Exploiting Steamy Players With Hero Calls

This is the free version of the Crush Live Poker subscription podcast. If you enjoy this audio format of poker training and want to hear more complete episodes, check out our membership options at CrushLivePoker.com. What's going on everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Crush Live Poker Podcast. I'm your host here, Bart Hansen, and today's episode here is versus short-term steam. And I want to start off the show by saying that I'm giggling here, I actually won another PLO tournament. I shipped another $55 tournament. I spoke last week about how I took down this $55 PLO tournament on Club WPT Gold. And now I hadn't really won a tournament back since like 2005 on Poker Stars. Well, I won another one for like sixteen hundred bucks. These nightly 55 that start at like $845. There's a hundred dollar one too, but usually I'm putting my kid to bed so I can't play in it. But I like it. I like late regging and learning the short stack stuff in PLO. And I discussed briefly either last week or two weeks ago about a tool that I was investigating that I've been using. And whenever I run into a poker product that I just find on my own and that I like, now what I do is I reach out to the creator and I had a couple of people ask me if the tool was Omaha mate, and it is. And somebody on CLP actually suggested it to me. It's Omaha Mate, like the word Omaha mate.com, and it is made by an Australian poker player slash developer. And basically what it is, it's a web interface of a lot of pre-solved pre- flop stuff. Now there's a trainer too that talks about post-flop. I haven't even used it because I wanted to basically look at the optimal solutions for pre-flops six-hand ed in PLO high tournaments at different blind levels. Because for me as a no-limit player, it's not exactly intuitive to know which hands to go to, which hands to go with, which hand s to limp, which hands to you know open for pot, things like that. So this guy told me about this product and I've been using and I've been making like a spreadsheet about different spots that I didn't really know about and it's been a big help. So I reached out to the developer and I said, can we get a deal for my subscribers if I mention your product? And he said, Yes. So I think it's normally 75 bucks a month. So if you use the code CLP, it's 65 bucks a month. Now I haven't even used half of the features because I've been mainly looking at potlam at Omaha High, but they also have limit Omaha 08 and four card pot limit high low, like PLO8, which I find very, very interesting because a couple of years ago, or two or three years ago now, I actually hired someone to write or to figure out some solutions at exactly 25 blinds for PLO8 tournaments because I was going to be playing in the 10K PLO8 tournaments. And apparently Monk or Solver, we haven't heard that term in a long time, had the capability of doing high low, but no one had ever really made any of the results public. So this might be one of the first ones that I've actually seen. And like I said, I've just used it all for pre-flop. And it takes a couple of minutes to learn how to get the hands in easily, but I love the clean web sort of format, like the clean layout. And it's been a big help. And I gotta tell you, going into, I don't even know if I've ever even played in a live PLO high tournament. I think I might have played in one of their Colossus type PLO high tournaments like many years ago. But this summer, I'm all over it. Especially the hal halff half, like no limit, half PLO. I would love to play that event. So depending on when the schedule comes up, I mean I still want to play the 10K PLO8 for sure, but I want to play some of these PLO high events. And it's, you know, you have to deviate a little bit according to what you think, you know, ICM types of situations are. And so a lot of these tournaments on Club WPT Gold are also bounty tournaments. So sometimes I find myself playing in a bounty tournament and I'm like, well, I need to deviate from strategy here because half the prize pool is going to the bounty. So you're always incentivized to knock someone out. And then PKOs are even different. You don't want a late ridge for those progressive knockouts where you sort of gain a value as you knock people out. But yeah, I love it. And I've played a ton of cash. I actually put out a tweet. I've probably got somewhere around 10,000 hands or something like that. I mean, I know my stats say five thousand, but on some other stuff too, probably 10,000 hands now. Not super high stakes, just to get the reps in for PLO. Knowing that, when I went to Encore, by the way, if you've ever signed up for Club WPT Gold. O cofurse you can use the code BART and you can get entered into our free rolls. I think they've given us like 20,000 and we'll continue on with that. But of course, knowing having all this instant PLO experience, I'm when I go to the enc ore, I'm always you know looking forward to playing PLO. I actually didn't get a chance to play any PLO when I went to the Encore on Tuesday. Part of that was because I was in a really good no limit game. I don't know why it was, but it was a really good 2-5 game and I won a lot, like $2,700 . And I had a godlike image. And we're going to go over some of the interesting spots. So going into this session again, it was kind of a normal shift for me. I got there around I don't know, 10:30, 11, got in the game, played for actually got in about six and a half hours. And most, if not every single person, for whatever reason at the table. Well, there were a couple guys I knew, because there was one hand that I I think I kind of screwed up on that these guys were 5'10 regs, but everybody else was a total unknown. And there wasn't anything special going on. I don't know where these guys came from on a random Tuesday. Now there was this one guy who was actually going to be a common villain. I'd seen him play before, so not an entirely unknown, but I think one of my weaknesses that I will acknowledge, but I think I did well within this session. One of my weaknesses is noticing people , like not paying attention at the table enough to notice who might be tilting because they took a bad beat, or noticing who's up and down in the short term. I mean, it's easy to see who's up and down over the course of several hands. You can see somebody's stack dwindle down to nothing. But there are certain guys that will just go off because of an individual hand. Like a guy might have two grand in front of him and he might lose a three or four hundred dollar pot because a guy rivered two p air against his aces. And if you're not paying attention to that, you don't really see a huge drop in his stack. But that little, little bad beat sets the guy off. And I saw this in this particular villain, this common villain, at least towards the beginning of the session. Now not saying that I would necessarily play this particular hand, hand number one any differently, except maybe fold pre-flop, but it made it a lot easier to play post. I mean, it kind of played itself post because of the stack sizes, but I might even make a case where I might have done a move even at these stack sizes, even lighter with even lighter than what I actually held post flop. So let's take a look here. So two five, again, beginning of the session, about a thousand fifty effective. Again, I saw this guy go up to like two grand quick. Then he got a bad beat and he lost 500. And I could just tell that he was steaming, like short-term steaming. So no straddle. This was kind of a mix of some straddle, some non-straddled hands and he raises to 15 mp calls and i look down at ace queen of hearts in the small blind and i three bet it to 75 four x plus the dead call from out of position. This guy proceeds to forebet to 250. Now he is obviously incentivized to forbet. He actually should be a little bit wider here because of the dead call, but I just knew that he was really really steaming now the guy in between folded and i even considered actually shoving to be perfectly honest with you but then i was like you know what i can call here we're gonna have one and a half sprs behind and then just play accordingly. So I decided to call and the pot was $5 15. Again, it's a four-bet pot. I three bet out of the small blind against this under-the gun guy. This guy's a little bit older than me, mid-50s, something like that. And I've got ace queen of hearts. And the flop comes out: 10 of hearts, three of hearts, deuce of clubs. Ten of hearts, three of hearts, deuce of clubs. I check. And sure enough, he fires 300. So I've got about 800 left in my stack. And I was looking at the pot size, and I'm like, well, if I GM here, the pot's gonna be 1600, it's about 500 for him to call. He's definitely gonna call with any pair, but my hand has so much equity against his range. And maybe, maybe I he actually has ace king and I can get him to fold here. It's interesting to note if I thought that there was so much junk that this guy had, like so much junk. If you could make a case where this is just a call-call, meaning you call the flop instead of jamming. So now the pot would be like 1100 with about 500 left. And then you just call across a turn, no matter what it is . Like if it's a blank turn, maybe he just fires his entire stack in. That's a little bit on the risky s ide. I suppose you could make that case maybe a little bit better with Ace King specifically. And then of course, he might have something like pocket sixes, pocket sevens. I still think he might call with those hands. Again, the board was 10-3 deuce with a couple of hearts but it's interesting when you pick up like a big big nut draw that actually has some showdown value again like a hand like a good ace high against somebody that you think might be over bluffing. Like you could make a case that this might have been better to play call call. Now, I ended up jamming for 800 total. So he bets 300 into 515 as a C bet. I jam with Ace Queen of hearts on ten of hearts, three of hearts, deuce of clubs, and he just pretty quickly folds. Now, when I was looking at this hand afterwards, I was kind of thinking back and I'm like, I I mean, honestly, something like ace four, even without a heart draw, ace four, ace five, which is a gut shot, and a wheel draw, and it doesn't have showdown value against other ace highs, would be a good jam. But even if I had like ace jack of clubs, something like that. Now, what's the difference between having ace king and ace jack? Obviously, you've got more equity against like pocket queens on 10 3 deuce. You know, down to ace jack. You're you don't have as much equity if you guys got jacks, queens, or kings. But I mean if I've got ace jack a clubs on 10 three deuce and he had queens, I would have what some backdoor straightening out to backdoor flip. I mean, I'd probably still have like 20% equity. I mean, it's not the the best spot that you want to be in, but if he had something like nines, I'd probably have somewhere in the what the low to mid mid-30s, if he were to call off. But it just one of those things where I just felt it, where I just thought this guy was kind of full of shit. But then like I said, looking back at it though, it's interesting because maybe I could have actually just played that hand as a straight call call, no matter what. Literally, and I'm talking about I call the flop, the pot's 1100, I've got 500 left. No matter what the turn is, I check all. Whether it's a board pair or whatever. Because I still think there's enough air. Like he could he could have had air where if the turn's a brick, like an offsuit eight, he just jams with air. Of course you run the risk of like allowing him to hit something, but I've got the hearts covered though. So it was kind of a little interesting spot that we don't necessarily think about all that much. Moving on here to hand number two , this one was played at no straddle. And this was actually against a different guy who I also noticed was a little bit steamy. He was a little bit steamy, but probably not quite as steamy as the last guy. And normally when I play against guys who I think are a little bit steamy . When I'm the pre flop razor, especially when it's heads up, and I get I would say a non-favorable board, like a ragged board, like we'll see here in a second, I don't attempt to bluff a steamy guy off of a ragged board. I attempt them to take them to maximum value, but a lot of times I try to just get to showdown with my ace high. Now, if you are up against sort of a steamy aggressive player, they can put you into some spots because once you check back that flop, that kind of gives them the green light to fire on certain boards, on raggedy boards. So let's take a look here at this particular hand. And this is gonna mention one of I think the most important small stakes exploits, which I think when I did the small states exploit series, it was the longest smallstakes exploit that I recorded. Like it was almost 30 minutes. And it has to do with calling down with any type of showdown value when a disconnected high card comes at the end. I'm just kind of looking at number 14. Bluff catching out-of-position bets on high disconnected runouts after checking back the turn. So I'm going to be checking back the flop. You'll see what I'm talking about here in a second. This has to do with top pair changing on the river and then all of a sudden out of position coming out embedd ing. So this one goes down two five, thirteen hundred effective. I open it up from the cutoff, no straddle to 20 with ace three of diamonds. So I go to 20 and this guy in the big blind calls. So the pot's $40 . The flop comes out, eight of clubs, four of clubs, six of hearts. He's in the big blind. He's wide. He's a little bit steamy. I've got ace three of diamonds. I mean I got a tiny bit of a backdoor, but not at the best flop for me. And I just don't think this guy's folding like almost anything. Definitely nothing worse than my hand. So he checks and I check it back. Now I'm not gonna call across every single turn card, but certain turn cards I very well might call across and try to get to showdown with ace high. So the turn comes and it is the four of spades. So it is eight of clubs, four of clubs, six of hearts. Turn is the four of spades, and he comes out and he bets 25. Well, that is one of the turn cards that I will call across. I was a little bit actually concerned at the small bet size, but the board pairs, there's less of a chance that he has a pair. The board is draw-heavy. I'm going to call here with my ace high, see what develops. So I make the call , and now the pot is $90. Eight of clubs, four of clubs, six of hearts, turns of four spades. Again, I've got ace three of diamonds in position. And I check back the flop and I called his bet on the turn when he bet from out of pos ition. The river comes out, the jack of spades. So now the board is eight, four, six with front door clubs, turns the four spades. The river is the jack of spades. Now that small stakes exploit specifically talks about betting flop and then checking turn and calling with any type of showdown value if out of position comes out and bets a disconnected high card. So it's not exactly the same setup, but I think it's a pretty similar concept in this hand. Now he comes out and he bets 200, 8, 4, 6, 4, and the river is a jack. And my question to you guys is, what is he betting here for value? What is he betting here for value? And I think that we can all come to the conclusion that at a minimum given this line, it's going to be a four or better. So this is a pretty polarizing line, especially when he comes out any over bets here. Eight, six, four, four, jack. I don't think that this guy is value towning me with Jack 9 of Clubs for 200. I just don't buy it. Maybe some players would. I don't think that this guy had it in him. He didn't look like a for profit player at all. So when you take a look at a non for profit player taking this line, we can make that conclusion that this guy is only betting trips or better, whether it's five seven for a straight , trip fours, or a boat. And I knew he was steamy, and I knew he was slightly tilty, and I knew that my hand had showdown value. And then I went back and looked at the board because there are other types of situations where sometimes you can make these hero calls and you might lose to a bluff. And there are times when it's very, very close in a scenario like this where I'm thinking about making a certain call, but then I end up folding because I think a small portion of my opponent's range might actually beat my bluff catcher. In this particular spot, I didn't think that that applied. Like I don't think that this guy is turning pocket deuces or pocket threes into a bluff. He is going to be very, very happy to check that river, possibly to call because of busted draws, but there's really no reason for him to do that, especially on a paired board. So I wasn't concerned about me calling and him saying good call and turning over like six deuce, which is actually middle pair, or pocket deuces, or pocket threes, or like ace eight. Again, in a situation like that, well, excuse me, ace eight, ace better kicker , which looks like it would chop anyways. I chop with ace seven, but like ace nine, the nine would play, right? And that's just a pattern that I've picked up is someone's not going to turn a decent ace high here into a bluff when it looks like I also have ace high as well. So I put it all together. I mean, and the other thing though too, you know, you always have to go back on is it's a large bet. Like how often does somebody 2x the river here in live poker as a bluff. And maybe if I hadn't noticed that this guy was slightly steamy from the short term, I don't make this call. I might have gotten very curious, but I might not have leaned towards the call just because I hadn't necessarily seen anything, but with that added information and that small stakes exploit and also the fact that I don't think he's bluffing with a better hand than me, I flicked in the call and he said, good call, and I did not wait for him to turn over his hand. I immediately tabled my ace high, Ace3 ., And the guy of course, looked bewildered. That concludes this free version of the Crush Live Poker subscription podcast. You just heard about 25% of the full podcast here for free. To hear the rest of this episode, become a