Anton "BlaCKSuRGeoNNaiV" described his thoughts on the hand from the initial stage of the $2 tournament, and coach Vladislav "pravdazatoboy" B pointed out his mistakes.

Playing a tournament on the GGPoker network for $2.16 with knockouts. It's a relatively early stage of the tournament. At the time of the hand, the effective stacks are slightly more than 90 bb. There is no information on opponents.

At very low stakes, we often face limps and the multiway pots that result from them. It's not uncommon to see 3-4 limps from any position. My strategy is to play from my range and isolate 100%.

Preflop

Preflop, I didn't notice that the button limped too, and then I made the mistake of only betting four bigs. As a general rule, against a single opponent, my standard raise size with an unmade hand is 3.5-4bb. It seems to me that the size of the isolation here should be higher, but carelessness prevented me.

Making guesses about an opponent's limping range can be tricky. I figured that UTG would have about 40% of hands there, and the button would have a little more. They limp low aces, small pocket pairs 44-22, offsuit KQ-K8, QJ-Q8, JT-J7, and offsuit connectors without a picture card. Of the suited ones, there may be all the kings, some of the queens, and all the cards that a straight can make.

My ATo against this range will be ahead in equity, I have 65% preflop. Therefore, I like to isolate here, but I made a mistake with the size.

Flop

Not the most pleasant flop, as it suits the range of limpers very well. However, I do have outs on the straight, plus my jacks/queens will often be better from an opponent's point of view. If they had a queen or jack with a good kicker, they would have raised preflop, not limped. I think if you look at the Flopzilla, our hand still has good equity.

As a rule, after isolating I play 100% c-bet on the flop, but then for some reason I decided to do a check-raise. Apparently, this is a mistake – with an unmade hand, we don't want to build up the pot. It was possible to play from a continuation bet, the opponent would hardly have raised, and if he decided on this, then I have a simple solution – fold.

Turn

The turn didn't change the structure of the board much, and I thought that with the second barrel, there was a chance to knock out a weak queen and lower combinations – pocket pairs and draws. I think 1/3 sizing is a mistake; here, you probably need to bet tighter, since your opponent will pay a third of the pot with almost any hand.

River

On the river, I think we should have given up – we have no showdown value, if the villain called on the turn, then on this river we probably have no fold equity. We will not beat anything with a red-hot iron. Plus the flush came in. Overall it's a bad river for me.

In general, I didn’t play the hand optimally, but the opponent also played it wrong too :).

Coach's Comment

Vladislav "pravdazatoboy" B

Isolating the entire range out of position is definitely a bad idea. In such a situation, you can play about 80% of your hands, and only 20% of them should isolate.

When choosing a size for isolating out of position, I would keep in mind that it would be easier for our opponents in position to play post-flop, so I would like to protect my value range with a tighter sizing. I like 5-6 bb bets. 4 bb is too low a price in my opinion.

Post-flop we found ourselves in a multipot against supposedly two amateurs. I would try to win back such spots quite honestly and simply, starting from my own equity. I would absolutely not think about balance here and would immediately try to get with value hands, and for bluffs, I would just use hands with draw potential. On the flop I would always choose to bet a third of the pot, this size has two goals – to knock out weak hands on the flop from both opponents, and to realize the nut equity.

On the turn that came out in this hand (another J), in my opinion, you can check (with an eye on the check-fold or bluff on the river if it goes check-check). This turn card makes things worse for us – there will be a lot of second pairs in Villain's range, and the potential hit of our overcard now will not always give us the best hand. I would also keep in mind that this was multiway pre-flop and weak draws on later streets would have very limited potential here.

I think 1/3 sizing is a mistake; here, you probably need to bet tighter, since your opponent will pay a third of the pot with almost any hand.

In overinflated pots, even a third-pot sizing will achieve the necessary goals: it gets some folds and an inexpensive showdown. A large bet will not generate more fold equity, but it will make it much more expensive to implement. Again, I don't love the idea of check-raising the flop, but assuming what hands we could knock out with a bet on the turn, then it will be weak third pair and all sorts of dubious equity (weak draws, small aces, and flop backdoors), this range you can get to fold for this size.

I don't like this line at all. It seems that we have set ourselves a goal – to win the hand at any cost or to show off to our fans. I'm closer to the approach that in a game against amateurs, I want to act as simply as possible. At the same time, don't turn crazy, and most importantly, expensive bluffs. As a result, I don't really support the idea of ​​check-raising the flop in conjunction with a continuation on the turn, but if we suddenly played this way for some reason, then I'm in favor of just playing check-fold on the river.

I'll explain separately why a check-raise line on the flop is bad: when we bluff with a direct c-bet with a third of the pot sizing, we are playing against a very wide range and we will get a lot of folds. Yes, there are two opponents against us, but in the case of a bet on the flop, a bluff is not so expensive for us, while the minimum number of folds required will be reached, and also, as I said earlier, we will achieve the main goal – to make our draw hands cheaply. When we choose to bluff check-raise, we are dealing with a stronger range of the opponent (after all, he bet on the flop, that is, there is far from the entire preflop limp-call range). As a result, our bluff becomes much more expensive and hardly more effective.