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Eagles

Dec
04
2009
Ranges of Unknowns in MTTs
Posted in Poker | View Comments (1)
 

Bkice posted a fairly interesting hand on 2p2 at the brawl FT. I initially responded lol call because folding is a clear mistake in my opinion. But I eventually decided to give some more in depth analysis and I figured id post it here.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/87...awl-ft-645937/
The hand for those too lazy to click the link is below.

YrrsiNN (BB): t948309 M = 10.54
Hero (UTG): t1382943 M = 15.37
mikkelstrack (MP): t1762204 M = 19.58
Jotagran49 (CO): t702630 M = 7.81
Snusarn1 (BTN): t2615646 M = 29.06
SpazIsPlusEV (SB): t970268 M = 10.78

Pre Flop: (t90000) Hero is UTG with Ts Ac
Hero raises to t92750, mikkelstrack calls t92750, 4 folds

Flop: (t275500) 7c Th Ah (2 players)
Hero bets t154000, mikkelstrack calls t154000

Turn: (t583500) Qc (2 players)
Hero bets t342000, mikkelstrack raises to t1510454 all in

The point is he's a random $100 mtt reg. I'm sure you guys all have a friend from high school who is a "serious poker player" but he just plays $100 mtts and only plays a few tables, and if you sit down and talk to him about poker he is obviously clueless. There is a good chance this player fits into that archetype. He is probably uncomfortable at the final table which means he will likely play in one of two ways.

1. Extraordinarily tight
2. He will think, "wow I'm playing for a lot of money, I don't want to get run over because its for more money"

Given that he has been splashing around a lot(as per the reads bkice gave)its much more reasonable he is in category 2. Now when he gets to the turn he has a multitude of combos with a pair and a fd or a pair and straight draw or two pair and he gets there and sees a lot of money in the middle and will often just decide **** it I'm all in. It seems like I'm making this up and constructing a narrative when its not there, but I have seen this happen so many times in mtts. Often with players who are more skilled and disciplined than your average $100 mtt reg. The turn is one of the worst cards in the deck as we go from having basically the nuts to a hand that is vulnerable and may no longer be good, but the turn is still a clear bet call.

Now lets get into villain's pf thoughts a little more. He has already flatted a few opens with shallow stacks which indicates his preflop game is not particularly polished. Now he flats another open with three reshove stacks behind. Do you think his thought process is.

1. "There are three good stacks to reshove on me, I should be tight in this spot because I can't call loosely.
or
2. Hmm 89s, let's try and hit a flop.

Obviously I am oversimplifying but this type of player's thought process is much closer to the latter than the former, which he has shown with his play thus far. Once we have established he does not have a polished pf game, and is probably balancing a combination of fatigue, anxiety and adrenaline, the number of hands in his pf range becomes incredibly wide.Now when he shoves the turn I'm not in love and he certainly has AQ/77/KJ a significant % of the time but there is simply no way you can fold AT.

Losing hurts more than winning, most of us remember when he has AQ/77/KJ. We dwell on the hand and post it on the forums, and wonder if we could have done anything differently. Especially if its a big tournament, in an opportunity we might not get again.But its so easy to forget when people clown it up and shove KQ or AJ or some other inexplicable hand and we win, and than move on.

This forum is incredibly nitty because most of the hands people post are pots they lose, we all know not to be results-oriented but it is much harder in practice than in theory. When a reg(nothing against bkice) makes a thread "silly spot 6 handed at brawl ft" He most likely came 6th in the tournament. There are very few posters who will post hands that they won, in fact if bkice binked an Ace on the river he probably would not have posted this hand, which makes him just like everyone else. When most of us lose big pots we want reassurance we did not make a mistake and when we win big pots its because of our incredible skill. I've spent the last 8 hours in my head discussing the merits of checking back vs betting 69dd on KT6dd, when the answer is it really does not matter. One is higher variance but the EV($ and chip) is more or less the same. Part of the reason poker is so frustrating and profitable, is because we do not have as much control over the outcome as we would like. In a lot of spots you ultimately need to click call or shove and hope to run into the right part of someone's range, which can be especially frustrating in tournaments where some pots are worth 50k and others $50.

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Comments
12-04-2009
tedjam is offline tedjam
A++++++ very good post
 
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