Dry As A Bone

[peterbirks]

Well, I've been feeling kind of weird since Friday. I did the absolute minimum for the newsletters (there was nothing urgent; I had a fair amount of stored material built up through the week; I used it) and I didn't feel like writing for the blog.

The downside is that I have a whole bundle of (unurgent) news that I need to write up, plus a guilty feeling about not-blogging, plus a bit of a headache. Net result will have to be a serious cutting down on online poker on the most profitable day of the week. Bleeagh.

On the plus side, I got up this morning after hosting Messrs Ward, Young and Aksu to dinner last night, and gazed forlornly upon the morning-after-the-night-before mess -- of the kind that I most definitely recalled unfondly from the times that I hosted poker games. When I woke up this morning I had a mental idea that there was about two hours' cleaning-up to do, and, to my amazement, it only took me 45 minutes. So, in life terms, I'm an hour and a quarter in front. Woo hoo.

Aksu kindly brought me a copy of "Sign Of The Times" as I had informed him that I was not the most manic of Prince fans (500+ CDs, none by Prince). I'm playing it now, and it's similar to my recollection. It's nice, inoffensive, techincally very proficient, but I just don't get emotionally involved in it. Perhaps it's something to do with chord progressions.

I had my first decent result on NoIQ yesterday since three weeks ago. Why my (very competent) opponent decided that raising me all-in on the turn from the big blind with AK after I had raised in the cut-off and a board of KQ5 rainbow appeared, I don't know. Turn brought a Jack (surely even more scary for him), but he promptly check-raised all-in my pot bet (following a near-pot bet on the flop). Given the way things have been going this past few weeks, I called with a heavy heart, although I couldn't see how he would call my flop bet if he had AT. It was a relief to see the money being shipped in the right direction after my KQ held up. A very welcome double-through.

It still seems forever since I had a session where I didn't feel as if I was swimming upstream all the time, but at least that was a hand that had a pleasant ending. Baby steps.

And I've just lost a quarter of an hour of the 75 minutes that I was in front.

Later.

Comments

Sign of Your Times?

[geoffchall.livejournal.com]

If you don't like Sign of the Times then resist all thought that you might like anything else by Prince. That's the artistic peak of the man. Most everything since is funk-by-numbers. Everything before is flashes of genius and technical ability - the live perfomance of Purple Rain I saw on TV once (round at Dianne Hammon's place for some reason) is right up there with Meatloaf's live Paradise by the Dashboard Light.

Or it could be you and you're just not in the mood.

[(Anonymous)]

"Why my (very competent) opponent decided that raising me all-in on the turn from the big blind with AK after I had raised in the cut-off and a board of KQ5 rainbow appeared, I don't know."

Because he had top pair and top kicker and was therefore somewhat ahead of your range?

Don't turn into a weak-tight nit like Holden who is constantly amazed when anyone raises a non-nut hand against him. What can they have? What can they have been thinking? Zzzz.

matt

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Good point matt, but it doesn't cover the whole story, surely. Being ahead of my range isn't enough here to justify a raise. And I would rather dispute that he is ahead of my range after I've put in a continuation bet and also followed through with a pot bet on the turn.

I read a very interesting piece on 2+2 a month or so ago that covered this very topic - when "I am ahead of more than half his range" does not necessarily make a raise correct. Indeed, Sklansky gives an extreme example of this in one of his earlier books from a 7-card stud game.

If players want to reraise me all-in for a fair proportion of the pot with TPTK in this kind of situation, then I want to sit down with them.

Do you actually think he was check-raising for value here? Myself I thought it was more of a "I might be ahead, but if I'm not, I might have outs" kind of check-raise.

PJ

[(Anonymous)]

Well TPTK is a watermark isn't it? I wouldn't recommend his play with less than that but it seems OK to me. There's a fair chance he's ahead and if not then he has outs. Against your KQ he needs an Ace, Jack, or Ten. That's 10 outs (with one card to come I know). Also he was in the Big Blind where you don't so easily credit people with premium hands. It's borderline but not clearly bad.

Perhaps he just saw your turn bet as "firing the second bullet".

matt

[(Anonymous)]

Oops ignore that ... Jack doesnt help him. I was thinking his two pair would be better ... Duh. His move would be better if he'd picked up a flush draw on the turn I think.

matt

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Hi Matt:

Yes, I was going to say that I could understand the play with the flush draw and with a gutshot.

The way I saw it, his reraise all-in is right if I have TT, or if he thinks that I am willing to fire a second bullet with 99, 88 or even less (he's right that my range for original raise and continuation on the flop is quie wide). But he's only facing a two-outer in the case of lower pairs.

I really prefer a reraise pre-flop with AK against a single opponent, and then a lead-out of sometehing close to pot-size, although this can go wrong against markedly cagey opponents and depends a lot on the stack levels. I don't think I've yet been called beyond this point (if I have the AK in the blind and I have reraised preflop, then continued on the flop), but if I was, I'd probably give up on the turn if I failed to improve, betting out if the board becomes drawy (say, KT97 with two of a suit), and check-call a dryish board such as ATxx rainbow. I've not really analysed this scenario though, so that line might well be wrong.

As a rule, though, at this level, the reraise to 3x original raise pre-flop takes it down 90% of the time. If it doesn't, then a continuation bet is usually good enough, no matter what the flop. If opponent has flopped a rogue set, you are probably committed and in trouble, but, as they say, if my aunt had bollocks... You are winning an awful lot of pots before that scenatio appears.

This reraise line is exploitable if original raiser is willing to raise on the flop here with air, but I haven't found a single player capable of that at $100 buy-in , yet.

PJ