Online Poker -- Play Some Hands with Shawn 'jordankickz' BusseBusse Analyzes Two Hands From His Recent Runner-Up Finish in Full Tilt $100 Rebuy |
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Shawn "jordankickz" Busse is one of the most consistent players in online poker. In March 2007, he made the final tables of the PokerStars Sunday Million, the Nightly Hundred Grand (twice), and the Sunday Second Chance. Later that year, he made the final table of the Sunday Warmup. This year, he made runner-up finishes in the Full Tilt $1K Monday and $100,000-gauranteed $100 rebuy event (twice), and he took down a $100 rebuy event on PokerStars. When all of the scores are in, this young Internet phenom has raked in more than $400,000 in Online Player of the Year-qualified cashes alone.
Card Player got ahold of Busse to pick his brain about two hands from the deep run he made in the Full Tilt $100,000-guaranteed rebuy event on Sept. 24.
| Info | Full Tilt six-max $100 rebuy, five-handed table | Blinds: 250-500 with a 50 ante |
| Player | Shawn "jordankickz" Busse | rosieace |
| Stack | 36,382 | 38,750 |
| Hand | A 10 |
?-? |
Jordankickz raises to 1,300 from the cutoff seat with A 10, and rosieace reraises to 3,500 from the small blind. Jordankickz reraises to 6,200, and rosieace calls. The flop comes Q
7 2, and rosieace leads out for 8,500. Jordankickz pushes all in for 30,132, and rosieace folds.
Shawn Patrick Green: Just by the nature of the fact that this is a six-handed tournament, is that why the hands you sent me tend to illustrate some very aggressive play?
Shawn “jordankickz” Busse: Yeah, for the most part. Obviously, six-handed, you’re going to be playing a lot more hands, but there were a couple of specific reasons why I played rather aggressively in these hands.
SPG: You were dealt A-10 offsuit in the cutoff. How would you rate the importance of being in the cutoff position at a five-handed table with this hand?
SB: With a hand like A-10 five-handed, I’m not open-folding from any position.
SPG: You ended up making it 1,300, a pretty standard raise. You got some resistance from rosieace, who was in the small blind. What kind of read did you have on rosieace?
SB: I’m actually pulling up his preflop stats right now. I was running PokerAce HUD, which tracks people’s preflop stats. I played 104 hands with him, and he was playing 29 percent of hands and raising 18 percent of them. Even though this is a six-max tournament, that is still very, very aggressive. I had been playing 19 percent of hands and raising 14 percent of the time, at this point. So, this guy had been very loose and splashing around in a lot of pots.
Another important thing was his location. I’m not 100 percent sure what it was, but it was like Sweden, or somewhere in the Netherlands, or something …
SPG: … He was Scandinavian, basically.
SB: ... and those people are kind of crazy. So, it might be bad, but I base a lot of decisions on that. If I have a close decision and I see that the person is from Sweden, it will instantly change my decision.
SPG: You said that your preflop stats say that he was not only in a lot of hands, but he was raising a lot of hands, but that doesn’t necessarily indicate how much he was reraising. Does the fact that he was reraising here, as opposed to raising, narrow down his range at all?
SB: Well, obviously if a person is reraising, they’re not doing that with the same range of hands that they would raise with, but he’s still certainly reraising a much larger percentage of the time than anyone else at the table, and certainly more than he should be. So, the hands that he raises include, obviously, all of his strong hands, tens or better, A-K, A-Q, and I’m sure a bunch of smaller pairs. But I think there are also a lot of random bluffs that he would raise, like 7-6 suited, 10-9 suited, even really random K-4 offsuit, and other random hands that he would just decide to raise. We were both really deep, like 70 big blinds apiece, and he just wanted to put a lot of pressure on me, even though I don’t think he really cared. I’d been raising a lot of pots for the past couple of orbits, and I think he was just trying to take a stand and not let me win every pot.
SPG: So, basically, in your mind, there was still a very good chance that your A-10 was ahead, despite the reraise from out of position.
SB: Right. Obviously he could have had a hand that had me dominated. I do think that my A-10 plays OK, but at the same time, I didn’t really just want to call and see a flop with A-10. Even though I did have position, I didn’t have the lead in the hand, which made it very hard to play.
SPG: So, he ended up reraising to 3,500, and you reraised to 6,200, which was less than twice his total bet after the raise. What was that kind of raise designed to do, since it was such a small raise?
SB: It was a very small raise; the minimum raise would have been to 5,700. It was actually designed to get him to call. I think that this is the kind of guy who would go crazy preflop, and if I maked a normal-sized reraise, he might just have shoved with a wide range. I think that when I made a raise of this size, it made him think that I had a very strong hand, and he was getting great odds to just call. He was getting almost 4-1 to call since it was another 2,700 for him, and we still had another 30K behind. He was putting me on a really tight range preflop, or at least he should have been, and he was kind of just forced to call. Let’s say he had pocket eights or something, if he was putting me on a really tight range then he was almost happy to call, hoping to outflop me so that he could stack what looks like a strong hand.
So, my four-bet was not really designed to get him to fold, it was just so that I could take the lead in the hand so that I could be the first person to bet the flop, usually. If I called his three-bet, even though I was in position, he’d be first to act, and he would lead out nearly every single time, and I would be forced to either float him or bluff-raise the flop and commit a lot of chips.
SPG: So, basically, you were hoping to get him to just call so that he relinquished the initiative in the hand. He was not mentally forced to continue on the flop since he ceded the aggressive role to you preflop. So, the flop came out, and it was a pretty favorable flop; it was a complete rainbow with no real connecting cards and with just one facecard. He relinquished initiative to you preflop, and yet he led out on this flop; what kind of message did that send to you?
SB: Yeah, that was really weird. He led out for 8,500 into 13K; I was not really expecting that to happen at all. I had about 30K behind, total, which definitely left me with significant fold-equity on a shove. Since I was representing a pretty tight range preflop, let’s say that he flopped a set, I don’t think that he would ever lead out, because I’m going to bet the flop when checked to pretty close to 100 percent of the time, and he can just check-raise and get all of my chips. On the off-chance that I don’t have a hand, him leading out will never get my chips if he flopped a good hand. So, I think that most of the time when he leads out, he’s trying to either find out if his hand is good or he has nothing and he’s trying to get me to fold maybe A-K or any bluffs that were in my range. I think some of the hands that he would lead out with are nines, tens, or jacks as a feeler-bet, to see if his hand is good. It was not a bad flop for those hands, although we did get in four bets preflop. I really just think that he was trying to see where his hand was at. I don’t think he ever really has too strong of a hand here.
SPG: So, in your mind, he was likely making that bet with the intention of folding to any continued aggression, at this point?
SB: Yeah, it didn’t make sense for him to be leading out and calling a shove there, because check-raising would be a much better option, since I would be betting the flop pretty much 100 percent of the time.
SPG: So, you ended up shoving all in, and he folded.
SB: Yeah. I expected him to fold a pretty decent percentage of the time, and even if I did get called, I expected my ace to be live most of the time, so I still had at least three outs to get there.
SPG: And even if he made a hero-call with something like eights or nines, like you said he may have, you’d still have two live overcards.
SB: Yeah, exactly.
| Info | Full Tilt six-max $100 rebuy, four-handed table | Blinds: 2,500-5,000 with a 600 ante | |
| Player | Stuart Paterson | Shawn "jordankickz" Busse | Brady "vegan213" Shepard |
| Stack | 258,786 | 319,722 | 410,084 |
| Hand | ?-? | Q 10 |
?-? |
At a four-handed table, Stuart Paterson raises to 12,340 as the first to act, and jordankickz reraises to 35,000 from the button with Q 10. Vegan213 reraises to 88,444 from the small blind, folding Stuart Paterson. Jordankickz five-bets all in for 319,122, and vegan213 uses some of his timebank before typing "so sikk" and "jj" into the chatbox and folding.
SB: I think this was during the final two tables of the tournament, but I’m not 100 percent positive.
SPG: Preflop, the pots had 9,900 in there with the blinds and antes. You were dealt Q-10 on the button. Stuart Patterson made a pretty standard raise, and you elected to reraise him about three times his total bet. Was that because you had position, or was it the content of your hand? What’s the deal?
SB: There were a couple of different reasons. We were playing four-handed, and Q-10 is a decent hand, but not really a hand that I’m too comfortable calling a raise with. So, in position, the hands I elect to three-bet, besides my really strong hands, are hands that I don’t think are strong enough to call a raise with but that I don’t really want to fold. I think that Q-10 falls into that category. I also had position, which was obviously a good thing.
SPG: If you got any further aggression at that point, what was your plan of attack?
SB: Well, I had started to become pretty aggressive at that point. As you can see, I was pretty deep, Stuart was pretty deep, and Vegan was pretty deep. I had three-bet Stuart probably two or three times before, and maybe the other guys once or twice. Stuart Paterson is a pretty spewy player; he’s not afraid to go broke preflop, but with the stack sizes (we’re about 50 big blinds deep), it just makes it really awkward for him to do anything. I make it 35K, and he would have to ship in another 220K, which is just a huge amount to shove, if he wanted to make a four-bet with a weak hand. So, I think it puts him in a tough spot, and he doesn’t really want to call and play out of position. So, I expect to take it down a pretty decent amount of the time. It just seemed like a good spot.
SPG: You ended up getting played back at by Vegan, rather than Stuart. You didn’t expect to get much aggression from Stuart, as you said. When Vegan reraised you, you now had a 146,000 pot and you had 53,000 to call. Was calling even an option, though?
SB: No, no. I would never consider calling here. Q-10 was not a hand that I wanted to play here, and not a hand that I want to see a flop with — ever. I’ve played with both of these guys quite a bit. I’m pretty sure that I have a reputation as being a pretty tight player, most of the regulars in high-stakes tournaments view me that way, and that’s probably a good thing for me, since it’s not 100 percent true, but I am probably a little bit tighter than most regulars, especially in preflop wars with three- and four-betting.
So, besides that, I had been pretty aggressive at this table, and this looked like a really good spot for me to three-bet Stuart Paterson light. So, Vegan came in and made a four-bet of about 2.5 times my raise, which is a pretty standard amount, although some players would make it a little bit more there. His play, in his mind, was really strong, and even if I had a hand, which he might not have thought that I did, it was going to be really tough for me to play most hands besides kings, queens, or aces. So, I just thought that there was a good chance that he was making a move, because I think that this was a really good spot for him to make a move. I’ve played with him a lot, and he’s very aggressive; he opens a lot of pots, and he does three-bet a fair amount. So, it did really seem like a good spot for him to be reraising light.
SPG: So, given that, you ended up pushing all in, and he started tanking for a while. Were you kind of nervous once you’d pushed?
SB: He plays aces, kings, and queens all exactly the same way preflop, and if he had those, there was nothing that I could do, he was going to call. I made sure that I had enough that he wasn’t priced in to call. I think he was getting like 1.8-1, which meant that if he had A-Q or a hand like that, he could definitely get away from it. But I just really thought that this would be a great spot for him not to have a hand, so I decided to shove. He tanked for a long time and typed in the chatbox, “So sick. J-J,” and then he folded.
I decided to show, and I’m not sure whether or not that was a good thing to do, but immediately after showing, I decided, “OK, I’m going to have to tighten up a bit.” Stuart Paterson I think is going to decide to never believe me ever again after this, the same with pretty much everyone else. So, I made the decision to tighten up, and the next time I three-bet, it was going to be with the intentions of snapping off a four-bet. A few orbits later, I three-bet Stuart Paterson with A-K and he shoved for 35 big blinds with A-8 offsuit.
SPG: On a final note, what do you think of Vegan’s fold if he was telling the truth and had jacks?
SB: I think that he was telling the truth, because he did tank for a fairly long time, and if I had no hand, I’d probably fold pretty quickly, because it is a semi-common play to cold four-bet with nothing, so he doesn’t have anything to be ashamed of. I do not think that his play is good; I’m not entirely sure what he should do, but four-betting with jacks and then folding is certainly not the best play, because I’m never going to just call his four-bet, and I’m certainly never going to call with the worst hand. So, what he’s basically doing by four-betting jacks and not calling it off is turning his hand into a bluff. Since he did this with jacks, he can do the exact same thing with 7-2 offsuit; they have the same value based on how he played the hand.
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