Session Notes — Part IV

We’re coming into the home stretch for this series of articles from a session I played a couple months ago. We’re playing $5-$5 no-limit hold‘em with a buy-in range of $300-$1,500. Unless I say otherwise, the effective stack is more than $1,000.

Hand 1:

Hijack at a seven-handed table makes it $20, cutoff (stack of $275) calls. I call in the big blind with A J. The flop is 7-5-5 with two spades. It checks to the cutoff, who bets $50. I make it $100, the preflop raiser calls, cutoff calls. The turn is the 2. I bet $150, preflop raiser makes it $350 with $450 behind, cutoff folds, and I call. The river is the K, I check, he jams, and I call. He has 7-7.

Blah. This hand really frustrated me at the table, because I was having a good session for the first time in a while and I ran into the effective nuts with the effective third nuts. I’m still a little bit unsure if I should have called river, but looking at it now, I think it’s probably right. Before that though, there was some weird play on the flop. The cutoff having such an odd stack size makes the hand difficult to play. I probably check-call if the preflop raiser bets, but once it checked to the cutoff and he bet $50 out of $275, I decided to change my plan. I thought that by raising to $100, I would get folds from the raiser’s medium pairs and that the cutoff would jam with a pretty wide range, considering his stack. Then, the raiser called and the cutoff followed. I put the raiser on a range of 7-7, 5-5, A-5 suited, overpairs that were looking for a check-raise, and K Q or K 10. On the turn, when he raises, I can remove overpairs and probably even A-5 suited out of his range, since he was pretty tight overall. At this point, by calling turn and calling river, I’m committing to calling $700 ($350 – $150 + $450) into a pot of $660 ($150 + $150 + $300 + $60), giving me odds of 1310 to 660 or 1.98 to 1. If he always jams river with the king-high flush and a full house or better (7-7 or 5-5), then there are two combinations of king-high flush and four combinations of 7-7 or 5-5.

So, I’m a 2-1 dog against his value betting range, meaning that I’m losing just a tiny bit by making the turn and river call. I’m truly not sure about my presumption in the hand. I don’t think he raises the turn and jams the river with any worse flushes than the king-high flush, but I also think it’s possible that the only full house or better hand he raises turn with is 7-7. For whatever reason, people are more willing to slow-play 5-5 on a board like this than they are 7-7, even though it’s basically the same hand with regards to relative strength. The good news that I’ve taken from writing out this hand and doing the math on it is that, in close to a worse-case scenario situation, my play is essentially break-even. The close decisions are the ones that you really don’t need to worry about as much since, either way, you’re not winning or losing that much. That means that I dwelled on this hand a little more than I probably needed to. This is a good indicator of why it’s so good to do this analysis right after a session. That way you’re unlikely to be worrying about a situation that was super close for a long time and you can focus more on some other leaks that you may have found within that session.

Hand 2:

Four limpers, I make it $45 in the small blind with K J. The big blind, second limper, and button call. Flop is A-J-4 rainbow. It checks to the second limper, who bets $75, I call, everyone else folds. The turn is a seven, completing the rainbow. I check, she bets $150. I make it $415 and she folds.

This hand was a non-standard line that I took for exploitive reasons. I knew that my opponent liked to limp/call with weak aces, that she often two-barrels with them when she flops one, but that she would also fold anything worse than A-Q on a board like this, and she’s unlikely to have A-Q. In addition to that, my line looks insanely strong and I have one blocker to a set. You might be wondering why I have included a hand that is very player-dependent when you probably won’t be playing against said player. I included it to show that, when you’re going through a bad run or what you perceive to be a bad run, you have to be even more focused on the poker than usual. If you can find spots to make plays like this that are exploitive and that you know will work against your opponent’s perceived range, it can go a long way towards building your confidence back up. The only thing that can and should boost your confidence in situations like this is clear evidence that you’re still playing well, despite how the cards are treating you lately. If you can keep focus on that and use that positive emotion to help control the negative emotions you’re feeling, you’ll be doing well. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG