A Very Nice Night

It's 7AM and I just got finished with a live/HU session. The live game I play in is the most +EV game you can imagine. If you want to see a table full of 9 people who are doing exactly the opposite of the right play every single hand, you will come sit at the home games I go to. Unfortunately for me, I run like total ass in them, so there's that complication...I played a guy HU tonight in a PLO/8B and NLH mixed game. I ended up taking him for ~$300 and then losing that on the NL tables after we quit. I ended the session down $75 live. A guy raises, calls my RR (which was half his stack) with T8 and flops trip 8's. Very well played buddy. People come to gamble, nothing much you can do.

I came home a bit dejected and decided that I was going to play some HU 2/4 on FTP. I watched a Stinger HU vid on cardrunners last night and it was incredible. I learned so much just by sitting there and hearing his thoughts throughout the session. If any of you have seen the commercials for the movie Hot Rod where the dude is kicking another guy's ass and is like, "I'VE BEEN DRINKIN' GREEN TEA ALL DAY" that's how I felt after watching Stinger's HU vid.

I sat down and had a semi-retarded opp who hit n run me after he got up a buyin. Oh well, keep pluggin'. I got a guy to sit down who seemed like a pretty decent opponent, but man did he make some really, really dumb tilt plays. I was playing my normal semi-insanely crazy aggro style and he seemed to get to the point where he was just playing his cards. I was betting him out of almost every pot, and when he did have a hand he just c/r and I folded easily. Here is the biggest hand we played the whole night:

Just to give you a background of the game, we had both been opening each other very light (basically every hand on the button was raised). There wasn't a ton of 3 betting, but I had started 3 betting him a lot because of his prf aggression. I finally pick up a hand that is actually worth 3 betting here with AA...and here we go:

FullTiltPoker Game #3012776961: Table Gass (heads up) - $2/$4 - No Limit Hold'em - 6:49:31 ET - 2007/07/21Seat 1:
RightThurrr ($1,129.50)Seat 2: lvnoffsklskybux ($819.50)
RightThurrr posts the small blind of $2 lvnoffsklskybux posts the big blind of $4
The button is in seat #1*** HOLE CARDS ***Dealt to lvnoffsklskybux [Ad Ah]
RightThurrr raises to $12 lvnoffsklskybux raises to $42 RightThurrr calls $30
*** FLOP *** [Qh Ks 6s]
lvnoffsklskybux bets $70 RightThurrr calls $70
*** TURN *** [Qh Ks 6s] [2h]
lvnoffsklskybux bets $180 RightThurrr calls $180
*** RIVER *** [Qh Ks 6s 2h] [7h]
lvnoffsklskybux bets $527.50, and is all in
RightThurrr calls $527.50
*** SHOW DOWN ***l vnoffsklskybux shows [Ad Ah] a pair of Aces
RightThurrr mucks lvnoffsklskybux wins the pot ($1,638.50) with a pair of Aces*** SUMMARY ***Total pot $1,639 Rake $0.50Board: [Qh Ks 6s 2h 7h]Seat 1: RightThurrr (small blind) mucked [Ts Qs] - a pair of QueensSeat 2: lvnoffsklskybux (big blind) showed [Ad Ah] and won ($1,638.50) with a pair of Aces


During the session he was complaining about how good I was running. I really wasn't running that good honestly, but (almost) everytime we showed down I had a great hand. That's exactly what you want HU. You want to take down a lot of pots without show, but when you do show you want to win with quality hands. At the low limits, this forces your opponents into a mindset where they think they cannot win without a great hand themselves and thus they just play their cards. This makes them incredibly easy to play against.

In this hand, I decided to go ahead and value shove the river. This card was very good for my hand and earlier during the session he had shown a propensity to just call down with top pair. I decided that if he had top pair (which is what I thought he had) then he would call a value shove as much as he would call a value bet, thus the shove. Of course, I only had a PSB behind anyway and I think that I setup this hand perfectly to shove on the river by keeping my turn bet an amount that I thought would be called, but also keeping the stack sizes perfect for me to go ahead and shove the river and make it look a bit bluffy rather than look like the value push that it was. He made a tilty (terrible) call on the river and I scooped. He left immediately after. All in all I ended the night +$1,600 after being down ~$500 before this opponent sat. Nothing like the feeling of totally dominating an opponent HU.

Food for thought:

When playing hands postflop, it is important to "set yourself up" for later streets. In other words, let's say that you have a hand which you do not plan on folding to any action. What you want to do is make sure that you bet your hand in such a way that you leave yourself room to play. Let's say there is $200 in the pot and you have $400 behind on the turn. You decide to bet the pot, ($200). You have left yourself no room to play on the river at all. If you have a hand you do not plan to fold to any action, I would recommend betting ~$125-$145 on the turn, this way you can make your hand look a bit more bluffy on the river and hopefully get a call (if you have a big hand). If you actually are bluffing, you want to bet your hand in a way that will leave you a decent amount of fold equity on the river. This same bet of ~$125 or so will leave you room on the river to go ahead and shove without keeping your opponent pot committed to call any bet as he would be if you bet $200 on the turn and then shoved $200 on the river. Of course, you need to be mixing up your bluffs and value shoves in this situation in such a way that your opponent will basically be stabbing in the dark as to whether he should call or fold. I probably explained this terribly, but I try.

Im gonna finish watching cartoons with my son and then get some sleep. We're watching Jimmy Neutron right now. My son also loves Spongebob Squarepants and lovingly refers to him as "Bob Bob". :) Best of luck at the tables.