What follows is a unique conversation between PocketFives Traininginstructor Alex AssassinatoFitzgerald (pictured) and Andres andressopranoPereyra about a hand that came up at a No Limit Hold’em tournament table. You can learn from pros like Fitzgerald by visiting PocketFives Training. Top-level MTT training starts at just $30 per month.

The hand:

Tourney Hand NL Texas Hold’em – Monday, March 26, 12:24:25 ET 2012
Seat 9 is the button
Seat 1: Dieyoung ( $1079104.00 USD )
Seat 2: ToMP73 ( $1106253.00 USD )
Seat 3: skyboyPT ( $1560211.00 USD )
Seat 4: IgoDEEP ( $341480.00 USD )
Seat 5: virtual9 ( $876445.00 USD )
Seat 8: poonaniboy ( $900125.00 USD )
Seat 9: whompadpg ( $535512.00 USD )
Dieyoung posts ante of [$2000.00 USD].
ToMP73 posts ante of [$2000.00 USD].
skyboyPT posts ante of [$2000.00 USD].
IgoDEEP posts ante of [$2000.00 USD].
virtual9 posts ante of [$2000.00 USD].
poonaniboy posts ante of [$2000.00 USD].
whompadpg posts ante of [$2000.00 USD].
Dieyoung posts small blind [$10000.00 USD].
ToMP73 posts big blind [$20000.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Dieyoung [ Ad Kd ]
skyboyPT folds
IgoDEEP folds
virtual9 folds
poonaniboy raises [$41500.00 USD]
whompadpg folds
Dieyoung raises [$110000.00 USD]
ToMP73 folds
poonaniboy calls [$78500.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 8s, Jc, 4s ]
Dieyoung bets [$157000.00 USD]
poonaniboy calls [$157000.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Qc ]
Dieyoung checks
poonaniboy checks
** Dealing River ** [ Jd ]
Dieyoung checks
poonaniboy checks
Dieyoung shows [Ad, Kd ]
poonaniboy shows [9d, 9h ]
poonaniboy wins $588000.00 USD from main pot

Andres Pereyra: Let me introduce this hand to you. Zero reads and it’s the second hand of the villain at the table. 16 to 17 players left, $67,000 on top, and I’m top five in chips.

Pre-Flop: In retrospect, I prefer a smaller 3bet to keep more dominated hands in his range and induce some light 4bets, etc. My sizing is too nutted and forces him to 4bet larger with fewer bluffs, if any at all. Flatting is also an option of course, but at the moment, I didn’t give that thought too much consideration.

Flop: A couple of cash game friends of mine advocate check/folding the flop, as we should expect very few bluffs in an inflated pot, especially from a random who is going to be afraid of facing a check/raise. If we bet, most people consider it should be in the 100,000 to 110,000 range.

Turn: I check with intentions of folding. A really highly ranked MTTer says he’d shove, as the villain shouldn’t have too many queens in his range and I can rep a number of strong hands. I don’t like it, however, with no reads.

Others say to bet 300,000, but I think we’re folding very, very few hands, probably only 99-TT, and this is if the villain is not a stubborn fish that always puts you on A-K.

Alex Fitzgerald: I like 3betting a little more out of position. 110,000 is fine, but considering you’re going to be out of position for the rest of the hand, you’d like it if your continuation bet threatened your opponent’s stack a little more.

Also, if a person feels they don’t have the right implied odds to flat your larger 3bet size in position, they might turn their hand into a 4bet bluff. You can then 5bet and completely neutralize your positional disadvantage.

In addition, if a player is flatting with A-X suited or A-To+, if he were calling 110,000, he is calling 120,000 to 130,000 most of the time. Increasing the pot size versus dominated hands gives me more chances to break them if we both hit the flop. For these reasons, I would tend to 3bet to 120,000 or 130,000 here.

Andres Pereyra (pictured): Yes, we can agree that making larger 3bets OOP accomplishes more. I considered what I first said regarding my sizing and think that unless we have an aggro, dynamic with villain and expect him to 4bet with a high frequency (in which case our 3bet can be smaller), a larger bet is closer to optimal. Since we are without reads, there are no assumptions to be made.

Alex Fitzgerald: I think you have a point about 3betting smaller, that it might induce a few more 4bets. Still, in general, I prefer a larger 3bet for the reasons I’ve described. People seem to 4bet lighter a little more when they can’t flat profitably. I’d rather someone 4bet/fold a T-7 suited here than flat me since in position he’s not going to be at a huge disadvantage.

I don’t know whether continuation betting this flop is bad because we have no detailed records of how often he folds to a continuation bet on the flop or turn. One way we can find this out is searching for his profile on PocketFives, pulling up his screen name on PokerStars, and then looking that up in our Hold’em Manager database.

Andres Pereyra: I am more interested on looking at their graphs than overall profits or biggest scores. When a sample size is not big enough, I search for them on PocketFives. If they have an account with more screen names listed, I search them all.

Alex Fitzgerald: I like to get whatever info I can find. Lately, to be honest, I haven’t been doing as much research as I should. Reading this hand is reminding me how important this is. Since we don’t have specific data, let’s envision some typical scenarios.

If the person folds to the flop 55%+ of the time, or in other words he is pretty honest, I will often continuation bet this flop and give up on the turn. I give up on the turn because the fold to c-bet percentage indicates real honesty; the person might fold a hand like 9-9 to the flop bet. That is the exact kind of hand we’re usually hoping to fold out when we double-barrel the turn. Their range simply gets too strong on that street.

If the person folds 45% of the time or lower to a continuation bet, I will only continuation bet the flop if I’m prepared to barrel an overcard like this since hands as weak as 7-7 and 6-6 will be flatting me on the flop.

Since you know nothing about this opponent and we assume he knows nothing about us, I don’t mind taking the lower variance play you described of continuation betting larger on the flop. He hasn’t played with you enough to know you don’t do that with real hands, so continuation betting bigger is our cheapest and least complicated chance of folding out many medium pairs. It’s maybe not the best option, but it’s a solid option.

I think if you’re not willing to double-barrel this turn card regularly, you should be betting larger on the flop because this smallish bet will often induce a call from even the weaker portions of his range. In general, I almost always double-barrel this turn versus an unknown.

Everything described thus far has been pretty high-variance and unlikely to be super-profitable. I prefer barreling and believe it to be the better option, but if you recognize players at this table as weak and want to preserve your stack to exploit them, then check/folding out of position when you brick to a complete unknown is forgivable. If you have no possibilities of exploiting the rest of the table by retaining your stack after this hand, then you absolutely should be double-barreling.

After it goes check/check on the turn, I think you could really represent a queen that checked the turn hoping the villain would barrel all floats, but no one ever thinks that way. Every time I bet this river, a villain holding 9-9 high-fives their cat and dances as they get their chips in.

Andres Pereyra: Regarding the whole post-flop part, the more I discuss this hand and the more I think about it, the more convinced I am about check/folding the flop. Whether the villain believes we have a big hand or thinks we don’t, very rarely will he bet this flop with what we can consider the middle of his range: 22-77, 78s, 89s, 9Ts (except 9T of spades). People don’t like to be check/raised in spots where they’d probably have to fold. Hence, they tend to give themselves the free card.

Hands that now become the bottom of his range, he will also check back in hopes of pairing on the turn, completing a gutshot, or developing an open-ended straight draw on the turn: Q9, QT, K9-KT-KQ, A9-AT. Against those hands, we are large favorites. Unless the villain has huge floating tendencies, we lose these hands with a continuation bet.

Probably the only hands he’d bet versus our flop check are at the top of his range: 44-88-JJ-AJ, KJ (especially KJss), QJss, 9Tspades. We are practically dead against most of those holdings. Therefore, if betting doesn’t extract value from worse (unless it’s a huge draw like his T-9 spades+ hands), what do we accomplish by betting? I understand that sometimes we can fold out 22-99, but I think you will agree with me when I say that in most cases, we have to at least double-barrel in order to get that fold we’re looking for, which brings us back to my original concern.

We are not deep enough to double-barrel in spots like this, especially considering that we’ll only fold a very small percentage of the villain’s hands that have us beat.

Alex Fitzgerald: I think you have a point. He does check back a lot of hands we have real equity against and I’m not sure we get those hands to fold anyway with a flop bet. In my original analysis, I was assuming we were check/folding on the flop more than we probably really are. If we’re not seriously considering a double-barrel or we don’t think it’s the most logical line to take with our stack size at this stage in the tournament, then your line is an interesting alternative

What do you think? Weigh in by leaving a comment here.