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BGonline.org Forums
Hand of the Day #1
Posted By: Stick
Date: Monday, 10 June 2019, at 12:30 a.m.
Depending on the level of interest I may or may not continue the HotD. Not really sure how many poker players are lurking on here and esp. those who play PLO or other mixed games. I will stick to 4 card PLO for now.
Playing 8 handed. Now, it is only a $1/$2 game, often a $1/$2/$4 game, but is playing much bigger than that because of the stacks on the table and the looseness of certain players. I'm sitting with ~$3,500 (max buyin is $500) and am under the gun (UTG) with AT92 all diamonds.
Now, if you're a PLO player you should be asking yourself right now "Why is Stick posting this hand. He just folds and moves on with life." In theory, absolutely correct. This hand is refried trash however...when other bad players have big stacks and are willing to play big pots with hands they shouldn't you should do everything you can to be involved in these pots assuming it won't cost you too much preflop. It's somewhat similar to cubing thinking you might get a pass (or a beaver). There's a fine line to toe but it is huge +ev if you know how to walk it. Your postflop play needs to be excellent to take advantage of doing this.
So in short, I limp, one player behind me limps, the biggest stack ($3,800) pots it to $11 from the cutoff. Small blind ($900, SB) calls. Big blind ($2,100 super fish, BB) pots it to $48 and now it's back to me.
We have invested $2 into this pot so again you should be saying "Easiest fold I've ever seen." and I may not even be able to argue with you this time. I wanted to limp or even limp/call a raise (as most pots are raised with these players) but limp + call a 3 bet? Disgusting with this hand. My relative position for the hand is mediocre but the strength of my hand is a joke. Still, in this game and knowing the types of hands BB can 3 bet with (virtually anything) I decide to call praying it doesn't get 4 bet. It doesn't.
I call and the 4 of us go to the flop. (SB $900, BB $2100, me $3500, CO $3800)
Pot: $194
Flop. A28 rainbow.
SB checks. BB leads out for pot.
And herein lies the problem of playing this hand. My hand is either pretty solid though vulnerable esp. with two players still to act behind me or, I could be destroyed and drawing virtually dead if the BB actually has what he is representing. (set of aces, even top pair and over cards is a major threat to my hand)
I decide he's way too much of a fish to ever lay this hand down. I also decide to figure out where I am with the other players in case they have Ax I want them to lay it down. Hell, raising here even makes players fold top two or a set of eights. So I raise 3x, folded to the BB, and he makes the call.
His call is a lot of WTF?! Either he has it or he doesn't really. If he has it, it's an okay play assuming I'm going to bet turn and he'll get it in then. This is the driest non worrisome board ever for a flopped set. If he doesn't have it he could have Axxx hoping to catch a card over an 8 x or he could have some weird Ace combo with a straight draw, A345 or...as I said, super fish, I could just have no idea what he has and not care. It's going in I figure at this point and I have to trust what I've seen so far in the game.
Pot: $1,358 Turn: 9, two to a suit I obviously don't have (board is Ah 8c 2s 9s)
He leads into me for $376. That's a little more than 1/4 pot. Maybe he picked up a flush draw with whatever he had. Maybe he picked up a straight draw of some sort with it. Maybe both!? Doesn't matter to me, that was about as good of a turn as I could hope for. Now I have top two instead of top and bottom so if he did happen to have A8 he is smashed now. I jam, of course. He insta calls. When someone instacalls you it's generally not a good thing. He flips over 239J no flush draw and is drawing dead. To get it in drawing dead in PLO is almost unheard of. It generally means you play baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.
I scoop this $4k+ pot by playing a poor starting hand and trusting what I know about a player that I've learned over time. This goes to show you there's more to poker, a lot more. One big thing when you have options is table selection. You get a couple guys at a table like this guy and you're money. You'll have some swings of course but at the end of the day you should never leave the table until they're broke. You should be able to tell when you're at a good table or a bad one. You may not know if the other tables are action or not if you don't frequent the casino, but if yours is bad, get a table change asap.
Another thing that has to be developed over time with virtually any gambling game is trusting your instincts. It's easy to sit at home, watch tv, see hole cards and chirp on about how you would play the hand but it's another to know when to ship it and when to ship out. Player tendencies are big indicators whether it's how many hands they play, what kind of hands they play, their bet sizing, etc... Online they have created programs that keep track of a lot of this stuff for you on some sites. I'm familiar with them but never actually used them. I prefer to notice and digest it myself rather than pure stat form. Again, much like backgammon where you have some players who are super technical and great players and other players who play on feel and are great players I believe the best combo is a mixture of the two.
Feel free to criticize, question, or call me a luckbox as needed.
Stick
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