PCA 25/50/100 Session

I went down to the poker room yesterday for another quick session before dinner and sat down in the 25/50 game which had a straddle to 100 happening about 80% of the time. This meant we were effectively playing 25/50/100 and with only 20K on me so this was probably always going to end badly.

I won some small pots early and was up $1500 when the following hand went down.

Hand 1

I opened to 325 in MP with KQo, the CO called and one of the blinds called.

The flop came Q97r and I bet 700 into 1000 and the CO called.

The turn brought a 5 and put a flush draw out there and I decided to bet $1500.

Whether to bet or not is actually really close and I find this spot really tough in general. The main reason I like to bet here though is because it generally makes the hand much easier to play. I find that if you bet here and get a call they generally check back a ton of stuff if you check to them on the river. For example if the river bricks and I check he may check behind AQ because he may think I’m checking KK to induce a bluff from JT. On the other hand if I check/call the turn with KQ they have an easy value bet on the river with AQ and you now have a much tougher decision on the river with a hand like ours. The same reasoning would apply if we held a hand like JJ on this board.

Anyway he called and the river paired the 7, meaning the final board was Q9757. I checked and he bet 4000 into 5600. At this point I felt his value range was very polarized and consisted of QQ, 99, 77 and some combos of AQ (I discounted AQ a bit due to the bet-sizing and because of what I said above). The problem though was that there were virtually no bluffs in his range. I would be hoping for a hand like JT, T8s, 65d, KJd or some other flop float which turned a diamond draw like ATd. I ended up making the call though and he showed 99 for the full house. I’m not sure what I think of my call. It’s definitely not terrible but probably not great either and slightly –EV. The 7 on the river just makes it so hard to fold though because his range just becomes so ridiculously polarized. AQ would be a pretty quick and mandatory call I think (though not fist-pumping by any means, I think you’d have to call because other than perhaps QQ it’s at the very top of your river checking range as KK+ I’d usually just bet the river with and hope to get a call from a Q) and QJ would be a fold so KQ is obviously right on the borderline.

Hand 2

An orbit later I opened to 175 with AKs utg+1 (UTG wasn’t a straddler), got called in 2 or 3 spots and then got squeezed by the youngish player in the big blind to 900. I 4-bet, he shoved for 7500 total and I called. He showed QQ and we decided to run it twice. Unfortunately I bricked both boards and he shipped the 15K pot.

After this hand I got up and went to watch some friends play a SNG and 1/2 cash respectively. Eventually I got bored of just watching and dived into the 1/2 game as well, playing every hand and making a solid $150 profit in about 30 minutes.

This reduced my total loss for the two hour session to just $13155. Awesome...