Online Poker: Cash Game Hands with Andrew 'Foucault' BrokosCard Player Pro/PokerSavvy Plus Coach Goes Over Two Cash Game Hands Street for Street |
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Andrew “Foucault” Brokos, a poker pro on the Card Player Pro (powered by PokerSavvy Plus) roster of poker coaches, recently made a deep run in the 2008 World Series of Poker main event (finishing in 35th), but tournaments aren’t his M.O. Brokos makes the majority of his money as a cash-game grinder, and he’s quite good at what he does.
Card Player got brokos to talk about two interesting hands that he played in cash games, one in which he played well and one in which he was “owned by an old lady.” He may be good at what he does, but lapses in judgement are equally vital to review in order to improve one’s game. Plus, it’s just fun to hear about him stacking off to a nitty granny.
The hand took place at a $5-$10 six-handed no-limit hold’em table online. Andrew “Foucault” Brokos was dealt pocket tens as the second player to act. He open-raised to $35, and the player to his left called. Action folded to the player in the big blind, who reraised to $145. Brokos called, and the other player in the hand folded. The flop came Q
9 4
, and the big blind led out for $190. Brokos called, and the turn was the K
. The big blind bet $430, with the effective stacks at the time around $900, and Brokos pushed all in for $900. The big blind folded, and Brokos raked in the pot.
Shawn Patrick Green: You raise preflop under the gun with tens. There probably isn’t much to talk about there; it seems like that would be pretty standard in a six-handed game, right?
Andrew “Foucault” Brokos: Yeah. In a full-ring game, you might sometimes consider limping in in early position with tens, but in a six-max game, I think you would raise 100 percent of the time.
SPG: You say that in a full-ring game you would sometimes consider just calling in this position with tens. Is that because it’s a small enough pocket pair against so many opponents that you’re almost just set-mining with it?
AB: When you raise from early position, people recognize that you’re going to have stuff other than big pairs, but people also know that big pairs are a big part of your range, and so tens is just a weaker version of that range. You have, basically, the hand that everyone expects you to have, but it’s even a little bit weaker than that. So, I would raise most of the time, but if you’re going to have a limping strategy, which some people do in a full-ring, I think pocket tens is one of the hands that should be in the mix [for limping], because it can be played as a small pair for set value or as a big pair.
SPG: But, in this case, it’s not a full ring, it’s six-handed, so let’s get back to that [laughs]. You raise, and you get called by a player to your left. And then it gets to the button, who reraises to $145. You told me in your e-mail with this hand that the table had been making squeeze plays a lot; I assume that factors into this situation.
AB: Right. I think that he’s going to play every single hand better than tens like this, but I also think that he’s going to have a large number of weaker hands. So, it’s not like I think that he’s always bluffing here, but he’s bluffing enough of the time to make tens too good of a hand to just throw away. Sometimes he will have a suited connector, but a lot of the times he will be three-betting for value with something like A-K or A-Q, where the tens are still in good shape. And then, having position on top of that, it’s definitely a call with tens.
SPG: How does the other caller in the hand factor in? Are you pretty much assuming that he’s going to fold? I presume that you’d rather not have him stick around when you’re holding pocket tens.
AB: With hands like tens, where sometimes you are going to be playing them for their unimproved showdown value, you really don’t necessarily want to have another guy in the pot. Having another player in the hand behind you is going to make it very difficult to get to showdown with pocket tens when they’re the best hand. Depending upon the situation, it’s hard to get your money in profitably with pocket tens in a three-way pot, because everyone’s standards for what kind of hand they’re going to want goes up, so it’s harder for you to win the pot unimproved. You’re either not going to have the best hand or someone is going to figure out the sort of hand that you have and bluff you out. With more people in the pot, you’re required to play more straightforwardly.
SPG: Luckily for you, the third man drops out. The flop comes queen high with a flush draw and a possible open-ended straight draw with J-10. The big blind makes a continuation bet. What is your thought process, now?
AB: My thinking is that he’s going to be betting a lot of stuff. You pointed out the draws that he could have, and I think that he will be betting when he has those draws, but he will also be betting A-K, A-J, A-10, or 6-5 suited [hearts] that he randomly decided to play like this. I just pretty much think that he’s always going to be firing at a flop like this, so my pocket tens are still figuring to be ahead of his range.
SPG: Since your pocket tens are figuring to be ahead of his range, and his hand hasn’t been narrowed down too much at this point, is there any value to raising to narrow his range, or is that not worth it?
AB: Well, it would narrow his range, but it would narrow his range only to the hands that I don’t want him to have. So, if I were to raise here, it would allow him to fold everything that was worse than my pocket tens, and I’d get it in against anything better than pocket tens and also other times when we’re basically a coin flip, like if he had J-10 for an overcard and an open-ended straight draw or if he had the nut flush draw, he’d have an overcard and the flush draw. So, even the times that I am very slightly ahead, it’s practically a coin flip, and I don’t think that the information is worth anywhere near what it would cost me to get it. I would rather keep the weaker stuff in his range and continue to use my position. If I raise it now and end the hand, I can’t take advantage of the position that I have on later streets to try to make better decisions.
SPG: Once you’ve called, here, what’s your plan of attack for the turn? What cards are good for you, and what cards are bad for you? And what happens if he checks, what happens if he bets, etc.?
AB: It’s not so much about the cards as much as what he does, because right now his range is really wide, so it’s hard for me to know what cards are going to be bad for me. This is what I mean by using the power of position; I’m just going to have to consider what he does in conjunction with what card comes on the turn and try to use my position to get information about his hand. So, rather than raising to clarify what my hand is, I’m calling to clarify my hand, because just seeing what he does on the turn will give me enough information.
SPG: The turn brings out an offsuit king, and he ends up betting $430, a little less than the pot.
AB: It is also significant that the size of his bet is almost half of our effective stacks. I think there was about $900 in the smaller of our two stacks, and he bet pretty much exactly half of that.
So, here was my thought process. First off, the king was, in a sense, a scare-card for me. When you have pocket tens and a king comes, you’re usually not happy about it, because that’s a card that your opponent could very easily be playing. And then, when he bets again, I have to think that even if I was ahead on the flop, if he had something like A-K or K-J, did he just get there on the turn?
So, the question was whether or not he’d bet again if he did hit the turn, and I didn’t think that he would bet if he had a hand like A-K or K-J, because it’s a scare-card. So, I actually thought that because the king was a scare-card, he was likely to check if he actually hit it so that he wouldn’t scare me off of a hand like pocket tens, and he was likely to bet if he did hit it so that he could scare me off of a hand like pocket tens. Basically, I thought that he was going to do the opposite of what he had; he’d bet when he was weak and check when he was strong.
The bet-size is kind of a perfect way for him to test whether or not I was going with the hand, because he is risking only $430 to force me to commit $900. That’s a good thing for him to do with a bluff, because he could just shove all in with this king on the turn, he could shove for $900, and that would put me to a $900 decision, but that’s twice as expensive as if he just bet $430 and put me to a $900 decision. I can’t really call $430 and then fold if he goes all in on the river, so if I’m going to continue with the hand, at this point, I’m not going to call off half my stack, I’m going to be putting the rest of my money in. So, he can bluff twice as often if he’s bluffing half as much; it’s just a cheaper way for him to bluff, and the fact that he chose half of our effective stacks seemed to me like he was trying to put maximum pressure on me while minimizing the amount of money that he was spending, which is something that someone would do if they were bluffing.
I thought he was either going to have something like K-Q or better, or he was going to be bluffing. I didn’t think he was going to have something like A-K or K-J, or even pocket aces. So, I thought that very occasionally he would have a huge hand, and the rest of the time he would be bluffing.
SPG: So, he would be bluffing enough of the time that it made sense to get the rest of your money in.
AB: Right. I don’t think he’s ever going to bluff with that last $400, which means that it’s only going into the pot when I’m behind on the river. If he just has a bare ace in his hand, I just want to make him fold it at this point and not let him see another card, because my whole stack is committed, anyway, so I want to go ahead and put it in now rather than on the river.
SPG: So, you put it in and he folded, and that’s pretty much that. He’s not folding there unless he was on a bluff, so your read should figure to have been spot on.
This hand takes place in a live $2-$4 no-limit hold’em cash game. Andrew “Foucault” Brokos posted a missed blind in the cutoff seat. The under-the-gun player limped, as did a woman named Mary. Two other players limped before action got to Brokos in the cutoff with 7-5 offsuit. He checked his option with his posted blind, and the button also limped, as did the blinds. The eight-handed flop came Q-7-7 rainbow. The under-the-gun player led out for $30 into a $32 pot, and Mary called. Brokos also called (the other players folded), and the turn brought a king. The under-the-gun player checked, and Mary bet $75. Brokos called, and the other player folded. The river was an ace (no possible flush was on the board), and Mary bet $55, leaving herself with $183 behind. Brokos pushed all in, having her covered, and she quickly called and showed pocket aces for a rivered full house. Mary took down the pot.
AB: I should give a bit of background for this hand, because this was a live hand. One of the things that was important was that there was this woman Mary who was at the table, and she looked like your grandmother. She was a tiny, sweet old lady wearing a shawl. She was a very friendly woman and very tight. She was at the table for maybe four hours, and I probably saw her play 10 hands in that time, so you knew that she was only playing very premium hands. She was mostly just there to talk and have a good time; she was a very nice, quiet woman, not the kind of person that you would normally find at a poker table. And, being the arrogant young kid that I am, I assumed that she wasn’t going to be very good or very clever at poker and was just going to play her hands face up, and that is what she had been doing for the four hours that we’d been at the table.
I had actually just taken a break and — you might actually say that this is my first mistake, I pretty much never do this when I’m playing online, but live poker moves so slowly — when I got back to the table I posted my missed blind out of turn, just because I didn’t feel like sitting there for 20 minutes waiting for the action to get back to me. So, in this hand, I had just returned from the bathroom, and I was sitting one off of the button, and I posted my blind so that I could get dealt in immediately, which is probably a slightly –EV [minus expected value] play when taken in a vacuum, but I just didn’t want to sit there for 20 minutes. So, I posted, and that was how I ended up playing 7-5 offsuit in the first place [laughs].
So, there was one other good player at the table, and he came in under the gun; he just called the blind for $4. The player to his left was this little old lady, Mary, who also came in for $4, and then like two or three more people limped in between her and me. You can tell that this is a live hand when you have half of the table limping into the pot preflop. So, I still haven’t had the opportunity to fold my 7-5 offsuit, and it gets around to me in the cutoff. I’m not going to try to raise through all of those people, so I just check my option.
The flop comes out Q-7-7, so now I’m kind of glad that I played my 7-5 offsuit, because I have three of a kind. The under-the-gun player bet $30, pretty much the size of the pot, and Mary, to his immediate left, called.
SPG: So, what were you putting Mary on, at this point? Because she limped in, so she wasn’t forced to put any money in, and you said that she only played premium hands. The worse that you could put her on was a pair of queens here, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t she have raised preflop with pocket queens?
AB: That’s where I’m having difficulty, already. A lot of people, especially live poker players, like to limp with their small pocket pairs if they’re the first ones into the pot. But if someone else is in the pot, they’ll almost always raise with them, because they don’t want a multi-way pot, because the other thing that live players hate is when their big pairs get cracked, so they’ll usually make a big raise preflop to get the pot heads up rather than see an eight-way pot, which is exactly what happened here. So, it was difficult for me to put Mary on a big pair, but at the same time, I definitely didn’t think that she was going to call with less than a pair of queens. So, I was thinking maybe like K-Q or Q-J for Mary.
For the under the gun player, it was possible that he did have a big pair, aces or kings or something. At least, that’s what I was hoping. With trips, I wasn’t quite ready to raise, because I thought that it would really give away my hand if I raised here, but I could definitely envision both of these players having one-pair hands, so I wasn’t going to be folding my three of a kind yet.
SPG: The turn was a king. Did that card give you any kind of scare? Probably not, since that couldn’t improve many hands to be beating you.
AB: The only hand that improves against me is pocket kings. If someone had K-7, then that person was already ahead of me. The king didn’t change very much.
SPG: So, you’re still pretty happy, but were you happy enough to try to keep them in until the river? What was your plan of attack, now?
AB: At this point, like I said, I was a little suspicious with what was going on with these two, and I thought that they might continue putting money into the pot, but I wasn’t at the point that I was comfortable raising with my hand. I thought that I was ahead of their betting ranges, but I didn’t think that I was in good shape once I raised, because they were going to put me on trips, and I pretty much had the worst-possible kicker. So, I didn’t think I could raise my hand, I was just trying to call, at that point, to see a river.
SPG: So, the under-the-gun player checked, and Mary bet $75 into a pot of about $120.
AB: Right, and this was where I think that I made my first small mistake that got me into more trouble later. I was thinking that Mary could be betting something like K-Q; K-Q is really the only thing that kind of made sense that I was ahead of, here, and even that … she was a tacit enough, cautious enough player that she was not going to be betting with less than trips, there. It’s not that she was folding, but even if she had pocket aces, I thought she would go into check-call mode.
So, I was planning on betting if the action checked to me, but when she bet, I should have been more scared than I was. I was more like, “What’s going on, here? Oh well, I have trips. I call.” I think you can justify a fold on the turn, is what I’m saying, because with two people besides her putting money into the pot on that flop, she has got to be worried that someone out there had trips. So, for her to voluntarily put more money into the pot against two people when there was a pair on the board was not consistent with her character. So, I think a fold could have been justified on the turn, but she could still have K-Q or pocket aces, so I decided to call again.
SPG: The other player folded, and the river brought an ace. How did that affect things?
AB: As I was saying before, there were two hands that I thought that she could have that I was beating. She could have K-Q or she could have aces, and I didn’t think that aces were very likely based on the preflop action, but it was really one of only two things that I could think of that she would play this way that I could still beat on the turn. So, if she had aces, I was now behind, but if she had K-Q, it didn’t change anything. If she had A-K or A-Q, then it actually helped me, because now maybe she thought her hand was a little bit stronger, because she had two pair, now.
So, I was starting to get a little bit optimistic that I was wrong on the turn and that she had A-K or A-Q and now she was going to feel happy about her hand and pay off my trips.
SPG: So, she ended up betting $55, which was less than her turn bet and a drop in the bucket as far as the pot was concerned.
AB: I was actually nervous enough on the turn that if she had bet really big on the river, I was going to throw my hand away. If she had bet $200, I would have folded, because I just didn’t think that she would do that with K-Q or A-Q or anything like that. So, I was prepared to fold the river; even after I had made my crying-call on the turn, I was telling myself, “If she bets big on the river, you have to fold.” I was preparing myself already to make a big laydown on the river if she bet really big. And if she had made a normal-sized bet, like if she had made a bet of $150, I was just going to call. I definitely wasn’t going to move all in on her to try to get more value out of the trips.
But when she bet the $55, I was like, “Wow, there’s no way she has a big hand, here. I am only concerned about her having a full house, and there is no way that she is betting $55 into a $300 pot with a full house. This is clearly a weak bet, she must not have the full house, I must have the best hand.” So, I decided that I would go ahead and move all in with my trip sevens, which flies completely in the face of what I was thinking on the turn. On the turn, I was very nervous and contemplating folding to a big bet or contemplating calling a smaller bet to get to showdown as cheaply as possible. And then she made the $55 bet, and it completely changed my plan for the hand — in a bad way, it turns out, because she threw her chips into the pot quite quickly for a woman of her age; she couldn’t get the chips into the pot fast enough.
And she did have pocket aces. So, I was ahead on the turn, and she did hit a two-outer on the river. The thing that really blew me away was that she played the hand so perfectly to get value from me on the river. As I was saying, I was folding to a big bet and just calling a medium-sized bet, but by making that small bet, she actually induced me to put all of my money into the pot, and she won more from me than she could have any other way.
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