Some Tournament Hands: Part I

I recently played the WPT Regional tournament at the Commerce in LA. I do my best to make it up there for all or most of their $1,000 and higher tournaments. Not only do these tournaments offer really good value because of the level of play, they are run by the best tournament staff in the world. Matt Savage puts together great structures, the tournaments run efficiently and they always get the decisions right. One problem with many floor staffs for tournaments or cash games is inconsistency in vision, voice, and rulings. This is not a worry with Savage’s staff. They are clear on the rules and fair with their decisions. If the individual floor person is struggling with a ruling, Matt is always on hand, walking around to try and fix little problems that arise.

Now that I’m done with my little advertisement for Matt Savage run tournaments, let’s get to the poker. This was a $1,650 buy-in tournament with two starting days and unlimited reentry for the first four levels each day that ended up with 652 runners. I meant to record hands for the first starting day but spaced it. Luckily for the readers, I busted day 1a after registration closed and was there with notepad app in hand to record some interesting situations for analysis. My starting stack was the usual mix of Commerce tournament players, myself, Matt Affleck, Dan Furnival, and Young Man (whom those who play in games around California and Vegas will certainly know). Starting stack was 20,000 and, unless otherwise noted is roughly the effective stack in the hand.
50-100 blinds

With several empty seats because of late registration and late players, I open one of the first hands from the hijack with Q J to 250. The cutoff (who is effectively the button on this hand), small blind (SB), and big blind (BB) call. Flop is Q J 3. Checked to me, I bet 600, the SB calls, everyone else folds. Turn is the 2 putting up a club flush draw. SB checks, I bet 1,300 into 2,200, he calls. River is the 9, he bets 2,500 into 4,800. I think for a while and call. He has J 9 and I win.

I don’t think anything in this hand is particularly interesting until the river. Before river action I have my opponent on a range like this: K-Q, Q-10, Q-9 suited, J 8 plus, 10-9 suited, and K-10 suited. I didn’t really need PokerStove to tell me that I’m a favorite against that range on the river and I think he calls with enough of his range to warrant a value bet, so I was definitely going to bet if checked to and fold to a raise. I did just run it on Stove though and I’m an 85-to-14 favorite against that range. Things change a bit when my opponent bets the river though. I think I can pretty safely remove Q-10, J 8, J 10, and 10-9 suited from his range now. He may make a value bet with K-Q, though I think most people tend to make a blocking bet with that hand when they’ve used the check/call, check/call, lead line, so I think his sizing would be smaller. So, I’ll go ahead and remove the K-Q offsuit from his betting range and just leave in K-Q suited, so only two combinations of that remain. I definitely think he would bet Q-9 and J-9 for value and obviously he would bet K-10 for value. Now, we’re 50-50. Since we’re getting almost 3-to-1, obviously we should call, but should we raise? I think our opponent calls with Q-9, possibly calls with J 9, folds K-Q, and reraises with K-10. If we call, we win 7,300 50 percent of the time and lose 2,500 50 percent of the time for an expected value of (.5 * 7,300) minus (.5 * 2,500) equals 2,400.

There are two combinations of K-Q suited, four of K-10 suited, one Q-9 suited, and one J 9. When we raise, let’s say to 6,000, our opponent folds 25 percent of the time, calls and loses 25 percent of the time, and we lose 50 percent of the time. So, we win (.25 * 7,300) plus (.25 * 13,300) minus (.5 * 6,000) equals 2,150. Since we expect to make 2,400 calling and 2,150 raising. If he doesn’t call with J-9 our performance looks like this: (.375 * 7,300) plus (.125 * 13,300) minus (.5 * 6,000) equals 1,400. Finally, if he always folds a worse hand our performance looks like this: (.5 * 7,300) minus (.5 * 6,000) equals 650. We show a profit in all four situations, but calling is better than raising even when he calls with the entire portion of his range that we beat, which is probably a bit optimistic anyway.

There may be some game theory considerations, but I felt pretty good about the hand in the flow of the game and I don’t think calling looked weird. If we have a range of A-A, K-K, Q-Q, J-J, 3-3, A-Q, K-Q, Q-J, K 10, and 10 9, that’s a total of 56 combinations. Raising Q-Q, J-J, 3-3, and K-10 is 10/56 or 17.8 percent if the time. Calling A-A, K-K, A-Q, and Q-J is 33/56 or 58.9 percent of the time and folding K-Q and 10 9 is 13/56 or 23.2 percent of the time and that distribution looks good to me. It doesn’t allow for any bluff-raising range, but I think that’s probably OK in this spot.

This hand seems like a pretty standard line, but it’s always good to go back and do some checks of your basic lines to make sure you’re not making any major mistakes. Next time, we’ll take a look at some more hands from this tournament. ♠

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