[Music] [Music] all right folks well you know you're in for a treat when you hear that tun it's time for another week of the wck poker podcast I'm your host Jim Reed bluffer in the home game and at Rec poker JY on the hellscape we call Twitter and I have the best freaking job in the world hanging out with my friends and talking poker here on the strategy forums edition of the wck poker podcast every Monday night while we steal each other's chips in the free nightly home game now I have to mention to you that we're brought by we're brought to you by Running Aces the official sponsor of the recck poker podcast they're located less than an hour north of the Twin Cities in the beautiful state of Minnesota you can find out more about them at run asis.com uh most of what we do here is free we're a largely volunteer-based organization so we really depend on support of our sponsors and our premium members who take part in our training material and study opportunities for only $22 a month now 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of wizards The Wrecking Crew and if you want to find out me more about me or the rest of the crew you can go to wreck. pooker crew uh or you could just listen up to meet one of them tonight one of the ogs of wck Poker and The Wrecking Crew uh one of my friends from way back it's the one and only Rob wasam welcome Rob welcome yes you can find me as rabman 50 just about everywhere and on the first and third Wednesdays of every month you can find me with a group of our premium members discussing the greatest poker books around so join us for that that's right now this is the forums edition of the podcast and uh we've got some exciting news when it comes to the forums over at Rec poker as a matter of fact so you can always go to rec. pooker forums and you'll find um some great uh conversation starters places to post your own questions or comments it's so important as a learning player to share your areas of uncertainty uh with peers and friends and mentors like you'll find here to get some great responses and help you improve as a player uh we've actually started moving a lot of our live chat conversations over to Discord um I I'm sure you've heard about Discord as a fantastic online platform for real-time chatting they've really upped their game a little bit over the last little while and we found that we can have our threaded forum conf conversations on Discord just as easily as we could on the website so we're going to keep the website forums going because I know some people like posting there and it is excellent for kind of like long form response-based uh strategy conversations but I'd encourage our listeners to come check out uh the Discord Channel we've got a little over 400 or 500 members there right now it's a very uh vibrant and encouraging place to come and discuss poker it's not just poker strategy there's a lot of off the felt stuff to get involved with um you'll find some friends uh here at Rec poker one way or another and we're um really ramping up our Discord uh uh offering so I'd encourage folks to go check that out and if you go to rec. pooker Discord you can get an invitation and uh join the fund there and see all the great stuff that we've got going on so we're actually taking this is our first episode of the forums where we're taking a hand from the Discord uh hand review section this is a tourn hand that our own Chris Jones played in the Venom and uh he said he you know Chris is such a studious player he said he ran his hand history for the Venom tournament through GTO Wizard and that this was this spot came up as being the the most negative EV play that he made in the course of his tournament so like every good student he's taking the hands that he performed the worst in and bringing them here for us to discuss on the a so uh thank you Chris Jones who couldn't join us tonight but um looking forward to getting into this uh this hand of his and we've already gotten a ton of great responses to the post here so I hope uh folks go to Forum go to our Discord for free and join for free and check out some of the great conversations so uh rob you were talking earlier when we were setting up this hand um this is an interesting spot the Venom is a prestigious online tournament if folks don't know the Buy in is like $2,600 that's US dollar mind you uh not not not the Canadian uh equivalent um and so a lot of players satellite into it it's it's kind of like in in a way it's like the WSOP Main Event which is that it's it's out of the bank role for a lot of recreational players but a lot of promotional work goes into it so a lot of players satellite into it so you have a lot of players in the field that wouldn't normally be playing in a $2,600 online tournament and then you also have of course all the best players in the world so it's a very interesting field to navigate and you encounter players of all skill levels and experience levels uh this uh this hand is about a a spot where Chris was in the big blind I'll set it up for you Rob and then we can kind of have a little conversation about it so Chris says uh a wide and loose player uh opens on the button they're quite deep they've got about 146 big blinds and Chris is the effect effective stack in the big blind with 43 big blinds and 43 is still a comfortable stack size I think once you get down below 35 you have to really start being thoughtful about which hands you're going to three bet and the sizes that you're going to three bet to um but above 35 and in the 40s I think you can still play your standard three bet game you don't have to worry about committing um with one rays that kind of stuff so we're we're in a fairly typical spot the uh player on the button is showing up in Chris's uh HUD as a 3730 player with vpip pfr so 3730 very wide very aggressive they're opening a lot of hands they're playing a lot of hands aggressively so when this player opens the button I think we should be three betting pretty widely from the big blind they've got a bunch of junk in their hand and we we can profitably win with a a bluff here fairly frequently and that is Chris's thought as well uh he opts to three bet to uh with King for offit and the original raise was to 2.1 and Chris raises to nine big blinds with King four offit and Chris says in his post this is a marginal spot but given their opening I feel fine about it and I think what he's really getting at is just when players open with such wide ranges they're good candidates for three bets because they have a lot of hands that have to fold and once you run out of good strong hands to three bet with you have to start three betting with less strong hands and so the the kind of hands you're going to look for are hands that have Aces or Kings in them as blockers right um ideally some other kind of like suited or or connectedness that they can benefit uh from from play post flop and uh Chris has selected one of these hands King four offit um it's got a king blocker it uh can make a good one pair hand and it's also an easy hand hand to fold if our opponent decides to to for bet here and it's also a kind of hand where we don't really care about missing the opportunity to see a flop it's not like a hand like 98 suited which we'd actually really like to see a flop with so we we we would resent having to fold to a forbit this is the kind of hand that it's a oneand done essentially and we can try and get the the the fold here and if we don't then we just play po or post flap out of position uh Rob what do you think about the sizing it feels so we should definitely be sizing up a little when we're out of position um it feels like it's still maybe a little big I don't know is is nine your number out of position against a 3X I could see the nine here or like a 2 point 2.1 it's is so nitpick you Rob but I I kind of feel like I might go down to eight big blinds here or eight and a half nine just feels like a little bigger than we need uh against this opponent because we're really trying to just leverage our our fold Equity here we've got a blocker they're opening a bunch of crap we shouldn't need to make it too big for them to fold the crap that we want them to fold yeah and I agree um I think you you see in tournaments these days that people are opening two and a half 2.1 2.2 and why are they doing that because those bet sizes work just as well as larger bed sizes from the standpoint of isolation or whatever you're trying to accomplish with your pre flop Rays so when you um typically what I would do from out of position either the small blind or the big blind I would go three times my opponent's uh original rays and then add one big blind because I'm out of position mhm so that would be what 6.3 7.3 so seven and a half big blinds saving yourself one and a half big blinds um especially as you get lower in stack sizes that that can be very important um but I think he was trying to make a statement to this guy with his bet size so I'm not going to uh I don't have any qualms about him going to nine I think that's totally fine I think 7.5 is totally fine so anywhere between 7.5 and N is probably a good bet size there for a three bet yeah and I think depending on how Savvy your opponents are you don't really want to be allowing the the your your actual Holdings to dictate the size but I actually like sizing up a little bit with this exact hand because you really just want folds like you you want them to turn down a lot of those marginal hands and just fold them because you don't really want to play out of position with King 4 offit um it's fine to like go into it with range Advantage because you're the three better but if they're on the fence about folding or calling I don't mind adding just like a little extra weight behind the fold category there it just uh uh makes for easier decisions post flop so I get uh I get what Chris uh is thinking there as well so the funny thing the funny thing is you know we look at this button who has 146 big blinds and so far he's opened 100% of the cut offs when it's folded to him and 100% of the buttons when it's folded to him so basically what he is doing um is opening anything so that tells me that he doesn't necessarily have to have a very strong hand or very strong range be making these opens so what that also tells me is I don't need to bet as big to get him to fold if this was a tight player who was only opening you know the normal amount of hands and maybe even tighter from a big blind or a a cut off range then yeah maybe going a little bit bigger to uh you know to give that you know feeling to him that hey we have a really really strong hand um I don't think we need to do that here just because of the type of player that he is looks like he's just um trying to steal blinds he's just trying to steal blinds and he doesn't necessarily have to have a monster to do that with he can do it with just about any two the way he's playing here so uh that's why I think we can probably go seven and a half or eight and be is fine with it but really that's not the discussion that that Chris wants us to get involved in that's right take it away from take it away get us there the the biggest question that we have is what do we do on the Flop okay so we we have King four offit um we open a nine or I mean they open a 2.2 we three bet to nine in the big blind and then the Flop comes Jack 109 rainbow now Jack 109 is one of those medium type of flops where it can hit everybody I mean it you know you even though he's opening loose he could be opening any any any hand with a queen any hand with an eight you know he could be all over the round around this flop um but the fact that he has been opening so much means that he can also have missed his flop whole ton of time and if you look at um ranges now the fact that he called the three bet means he's probably a little stronger than seven Deuce right right right he's not probably calling with seven Deuce so he's got something um so we can't discount the fact that he has just any two cars now because he call the three bet but I think in this spot it's a good spot to lead out as the pre flop Reb better I think it's a good spot to lead out you can get him to fold a lot of his backo type draws and his unpaired hands that still have Equity because we really don't have much other than King High right I mean that's really all we have King High and a gut shot so we could probably gain by um you know not allowing him to realize the equity that he has in his hand by betting out on the Flop and getting him to fold some of that marginal back door stuff but we don't do that we check and then he checks back which is a good good sign I think um right now the thing is what is he checking back right is he checking back um king queen here obviously he could because it's the nuts yes and it doesn't he doesn't have to worry about protection as much the rainbow board yeah yeah yeah but now our decision was based on denying so his decision should be very similar if he has if he doesn't need protection then he could be checking if he needs protection then he should be betting yeah he should be betting hands that are like Queen Seven Queen six you know any any queen that he got there with should be probably be betting for protection um the fact that we checked means that either we have the nuts or we don't feel that we need we don't feel that we need protection um and we're trying to get him to Bluff at us but so if that's the case wouldn't he want to find out where he's at which is a horrible reason to bet but trying to deny Equity is more like it um so I think a a queen here would probably bet if we check to him but instead he checked then we get to the turn which is the four so now we have a pair of fours with a king kicker on a jack 10 N4 board not a lot again we're going to check and this time he bets um 591 big blinds which is kind of a weird sizing let's just say six and what do we have in middle we have it's like a third of a third of a pot a little less than a third actually little less than a third 30% little less than a third of a pot so it's a very small bet um and we call do we ever check raise it I mean It's Tricky we're basically bluffing if we do um we basically trying to get them to fold like pocket eight pocket sevens pocket sixes you know a hand like Ace n or something that paired but doesn't have uh you know a very strong hand and it's a weird line for us to take to go check flop check turn and then and then check raise turn what is the story that we're time trying to tell there I think when we when we check blop and turn like this we are kind of restricting the lines the hands that we can represent now right yes um yeah I agree so that which means that that usually means that we have to eliminate some of like the strong hands that we could theoretically have from zero uh now we have to kind of like remove some of them from our from our range and so I always I I kind of I I get I get I kind of hesitate to like start semi bluffing on the turn um usually I like to just like start that on the Flop and then decide to continue or not on the turn the delayed aggression is less common and and that can play to to your strength or or against you depending on what your opponent's expecting but I don't know do you feel like we have any Showdown value with a pair of force here that's the real question we do have Showdown value if he has a naked Queen yeah you know he's what he has right now now is yeah Ace Ace Queen Ace King those hands are you know um we're ahead of those hands um so yeah we do have some Showdown value so that makes a call but here's the thing if if you think about our hand you think about what's on the board what is the best card we want to see on the river well it's a the only thing it is is a right yeah a king brings in the four straight yeah yeah a queen guess a queen a queen queen or a four yeah but the king gives us two pair which we would have been we would have been over the moon if that would have happened on the Flop right but now that it happens on the on the river um we get the King on the river after we call yeah and so now that brings that naked Queen is now has it straight mhm um so and for the audience so the board is now King Jack 1094 so any Queen makes a straight um right and it does it's not indicating there's any flush type things so and what's our opponent let's think about our opponent's betting range on the turn here a little bit as well a lot of the hands that they would be bluffing with have now improved because those would be semi Bluffs with a queen um and we're even behind some of those semi Bluffs by like the pocket sixes pocket sevens pocket eights now I guess we're not now because we we we River the second pair yeah right um so we're really we're we're still losing to a lot of their value I guess is what I'm saying so so we check River and they bet shove oh they shove right and it's an over BET right I think at this point that's big bet then huge overb so it's a difficult position for us because we're beating their Bluffs are we beating their Val are we beating any value hands here he'd have to be shoving a hand like 910 or 10 Jack that we beat now right uh because we've got a very unlikely two pair um I don't think he takes this line I don't think the the opponent takes the shove line here with a lot of those middle of the range hands so they're doing it with their Bluffs and their Straits are they doing it with sets and two pair or are they doing a different sizing with that or even get here you know it if you think about obviously this this we've put this guy as a as a thinking player because he the lines that he's taking is taking advantage of other players and putting a lot of pressure on them by opening 100% of the cut offs and the buttons when it's folded to him because of his chip stack he's probably the biggest chip stack at the table if I recall I was watching I was watching Chris while he was streaming this and if I recall there was Chris was like right with a bunch of other players as far as chip stack size and there was a couple players with you know a lot more and maybe a couple with less but 146 big blinds I think is a very big chip stack at this level of the tournament so yeah he he's smart enough to know that so he's is also smart enough to know that this king put all the queens that Chris could have now what's Chris three betting with that check that check twice you know I mean a queen is Ace Queen is right there that's right in that range that's going to check there right um although you could do you know a semi Bluff with the open and a straight draw but you know there is a there's a lot of Queens in in U his range also so is he willing to I mean he is he willing to face a maid straight or does he have Ace Queen himself for the absolute nuts I don't see him jamming without Ace Queen or at least a queen but more than likely Ace Queen yeah because otherwise he's opening himself up to what do we always talk about um when you go all in well you're you're letting your opponent play perfectly that's it if he has a queen he calls and if he doesn't he folds yeah then that's why that's why what hands are you doing it with you have to be doing it with Ace Queen and that and so that's why and I think he could do with some with some Queens um yeah yeah but yeah but I think he does not take this line with like the the majority of their value Holdings so the sets the two pairs the one pair those aren't taking this line I don't think it's they're gonna they want to see Showdown that's all now the so the real question is how many combos of Bluffs are they doing this with and I will say Chris has really opened the door door for some bluffing here by his passive play post flop by by checking on the Flop and checking the turn and checking the river um of course the dynamic changes once you make that first check on the Flop but you have kind of waved the the red flag to the bull to say come and and Bluff more than you would typically because um you know typically we're going to be continuing with our with our stronger hands post flop and as a three better yeah I would think as a three better if you're three betting with Ace Queen and you see this flop you're betting out I think so too you're betting out so he's probably pretty much you know um projected to his opponent that he does not have the queen or even a queen period because I think a queen after three betting any Queen after three betting on this flop is probably going to be leading out mhh so then that does that does change things a little bit if if we feel like our opponent can discount all Chris's Queens maybe other than exactly queen king right then he can start value shoving you know sets of although how many sets does he even have that he's not forbiding I guess he's I mean he can't I don't think he has Kings jacks or t or nines I think he's betting flop um a lot of those two pair combos too I think he's betting flop when checked to in a three bet pot so but again I I guess we don't really have to okay we're I guess we're getting a little astray here because given the given the shove on the river we don't have to wonder about what he's doing with two peros cuz I I don't think think they're showing I don't think they're showing up there enough right so this brings us back to how many bluffing combos does he have so Chris does in his post he says um and I won't I won't spoil the whole thing here but he says GTO wizard thinks this is a call to facing the shove to call and to get there he's breaking down the the the combos of uh Bluffs we have to think that they called our three bet and are now bluffing with pocket fives sixes sevens or eights ace3 suited to ace7 suited and Ace 10 off ace9 off and ace8 off and the question is do we think that they're really bluffing with all those combos I I don't I don't either I don't either I think the biggest mistake in the hand is not um betting out on the flop because you can make a bet right there of six to seven big blinds and have established a Reign stronger than the one you actually have okay because you really should have a stronger range than him because you three bet and he call so yeah I think by not establishing our self with a strong range on the Flop we allowed him to make this play and because of our actions like you said earlier we've pretty much taken all our Queens out of our range so you know he could have Ace King he could be doing this with Ace King yeah yeah yeah yeah again and yeah again we can say like you know is it a four from this player from this aggressive player you know pre flop with with that but um I will say as as the three as the three better we can downsize our flop C bets as well so we don't need to even bet a lot to to right maintain that range Advantage by by betting here although the 910 Jack flop it like it is good for both players but I do feel like that just smashes the calling range um they they just like so much more of their range is contained there like if we have a polarized three bet then a lot of our stuff misses it um and you know we can have some very strong one pair hands there and we can have the sets and that kind of stuff but I do think uh the calling I I think that might be in Chris's mind what caused him to check the flop because I think typically as a three better you're going to be see at a high frequency with a small sizing a lot of boards and I think if I had to guess I'd say Chris looked at this board and said you know this this favors my opponent's range too much to bloat this pod out of position I'm just going to take a different line and I think it kind of works for him too because he gets check check uh he gets to call a small bet on the turn and I think if the villain makes a more conventional bet size here than Chris maybe calls with two pair because we're including a lot of our opponent's worth worst two pairs in his range now and it's a less polarized range I think that takes that that line yeah you got to know that after calling a three bet pre flop what does his range look like first of all Chris is not Chris is not sorry you cut out there for a second what were we saying capped Chris is capped his range is not capped whereas the um bers range is now capped he shouldn't have Aces kings ace Queen Queens uh he shouldn't have any of those types of hands right typically we don't know I mean he could be playing tricky and trappy never know but in general in general uh GTO terms he shouldn't have any of those types of hands yeah so his hand his range is going to be very condensed and it's going to be very condensed in that Jack 10 n right kind of Realm right so yeah it's uh it's a very tricky spot it's a really really horrible horrible [Laughter] plot and we can sit here going around and around all night and um I think I think his fold was good yeah on the river I think you have to fold because it's your terminant life right right he's putting a lot of pressure on you um I think he might not have gotten into this position if he had bet out on the Flop yeah which you can do for a small for a small price in this Dynamic yep yeah I think I'm I'm probably folding honestly uh as played I think I'm probably folding but it's definitely one that's getting keep me up at night and I'm going to wrap right up for the wck poker forums and get some feedback on it because it's not it doesn't seem like a slam dunk to me either way um we've got some fantastic comments in here from SIU Ranger Fortune uh LFC YN ynwa 1982 um let me see I think we got uh Craig Savage in here DFS brat um got a bunch of people adding some really really good thoughts I love how our membership takes all these different perspectives to these hands and some people break it down by thinking about combos some people break it down by thinking about player types some people take it uh break it down by thinking about like uh uh field um Tendencies and post flop betting lines uh so we you really get a lot out of these different approaches to how to uh how to play this hand so I think we we had a pretty good conversation about sort of some of the relevant factors but I'd encourage our our listeners go check out our free Discord Channel and uh poke around in the hand reviews sections you'll see some for tournaments and some for cash games uh there's a lot of really good insights here from uh from these members so I'm excited to see this uh picking up and hopefully we'll get even more folks in there posting and uh and sharing their sharing their thoughts of this great game of poker um Rob was there anything you wanted to add to sort of sum this up or or weigh in are there any variables that we would change to make uh our decision easier or harder or anything well I know I know in some of the comments were saying that maybe we were a little um optimistic three betting with a hand like King for off suit um basically I know what Chris was doing was attacking a certain player type um with a hand like you said earlier that has some blocker ability because it has a king in it right so you're blocking Ace Ace King King King those types of hands um and we know that this player is probably wider than those types of hands anyway he's probably playing uh well said what was it 30 30 37 so he's raising and especially in in those late positions that means those late positions is where that 30% coming from he coming from the cut off and the Button he's not probably raising 30% of the time under the gun he's probably raising 30% of the time from the cut off in the button so we know he's pretty wide there and king4 is actually probably ahead of a 30% range most of the time yep so I see what Chris was doing there but the way it played out and we got some com other comments about how maybe we shouldn't have done this against a player with a chip stack that yeah because he's so deep we can't threaten them we can't apply the same kind of fold Equity that we can against conventional stack yeah we can't put any pressure on him whereas he can put all the pressure on us which we saw yeah so it may have been it may have come down just to the size of the chip St back if we were much deeper that we could actually threaten him maybe it's a better play and uh I will say the only the last thought I have on this is when we three bet against aggressive opponent's pre flop we're doing it with a bunch of different kinds of hands we're doing it with very strong hands that we're going to proceed with on almost every flop we're doing it with some semi Bluff hands that are going to be flop dependent um that are going to have good draws on a lot of flops but some of them not going to continue with bad flops and then we do it with hands like this that have blocker value but really no playability post flop um so like pocket aces when we three bet we're going to continue on a lot of boards 89 suited we're going to continue on boards where we have strong draws or two pair plus King 4 offit I mean we we kind of we got the value out of it by using it as a three bet Bluff candidate it has blocker value right when they don't fold this isn't a hand that is going to be have it's going to find a lot of natural continues on flops and turns unless you're hitting you two pair it's going to be hard to have a very very strong hand to continue with and it's going to be hard to have strong draws to continue with so I don't mind having this plan preflop here's this loose button player I've got a hand that suits a pre flop three bet Bluff well so I'm going to take that line with it and when it doesn't work sometimes it's just time to hang up your skates you know like you just don't get to win every hand that you play and you'll find other hands where you're in a better position to continue even when you are three bet bluffing um so we might have been we might have been better off folding uh to the turn bet folding to the turn honestly it's not crazy given how bu rivers are good for us and how infrequently I think this player is going to give up if we thought they were going to give up more often on the river then you can call the turn and you can get that for to Showdown um but if we think that this player is an aggressive player who's going to be trying to take it away on Rivers not only when they have the hand but when we just check um then yeah that you know again if we had a crystal ball and we could tell the future then yeah we probably wouldn't have called the turn but um right yeah yeah so interesting so so I I do like that he didn't lose a big pot just because he tried to take on this aggressive player from out of position and three bet because that is a trap recreational players get into they're like oh well I three bet because I I thought he was wide now I'm post flop and the the only way I have to win the hand is by bluffing and we kind of put this priority on winning the hand but actually winning the hand isn't really that important what's important is having more chips than anybody body else at the end and that doesn't happen by winning every hand it happens by winning some hands and losing some hands losing as little as possible when you lose and winning as much as possible when you win so um so kudos to to Chris for not just falling into that trap of okay well I got to get him to I gotta win this hand because I started with a with a three bet Bluff all right well uh thank you to Chris Jones thank you to all the Fantastic uh posters and responders in the in the Discord forum here uh thanks to Rob wasam thanks to Running Aces thanks to our listeners thanks to Jim Reed and thanks to all of you listeners we'll see you again soon uh on another week of the re Poker podcast have a great night everybody catch up to you [Music] the [Music]