In my last blog, somebody asked me what tricks I've learned over the last couple of months. I wasn't going to talk about it much - there are some things you just don't talk about when you play with the same people regularly - but there was a thread in the 2+2 HSMTT forum that got mostly deleted which is a pretty safe thing to turn into a blog entry. (If you read that forum, it was the 'QT on a Q high flop vs. an old nit' thread - it was 45+ posts and now it's mysteriously 28. No clue why it got pruned, and it's a shame, because a lot of those posts were interesting.]

At any rate, here's the hand:

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400-800 (100)

cutoff : hero (T70,000) Been at the table for 1 hour and established tight aggressive image

SB : (T50,000) Standard older nit, although he seemed to be opening up, may have just been a rush

BB: JC Tran (T150,000)

Folds to hero in cutoff, raises Qc10s to 2200, SB and Tran both come along for the ride.

Flop Q64 SB leads 2000, Tran instamucks

Hero???

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Most of the better MTT pros took the 'call the flop, raise the (2x) turn when he only bets 2500' line. [Hero raised to 8K - a small raise, but one that works decently live. I'd raise to 12K but that's quibbling.] This is something that has *definitely* changed in my game since Vegas - the ability to turn top pair into a bluff. A lot of players...actually, probably almost every MTT pro...just don't ever bluff with hands that have showdown value, but when playing live - especially in big tournaments with lots of people just happy to be there - I think not doing that is a major mistake. When he bets the turn, his most likely hand is a better queen, and the fact that we actually have a queen is irrelevant; we might even be better off with 65, because if we're behind that hand has more outs (and it's very very rare that he has exactly JJ-99 etc.) So, since we don't want to call down this bet and a river bet for no apparent reason only to lose, we may as well convert our hand into a bluff; if he calls, fine, it's the WSOP, and we can always follow up with a huge river bluff (on any river - here, it came the J, and my advice was for hero to shove for just over a PSB when checked to).

Bakes and 0evg0 then said that a good hand reader would see through that, mostly because of the size of the turn raise. I know 0evg0 is under 21, and I'm pretty sure Bakes is too, so that part of their replies is influenced by them not playing live enough - it doesn't matter what you raise to, old nits will fold regardless. But the more important part of that reply is that they both, especially 0evg0, said stuff like 'you're bad if you raise to 8K with only a flush draw on the turn'. The other half of what I learned in Vegas: that's 100% not true. Internet players correctly interpret tiny bets by live nits as weakness, but we then make the mistake of thinking our opponents play the same way as ourselves, and we wind up making big raises when smaller ones would still be fine. The real reason to raise to 12K, rather than 8K, is that the follow through bluff shove on the river doesn't look so big that a nit might 'correctly misinterpret it' as a bluff (never mind that I'd value shove all my real hands there too.) But if we're raising to 8K as a means of pot control - say, if we're not sure about whether to bluff shove any river, or maybe we think we might have the best hand and it's more of a 'range merging value semibluff' - we can easily do that with a flush draw, a Q, complete air, etc. and it'll have almost the same effect (re: our fold equity on the turn) as a 12K raise. We could even do this with top set, as long as our plan is to make the river bet smaller and milk whatever hand he thinks might be good. In other words, the fact that the raise is small, should, in theory, mean very little re: our hand range, and that we can very easily have a flush draw here.

Okay, so what does all this actually mean? Basically, when playing at Turning Stone next month, I'm going to make all of my turn and river raises smaller relative to the pot (keeping in mind the pot size relative to my stack size) and see what happens. I have a hunch the results will be good.

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Took another 11th place (barf) in the 215 HORSE event I played last night. Not much success this week otherwise, but then again, I played very little due to a lot of writing I had to complete. As a consequence, I'm done with the magazine articles I talked about a while ago; they should come out this fall and I'll reprint them here. I probably like writing about poker more than playing it :)

Anonymous says

Do you mean make TP seem like a bluff so that they will come along or play back at you?

07/30/07

Adanthar says

No - I mean actually bluffing with top pair. When you have a hand with showdown value but you think they likely have a better hand, most MTT players call when, often, they should bluff raise.

07/31/07

lakong says

Not sure if I understand this. On the hand in question, if the villian actually has a better hand then you, do you really think you can bluff him off his hand? Especially given the flush draw and the strong possiblity that you could be semi-bluffing? It seems to me that if he has you beat, say with AQ or KQ he would likely call a raise here. In this spot it seems more likely that you have the best hand given his weak bet because if he really had KQ/AQ, two pair or trips his bet would be closer to pot size given the flush draw so I too like the called flop and bet or raise the turn.

Also, why do you feel that a 12k raise would be better on the flop. The pot is now at 8-9k... right? Seems like 10-11k is just right, don't you think?

- s

07/31/07

Anonymous says

At certain level, some things become intuitive and lack the logical explanation.
One feels one way the other picks the move of his own. There is no way to prove
who is right

07/31/07

Adanthar says

Live players - especially at the WSOP - love making big folds. Also think about what you're telegraphing - you raise PF, call the flop, then raise the turn on a fairly raggedy looking board. Basically, even if the guy has AQ and calls the turn, he'll have a really hard time calling HIS TOURNAMENT LIFE off on a lot of rivers.

As for the raise size, the pot on the turn should be 12.5K or so.

07/31/07

Anonymous says

I get it.

07/31/07

Anonymous says

Warning. Don't try this in low stakes MTT's

08/01/07

Swami54 says

Thanks for the insight. I guess this is why Hellmuth (although I'm not a big fan) likes to make the small raises and small bets.

08/04/07

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