Poker Articles

Analyzing a Recent Tournament Win, Part Two

In this series of articles, I am analyzing a recent tournament win online. I have uploaded the entire tournament onto pokerxfactor.com and you can find the link for the video here. I will try to make it so that the articles may be read as stand-alone articles, but watching the hand history reviewer will offer more insight and give you a better feel for the table dynamics. It'll be more work to read, but it will be a valuable tool for you in my opinion.

So, without further adieu, here is part two of my win in the FullTiltPoker nightly $150+13, 55k guarantee NLHE tournament. I will only comment on hands that are insightful.

Alright, so picking up on hand 98, I will only comment where necessary.

Hand 99. This is pretty LAG. With my stack of like 150 bb's and the Big Blind's stack of 100+bb's, I'm playing this hand like a cash game. I only recommend raising speculative hands like this in this spot only if you are comfortable playing a deep stack, because you will often be put in situations where you have to play a bloated pot with one pair. So, as played the board flopped dry Q high, this was good spot to c-bet. I get called. The turn came 9 (open ender, we have JT), we check, they bet small, giving us odds to draw. We peel one off, miss, and check fold. Standard, just like a cash game. This is not something you want to be doing with a 25 or less BB stack, or if you are not comfortable with a bigger stack.

Hand 113. You may be getting ancy to play, as we've folded 13 straight, but dharma is putting in 10% of his stack. You're going to get it in way behind too much to make this a profitable call. Remember, 20-1 is the range we want to call for implied odds.

Hand 115. You don't have to c-bet every time.

Hand 118-119... Gap in software, sorry... stack didn't change though... and action one time?!?

Hand 120. 88KOOK's stack size and our position make this a bad limp... us limping is basically asking for rash123 to squeeze and 88 could then easily isolate. Muck'em.

Hand 136. Even though we're bored, rash is going to ship it on us a lot and we're often going to be behind while having to call. There's no antes as incentive so just muck'em. I know i'm a little nitty, but I think it's right here.

Hand 159. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...................

Hand 160. O HI DER.... sigh.

Hand 165. This is basically a 7bb open shove from MP1. People sometimes get cute and make it a standard amount with aces or whatever, but sometimes they'll do that and fold thinking that you're huge. Anyways, we should be calling 7bb shoves in the BB with ATs, so we might as well shove and hope he disconnects. Unfortunately we did not play good and hit an ace.

Hand 168. OMG I was a nit. I remember this hand actually. I remember thinking that I didn't want to raise and then call a shove, because by raising I was committing myself. I also kind of wanted to induce a squeeze from the big blind. Not bad thinking, but I don't think this was the right spot for it. I should have raised and called a shove. By flatting I set up this gross spot on the flop. Gotta re-raise pre and get it in.

Hand 171. This is a pot odds thing. We were getting over 2-1 on a call and our hand, even though it's T6o, is +EV to call in that spot.

Hand 176. Bad spot to open. I think I was getting bored.

Hand 177. Good spot to open. Note: There are mistakes in all of our games and I highly recommend you do this exercise with yourself. You'll see stuff that you can't believe you're doing.

Hand 178. Interesting spot. Standard pre, really bad flat by the big blind. He should be folding or getting it in one way or another. So, I flop the nuts and even though it's vulnerable, this is a good spot to slow play, because he will bluff shove his stack on many turns and he only has a pot-sized bet left. Gotta bet turn, as a free card there could be disastrous.

Hand 181. Ball 4. You don't have to win every pot. We're still very comfortable, over 30bb's.

Hand 189. It takes a lot for me to fold top pair top kicker heads up, especially blind vs. blind, even with a pair on the board. Flat pre recommended only if comfortable post. I also don't mind a re-raise pre.

Hand 204. Standard, and more on the theme of you don't have to win every pot. Many times in these tournaments you hit long gaps of cold cards. Many players will complain about this and try and force things. We've done a good job thus far of chilling and maintaining our stack. Now, let's not push it and bet this flop... because the flop has "hit their range" very hard. What this means, and you can play with the numbers on poker stove, is that this flop is very strong for the hands in their pre-flop calling range, therefore the likelihood of you succeeding with a c-bet is significantly less. Since you need to succeed 1/3 times with a 1/2 pot sized bet, I don't think they're both folding 2/3 of the time and thus you should check/fold/hope to turn something good but not if they already have a huge hand cause then that would just suck.

Hand 206. Ball Four! I love it.

Hand 222. Standard open, must call any two cards here getting better than 4-1.

Hand 238. See my article "Accumulating chips... pt 3." After I folded, he typed in "I read your articles." LOL.

Hand 240. Alright... this is really bad. When you're at 25 bb's and below, you don't want to be flatting preflop, ever, unless you are inducing a squeeze or something. I basically just lit 10% of my stack on fire. I honestly don't mind shoving in this spot, although I think it's a little lag, but folding in this spot has to be the best.

Alright, I'm going to wrap it up here. There really was not anything exciting in hands 98-240, but it's a good theme for an article. So much is taught on creative plays that we often forget our fundamentals; that tight is very often right. We need to be able to get out of line when necessary, but remember, always know why you are putting money into the pot.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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About the Author:

Bryan Devonshire is a rising star on the professional circuit. Since he took second place in the first event of the 2006 World Series of Poker, he has cashed in four major tournaments, including a first place finish at the Commerce Casino. Bryan is also a featured blogger on PokerPages.com.