A Tourney Hand - I think I shouldn't have busted

[shipitfish]

During the weeks leading up to the WSoP this year, I played lots of satellites with points and various other small amounts. This is a tourney hand from an online WSoP main event $600+35 satellite (which I'd super'ed into). Starting chips were 2,500 and starting blinds were 10/20. We were on the first blind level, at a 9-handed table. I had 2,800 in chips and was two from the button.

Action is folded to the person on my right, who made it 60. I called with 5 5. The big blind (with 2,959 chips) defended and we saw the flop of 5 2 6 three-handed with 190 in the pot.

It was checked to me, and I led for 100 chips. The big blind called and the preflop raiser folded. The pot stood at 390 chips. I knew nothing about the players, but I put the big blind on an overpair (probably around 77 or 88 that he was misplaying), 34, 66, 22, 78, 45, 47, or maybe overcards. The turn was the Q and he led for 200 chips. I somewhat felt perhaps he did have something like AQ that he check-called with and added this to his range. I also though maybe at this point he had a gutshot or overcards on the flop and picked up a flush draw. The annoying part about his lead is that it actually increased my range for him (even if it did make it unlikely he held an overpair on the flop).

I made it 600 chips to go and he called quickly. We saw the river of J with 1,590 chips in the pot. He had only 1,699 chips remaining. I really felt he had a set of 2's at this point, but obviously 34 and a set of sixes were real possibilities. I consider that maybe some sort of Q was a possibility, as he may have been making some sort of delayed steal on the flop. I decided there were a number of hands he could pay off legitimately. I figured he'd call with everything in his range except busted-straights/turned-flush-draws. I led 800.

He check-raised all in. At that point, I narrowed his range to 34, 66, 22, and very rarely QJ. I called his last 899 with 1-to-3.54 odds, hoping for 22, and saw 3 4.

After calling the river, I felt strongly I shouldn't have tried that river value bet. I think I would have been more likely to check in a cash game, but in a tourney (at the time) I felt I had to collect the chips. Once I've value-bet, I clearly can't fold to the check-raise because I can't completely eliminate 22. Plus, if he had QJ even a little bit of the time I think the odds are clearly right.

Thoughts?

Comments

[swolfe.livejournal.com]

with his check-call on the flop, my first thought would have been flush draw. with his smallish turn lead and then call of your raise, i'm still thinking "flush draw". so when the flush card hits the river and he checks to me, i'm checking behind.

[swolfe.livejournal.com]

and....he played the hand terribly, heh.

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

Oops! I had a typo in my post. There was no flush draw on the flop, and no flush was possible on the end (the nuts was the straight). I've corrected the post. Sorry about that!

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

This is what I get for zealously cut and pasting those cute little suit links of mine. :)

[swolfe.livejournal.com]

heh, well, that changes things a little.

i'd probably still play it the same way, but for different reasons. when he leads into me on the turn, i'm giving him credit for either a good made hand (2 pair, set, straight) or a straight draw that picked up flush outs. i'm a little torn between raising and calling. i'd probably just call because it seems more likely now that he has a made hand.

as played I'm checking behind on the river. i probably don't value bet the river as much as i should, but i'm generally of the mind better safe than sorry. when i get to the river here against someone that likes their hand and played it in an odd way (check-call flop, lead turn is odd, generally speaking), i'd rather just see the cards and be done with the hand.

[paulv.livejournal.com]

Why not use the character entities (like 6♠ (♠) and 8♦ ([font color=red]♦[/font])) instead?

[paulv.livejournal.com]

Obviously this comment was meant for shipitfish. I fail at clicking the correct "reply to this" link. Oops.

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

We're all with the bad pasting and replying in this thread, aren't we? :)

I am a huge fan of the four color deck, and the entities render in two color. I wonder if it's possible to use CSS to render the entities in different colors … if so, I'd switch to them.

Oh, and also, when I started doing this and tested the entities, I found that text-based browsers didn't render them in the standard poker way (h, d, s, c) for ASCII hand writing. alt tags on the image get me that. Again, this was years ago, maybe that's fixed.

[paulv.livejournal.com]

I am a huge fan of the four color deck, and the entities render in two color. I wonder if it's possible to use CSS to render the entities in different colors … if so, I'd switch to them.

Of course the entities can be in different colors -- ♦, ♥, ♣, ♠. That was all with the font tag (b/c livejournal apparently strips out custom CSS to prevent cross site scripting), but you could do the same thing with something like <span style="color: 0000FF;">&diams;</span>, etc.

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I realized that after I wrote that part. But what about the other thing. I loaded this URL in links, and I saw:

 different colors -- cD-, cH-, cC, cS.

It worked fine in w3m in an xterm, but, in emacs-w3m, I got:
different colors -- ♦, ♥, ♣, ♠
which looks fine here, but looks like this in Emacs:

different colors -- , , , 

I suppose that's the fault of my font in emacs, but still, I think the point is there: it doesn't work well nor consistent in ASCII rendering. I basically want to force it to render down to single, 7-byte character lowercase (d, h, c, s) in ASCII. Is there any way to do that with entities? I don't think so…

[paulv.livejournal.com]

You could use javascript as a test -- if the client supports js, use the entities, if it doesn't use the text. Though if it works in links and w3m, it works in most of the text browsers people use, so I think it's kind of a moot point. I haven't used emacs-w3m ever, but that's what you get for running shit inside emacs. :)

[(Anonymous)]

D00d, everyone should run everything inside emacs at all times. I can't believe you don't. :)

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

I would have checked behind on the river in a cash game, too, but I felt I had to value bet because of tournament-chip-accumulation needs. Would you see a different in tourney play vs. cash game in this regard?

I kinda felt raising the turn was the right play because that weird check-call lead often means a default player has picked up an additional draw. Do you often see that weird lead with a hit two pair (I tend to see the two pair hit yield a turn check-raise in that spot).