So first of all I've played 5 events so far and have been eliminated within the first 15 minutes of when I got dealt my first hand in 4 of those events and bubbled the 5th, so not good (they were all big coolers or bad beats). Today I played the $320 no limit holdem ante up tournament and the $215 heads up tournament and both of my bust out hands were interesting.
First was the $320 holdem tournament. I began by opening to $50 in mid position with AK, the button (a bad player) called and the sb 3-bet to 250, we both called. The flop came KQ8 rainbow and the sb bet out like 350 into something like an 850 pot. I called and the sb folded. The turn is a 4 and he bets about half the pot. I call again and the river is a 2. At this point my opponent shoves all-in for about the size of the pot. Now, I only have top pair, top kicker, but think about what my opponent can have. I basically only lose to a set here. KQ is kinda possible but very rare (he would have needed to 3-bet preflop with it). Any other 2 pair is basically never. There are no straights or flushes possible. What he has done here is what we call polarizing his range. This simply means he either has a nut hand (in this case, a set) or is bluffing. If we count the number of nut hand combos there are, we see there is only 1 KK combo (2 Ks are out of the deck already), 3 QQ combos, and as for 88, 44, 22, those are going to be so rare that we'll give 1 combo for all of those combined and 1 more for KQ. That gives us about 6 combos that beats me. Since I'm getting about 2-1 on a call, he only needs to have 3 bluff combos in his range to make this a profitable call. When the number of bluff combos required is that small, you don't really have to think about what hands he might be bluffing with, just assume you have to call. I called and he turned over QQ, so I busted in that but it was just an unlucky spot.
My other bust out hand for the day was in the $215 heads up tournament. Going into the match I saw my opponent was a consistent winning player in low stakes tournaments. He kept having the nuts and developed a 2-1 chip lead on me when the following hand arose. I was dealt Td 4d on the button and min raised to 120, he called. The flop came Ac Ad 2d, he checked, I bet 120, and he raised to about 400, I called. The turn was a 6d and he moved all in for like 2000 into a 1040 pot. At this point I know in my head that I am like never folding but decided to stop and think for a second because I think it is closer then most people would think. Based on the way the match had played out up to this point, I felt like he was basically never going to be bluffing here. He hadn't made any big bluffs yet and has been playing very passively. Now if you are playing a good player, they will use their image (or at least might) but I didn't think he was ever going to. Additionally, think about if he has Ax. A naked A doesn't really get called by worse (except a worse A) or get better hands to fold. For this reason, it didn't make much sense for him to be shoving Ax. That brings his range to be boats and flushes. If that was his full range and I didn't believe he was bluffing this would be a very very close spot. (By the way, shoving a boat here isn't a bad play, my range after calling the check raise and then having the flush card hit is very strong and you'd hate to let me not go broke with Ax or a low flush by having a 4th diamond hit on the river). However, even though shoving Ax doesn't make sense, I was under the impression that my opponent wasn't very good and was capable of shoving Ax for one of two reasons: 1, he is protecting against a 4th diamond or 2, he is frustrated by the flush card hitting and so he just shoved. With this in mind, I called and he turned over some weak A and rivered a boat to send me to the rail.
Tomorrow I'll be playing the $265 NLHE 6-max Knockout and the $215 Razz. Hopefully I turn this around.
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