Blind Play in the What Do You Do Series?

[miamipuck]

I was just moved to this table. I have Absolutley no reads on this guy. Do you guys call fold reraise. Please give me reasons for your actions. Hands like these are more common in a tournament then you may think.


Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t (10 handed) TightPoker converter

MP3 (t33003)
CO (t146033)
Button (t35345)
SB (t46980)
Hero (t65778)
UTG (t86139)
UTG+1 (t194332)
UTG+2 (t201233)
MP1 (t64177)
MP2 (t57742)

Preflop: Hero is BB with , .
6 folds, CO raises to t12000, 2 folds, Hero ????????

[tdostie@nc]

What's the BB?

[bobcorn]

I fold regardless of the blind level.

[miamipuck]

was a mini raise blinds were 3000/6000 and 100 Antes.

[aj]

I'm curious what the rest of the group thinks. I agree that this type of hand comes up pretty often. My thoughts: since you just got to the table, I assume you have no read at all on the raiser.

Folding will be the choice of most, I think. Reraising is an option, but anything less than a push has little value since it commits you to the hand anyway.

What about a call? He has no reads on you either. Three things can happen. One, you miss the flop completely giving you the option to check/fold, or, represent a hand if it's rags. Two, you can catch a piece of the flop and take the lead since you'll have to play first. Three, you hit the flop hard and trap.

I think A6 is too strong to fold here but maybe too weak to push. Personally, I'm calling the mini raise and trying to win this pot with post flop play.

[ugignadl]

I don't know, this really sucks (like the converter). If your stack was smaller you'd probably shove it back in his face. Fold is probably standard, as you aren't beating much other than a bluff.

Since it's a miniraise you are getting some small consolation odds to hit the flop. The real problem is that your best odds are of hitting a pair, and your A is almost 100% dominated. The best way to play this postflop is to hope for an uncoordinated board and then assess if he hit any piece of it. That's going to be almost impossible because you have no reads.

So I am forced to fold. You just can't play this postflop effectively unless you destroy the flop, and you aren't getting the odds for that.

Stupid fold.

[mattaca]

I'm sorta with AJ on this one. I actually think I call it as its only 6K more into a 21K pot. The CO could be making this play with a very wide range of hands being one of the big stacks. Contrary to Ugi, I think you A could be good.

The only problem I see is that he'll likely try to be aggressive on the flop and try to bully you out of the hand, but depending on how it hits you, you can react accordingly. Your stack is still large enough to intimidate him as well. If it misses you completely, you can still let it go without doing much harm to your chip count.

So call and try to outplay him on the flop.

[bobcorn]

I didn't really explain my reasoning for folding before. I agree with what Ugi said. What you really have to ask yourself is - Am I willing to go broke if I flop an Ace? More often than not, when you hit the flop and get action, you will be beat. Also, because your opponent has position - on any flop where you both miss, he will win most often. Honestly, with 10 BB's I don't think I'm flat calling with anything in this spot.

(Edit: another thing - your opponent is going to outplay you on the flop no matter how well you play postflop - he has position, a 2.5-1 chip advantage, and betting impetus.)

[miamipuck]

I think we got some pretty good responses. Warning this will be kind of long:

As a caveat, I do not bother early in a tourny, I am talking when the blinds get bigger and take up a bigger portion of our chips. Also, I am not considering the times we would be terribly short stacked.

I have been watching, thinking, studying, learning and discussing about tourny play for awhile now. Specifically blind and stealing play.

It occurred to me that the times I went deep in a tourny are when I outplayed my opponent Blind vs. Blind, fought against blind stealing or was aggressive in them.

In my observations, I noticed that the top tourny players rarely just give their blinds away. Almost never to a mini raise and not so often to an appropriate bigger raise of 3x or 4x. Of course they would fold if a rock or a really tight player did this, but on a whole they are reluctant to give blinds up.

My discussions with Dday. If we get past our sarcastic and notoriously "Seinfeldian" (they are about nothing) conversations we talk about tourny's a lot. It seems blind play and stealing opportunity's are the most frequented talking points. He always telling me to steal more and call a mini raise from the BB with pretty much any two (again later stage of tourny).

I have been trying to incorporate this in my game and I think it has made me a much better player or at least a more successful tourny player. I used to play blinds much weaker. Of course, I would also always wonder why I could not make it deeper then many of the donks that always seem to.

So back to this hand and my logic (feel free to disagree):

There are already 22000 chips in the pot with Ante's. It is costing me 6000 chips to see a flop. My odds are 3.6667 to 1. I can safely add one BB for implied odds and see that there is nothing in his range of hands other then AA that would make this a bad call (based strictly on the odds). For example:

Big Pockets
AA vs. A6s = 87.78% or roughly 7.18 to 1
KK vs. A6s= 67.60% or roughly 2.08 to 1
QQ vs. A6s= 67.65% or roughly 2.08 to 1

Big Ace
AKs vs. A6s= 68.95% or roughly 2.22 to 1
AKo vs. A6s= 67.18% or roughly 2.05 to 1
AQs vs. A6s= 67.90% or roughly 2.11 to 1

Of course I did not make these calculations during the tourny. They should be familiar to most players already.

I suppose I could be up against AA and be completely dominated but in most any CO's range I think this is a prudent call based on odds absent any reads.

To make a long story short I called. I will post the results later if need be, but they are not material to this discussion. .

[miamipuck]

One more thing.......... I never considered Reraising/Pushing in this spot for several reasons:

1.) I was new to the table and the above player did not have a history of blind theft.

2.) My Stack was almost 11BB's, not great but I still had some chips and wiggle room.

3.) A6s really is not a reraising hand absent reads or history with above player.

[bobcorn]

Miami, what's your play when you flop an ace? Bet/fold, bet/call, check/raise?

[poormanbilly]

He always telling me to steal more and call a mini raise from the BB with pretty much any two (again later stage of tourny).

Three cheers for calling with any two. I insta-call with A6 suited and don't feel bad about getting my money in if an ace flops. Thinking that villian is always going to be raising with an ace is limiting his range WAY too much.

[miamipuck]

Miami, what's your play when you flop an ace? Bet/fold, bet/call, check/raise?

Ace on Flop, I bet out every time if I have an Ace. I have to I am not in position.

[shun]

I'm at least defending my blind.

I'm curious what part of the tournament it is, how many left/what the money payouts are.

An aggressive player's range in this spot should be quite large. Something like : 22+,A2s+,K5s+,Q8s+,J8s+,T8s+,97s+,87s,76s,A5o+,K8o+,Q9o+,J9o+,T9o gives you 49.245% equity

Even against a really tight range like : 55+,A7s+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,ATo+,KJo+ gives you 39.911% and you're getting 3.5:1.

I really don't think it's feasible to fold getting that good a price.

Stealing a page from a Matt Matros article and doing the actual math...

If you raise all-in you are risking 59778 to win 21000, which is pretty good odds. And the raiser is only getting 1.5:1 (80k - 54k).

I'm not entirely sure what the calling range is but I think it's probably pretty tight, something maybe like 55+,A8s+,KJs+,ATo+,KQo, but I think it could definitely be tighter. Against that range you have 36.190% equity. And which is 34% of the original range.

So 66% of the time you win 21000 and 34% of the time you have 36% equity of 134556, minus the amount you put into the pot.

So, EV = .66 * 21000 + .34 ( .36 * 134556 - 59776) = 13860 + .34(-11336) = 13860 - 3854 = 10006 of raising all-in, better than folding.

It's actually a pretty good amount although as Matt Matros says the EV of calling can be tough to determine. I originally felt that the best way was to call and makes some sort of stop-and-go on the flop. EV on the flop is 27k * .49 - 6000 = ~7250 which isn't that much lower than calling but I'm not sure what the best way to play on the flop is. I suppose your EV would technically be better than raising all-in pre-flop if you just made a stop-and-go on any flop.

But I'm tired...

(edit : holy crap I started this post around like 12:30 and after mattaca's post, lots of responses since)

[shun]

Yay! I killed another thread!