July 15, 2010

Go Andrew!!!!!

For those of you who aren't aware, Andrew Brokos (aka Foucault, author of the outstanding Thinking Poker blog linked on our right sidebar) is making ANOTHER deep run in the Main Event. Congratulations and good luck to him. We'll certainly be rooting for him all day here - if you want to follow along as well, he has been sending updates to his twitter page:


www.twitter.com/thinkingpoker

July 1, 2010

THIN! (Part 19)

Perhaps the king of THIN! thus far:


Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/784616
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG+1: $63.55
UTG+2: $31.90
MP1: $88.15
MP2: $50.50
CO: $45.80
BTN: $129.40
Hero (SB): $61.80
BB: $51.55
UTG: $85.95

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is SB with Ac Td
5 folds, CO raises to $1.50, BTN calls $1.50, Hero raises to $7, 2 folds, BTN calls $5.50 (Squeeze here is a little thin - I'm not doing it every time, just sometimes. Button is a pretty loose player, so could be calling pretty wide. CO is a standard TAG type, so I think he folds to the 3b quite a bit.)

Flop: ($16.00) 7c 5c Jd (2 players)
Hero bets $11, BTN calls $11 (Not the greatest flop to one-barrel on, but I do have backdoor straight and flush draws, and is it too much to ask that he fold QT or something to me on this frop?)

Turn: ($38.00) 3c (2 players)
Hero bets $22.50, BTN raises to $111.40 all in, Hero calls $21.30 all in (He does call, and I pick up backdoor clubs. I'm not folding this hand. I think he's just floating the flop with a pretty weak hand a bunch of the time. Like I'd estimate a jack or better to be less than 1/4th of his range. I've got 3 options: 1) open shove $44 into $38 2) bet something that might seem to give me room to fold, like $22 3) check, hope he bets smallish himself then shove over it, and lead river if he checks back. Of these, I think 2) is by far the best. 1) seems very draw-ish - I think he'd call me with pretty much any pair, and all the hands he's folding are worse than mine. If I had AcAs, I'd like this line more to get max value from lower pairs. 3) is pretty risky, because he could just shove himself when I check, which puts me in a pretty gross spot, and is really the only situation where I'd end up folding, which would really be a disaster against his range for calling the frop. I like 2) much more, since it looks more like I'm trying to get some value out of one pair myself, without putting all my money in yet, so he might find a fold with 66 or 76 or whatever. Or even better, he might call and then fold when I hail-mary shove the river. Also, he might shove over my bet with a bunch of worse draws. At the time I was thinking something in the T9/98 with one club range. Little did I know I'd be in even better shape than I could have hoped for!)

River: ($125.60) 9s (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $125.60
BTN shows Ks Tc (King Jack high)
Hero shows Ac Td (Ace Jack high)
Hero wins $122.60
(Rake: $3.00)

95.5% equity on the turn there with ace-high!

-BRUECHIPS