Strategic Decisions with Pocket Tens

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 on mental game, how to work through a frustrating session. Alright, so let's start off here. And it's interesting because the session didn't start off frustrating for me. We had big time action in the beginning of the session. So I sat there and maybe I was maybe like 30 minutes, I would say, into the session. And the primary villain in this particular hand is a guy. He's a little bit younger than me that doesn't really play hold'em all that much. And I've played with him in PLO. I actually won a huge pot with him in PLO. I don't know, about a month ago I talked a little bit about it, where I had a run-down hand and he had aces and I flopped like bottom two and an open-end straight draw, and I won a massive pot against him at five five PLO. But he tends to be a little bit more on the aggressive side. And obviously, I know he doesn't play a ton of PLO, a ton of hold'em. He's a PLO player, or at least he has been recently. So this hand goes down. And again, we're pretty much straddling, even like right off the bat. We're pretty much straddling right away. And this hand goes down maybe about a half an hour in. So it's two five plus ten. And we're about twelve hundred and fifty dollars effective. I was a little bit torn here with the sizing and what I wanted to do because I didn't want to let the guy off the hook. So check this one out in terms of bet sizing. So it starts off with the hij ack, who is the primary villain raising it up to 25? Now I'm in the straddle. So he goes to 25, the cutoff and the button call, the small blind calls, and I don't know. I think I had a mental brain fart a little bit. I actually misclick three bet. I have ace king offsuit. I'm in the straddle. Normally what I would look at, I would be like, what is four times the raise size plus the dead calls. So in this case, as sort of a default, and maybe I might go a little bit larger from out of position, but as a default, four times 25 is 100. You get one, two, three callers in there. I'm usually going to make it at least one seventy five here. The times that I'm going to make it smaller are when the the restrict you know when the stacks are smaller or sometimes if I think people are so bad and I've got like aces or kings and I want to keep them in because I I I feel like I would get more money guaranteeing a call pre-flop, which is usually not going to be the case when it's super multi-way. This was just an introduction to how multi-way the pots were. I mean, there were some pots, there were some hands where literally, literally in a straddle pod, there were seven people that limped in. And I was in the straddle. I mean, it was insane. But I had a I I don't know what ended up happening, just some sort of weird mental misclick. I raised it up to 130. And as soon as I did it, I was like, wait a minute, this this is not right. So I made it way too small. I threw bet to 130 out of the straddle with Ace King offsuit. The origin al guy who was I excuse me, I had actually said that the villain in the hand is the hijack. The villain in the hand is actually the button. So it went hijack open, cutoff call, villain is on the button. He calls, which is obviously going to play an important role in the hand reading. So the so the primary villains on the button, I misclick to 130. The original razor calls, the cutoff calls, and the button calls. The only person we lose is the small blind. So we go to the flaw four ways. Four ways. Hij ack cutoff button and me in a three-bet pot. And the pot's like 550. And I've got about 1120 left. So like two SPRs in a multi-way pot. And I have Ace of Diamonds, King of Hearts, by the way. And the board comes out: King of Diamonds, Jack of Spades, Four of Hearts. So King Jack four rainbow. I've got Ace of Diamonds, King of Hearts. The pot is like 550 , and I'm out of position to all these guys. Now, much kind of like in this particular session, even though I didn't connect with the flop all that much, I did consider checking primarily because it was multi-way in a three-bet pot. And you know, there's a possibility people can have King Jack and Pocket Jacks and things like that. But then I was like, what are you even thinking about? I mean, look at this game. It's almost like playing like a one-three game. And usually the best approach in these particular spots is just to bet your hand for value and then reassess if somebody puts pressure on you, like bet fold. I mean, I talk about that type of thing all the time . So you could call it exploitatively. I'm going to be doing a lot more bedding. And that's actually , you know, a concept straight out of small stakes exploits too, usually in a single raise pot, where you're just doing a a a larger volume of bedding than maybe is what might be optimal in a given situation. Now it's a rainbow board, so I didn't I knew I didn't necessarily have to go all that large as the effective stacks aren't even really all that deep. So I come out and I bet 180, which is about one-third the size of the pot. So I go 180 on King Jack 4, and the hijack folds, the cutoff folds, and the primary villain who double flatted the raise, by the way. Remember he, called the raise and then double flatted. He calls. So we're now heads up. We 180 and call. So now the pot is $9 10 . This is where it gets a little bit awkward because I've got like 9 40 left. Like I have just over a pot size bet left. And we go to the turn. The turn is pretty much a brick. It's the deuce of spade, so it's king of Diamonds, Jack of Spades, Four of Hearts. Turns the Deuce of Spades. The only thing that that obviously changes is that there's now a backdoor spade draw. So if someone were to have a straight draw like a Queen 10 with spades. They'd now have a backdoor straight draw if they had king x with spades, or if they somehow had like four x with spades. He closed the action pre-flop, which is also important here. It's not like he called next to act. If he was the original Razor, especially in the hijack and he called my bet next to act with two people behind him, I think that that is way, way stronger than what actually happened here, where he's closing the action. He's not even overcalling. He just closes the action. And I made a pretty small bet. So it's King Jack for Deuce now with two spades, the Jack and the Deucer spades. And this is where I was a little bit torn with about one SPR because I have ripped it in situations like this, but I didn't necessarily want to lose him. And at this point, especially against this guy I just didn't think now I was pretty much ever going to be folding. Like he he's just never the I mean the hand that I'm losing to primarily here I would say would probably be like pocket force. I suppose he could have King Jack and slow play it. He didn't have to worry about somebody behind him. So that's possible. I mean he could have like a hand like King Jack offsuit, something like that. But I certainly didn't want to lose him. So I was kind of calculating the pot out with about one SPR. I was like, well, if I go like one third again here, and he makes the call, the pot's gonna be a little bit over 1500, and I'll have about 600 left. So that leaves me with about a 40% pot size bet left. And that's fine. I think that that's more efficient than say just ripping it all in and somehow like if he's got like king five suited, he makes some sort of crazy hero fold or something like that. Now the only thing about this type of sizing though is that it is going to price him in if he were to have even like a queen 10 off suit. Like if he called the flop with like queen 10 off suit and he didn't even turn the backdoor here. I'm only betting one third the size of the pot. He's gonna be getting like four to one if I bet like one third the size of the pot. I ended up betting three thirty into nine ten, so a little bit larger. But he's ending gonna get up like four to one like in it as an immediate price, like if he makes the call, the pot's gonna be over 1500. We're gonna have like 600 left. So there are some implied odds there, too. Although I will say that the draws are somewhat transparent in the sense that, well, I suppose if the river is an ace, it's kind of tough when I make like top two pair. If that were to fill Queen 10. River's a nine is a little bit dicey as well. So you can get into these situations where if you bet smaller, you're sort of pricing your opponent in. And then if you don't leave much left and you're gonna call anyways, you're basically giving him a free shot. But I still thought that it was the right type of sizing against this guy. I ended up betting 330, King Jack for Deuce. And he thinks about it for a while. And now he moves all in. And I was like, well, I just did a meant I did a count real quick and I was like, all right, the pot here is going to be about 330 into 910, it's gonna be like 1240 plus like another 9 40. It's gonna be like 2 1 , 2200, and about 600 for me to call. So I'm getting over three to one here. The guy is aggressive, and if he's got a set of force or king jack off, so be it. Now, if this was a different type of player that plays more straightforward, then I could definitely consider making a hero fold in this particular spot, even if he is just representing a very thin value range. This is where I think it's important to sometimes, you know, pay attention to your player pool if you're playing the same people over and over aga again. Butinst this guy, I was just like, well, I'm just gonna go with it here. So I ended up making the call and the river comes off like a red three or something like that. It's just like a total brick. So it's King Jack four dudes three. And he says para fours. And I turn my hand over and I realized like after the fact, I didn't really know if that meant like he had a set of fours or not. But I turned my hand over when he said pair of fours and I got shipped the pot. So it seems to me like he must have had four X of spades. Because again, it was King of Diamonds, Jack of Spades, Four of Hearts, Terms, the Deuce of Spades. So I bring back that whole thing where I think this is a an easier call because he closed the action on the flop because he can just be much wider. Whereas if he was next to act, he really should not have four X here. So this is why it's so , so important to recognize what I like to call configuration, which is basically just the positional setup. Whether it's pre-flop, bringing everything together, pre-flop, post-flop here, it's a double flatter. So we know he doesn't have like pocket kings or pocket jacks. Usually he's probably gonna three bet off even to like with suited Broadways. And he's going to be much wider because he closed the action post-flop, just like if he was like closing the action, if he was in the big blind or something on the flop. Whereas if the pre-flop raiser had called next to act and then everybody else folded and I still took the same line, that would be much, much closer, I think. I think it would be much, much closer, especially when people don't just jam like King Queen. I didn't have to worry about that. And basically like I immediately doubled up. Like I was up, I bought in for a thousand and now I'm up like fifteen hundred because I've got twenty five hundred in front of me. And that was literally like the highlight of my session in terms of like big, big hands. Now we're going to get to some of the more frustrating hands and frustrating spots as well, but again you know we when I start off a session like that and you win right away I'm like oh this is gonna be another I'm gonna I'm gonna put together like two super sessions in a row unfortunately for me it didn't really happen that way the next hand was really, really difficult for me too. Hand number two. And it happened, I would say about three hours into the session. So I just win that pot. And then I kind of dribbled down. I'm missing. I don't have the best image. I'm probably sitting with like 1800 to 2000 just have dribbled off like 500 to 700 in raising and just never winning a pot. And the villain in this hand was a guy I did not know. He was an older gentleman. He was probably in his early to mid sixties . He did get just get stacked, but I will say he was certainly playing much tighter than everyone else . And I thought the particular configuration here was quite troubling for me and quite scary and left it sort of left me in a lot of close decision points, I gotta be honest with you. And it sort of started pre-flop. Now, the thing is that when you look at a hand like this on paper and you look at the sizing that the guy took, especially pre-flop and then on the flop, you you might be like, well, that's not really indicative of a strong hand. But sometimes when you're at the table, things go down a little bit differently. And I definitely read this situation as this guy was strong. He hadn't done much raising pre-flop, and the fact that he raised after everybody limped out of the big blind was very, very indicative that he was strong, even though he might have used smaller sizing than he should have. And it wasn't really clear to me, as we talked about from a couple of weeks ago, about noticing people that were on tilt. Didn't look to me like he was really on tilt. So two five plus ten, eleven hundred effective. So he had w likeon a pot. He had gotten stacked and then sort of settled down and then had won a pot. And this hand goes down. And once again, I am in the straddle. Five people limp in. That's right. Five people at 25 10 limp in. Under the gun, middle position, like the hijack, cut off and button, like all limp in. And this guy from the big blind raises to 105 out of the big blind, and I'm to his left in the straddle with pocket tens. And I gotta tell you, like when you look back at this hand, I think all things are available here. You could make a case as tight as it sort of seems for folding. I actually think that you could make a case for folding and looking at a situation where I'm almost just set mining. I think tens are a little bit too strong for that, just to say that you're set mining, especially when this guy might have ace king. Like even if a guy is tight, like he's gonna have some ace king. The issue, though, of course, is if you call , some of these guys are going to come in behind and then it's going to become much, much harder to realize. Like if I was heads up against this guy, like say everybody had folded or the guy made it so large, if I were to call, I thought everyone was gonna fold behind me. If the board came out like jack five deuce and he came out with a small battery checked, I can stay in the hand with tens . But if it comes out jack five deuce and there's like three or four people behind me and he bets, I'm forced to fold. Or even if he checks, I can't really bet. So I kind of wanted to three bet here to drive some of the people out. But the problem, of course, was that the sizing of the three bet and the awkward sizes were such that what was I going to do? Three bet to like 300 and then when it came back around to him if he were to jam the pot would have been like something like 1500 probably 800 for me to call, getting like two to one. And you could say, all right, well, you can fold there. Like you could rake a raise fold for value, where maybe he doesn't jam here with Ace King, maybe he just calls and maybe he just calls with some other hands as well. And you can sort of shut the action off or raise smaller, raise to something like 250. And then if it comes back around to him fold, if he were to jam, I didn't like really that option all that much either, to be perfectly honest with you. I actually decided to call, but I actually think it is really, really close. And I think that all three options are available between actually just straight folding to a single raise with pocket tens , making a small three bet, and then I guess folding if he were to jam, if it came back around to him, I guess that's a raise fold for value. Just would suck though if you you know, if you if you fold it out and he had Ace King, I will say, and I remember mentioning this about six months ago, if I three bet here with 1010 and he only comes back over the top for a jam with like Kingings, aces, and ace king, that's actually better for me. Like I'm doing better against a jam range of king of a jam range of queens, kings, obviously Ace is ace an king with tens, then I am a jam range of jack's plus . So if he just came back over the top with like I I think I said queens, but let's say he comes back over the top, if I three bet and he comes back over the top, sometimes with Queens. Kings, Ace is an ace king. I have actually more equity against that range than I do versus Jax Plus. And of course, that's because with Jax Plus, he still has he still has the same equity when he has a higher overpair than me, like I'm still 8218. And he's doing it with eight more combos, or say nine more combos. If we gave him half the queens, he's doing all the jacks and half the queens. So that's gonna change our overall equation