Session Notes: Part IV

In this continuing series of articles, I’m taking a look at the hands I recorded from a session I played a few months ago. I think it’s absolutely necessary to do so in order to get a good idea of what trends you can see in your game, good or bad, and really analyze how you’re playing individual hands as well. All hands are from $5-$5 no-limit hold’em, and stacks are $1,000 effective unless otherwise noted.

Hand 1: Loose, bad player limps under-the-gun (UTG). He calls too many hands, calls with bad draws, and bluffs in very weird spots. I make it $25 with A 10 UTG plus two, and we see the flop heads-up. The flop is K-J-4 with two diamonds. He checks, I bet $30, he makes it $80, I call. Turn is another king, we both check. River is a 4, he bets $150, I call. He has Q-Q.

This hand looks more like something from my limit hold‘em days. The preflop raise is borderline at best, especially because where I play, flops are often seen four or five-handed. My hand does not play well in multiway pots. The only thing I have going for me is that I sometimes get to isolate versus a bad player, but I’m pretty sure this doesn’t make my raise a good play. I think the only good play I made on this hand was betting the flop and checking the turn. Other than that, not very good. Calling the check-raise on the flop doesn’t do much for me. I can make an argument for being deep enough to call for implied odds when a queen hits, but I can’t be certain my ace is good because he could easily have A-J or A-K and I can’t be certain he doesn’t have a flush draw with a pair or Q 10. If I have four outs, which isn’t certain, I have to make about $500 on the turn and river in order to make the call profitable. I’m not sure he’d call big bets on the turn and river with a king, so it would have to be a set or two pair, which means I’d have to make even more money on the turn and river because I’m a bigger dog. I don’t like the call here, but it’s not the biggest mistake I made in the hand. Calling the river is pretty terrible. I would definitely call the river in limit hold’em getting 5-to-1, but in this instance, getting 2.5-to-1, I don’t like it. I don’t think this particular player has too many bluffs in his range in such a small pot. He would have to be bluffing almost 30 percent of the time for my call to be right, and there’s no way that’s the case. This is something I’ll talk about in a later edition of session notes because it’s clearly a trend in my game that I needed to work on.

Hand 2: An unknown player makes it $25 to go, three off the button. I make it $60 from the button with Q Q. The big blind (BB) calls. He’s a tricky player that has pretty good betting frequencies but probably plays too many hands preflop though he does play them pretty well after the flop. The flop is J-4-3 rainbow and we all check. The turn is the 8, putting up two hearts. BB bets and both of us call. The river is the 9, they check to me, I bet $210, BB folds and preflop raiser calls. My hand is good.

A very oddly played hand by me, but hands like this are sometimes necessary, especially when you’re playing super deep. On the flop, I usually bet, especially multiway, but I wasn’t very interested in playing a huge pot against the BB and I would have no choice but to call him down. I thought his range was very pair heavy, and that I could exclude Q-Q plus from his range since he would have four-bet, and he knows I would have to get it in against him due to our history (he’s four and five-bet all-in against me with 5-5 and 10-9 in the past). Also, he knows that I know he likes to sometimes four-bet as a bluff, so it would be a perfect spot to do so with an actual premium pair, because I would give him less credit for a hand in this situation. I checked back the flop for pot control and some deception, making it more likely that they’d put me on an underpair or A-K or A-Q. BB bets the turn, and again I don’t want to turn this into a huge pot, so I just call. I plan on betting the river if checked to. That’s exactly what happened, but I probably didn’t get the maximum on this hand. I think my opponent’s calling range has a ton of jacks in it, and that they’re probably not folding to any reasonably sized bet so I most likely could have gotten $300 on the river.

We can learn things from hands that we played well and hands that we played not so well. In the hands that we played well, we can look at the trends that appear and exploit them, as well as looking for situations where we can get more value. In the hands that we play not so well, we can look for things to cut out of our game to increase our winrate in the future. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG