Tuesday, 8 November 2011

To rail or not to rail

Tonight will see the crowing of the new Main Event champ. I feel conflicted. On the one hand, I want to watch it because it's the biggest poker event of the year and I enjoy watching any poker (although I do often get bored after watching half an hour of some online game). On the other, it's pretty late and I fell asleep after a couple of hours of the first part of this final table, and I really don't want to waste all that effort trying to rail only for some irritating prick (Benba) to win it. I don't hate him that much, there are many other poker pros who are much worse, and he's not bad, but his behaviour at the table, and his stare, really get me worked up. Perhaps it's intentional. Heinz seems like an alright guy considering his inherent faults and he's played well. I'm backing Staszko though, he seems like the nicest guy there and his play is surprisingly good. And the idea of a former chess player winning it appeals to me, and I can see it helping the image of poker a fair bit.
Well that's all I've got to say about the WSOP at the moment. I've also been grinding funnily enough.
The play was pretty bad in the first session. People were open limp-calling preflop with big hands, AK on several occasions. As I've said before, I really don't like slowplaying big hands preflop, especially AK because you don't want too many opponents. Fortunately for me, this meant that I was one of the too many opponents and I flopped big hands against them a few times and they decided to play more aggressively post-flop. I won a fair few big pots like this and finished 99 hands with $1.11 profit.
The second session was much the same. In fact, I finished 91 hands with $1.10 profit so it was very similar indeed.
There was one big hand that I'm unsure about strategically. The SB had a VPIP of 95 and PFR of 0, whilst Button had 35 and 0, both from only 20 hands.
PokerStars Limit Hold'em, $0.04 BB (6 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com 
Preflop: Psychomobil is CO with 4, 4 2 folds, Psychomobil raises, Button calls, SB 3-bets, 1 fold, Psychomobil calls, Button calls  
Flop: (10 SB) 4, 9, K (3 players) SB checks, Psychomobil bets, Button raises, SB 3-bets, Psychomobil caps, Button calls, SB calls  
Turn: (11 BB) 3 (3 players) SB bets, Psychomobil raises, Button calls, SB 3-bets, Psychomobil caps, Button calls, SB calls 
River: (23 BB) 5 (3 players) SB bets, Psychomobil calls, Button calls 
Results: Button mucked 7, K (one pair, Kings). SB had 6, 6 (one pair, sixes). Psychomobil had 4, 4 (three of a kind, fours). 
Outcome: Psychomobil won $1 
I felt like I perhaps should have kept raising on the river to win potentially another 6 big bets. PokerStove says that I had 92% equity on the river against two players with 95% and 35% preflop ranges. And I was fairly certain that the Button could only really have a king. The BB was so loose that he could have had anything and it was unlikely that he had something, but I was concerned about the fact that this was his first preflop raise. As it happens, he had a kind of hand (though not one that I 3 bet with preflop or continue with postflop) but it was nowhere near good enough to have me beat.

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