This is a tough beat. He bet $35 and you raised $55 (you said TO $90, not another $90 on top of his 35). If you had raised him more, he may have folder his draw because the pot odds were against him. You don’t say how much was in the pot pre-flop.
It was probably $25 three ways, so roughly $75-$80.
Meh, this one’s a shrug for me. It happens, wouldn’t have played it any differently. My hand was well disguised, and I think I win a solid pot against some of his range.
OddSox won a Poker tournament on our cruise ship while I was taking a nap.
He won another cruise.
#itscruiseshipsallthewaydown
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I am just trying to learn here.
I see some wisdom in check-raise-shove immediately after the flop. He was on a draw, and I calc the odds of his making the outside straight at 31.5%.
if you check-raise-shove here, the pot odds are not in his favor, and he may be induced to fold, right? If it costs him $150 to win $150 and his probability of winning is only 31.5%, his correct play is to fold by my thinking. When I am playing a hand from that guy’s perspective, I try to think about what my price is to call and how much do I win and what I think the odds of me winning are.
Now, he may also want to weigh in the chances that you have rags, but the reality is that even if you have nuthin’ you still have a very very good chance of beating his 9 high busted straight.
So for these reasons, and with time to have some thinking on it, I like the idea of a check-raise-shove, and I like the idea of doing it quite quickly after he bets, to let him see you smile and convey the message that “Ha Ha. I just check raised you into my whole stack because my hand is already made and your is not and your draw will be expensive”
I’m available, if you’re tired of the overwhelming mundanity of cruising.
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If I know he has 7-9, then maybe that is my thought process. Though not sure I don’t want him to pay me the smaller bet, rather than fold.
The issue is I have no idea he has 7-9. As a middle position raiser, that is in his range, but I am putting him on a stronger starting hand the majority of the time. AA-99, AK-A10, KQ-K10, QJ, Q10, J10. And against those hands, I put my raise as much more likely to make the right amount of money. Hands like QQ and A10 may shove and be way behind. Hands like AK, QJ may call or even shove putting me on a bluff or only a mediocre hand. So my raise is meant to extract maximum value from the rest of his range, and not push out a hand like 7-9 or J-9.
The hot streak is officially over, and it stopped at the worst time as I went to Vegas to see how I would fare while WSOP action was underway. 
The plan was to play cash and build up enough of a bankroll to try my shot in either the $1500 Turbo Bounty, the $1000 Tag Team (I had another friend in town), or the $1500 Milly Maker. Well I pretty much took bad beat after bad beat and didn’t get a chance to actually plan any WSOP events. A couple of the worst ones…
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At Bellagio 2/5, I am hovering around my $400 starting stack after about an hour. I look down at AA under the gun and raise to $20. One or two calls and pro in late position 3-bets to $85. I fake-tank for about 30 seconds and shove in, pro snap-calls. River gives him a set of queens.
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Playing 1/2/5 Omaha at the WSOP cash area, I have about $900. Someone raises to $25 and after a call I pot to $105 or so with AKQJ double suited. Two callers and we see a A-Q-5 flop (with my nut K-flush draw). Early guy bets half pot and I shove, he calls off another $350 or so with A-7-6-2 (!!!). Runner deuces.
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Same game a bit later I’m back up to around $600. I call a preflop raise with 7-6-5-3. Flop is 7-7-6. Guy bets pot, I re-pot, he calls. Turn is deuce. He checks, I pot for his remaining stack of about $350-400. He tanks forever and finally calls with 9-7-3-4. Naturally, rivers the 9.
Just brutal but I felt like I basically always got my money in as a big favorite the whole trip. One other noteworthy thing was played an Omaha Double Board Bomb tournament. So there are only antes and no action preflop, then you see two flops and the betting continues as normal. Pretty action heavy and insane game with lots of super complicated spots to navigate. I chipped up from 25k to about 90k, but then couldn’t get much going after and ending up losing on a semibluff where I had a J-flush on one board and top-middle 2 pair on the other. Guy somehow called me off with just Q-flush and top 2 (neither of those typically win pots in this game). But I guess good on him. That was my only marginal spot the whole trip really. All in all that was the highlight of the trip as it was a super interesting format.
Guess it’s back to the local card room once every few months. But I would 100% go back during WSOP, the action is wild out there and there were whales aplenty just spewing off thousands of dollars. Maybe next time I’ll be lucky enough to share in some of that.
Rough beats.
I love being there during the WSOP. So much awesome action. I played a lot of PLO and Big O last time. So much good action and good games. But there is a pretty high caliber of player there during that time. Definitely whales spewing thousands, but a lot of sharp players as well. It’s not like playing against mostly tourists at the Bellagio on a random Saturday night.
I’d like to play in an event this year, but life just always gets in the way.
Hi GoA 
So after enough time to forget our covid misery, I did book the (mostly) free cruise, which is actually a poker cruise with free $1k+$150 main event ticket: https://www.ncl.com/pokerchallenge
Given that I would like to win some money, I could probably do with some reading up on tournament strategy; any resources y’all would recommend? Specifically could use some help with 15-40 BB stack depth and how to think about 3-bet shove types of spots, this is typically where I feel a little lost playing random online tournaments, but I’ll take any reading/watching ideas.
Anything by Red Chip Poker. They are extremely accessible and hit on all kinds of major ideas. A couple years back I listened to their podcast regularly and read some of their material before a Vegas trip and I won a smaller 30 person tournament and had the best cash game results of my life. Prior to that I had pretty basic knowledge of the game with occasional cash game experience.
Strategy depends on the blind structure. The faster the tournament, the luckier you’ll have to be. Unfortunately, a critical mass (double the percentage of players making the money) of players already know this, so a poker tournament eventually becomes a luck-fest. Feast on those who play too tight and play only their cards. Identify the players who raise in late position and show down winning junk hands, as they are the ones who know how to play tournaments, which, as I noted on the AO long ago, require a different strategy from cash games.
I still leaf through my PTF books before playing a tournament, just to remind myself to be aggressive, to aim for a high finish (not merely the bare-minimum payout) and not worry about the buy-in once I buy in. And to remind myself there are cash games filled with tilted, bust-out tournament players. I have often won back my buy-in at the cash games afterward.
And, your chips are ammo, not precious jewels.
Will check them out, thanks!
It’s a 3-day tournament, roughly 700 spots probably. I think that should translate into a reasonably good structure but I don’t know level duration at all so we’ll have to see.
The cash games will have horrific rake but the players are probably going to be pretty bad so I’ll probably play a bit if I bust day 1 and get a feel for if it’s worth it.
Yeah, that seems reasonable. Gonna guess hour-long blinds, but that often means that some players take unreasonably long times to fold pre-flop (like, ten seconds, every time, so as not to give away any tells, taking two seconds on their turn to look at their cards, etc.). So, it’s more like a 40-minute blind tournament.
The big analysis now is in bet sizes and timing to guess a hand range, and in trying to be deceptive while sizing one’s own bets and timing of bets.
Rake affects the way people play, too, I’ve noticed. High rakes means higher raises. Five-ten times BB is the norm for a flat $6 (Post-Flop) rake in a 2/3 game. MIN($5,10% of pot) rakes see more conservative play, and attract smarter players.
I was at Commerce (SoCal), and their rake was $4 on flop, $5 on turn, $6 on the river. That’s not bad, but downside it was Commerce: lots of collusion among certain ethnicities.
I have a Scottsdale trip planned and was going to try the tournaments there, as they do not have no-limit cash games: they are spread-limit (state law, I believe). The tournaments are no-limit, though. Something to do mid-day when it’s 110 degrees.
See, this is why newbies like me always win the first time. We don’t know wtf we’re doing and neither do you!
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Went to a local joint before meeting with FF owners to determine the draft order.
No, we do not do it via computer random generator or have ESPN do it for us. We go old school, but in this league, you get one folded slip of paper for being in the league, a second folded slip of paper for missing last season’s playoffs, and a third folded slip of paper for showing up at this “Summer Meeting” where, besides draft order, we discuss rule changes, when and where the draft will be, etc. So, I get three slips. The slips are picked from a bucket first to last, but are unfolded last to first; that way there is drama and tension. So, one owner had his three slips of paper unfolded in the first six unfoldings, so his draft was done. My three slips were among the last four unfolded slips and I got the first pick with one to spare.
Anywho, I go to a local club near where we met. Played 1/2 for about 20 minutes, lost about $25 then moved to the 2/3. Ended +135. Both big wins were AK.
One of which, I’m not sure if I saw his cards right, as he flashed them to the guy next to me, then mucked them, but the board was 9977x, and I think he had 88. So, I think he should have won. I feel a little bad. (Maybe they were 66.)
I also picked up a small pot with 88 and flopped a boat, over Kings. Stupidly, I bet into it and the two opponents folded. Should have checked to get them to improve. Only two hours, and I thought about going back after my FF meeting. But, nah.
I’ll be hitting an AZ casino in a few weeks, where it is “spread limit” but the spread goes up to $300 on a 2/3 table. Nearly no-limit. Might play a tourney just to get all antsy. I’ll report when I get back.
Likely will get some time in this week at Red Rock. Last trip over was about even. Should have been better but a lady rivered an inside straight after I made 2 pair on turn and bet pot. Time before was down with bad table - guy w Trump hat telling another guy at table he didn’t like his language and commenting on hand he wasn’t in and the other guy blasting back until manager came over. Best day so far was hitting the $500 for flopping quads.
WSOP Main Event just concluded.
Biggest field ever, over 10000.
“I’ve always kind of felt that poker was kind of going in a dying direction, but to see the numbers at the World Series this year has been incredible,” Weinman said. “And to win this main event, it doesn’t feel real. I mean, [there’s] so much luck in a poker tournament. I thought I played very well.”
I agree. There is a lot of luck, even if one does play well.
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tournament poker is 90% luck, 90% skill, 80% endurance, and 37% bad mathematics.
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That last day (final 3 players) lasted what less than an hour? Previous final 3’s in the main event have gone longer than a day. Looked a lot like house game tournaments I played in. No nuance, just all out aggression at the end.