Why So Serious?

After a solid start to the year Poker has really taken a back seat for me over the summer. Between running around like a madman planning my wedding, getting married, going on honeymoon, family holidays and catching up with friends I didn't put in many long sessions at the tables.

But now the summer is over, the nights are drawing in, and it's time to get serious about poker again. For the remainder of the year I plan to treat poker like a business and do some serious grinding! In particular I plan to focus on:

- Building and maintaining a more consistent routine

- Learning a new game (HU Hyper Turbos)

- Working on my mental game

- Working on my poker game away from the tables

Combined, all of these activities will help me to maximise my hourly rate in the months ahead.

As part of my new routine I'm going to update my blog every Friday. I've had a few suggestions and I've got some good ideas for blog posts, so look out for them in the weeks ahead!

I'm going to start by taking a look at an interesting hand I played this week:

PokerStars Hand $58.74+$1.26 USD Hold'em No Limit - Match Round I, Level III (20/40) -
Table '611403004 1' 2-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Villain (525 in chips)
Seat 2: Albumfiller (475 in chips)
Villain: posts small blind 20
Albumfiller: posts big blind 40
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Albumfiller [5c Kd]
Villain: calls 20
Albumfiller: checks
*** FLOP *** [7h 3c 4s]
Albumfiller: checks
Villain: bets 50
Albumfiller: calls 50
*** TURN *** [7h 3c 4s] [4d]
Albumfiller: checks
Villain: bets 160
Albumfiller: calls 160
*** RIVER *** [7h 3c 4s 4d] [Ac]
Albumfiller: checks
Villain: bets 275 and is all-in
Albumfiller: calls 225 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (50) returned to Villain
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Villain: shows [9c Qd] (a pair of Fours)
Albumfiller: shows [5c Kd] (a pair of Fours - Ace+King kicker)
Albumfiller collected 950 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 950 | Rake 0
Board [7h 3c 4s 4d Ac]
Seat 1: Villain (button) (small blind) showed [9c Qd] and lost with a pair of Fours
Seat 2: Albumfiller (big blind) showed [5c Kd] and won (950) with a pair of Fours

To provide some context there had been a fair amount of back and forth so far in the match and the villain is a fish who had been playing particularly aggressively post-flop.

Pre-flop on the button Villain was raising around 55% of his hands and limping around 25%. K5o will be well ahead of his limping range and a strong case could be made for taking a more aggressive line and shoving pre-flop (as my hand has good showdown value but isn't easy to play post flop). On this occasion I opted to check and see a flop.

The flop is actually a pretty good one for my hand. With our villain folding the bottom 20% of his range he won't have connected with this board too often. Since I expect the villain to raise all aces, kings and pairs pre-flop I can expect my king high to be good here a lot of the time. On top of that I also have a gutshot straight draw for a little extra equity in the rare cases where I'm behind, so it's an easy flop call vs an aggressive villain.

The turn pairs the board. Good news - if I was ahead on the flop I'm still ahead now. The villain now fires 160 into a pot of 180. This large bet really polarises his range to include mainly very strong hands or complete air. Against some opponents this bet size would set alarm bells ringing, but against a villain with an aggression factor of 8.0 it's less cause for concern. 

What value hands is he representing? An overpair that was limped pre-flop, a flopped straight, a flopped set (now a full house), or trip fours. I think it's unlikely he would make such a big bet with a pair of sevens (especially as we can discount A7 from his range). Furthermore I expect with all of those value hands the villain would be likely to bet less in order to entice me to call. Add to that the fact that I expect him to continue with almost all of his bluffs and this looks like a pretty straightforward call.

Finally on the river the ultimate scare card comes - the dreaded ace. This is actually a good card for me. In the unlikely event the villain was betting a seven or a limped overpair I would now expect him to check (the ace being a scare card for our villain and also A high should be a large part of my perceived range). When villain bets here it's even more likely to be a bluff than it was on the turn, and I was actually able to snap call.

I earned some abuse in the chat box from our charming villain for the call down, but when I break the hand down and look at all of the variables I'm happy with the way I played.

Feel free to call me a fish in the comments if you disagree!

Good luck

David