By
kice32
In Part 1 of this two-part article, I explained a self-evaluation of my tournament play over a series of 140 different tournaments. What I specifically examined in each tournament was the bust out hand (along with the hand before the actual bust out if relevant). In Part 2, I will review and analyze other groups of bustout hands from this sample of 140 online tournaments. Here is the summary of the results I covered in Part 1.
|
22-55 |
15 |
11% |
|
66-99 |
27 |
19% |
|
1010-AA, AK |
33 |
24% |
|
A10-AQ |
24 |
17% |
|
two broadways |
19 |
14% |
|
Ax |
10 |
7% |
|
S-connectors/one-gappers |
6 |
4% |
|
Others |
6 |
4% |
|
|
140 |
|
Since I addressed a few different groups in Part 1 (22-55, 66-99, TT-AA, AK), I want to examine the other groups in this article. There were several comments about grouping the hands in the ways that I grouped them. As long as you group your hands in a way that you can find similarities in the way you played the hands, it works for analysis. The hands should obviously be somewhat close in value as well.
AT-AQ
This group of hands had some striking similarities. AT accounted for 12 of the bust outs, while AQ was at 10. AJ only accounted for 2 of the bust outs.
Common Problem: Several of the bust outs with AQ occur in mid-stages of the tournaments against bigger hands pre-flop. Several times, I got involved in a 3-bet/4-bet situation in middle stages against stronger hands like QQ+ and AK.
Evaluation: While sometimes in deeper stages, these situations seem almost unavoidable and extremely difficult to get into, I wonder if 4-betting all-in during the middle stages in questionable situations is really worth it. Most of these 3-bet and 4-bet situations seem to come when both players are deep stacked and a 3-bet has less value than later in the tournament. Often, when I 4-bet, I’m not considering position, the value of my stack, and am using my propensity to want to gamble to my disadvantage. While there is a time and place to gamble, it’s probably not necessary to do it in middle stages, when I have room to maneuver post-flop and a 4-bet it only getting played back at by a huge hand. Might I be racing or the other player on a move? Of course, this is possible and did happen a couple of times, but the majority of bust outs here point to the AQ over-aggression in stages where it may have been better to not get so deeply involved.
Solution: I think the solution here is to understand the opponent’s position better. Is another considerable stack really going to play back at me with worse than AQ no ante/early ante stages of a tournament? I would think that most often the answer here is no. At the same time, I think it may also be better to take more flops here. I need to understand the purpose of my 4-bet. Am I expecting a fold here from an opponent who is 3-betting this early? Do I think I have the best hand and am looking for value? Very rarely do we see a situation where the answer to these questions is yes against a good opponent.
Common Problem: A little more than half of the AT bust outs have occurred after my 3-bet was just called. At this point, I had to proceed with a considerable amount of chips in the middle and not much room for different moves post-flop.
Evaluation: Ah yes! It is the dreaded flat call after we three bet with a marginal hand. The players I admire most know how to handle situations like this best. Judging by my results from this evaluation, I think I have a lot to learn. Several times, I get flat-called when I 3-bet out of position and am first to act. This is a difficult problem. The pot is so big that it’s very tough to not make a move on a rag flop. If a flop of 8-3-2 comes down, what could your opponent possibly have? I think the key to coming out ahead in these situations (and remember that coming out ahead sometimes means not hitting the felt here) dependes on sensing your opponent’s likely holdings. I know that my first instinct here is to always fire most of my chips in here. I just use the mentality that if I’m trapped, I’m trapped, but I may get some hands to fold. What I find in my results is that often, this flat-call is a stronger hand than I give it credit for. I don’t think there is an easy answer to this one.
Solution: I think the first line of information here is to pay attention to your opponents earlier in the tournament. That doesn’t offer much of a solution. The second key point to avoiding this problem is possibly giving more respect to opponents when I have no reason not to. This isn’t to say that playing aggressive is a bad thing, but moving to a new table and making a play like this against an unknown player could be almost considered getting into a coin flip with another player. The temptations of a big pot, when a player flat-calls your 3-bet, lead players to do crazy things. I think another thing we can do here is to make a 3-bet amount in a way that pays attention to our opponent’s stack. If we understand how much another player is committing, it may help us deduce the possible holdings.
Common Problem: Post-flop play
Evaluation: While the majority of the problems are covered in the above two points, I can’t help but notice some terrible post-flop decisions in general. When I catch a piece of the flop, I appear to have a difficult time getting away from it. For example, I flop maybe second pair and top kicker against the under the gun raiser that refuses to give up and eventually puts me to the test for all my chips. I often play post-flop in a passive manner that really leads to less than optimal “aggressive calling.”
Solution: Define where I’m at earlier in the hand when catching a piece of the flop or define my hand pre-flop.
I find this group of hands as one of the most difficult. I’m sure many players agree because finding the balance between aggression and caution is what determines success here. I almost don’t have an answer to any individual solution. Some players will likely be too passive and others too aggressive. The problem with this evaluation is that it’s hard to see when I’m too passive because I likely didn’t get into trouble with the hand.
Two Broadway Cards
This group of other two broadway cards including the KQ, KJ, KT, QJ, QT, JT combinations accounted for 17 of the bust outs. In examining the bust out hands here, there really seems to be a wide range of reasons and mistakes made. I don’t want to address post-flop play again because several of the same problems occur in this group. Catching top or second pair with a decent sized stack and not being able to correctly define my hand against my opponent's hand is again a problem here. With these hands, I almost feel like if I don’t have room to 3-bet with them as a short to below average stack, so it’s probably best to just fold.
Common Problem: Re-raising without fold equity. For example, in one tournament I held KJ on the button and a mid position player raised to 600 when I had about 1500 in chips. I moved in and with blinds at 100/200, there is now 2400 in the pot. He has to call 900 more. He’s getting 2.67 to 1 to call. With a 6000 chip stack, he is correctly calling all of the time here.
Evaluation: These hands teach me a lot about my short stack play. While I feel that I don’t often re-raise all-in enough with these hands, my evaluation is telling me otherwise. I think there are two problems related to these hands that I encounter as a short stack. Is it best to wait for a spot where you have fold equity, or do I just try to double up as a short-stack?
Solution: Judging by my own play and results, I will tend to err on the side of caution and avoid re-raising this group of hands without fold equity. I rarely have a better hand than the initial raiser and putting my tournament life at risk in a coin flip situation without fold equity is not a good short-stack play.
Other Hands
The majority of the other hands were instances where I was short-stacked and, given the situation, it was correct to push.
As a final summary into this experiment, I have a few closing thoughts. First, you can’t determine what you are doing wrong unless you actually evaluate your real line of thinking in crucial hands including all other factors (tilt, player image, previous situations). This exercise has its limitations, but also brings forth some revealing player tendencies. I know it has given me at least a framework for looking at situations with a different mindset. Poker will never be robotic. Different situations, variables, and styles will never make the game an exact science, but the best thing to start mastering is yourself.
**kice32 writes more about poker and other topics at http://kevinice.blogspot.com.