it down right here. There is no card on the river that can bring us more money, and there are lots of ones that will give us a loser. And there isn’t anyway we can extract more thin value like we did on the flop without dangerously letting everyone come along for a good price river ride. They all took a good price on the flop, we have no reason to think they wouldn’t all chip in another 3.5k into what is potentially like 14k to see a river.

Ship it. Remember this isn’t for value anymore, it is for protection, and I don’t see how else we can. Charge people their life if they want to stick around. The BB has us covered, but I’d be shocked if he had the goods, after calling pre-flop at 10:1 on his money, and check/calling the flop at ~6:1 on his money. I’d do that damn near any 2 cards with his stack and that price. And if any of these dopes actually have QT, well, so be it, they’re probably the type of player that just contributes to prize pool anyway, and we aren’t knocked out.

We got feisty upping AJ from UTG, we struck gold, got way more flop value than we expected, but now it is time to not get stupid and greedy, and shut it down. 7.7k is going to look real nice on top of our 16k.

I over bet all-in.

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John Kugelman Reply:
November 29th, 2010 at 7:23 am

Crazy. I don’t want anybody to fold a weaker hand. I want them to call and brick the river, that’s what I want. I bet 5.5K and shove any river.

“Juicing the pot while not increasing your chances of winning is not good.”

Yes it is.

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Rhycar Reply:
November 29th, 2010 at 9:07 am

I completely agree with the general here. Unless you get very unlucky to run into QT, you are best right now. And if you shove here, there’s no way all three villains are playing along with you. Maybe you get one caller, but I wouldn’t be shocked at all to see three folds.

John, I have no idea why you think building up a big pot without improving your chances of winning it is a good idea. That’s poor poker. When the pot gets big, you must maximize your chances of winning it. In this case, that means a super-imposing bet to chase off the draws. If you are a good enough player, your new stack of 23k will be more than enough to work with to get you a long way in this tourney (barring bad luck). A big bet is the way to go, and I like the shove right here best.

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John Kugelman Reply:
November 29th, 2010 at 2:03 pm

“John, I have no idea why you think building up a big pot without improving your chances of winning it is a good idea.”

When you have the highest equity in the pot it is correct to get your opponents to put in as much money as possible. Each dollar they put in is +EV for you.

“When the pot gets big, you must maximize your chances of winning it.”

This is incorrect thinking. We want to maximize our EV, not necessarily our chance of winning the pot. If we can get multiple opponents to put their money in bad then that is better than having them fold, even though our % chance to win the pot goes up when people fold.

Let’s say you have AA preflop and open shove. Do you want everyone to fold? Do you want 1 caller? 2 callers? The entire table to call?

The correct answer is that you want the entire table to call your shove. It is the riskiest, most high variance option, but it is also the most +EV, far more +EV than having everyone fold. You might only win the pot 30% of the time if the entire table calls, but that is more than made up for by the fact that you will 10X your stack the 30% of the time your hand holds.

Same idea here. While our chance of winning goes down when more people call, our EV increases.

Also, shoving has the bad effect of folding out worse hands and getting called by better hands. If we shove we are pretty much guaranteed to fold out worse aces while getting called by sets and straights. If we are up against a set or a straight we’d be in MUCH better shape keeping in other players who are likely drawing dead so we can get a better overlay on hitting our 4 outer.

Well, we don’t actually have a set, but we have a great hand.
We are beaten by QT, JJ, KK, AA and AK of which only QT would make sense with the preflop action.
On the other hand lots of hands that we beat have stuck around: any A, KQ, KJ, KT, TT, QJ, JT.

I have to assume I’m good here with only 3 river cards to worry about (T, Q, K). No real reason to scare people out, but checking is out of the question.

I’d bet around 3k.
I’m not adverse to getting it in, either, when someone comes over the top. But by all means let the donks call down their gutshots.

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The board is pretty scary and all three (3!) players called the flop bet. That’s a good moment to stop and think about if we can still consider Top/bottom 2 pair the best. What could they call with? Sure a random donk calls w/ a pair of tens, but three of them are chasing gutshots? I don’t think so.
Best case is there’s an AQ, a KQ (maybe: JT, JQ, JK) and a single gutshot out there. Anything else, and we’re drawing dead to a boat.
We were playing UTG, so basically we’re on the bottom of our range. Any V could have called w/ AK preflop – a lot of players hesitate to 3bet an UTG raiser w/ AK. QTs is a possibility too, especially for MP and BB. AA, KK, JJ are far less likely, but three callers on that flop mean you cannot ignore the less likely cases.
It’s time to get cautios w/ AJ, this is one of the spots where our medicore kicker can take us into huge troubles.
One more reason to check: any serious bet can commit us to the pot, and one of the players can eliminate us, the other can cause serious damage.
I check and reevaluate.

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i cant eliminate q10, ak, or jj from villains ranges and im a bit nervous. not that nervous though….im thinking at least two of the villains are behind me here and drawing in some respect. we’ll need to charge the draws. im betting enough that theyll come along if they want to call and draw at a bad price or find out if they shove to protect their set or avoid a broadway chop. -about 4200 or so should do it. i expect to see player D and at least one other player fold. if the BB or player B come over the top, im folding, theyve got it.

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I’d check.

The turn did not help anyone, so if opponents are on pr/draw combos they’ll likely check as well. Normally against giving the free card, but with 3 opponents calling the flop, I think it may be prudent to slow down and try to fade one. Even checking through the river will get us a nice increase to our stack. I would check-call a turn bet.

Betting may eliminate an opponent, but also leaves us somewhat vulnerable. Player D may get it AI anyway, so I’d allow them to commit first and see if that folds-out the BB.

I think AK and KK would have made noise by now. AK on the flop; KK pre. Q10 has us beat and certainly could have flatted the flop without a FD present.

If checked around and the river is a blank, I’d value-bet/call.

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