PrinceJigger said:
Thanks a lot, eetenor! You've given me a lot to think about.
I'll try to walk through my thought process from beginning to end.
Preflop: I raised 2.5x because 3x seemed unnecessary with 3 players left to act. 2x also seems too low given that all the stacks were still reasonably deep.
Flop: I'm putting my opponent on 99-22, AT-A2, KQ-K9, QJ-Q8, JT-J9, T9, T8, 98, 87, 76, 65, 54. On a flop this dry, I think c-betting 25-33% makes the most sense. Alternatively, I guess a check is fine too but I lean more towards aggression.
Turn: I chose my bet size for two reasons:
1) The turn completed the rainbow so I felt like the board was still a bit dry such that I don't need to bet that much. I thought maybe villain was nitty enough such that I could get away with only betting 30% pot and get villain to fold Q9, J9, 99-55, 33, 22. I now realize that a bigger bet would have been more likely to succeed.
2) I tried to represent AK, KK, KQ and make it look like I was luring my opponent. My mistake was underestimating how many unmade hands were still in my range.
River: By now, I thought the best I could hope for is a chop against A9, A8, etc. I thought about firing one last time to try to get T9, 99-55 to fold. I decided to shut it down because villain was still an unknown who has yet to have a showdown and I didn't know what they were capable of.
The player pool in $5 SNGs is pretty diverse. On one end of the spectrum, you have some sharp regs with good ROIs who are always the first to register to a table. On the other end of the spectrum, you have some very inexperienced players. Notice that this was only hand #17 and two players have already busted. The person who was sitting in Seat 1 got knocked out limping 82s UTG and then getting overaggressive with middle pair on the flop.
Hope that gives you an idea of what these games are like. 🙂
Thank U 4 Responding
Great job diving deeper into the hand.
I asked what was your plan and you bet flop and turn representing a big hand. You believed at that time the V would give you credit for said hand.
We have to know that our flop sizing and turn sizing is a must river shove.
We do not abandon our plan as we were never going to get the top of this players range to fold so we shove river targeting the rest of the range.
This is of course based on your choice to represent the K.Once we decide on that course of action nothing occurred that would change our river play. In fact the Q helps us as many of our bluffs AJ QJ AQ QQ get there and the Q is another scare card for AX and 99-22 which we were targeting on the flop.
We would be shoving river vs this player pool with KK QQ AJ and an SPR of 1.5
Unless we knew our V had 0 calls but then we would not have small bet KK on K44 as we know that our V are only giving us 2 streets and we would be missing too much value. So we would never be small bet bluffing K44 either if we were balanced but do we need to be balanced?
Can we bet bigger for value and smaller with bluffs often yes.
Most V on this run out should be folding most of their range 99-22 Ax should be a fold on this river for any bet size. Unless you see calls happening in your player pool you should be confident in this action.
The player pool is always the all important factor here. What mistakes are they making?
Call Call Fold? Call Fold? Call All?
Remember as well the important factor is we will lose this hand while bluffing. That should not stop us from bluffing. We should not change our plan in a spot like this when we were targeting Ax 99-22 and believed they would fold at some point. Our plan 2 streets small sizing was shove river, the Q helps us. Having 1.5 SPR helps us in our bluff if our V are not blind to pot
odds. Is your player pool blind to
pot odds? Knowing this will enable you to not make pot odds based bluffs.
Yes some calling stations will have made Q pair on the river and we lose but that is ok. You are now the wild player who does not know what we are doing and you can max value your hands now. You can shove for 3x pot on rivers and get calls from 77 for instance.
When we have a plan on the flop we need to know what are plan looks like on all streets.
Other players mentioned other strategies, you may be more comfortable playing a less aggressive style. The key is to know you cannot pull the trigger on the river and thereby not take an action on the flop that requires it.
For your reference I am specifically talking about this hand K44 flop the same does not apply to say Q44 or J44 or 544 We must know there is a difference on each board and change our strategy slightly.
Hope this helps
🙂🙂
