By poker_boy | 3 Comments
Last updated: Monday, February 21, 2011 | 110 Views Tags: blinds, briefly, decent chunk, folded hands, good chance, hearts, important point, little bit, pot
What’s this week’s question? Let’s dive straight in…
I held pocket jacks, and raised accordingly pre-flop. The flop was three undercards; I forget their values right now (I think it was 2-5-8), but the important point is that two of them were hearts. This is significant because I correctly read the only other player in the hand (everyone else had folded to my substantial pre-flop raise) as having two pocket hearts. As it turned out, they were the A-J (two GOOD pocket hearts), but pocket hearts nonetheless.
When he bet them, I pondered the situation briefly, deduced that he had pocket hearts, and decided that if he were going to chase, then he was going to pay, so I moved all-in. His smooth call led me to believe that he had luckily flopped a set, so I was somewhat relieved to see that I had correctly appraised the hand - although a little bit worried that he had the A-J. Still, I had pocket Js, so while that left him with twelve outs (a good number considering that there were still two cards to come), the fact that there were eight folded hands meant that there was a good chance that some of his outs had been folded.
The turn was a diamond, but the river was a heart.
Now, the question is: My all-in was for almost $6000 in chips, and the blinds were 100-200 at that time, so it was still somewhat early in the tournament. So, did he make a good call in hopes of getting lucky with his chasing - which I always have thought would be a stupid risk (although had he lost he would not have gone out of the tournament)?
Or did he indeed just get lucky, and I suffered a bad beat?
There was a "decent chunk" of change in the pot. I believe my pre-flop raise was $500, and as I was in one of the blinds, there had been some calls before getting to me, but I know that he bet $500 after the flop. The reason I suspected that he was chasing the flush is because he had been habitually doing that all game.
And unless he were a maniac he certainly would not have called pre-flop with an eight as his overcard, which is why I did not think that he hit two pair. He may have indeed called pre-flop with an 8-7 (particularly if suited), but that would not have beaten my jacks, and in that case he would have been chasing two cards to a gut-shot straight - another maniacal play.
The only hand that made sense was a pocket pair, which is why I was worried about a set.
On the other hand: Having read some of these answers, maybe that’s a call that I need to make myself in the future. I did not realize that the odds were actually that close.
Your preflop raise was 500 on top of 200 (I assume not 500 total otherwise you’d have got more callers) and one person called. You said others had limped, so let’s say 2 people limped. So already the pot is 1800.
On the flop he bet 500, you pushed all-in for 6000 which is 5500 on top. Now for him the pot is 2800, which is more than enough for him to correctly call. The minimum the pot would have to be is about 1220. For it to be a bad call, your all-in would have to be more than 12,600.
But it was a tournament. I’m not a tournament player but I’m guessing his call wasn’t ideal tournament strategy, it seems like that was too early in the tournament for him to risk his tourney life on a coinflip. I guess it depends on his plan– if his goal was to build a chipstack fast or bust, then the call made sense.
Likewise, I don’t agree with your shove there, for the same reason I dislike his call: already you’re risking your tourney life on a coinflip. You of course want him to fold but a lot of players are gonna make that call if it’s a relatively low-stakes tournament. I’d have waited to see what the turn was, and if it’s a blank you fire hard. On the turn his chance of winning reduces from 47% to 26%.
Even in a cash game, given your low stack-to-pot ratio and how many outs the guy has, waiting til the turn was probably a better play.
Mike Smith
February 21, 2011
It is simply two big hands clashing. You can’t really call it a bad beat since you were only a slight favorite.
Side note: the fact that there 8 folded hands does not change the odds; 12 outs = 48% (approximately) regardless of how many hands are folded. Sure there were some hearts in the folded hands but there were also some cards folded that were not his outs (on average about 48% of the folded cards would have helped him and 52% of the folded cards would not have helped him).
The amount of folded cards is irrelevant when figuring pot odds.
It is always good to be the agressor - which you were in this hand. It is always much better to make your opponents make difficult decisions for all their chips rather than vice versa.
February 21, 2011
Your all in was for 6000 in chips, but you didn’t say what the pre-flop raise was, or how much he bet after the flop.
If you don’t tell us how much was in the pot at the time he made the call, it’s really not possible to figure out if he had the right odds to chase or not.
And, please do not think that because there was 8 folded hands that meant anything. Some of his out might have been gone, maybe none of them were gone.
After a flop of 2-5-8 (with two hearts), someone with A-J of hearts is about 47% chance to win, while someone with J-J is 53% to win.
So it was pretty even. Assuming there was a decent chunk of change in the pot, it was probably the right call.
February 21, 2011
People have different definitions of bad beats but I don’t think its really fitting here. I guess you could argue that you held a dominating hand preflop and got beat…which would qualify by some players definitions. It’d really help if you dictated the situation a little better:
How many other players were in the hand / how much was in the middle when you went all in?
We know there’s at least 900 in the middle on the flop and 1100 minimum after he bets. If its "almost" 6000 more to call then as the player with AJ the math looks like the following:
Maximum amount AJ player has to call 5775(I’m assuming minimum donimation was a 25 chip and 5975 the maximum your call in could be)
Minimum amount in the pot is 7075(1100 + 5975)
So the worst pot odds we could be getting as the player with AJ is 7075/5775 or 5775 to win a pot of 12850 which is about 44.91%. If we assume your range only consists of overpairs and sets we still have about 42.68% equity in the pot. So in the worst all of the cases maybe the AJ doesn’t have the right price to call but I seriously doubt this is the case.
What is a "substantial raise"?
The math above assumes a min-raise. I would think that most people would think a min-raise doesn’t qualify as a substantial raise. But, exactly how big the raise is seriously matters. Was it 3x, 5x, 7x, I mean who knows. Theoretically you probably could have raised enough that it was probably a bad call on his part preflop. If we forget about that though the more you raised pre the easier a call this is when you shove.
Where you raised from?
Now, if you raised from Early Position or generally didn’t raise that often preflop we can really severely discount both 55 & 22. Discounting just these two hands from the range brings the AJ hand equity up to 45.79%.
What the exact board cards were?
Let’s pretend the board was exactly 253 with two hearts instead of 258. Now the AJ hand is more of a favorite against your specific hand than you were with the original flop. With 258 two hearts its approximately 53/47 with 253 with two hearts its 45.5/54.5. Their values could be more important than you’d think.
Ranging:
Most people don’t put a player on one specific hand, usually its a range of possible hands or likely vs not so likely hands. It seems you have conflicting opinions about what he had until he turned his hand over: "This is significant because I correctly read the only other player in the hand (everyone else had folded to my substantial pre-flop raise) as having two pocket hearts." "His smooth call led me to believe that he had luckily flopped a set, so I was somewhat relieved to see that I had correctly appraised the hand " These two back to back statements sort of scream to me "I don’t know what he had but once I saw his hand I was glad he had two hearts." To me a large portion of his range are overpairs, sets & flush draws. We’re very good with TT,99, really behind AA-QQ(if you made a "huge" preflop raise its perfectly possible he flats with big overpairs trying to induce more action postflop), JJ we chop with, sets we’re just as bad as the big overpairs and flushdraws we’re a slight favorite as they likely have at least one over too.
While I don’t disagree it’s probably profitable to shove here we don’t really have all the factors and I’d more likely than not much rather have AhJh. Against just sets and overpairs(88+,55,22) JJ only has about 34.80% equity. AhJh on the same board vs sets and overpairs has 42.68% equity. Not to mention any dominated flush draw like say KhQh the AJ hand has 4 to 1 equity here where JJ is around 50/50. So,to me anyway, the AhJh hand here is a bigger hand even though its a statistical slight underdog to JJ.