Four Betting With Pocket Kings

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 finding some mistakes when winning a lot. And in this particular episode, we will find some small mistakes even though I won a lot because there's always mistakes that you make and always things that you can do to improve your game especially when you go back and review . So we are going to cover a super session that I had at Encore Boston Harbor. And normally, when I define it, or what I define as a super session, is usually winning something like over 300 big blinds. I mean, I ended up winning 2,600 at 2-5, but it was mostly straddled. And then I won 1,700 at 5-5 PLO. And we actually will c over what I thought was a pretty interesting hand against a pro PLO player at the end of this podcast. Try to incorporate some PLO in here as well as I've talked about that. So overall forty three hundred dollars up. And I only played for maybe six or seven hours. So I had a really, really good month of February. I think I won almost eight or nine thousand. And again, that's playing maybe like thirty to 35 hours. I can't really complain. But there were a lot of interesting spots that I want to cover. And just as a funny sort of side note, the very first hour that I played at the 2-5 game, I played 17 hands. And it was just because of the distribution of cards. And then there were some limp hots that I got in, you know, in the straddle, and we're actually going to cover at least one of those limp pots. But it came to a point, and we'll talk about it as we start to cover some of these hands, where I picked up so many hands that I had cospie hands. Like somebody, you know, a couple people limp in and I had like ace three suited where I actually overlimped. Or a hand like pocket sevens or pocket eights where I actually flatted just because even though I I had a decent image at the start, I feel like if for some reason over the short term it appears like you're playing a lot of hands, then you won't get as much credit in certain situations. So it's not a bad approach to sometimes take the mix spots, the mix situations, and take a little bit more of the passive route. So if a hand is mixed raise, mixed call, mixed rebet, mixed call, and you play a lot of hands for that hour. Sometimes I actually will take the passive route because I feel like I might actually get less fold equity in the short term. Now us,ually I talk about image as a function of winning or losing. And if you have cultivated a winning image, then by all means, play as aggressively as you want. It just happened to be in the beginning of this session that, I picked up just a lot of playable hands. And like the opposite of the podcast that I did from like one or two weeks ago, where it was literally one of the most frustrating sessions that I've had in quite some time where I missed like 12 flops in a row as the pre-flop razor with things like ace king or pairs where overcards came. This time in this session, I literally hit everyone. So these things come in clumps, like raising with ace king, hitting the ace, raising with ace queen, hitting an ace, hitting a set, having pocket jacks, be an overpair, things like that. So things come in clumps. Okay, onto the hands. Now I've got six hands here and then one PLO hand and I've put some concepts and parentheses for these particular hands that literally I think really come straight out of like small stakes exploit. Small stakes exploits. The first one, I mean some of m some of them kind of small stakes exploits, some of them are just concepts. But if you if you look in the notes, I've put the key notes into or the key concepts into the notes. And I got into the game right away. I think I got there at like 10 30, something like that. Most of the table was unknown to me, except for one guy who is just absolutely great for the game. And I was talking I've been talking about this guy, Fremo. I haven't seen him around, but there's this Hispanic guy that's really, really good for the game that was sitting to my direct right, and I was like, Oh, this is gonna be a a really good game here too. But for the most part, the rest of the people at the table, I't didn necessarily know. And there was a couple of regs, but they were like recreational, sort of bad regs. So overall, it was a pretty good table. It was definitely a pretty good table. So this first hand, hand number one, I was actually the pre-flop razor for this hand. Like I said, I had just been playing like a lot of hands, just a lot of hands, just because I had gotten a lot of raising hands. And it wasn't even necessarily premiums. Like I don't even know if I got aces. It was just a lot of raising hands, like Queen Jack suited, queen tens suited, things like that, small pairs. But follow me what I'm gonna talk about here in a second. So this hand goes down, and this was not straddled, and it was in the beginning of the game. So we're about a 1K thousand a thousand effective. And there's one limp, and the the limper is to my right. It's the Hispanic guy who kind of plays loose aggressive, but sometimes maniacal , and he just makes a lot of wild bluffs, let's just put it that way, in a lot of situations. So although as I won more and more, he's like, Do you play five ten? It's funny about image, man , because once you start winning and you got a lot of chips in front of you, a lot of people stop trying to bluff you the wild bluffs. And that's why, and and they give you credit. And that's why to cultivate that good image, especially if you're playing in severely restricted cap buying games. I always talk about how you should try to play sessions as long as possible because your win rate will go up because you get to win a lot of non-shone-down hands. So this hand goes down. One lamp and I'm in with uh queen tennis spades. I got in my right limp. So I have queen tennis beads in the hijack and I make it 25 because there's no straddle. And the big blind, who is this like recreational kind of older guy, not really tight, but definitely recreational. Sometimes he plays PLO too. He makes the call and the limper calls. So pot's 75 bucks. Again, I've got Queen Ten of Spades. And the flop comes out, Queen of Diamonds, Jack of Clubs , Four of Hearts. So I flop top pair, and it gets checked to me. Now, I went a little bit back and forth with this because sometimes, especially with this specific hand, I always give sort of this example: Queen 10, or sometimes King Ten. When the board is very dry, like if I raise with Queen 10 or King 10 and it comes out like King Deuce 4 rainbow, something like that, with the no flush draw, as the pre-flop razor, I will sometimes check like two or three ways. Just because, especially on low boards, there isn't a whole lot to get value from. Sometimes somebody might try to kind of bluff at it later on. You might allow somebody to catch up. So when it got checked to me, I looked at it on Queen Jack 4, because obviously I'm losing the King Queen, Queen Jack. I don't think anyone has Ace Queen. I thought about it for a split second. I was like, oh maybe I'll just check this one back. And then I just quickly realized, wait a minute, look at the people that are in the hand with me here. Like maybe against two good players, sometimes you do check this, but I was just like, no, I'll just bet. And my version of a small bet in live poker, like my version of one third was actually thirty into 75. And the big blind calls next to act. Again, it's Queen Jack 4 Rainbow. I've got Queen Ten of Spades. And the Liber just snap check raises to 105. Snap check raises to 105. Now against an unknown guy , I'm going to give that check raise a lot of credit. Although I will say, if you do expect someone to raise with Pocket Queens or Pocket Jacks preflop, they're not necessarily representing a whole lot for value , but still people limp him with like Queen Jack, Pocket Force all the time. But against this guy, there was no way I was folding now. And especially if I had position on him. And I and he probably viewed that as sort of a tiny bet. And sometimes he's just out to left field. So I was never not going to continue on against him, probably for at least two more streets. So 30 call, he tracker raises to 105 . I call pretty quickly. And then he gets back around to the big blind who just sna p back raises to 550. And a back raise, as I define it, because again, these are all made-up terms, is when you call a bet and then you raise another raise. So it's literally has to be like a multi-way situation where it goes bet, you call somebody raises, and then when it gets back around to you, you re-raise. That's a back raise. It's one of the strongest plays that you could ever make in live poker. And what I was going to talk about here for a second is is that could you ever actually make this play as a bluff, especially going in as an unknown, and we'll talk about a situation where you could. So he back raises to 550 off of like 1K, got in my right folds, and I just snap fold. And he turns over Queen Jack offsuit for top two, which is probably a little bit of an overplay in a spot like that. I mean, he's never getting value from me from Morris. I mean, even if I were to have like Asus there, I'm just and I call theed the wild guys check raise. I'm just snap folding there. So it's a kind of an overplay of way ahead, way behind. But what I wanted to bring up was let's say you were in the big blind and you had called my race and, you didn't have Queen Jack, but you had like something like 910 suited or King 10 suited, something like that, where you were like open-ended. And you called my bet as the pre-flop raiser, like I bet you called, and then some wild guy check raised, and then the preflop razor called, like I did, you could just back race there all day, all day long. This assumes that the guy who's check raising is kind of wild because a lot of times someone who's check raising against the preflop razor isn't folding. I think maybe even a better example would be let's say the pre-flop racer checked in somebody in the field bet and you had nine ten or king ten in the big blind on say queen jack four and you just called. You didn't attack the field better because you didn't think the guy was going to necessarily fool the queen. And now the pre-flop razor check raises. I talked about this on the Colin show actually a little bit recently. Because sometimes you will see guys check raise overpairs if the field caller calls, or even if the field caller doesn't call, and it gets back around to you, you could back raise as a semi-bluff with a hand like 9-10 or king 10. Because look at that action, pre-flop raiser checks, field better bets on Queen Jack 4, you call preflop razor check raises. Let's say the field guy call s comes back around you and now you back raise. That is it it's just so value, so much value, like close to 100 % of the time in live poker, I feel like you can implement that in your game. Again, you have to sort of tread with caution when you do it against somebody else who check raises against the pre-flop raiser, because that's usually stronger. But if the preflop razor check raises and you think he might have some overpairs or might be doing it with something else, that back ra ise is so, so strong. So I put down in the notes semi-bluff back raise. So keep that in your back pocket. The possibility of sometimes semi-bluff back raising when you just call a bet and then somebody else raises it and you have the opportunity to look super strong by re-raising a raise. Obviously, you want to do this with maximum fold equity and not just run into a crazy spew type of situation. Okay, hand number two. I mean this got me off winning right away. I mean there isn't a whole lot to this hand, although I will say there is a little bit of a small stakes exploit here. So two five plus ten , I actually started straddling immediately and then we sort of picked it up I I would say maybe seventy percent of the table was straddling. So this lady is in the straddle, this Asian lady, never seen her before, and it gets folded to me at one K effective and I'm in the hijack with King of Diamonds, King of Spades, and I raise it to 30. This guy on the button calls, and she makes it 18 5. So 30 call 185. Now, when we talk about the pre-flop threshold, we talk about if you cannot raise it any less than I would say maybe like 30% of effective stacks in a given situation , it's usually better to just jam. Because if you're in a situation where a clickback commits you, where you're liter where your opponent literally knows that you're basically paw committed, then there's no point. Jamming over the top actually might make make it look more bluffy. However, if you have a big hand, usually I talk about aces, but could be kings to a lesser extent , you can sometimes break the pre-flop threshold in a given situation because you want the call. And obviously it's better with aces because if someone has an ace and you've got kings and they see the flop, obviously you're losing. So I thought about this one and I was like, all right, so it went from 30 uh 30 to 185. So she's raising 155. The minimum that I could make it would be 340. We only started at 1 K. So right off the bat, like if I make it 340 and she jams, I'm always getting two to one. I suppose you could do this as a bluff and make it break the pre-fluff threshold and just make it look um like you're never, ever gonna fold, but then you get into situations where someone might call you from out of position. So I thought about just jamming, but I was like, you know what? Let me just click this back. I don't care if it looks like I'm committed, which I am. Maybe she won't know . Right. And maybe I'll get more action. So 30 call, she goes to 185 , and I sort of click it back to 360. I mean, I guess it could have made it 350. And obviously, I'm very, very incentivized to four-bat there with the button behind, although she did make it really, really large. So I go to 360, the button folds off, and she thinks about it for a while, and then she jams, and obviously I call and she has pocket queens and I win. So