Originally posted by jbpatzer
Originally posted by roopopper
mr moshman when are you going to get me out of nl2? ♠_cool:When you start playing SnGs?
lol I'm not playing sng's till I beat nl2 ♦
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Sure you'll start beating NL2 if you work toward it, I'd think just a solid TAG strategy would be really profitable at that level.
In today's blog, topic is:
Playing with JRB and Gavin Smith at Venetian Main Event
I busted day 1 of the Venetian main event. I was very card-dead for most of it (sorry, know how fun it is to read complaints like that!), then lost more of my stack getting bluffed out of a pot against Jeff Madsen. He open-raised CO, I flatted Ad Js on the button. We started the hand about 40 blinds deep, unfortunately I forget the exact bet-sizing in the hand.
Flop: Ah Td 7d
He bets, I call.
Turn: Ks
He bets, I call.
River: Kd
He shoves for about the size of the pot, I think for a while and fold.
I'm pretty sure he's not value-shoving worse so for the most part I'm beating a bluff. The draws that missed are basically 98 and J9 (which turns the double gutshot), so that's 30 hand combos if he's always firing those, plus maybe a few more for unimproved gutshots like 86s or he could be turning a hand like A2 into a bluff. Meanwhile I think his value range here is something like:
AA, KK, TT, 77 (8 combos)
AK (4 combos)
KT, K7 (12 combos)
QJ (16 combos)
Diamond FD also got there so maybe another 20 combos or so in diamond flushes and the occasional non-full house KX hand (most of which though I think he checks the turn with). If I’m getting roughly 2:1 on a river call that’d make it pretty close against a player capable of firing the third barrel with air, but I think I still should’ve called. The reason is that I think he perceived me as a tight player who wasn't willing to put his stack at risk as I hadn’t been taking many hands to showdown and had already folded to him once at the river. If there’s a decent chance he’d just triple-barrel sometimes here when he didn't even flop a draw, it quickly becomes a call. So based on that, I probably should have called it off. (Or maybe I'm being a bit results oriented. When I folded, instead of mucking he passed me his facedown cards and asked me to turn over his hand. He had 98o. Oh well, I'll just make up for it by never folding again 
)
After that I won a race 3-betting shoving a 20 BB stack with ATo over a LAG CO open, got moved to another table, opened AK UTG and had 4 callers at which point Matt Affleck tanked in the big blind. I was praying he’d shove so I could get it HU with overlay; fortunately he did, I reshoved and took it heads-up against his KQ for a double plus some.
The two more well-known players at my various tables, Jean-Robert Bellande and Gavin Smith, both played just incredibly loose. Bellande busted a double-average stack in about an hour. The one hand I played against him, he min-raised in MP1 and I called K4o in the BB since he was opening almost everything and I'm getting about 4:1. Flop came K63, I check/called. Turn came a Q and I check/called again, prepared to call when the river blanked but he checked it back and mucked when I showed.
I then moved to another table that had Gavin Smith on the other end. He was a character, offering to show any hand he played for a $1 bill (and doing it whenever someone produced the buck), and apparently finished the first day with a mountian of chips. I quickly doubled at the table. He opened UTG to 1400 at 300-600, I flatted CO with TT, button and both blinds call.
Flop: 7c 9c Ts
Checked to me, I bet 5600, only SB calls.
Turn: Kh
He checks, I shove about 15k, he calls with KJo and misses his 8-outer.
I went into the dinner break with an above average stack but won literally not a single hand in the 2.5 hours after before busting. Gavin Smith ended up busting me and another player in a hand where he opened UTG, I shoved the cutoff with A4s since he was opening so wide, and short-stacked SB called all-in. Gets back to Gavin and he says something like, “This would be a really terrible call if I made it,” then tosses in the chips and flips 32s. Third three hits the river and me and the SB are hitting the rail.
Some fun tournies coming up at Bellagio. In the meanwhile we have family coming today for Thanksgiving, both my parents and Katie’s, so that will be a lot of fun. My goal is to eat more turkey than Wilbur on Thursday, prop bets currently accepted with Wilbur a 7:1 favorite at the moment. What can I say, that dog can eat!
You must have been pretty short stacked in last hand? Called by 23s? Well at least its rarely dominated hand
There’s a pretty big thread in the 2+2 HSNL forum started by Alec Torelli looking to find out other creditors of a player called Perky. The thread quickly changes course though as Viffer begins posting accusations against Torelli himself. I haven’t read every post in the thread, but the rough cliff’s seem to be:
Torelli plays Perky HU and extends him credit on the match, as he’s done before
Perky loses and doesn’t pay the $85k he owes
In a previous situation where Perky lost to Torelli on credit, Perky said the only way he could pay Torelli the $150k he owed him that time was through a chip dump, which Torelli accepted.
Viffer asserts that Perky was backed at the time of the chip dump and suggests that Torelli knowingly went along with a plan to rip off Perky’s backer to get paid.
Torelli wants his $85k from Perky that was never paid from the match where credit was extended, while meanwhile Viffer wants Torelli to repay $150k to Perky's backer at the time of the chip dump.
My thoughts on a few of these points...
Extending credit. When you extend credit on a match, you leave yourself open to getting free-rolled. I.e. you’re going to pay no matter what and your opponent is definitely collecting if he wins. If he loses though, there’s some chance he doesn’t pay you.
Effectively this is like additional rake (albeit very small if you're opponent is very reputable). Suppose you’re playing a $100k HU freezeout and think you’ll win 60% of the time. If you win, you’re paying of course. If he wins, let's say there's an 80% chance he’s paying. Then your EV for the match is:
40% x -$100k + 60% (80% x $100k) = $8k
Your $20k in EV has now fallen to $8k because of the potential for getting freerolled. Not to mention that it’s very stressful to be owed a lot of money and not be sure if you’ll ever collect, which likely explains a smart/ethical player like Torelli agreeing to a chip dump. Speaking of which...
Chip Dump. It’s a mistake IMO to accept a chip dump for any reason. No matter how much someone owed me, I’d wait on getting paid a legitimate way. Even if you don’t have any moral issues violating site TOS, the site could discover the chip-dump and take action against you, including possibly confiscating other funds you have in your account. In addition, it’s a very sketchy request. What legit reason could someone possibly have for only being able to pay by chip dump? If their account can’t transfer, demand offline payment.
Everyone, Torelli included, admits this was a mistake.
Scamming Backer. If Torelli knew that Perky was scamming his backer, that makes it a lot worse, and crosses the line between a judgement error and TOS violation into something even a lot worse. With that said though, even if he did know Perky was dumping backed funds, it would still be Perky who owed his backer the $150k he dumped on-stake. Looking at it another way, if Torelli owed the backer $150k, that would mean that Perky owed his backer nothing despite him being the one who dumped chips on-stake.
In summary, unless Torelli felt he had a large edge against Perky and he felt the risk of getting freerolled was low, it was probably a mistake to play him on credit. It was certainly a mistake to accept a chip dump as payment, and he should be held responsible for that. However he doesn’t owe money that someone else chip-dumped on-stake; if you violate the terms with your backer, you’re the one responsible for making it right. If he knew what Perky was doing then he deserves all the scorn some are giving him in that thread, but unless there's more compelling evidence that he knew I think the poker community should hold him accountable only for the chip dump. Meanwhile Perky owes Torelli $85k and his old backer the full $150k.
I'm losing all my faith in people around this online poker market 
This starts looking uglier and uglier day by day, and I'm not just talking about this particular case. Scammers everywhere, pardon my "prejudice".
Early Exit from WPT Main Event
A lot of players were tweeting they were upset at Bellagio for exposing them to secondhand smoke. I didn’t notice that (and wouldn’t have minded anyway) -- what I wasn't thrilled with was the registration process. As a more minor point, it was very disorganized with two separate lines players had to wait in. It took five minutes once at the head of the line for them to give me the $10.3k in chips to be admitted into the second line, etc.
The much bigger problem for me is that it turns out you’re given a table with people registering at the same time as you, so buying in right at the start time I ended up with a table where the 5 players to my left all turned out to be pros. I think it should be a lot more random than this.
To my direct right was Billy Baxter. Unlike most older players he was quite LAG and also a real character, holding court as countless people came over to chat and hang out including Viffer and Mike Sexton. He also must’ve exchanged tens of thousands of dollars in cash and chips with people who came to see him, definitely a pretty larger-than-life guy.
I was card-dead throughout and couldn’t get anything going, including against the couple of weaker players to Billy's right. Here was one example in a smaller pot where I still tanked for some time.
Blinds: $100-$200
Pre-flop: Folds to middle-aged guy OTB who opens for $800, Billy Baxter calls in SB, I call in BB with KQo.
Flop: Kc Tc 7d (Pot: $2400)
Billy checks, I check, and button checks it back.
Turn: 2h (Pot: $2400)
Billy checks, I bet $1700, button raises to $5k, Billy folds, I…?
Just a strange spot because I’m not looking to play a large pot with top pair 2nd kicker against a tighter player showing strength, but at the same time he’s not representing anything. Besides maybe 22, what other strong hands would he be checking back at that flop?
Ultimately I folded as I had seen him slowplay a flopped nut flush in a previous hand, albeit on a flop where it was much less vulnerable than even KK would’ve been on that flop. I just had a sneaking suspicion that if I stuck to my read and called the extra $3300 there and $10k on the river I'd get shown TT or something.
The pro to my left who Katie later told me was probably Isaac Haxton seemed to enter every pot that I was in and was playing very aggressively, always betting and raising me post-flop. Particularly given that we started 400 bb deep, this wasn't an ideal situation. I adjusted like normal by tightening my opening range and defending wider against 3bets when I did enter the pot, going to showdown more often, etc.
I still folded several times postflop when he barrelled, but took JJ in a BvB hand to showdown on a drawy K-high board where I thought he could easily be barrelling scare cards, but he had flopped bottom set. Then I folded to him postflop the next few times rather than make marginal calldowns, leading up to…
A bit over 50 BB post-ante I raised As8s in the cutoff and only he called on the button. Flop gave me top pair and the nut flush draw, I c-bet just under half pot and he raised. I thought about 3-betting but didn’t see much point since if I'm behind I'd just be getting it in bad while potentially folding out draws/air when ahead. So I called with the plan of calling down the rest of the way UI and check/raising if I hit. Given that I thought he was 3-betting AK and wasn’t sure if he’d play AQ quite so aggro by raising flop and barreling turn, I felt his value range was pretty narrow, mainly top two or bottom set. So I called him down unimproved, and he flipped bottom set for the second time.
Never fun to bust but I felt I played as well as I could, so just going to move on to the next one. Will be nice to have a few days off from live poker.
Today's Entry: How I spent $5k Getting Into the Bellagio Buffet
Saturday was the last tourney of our package, the $5180 WPT at Bellagio. I got up from $20k starting to about $37k in a hand during the 2nd level.
Blinds: $100-$200
Pre-flop: LAG UTG min-raises, UTG+1 calls, button calls, I call Jc4c in BB.
Flop: 4h 4d Th
Checked to UTG+1 who bets $1k, button flats, I c/r to $3k, UTG+1 shoves ~ $14k, button folds, I call and hold against Ah3h.
I lost KK to AQ (but later had KQ > AQ in a resteal spot so can’t complain), then made a bit back after I opened A9 in the hijack, got 3 callers, and shoved on a 78T flop after the BB donked ¾ pot -- everyone folded. Todd Terry on my right was opening a ton of hands (and playing very well) so I had some good resteal opportunities and shoved Q9o, AKs and a couple more hands over him leading up to a cold 4bet with 99. Blinds were 400-800-100, ADZ opened to $2400 UTG, Terry 3-bet to $6100 UTG+1, and I shoved about $22k in the CO with 99. Everyone folds to Terry, who tanks then flashes Ac4c and folds.
After folding he said that I was on a range of 99/AQ and he had 31% equity against that range (which the guy on his right confirmed was accurate on his phone) and therefore he was just missing the right price. It was a straight-up old school equity vs range clinic.
I also played two interesting hands in the BB against Cary Katz, who had recently busted from the $100k high roller. He was quite LAG, minraising a ton from all positions. In the first hand, I called his river bet with ace-high expecting to be good and feel like a pimp, except for the small fact that I was totally wrong.
Blinds: $300-600-$75
Pre-flop: Katz min-raises UTG, button calls, I call in BB with As6s.
Flop: Jc 9d 3s
Checked around.
Turn: Jh
I bet $2400, Catz calls, button folds.
River: 9h
I check, Catz bets $6k, I call.
I thought he was representing very few hands after not c-betting that flop, to me it looked a lot more like he was bluffing a counterfeited 66 or something. Unfortunately as soon as I called he flipped QsJs.
I did get the best of him though in my next big blind defense, albeit through very unusual circumstances. He again min-raised in early position last hand before dinner break and I called with A2o getting almost 4:1. Flop comes K Q J 2. Personally I thought a flop with 4 cards was a pretty cool way to shake things up a little at the table, but the dealer called the floor who ruled that the cards be put back in deck, shuffled, and new flop to be dealt. The new flop was a slight improvement over bottom pair and a gutshot as it came A A A. I played it cool and checked my quads, but he didn't bite and checked it back. I bet the turn and he called, but folded to my river bet.
Then it was dinner break and we were all led to the buffet for a comped dinner. Ship it!
Based on the title of the blog, you can probably guess how the rest of the tournament ended up.
Blinds: $5k-$1k-$100
UTG raises to $2400, UTG+1 calls, CO makes it $6700, I shove $32k on button with QQ, UTG calls (AA radar immediately went up when he called instead of shoving), everyone else folds. He in fact has KK and I’m out.
No more live tournies for a while, will be good to get back to normal work and recharge some.
All Live Tournies are Officially Re-Entry
Or so it seems
I was surprised to read this article in Cardplayer on re-entry tournaments. It’s well-written and presents multiple viewpoints on them, so the article itself is solid. Several of the players’ views are misguided though.
First let’s define terms.
Rebuy: Tournament where you can purchase another stack if you bust or your chips fall below a certain threshhold, usually the starting stack. You stay at your same seat and table.
Re-entry: Tournament where, if you bust, you can enter again – paying the rake a second time, getting a new table/seat draw, etc.
Most of the live tournies Katie and I played over the past couple of months were re-entries. A big theme among several of the players quoted in the Cardplayer article was that single-bullet players were at a disadvantage compared to those willing to shell out for multiple bullets, had lower equity, etc. This is false.
What’s true is that single-bullet players have a lower chance of winning compared to a similarly-skilled player prepared to re-enter anytime he busts during the re-entry period. If you have a goal of maximizing your win probability rather than making the most money possible – because you’re a rich amateur, have a prop bet, hunting for endorsements, etc. – then you can gain an advantage in re-entries.
As with conventional rebuys though, for most players the focus should remain on making solid investments with a good expectation. Any players willing to make a chip-losing play because it’s a re-entry/rebuy is either misguided or has a different goal than maximizing return on investment. The initial rebuy in a standard rebuy, despite exchanging the same amount of money for less valuable chips, can be a good investment if (as in most fields) many players who have rebought are routinely putting their double-stacks at risk in “marginal” situations. Making such bad plays yourself in a rebuy or re-entry, however, while increasing your chance of winning if you’re rebuying often to get a huge stack, will lower your return on investment – possibly to negative.
Personally, I like re-entries. Generally I’m not going to re-enter, as the blinds will tend to be higher at the point of re-entry so it’s like paying the same rake as you did initially for a worse structure. But if it’s a softer-than-normal field I can re-enter if I bust early, and as Kathy Liebert alludes to in the article, there are plenty of players who will splash around a lot more "because" they can re-enter.
As a final point, some claim that pros are more likely to re-enter than amateurs. While I can’t say whether that’s true, from the smallish sample I saw it wasn’t. Continuing on the anecdotal front, I heard that the $100k WPT high roller became a re-entry at the last minute as the only two people interested in re-entering were rich businessmen.
In summary: (a) Know your goals for playing and be explicit if they’re not to make the most money possible. (b) Focus on making the best possible investments. (c) It’d be awesome to casually re-enter a $100k buyin.
Hey Collin
I almost finish your book SnG strategy. Its super, but i think about playing HU SnG. I heard that they are the most profitable and I like play HU pots with player. Nobody are in pot and only you and your oponent. What you will prefer form E-book, Books and maybe someone else?
Cheers 
Besides my HU book there are a lot of good HUSNG resources, I'd check out the videos right here on PS first. Gl!
Free Live Coaching with Me and Katie -- Thursday December 29 at 1:30pm PT (4:30pm ET, 9:30pm GMT) accessible to everyone http://www.pokerstrategy.com/coaching/162749/
The first time Katie and I did strategy commentary together was a Stoxpoker video. She was fairly new to poker then, I got slightly condescending in my explanations, and she straight-up called me out on it in the video -- it was one of the awesome moments in training video history. We made two more videos over time that also got great feedback, but after that she went to Drag the Bar and our dual commentaries ended. Until now...
So I can’t wait for our dual coachings to come out of retirement as we go through MTT/SNG HHs, get asked the tough questions, and no doubt have some line disagreement throwdowns.
Definitely tune in!
Why I'll Only Stake Online
The first time I staked for live cash was in the very early days of Team Moshman.
Katie and I met Simon for the first time at our house in Maryland, and we drove up to Atlantic City to meet up with Kidkash and Grind4moniez at Borgata. I staked everyone at 60-40 (my favor) with no make-up, and everyone was up. By the end of the weekend, Kidkash somehow convinced me to let Grind sit the 40-80 LHE game, which he proceeded to crush for a couple hours before heading off to his room to get stoned.
That was my high point in live staking. I’ve subsequently staked players for NL cash from ½ to 5/10, limit games, and low-stakes live MTT. Most have lost, particularly in cash – in fact, all the longer-term live cash stakes have ended with me eating quite a bit of makeup.
The question is – has it just been running bad, or is there something else going on?
I was talking with a casual player about it, and he said he’d never stake live because a player could simply have a good session and report lower wins. It doesn’t take any premeditation and is pretty much impossible to catch. Or possibly a player makes tracking mistakes that tend to be in his favor. Either way, unlike online, there aren’t clear records outside of selected MTTs.
If I’ve backed you before live and you’re reading this, definitely don’t take that to mean that I think you’ve done anything wrong. I’d bet strongly that most I’ve backed haven’t. Ultimately though, I need to fully back players I stake – if something’s preventing me from having full confidence in a stake and what’s going on, I don’t think it’s a good spot for either me or the horse.
Without turning this blog into some kind of infomerical, I'm definitely excited about our current online staking program with the stake mentor system, more organized shot-taking, and an active community focused around Skype chats. If the price is never being a Sheets/Bax style baller with 100 horses in the WSOP main event, then I'm good with that.
Five days late with this one, but better late than never!
Despite 2011 being the year of Black Friday, I’m still pretty happy with the year. If not I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog, come to think of it. Anyway without further ado, poker-related stuff I did in 2011:
Released Math of Holdem with Dimat
Began making videos for Pokerstrategy, and continued making videos for Cardrunners
Released two ebooks co-authored with Katie: The Superuser and Pro Poker Strategy
Made Day 5 of WSOP main event with above average stack (prior to the infamous KK < AA hand)
Won a (smallish) Venetian Deep Stack tournament and chopped HU a Bellagio $550
Rebounded after Black Friday to expand Team Moshman coaching/staking with my partners
Maintained a 36% ROI online with a $56 ABI (playing a mix of primarily MTT and HU)
And my #1 accomplishment of 2011, coincidentally also my #1 accomplishment of 2010:
Chilling with the Iceman baby!
It was also a very fun year outside of poker, with an awesome trip to Paris in February with Katie and our move to Vegas. Most of my goals in 2012 are poker-related, but one outside of poker is getting an article accepted into at least one major non-poker publication. I just sent out a query letter to Men’s Health and I’m writing one now for Cigar Aficionado, which has a smaller circulation but I've always thought of as a really cool magazine.
Next week Katie and I are going to Norcal (Napa) so should be a great start to 2012.
Three Stories from Wine Country Trip
Katie and I just got back from a 4-day trip to Napa. Three stories from a very fun trip.
The Poker Metaphor Horseback Guide
We went horseback riding through Kunde winery in Sonoma. The guide asked what we did. My response to that question 99% of the time is “writer and investor,” but Katie gave an answer involving poker. For the rest of the tour, anything he wanted to communicate became a poker metaphor.
“You see,” he’d say on the topic of horseback riding knowledge, “before we can go over things like pair beats high card, higher pair beats pair, the first step is learning to keep your cards on the table.”
I didn’t understand most of the metaphors but he was a very nice guy and the scenery was beautiful.
FWIW if you’re ever in that area, I’d highly highly recommend doing the mountain tasting at Kunde. By far the best tasting we did in every way:
Everyone Drunk at 2pm
At Domaine Carneros, we went on a tour + tasting. There’s nowhere like wine country for a place where it’s socially acceptable to get drunk at noon (for the cultured sake of tasting fine wine). Unlike most of the tours/tastings, the Domaine guide drank with us and tended to pour herself about double what she was pouring us. By the end she was pouring everyone random sparkling wines – I’ve now had it hammered into me about 40 times that unless it’s made in the Champagne region of France it’s “sparkling wine” and not “champagne” – and people were in different states of intoxication. I asked the well-dressed middle-aged woman next to me how she’d learned so much about wine, and she slurred “Honey I don’t know shit about wine...” Then she leaned in conspiratorally and told me that she was annoyed at our guide because she (the guide) hadn’t poured enough wine. As we left the guide was drunkenly trying to convince her and her husband to buy bottles right then so she would get the commission for them.
The Googling Waiter and $20.12 Special
We ate at Farm, a great restaurant attached to a super-expensive hotel. Most main courses were $40+ but Katie had found an insane special for a 3-course tasting for $20.12. The waiter told us we had come during amazing weather and then said “Well played” twice. Katie said he must’ve Googled us but I wasn’t sure since I'd thought WP had made its way at least somewhat into mainstream culture. But by the time he started referring to “Hoyle’s rules” I had to admit she might have a point.
I sometimes start rambling on goofy ideas that amuse me for whatever reason, and that night it was the idea of ordering 3 of the special menus per person. Just being like, “Damn that was so good, let’s do it again.” Seeing how many of these super-well-priced 3 course dinners they’d bring out for us consecutively before basically telling us to leave the restaurant.
Green with envy. I'm waiting for global warming to bring ideal growing conditions to our frozen Isle...
Tales from a TM Friday Night Venetian Trip
Katie and I met up with Katie75013, KillerEV, MachtiSonni, Machti’s friend Mikko, and Machti’s hat at Grande Luxe at Venetian. Katie told the waitress that we had to make the 7pm donkament and she got really panicky and told us a moment later that the manager had veto’d Mikko’s salisbury steak order due to concerns over the donkament.
Fortunately we only missed a couple riveting hands of 25-50 action. I was the first to bust, losing most of my stack after making an equity-vs-range call.
Blinds: $100-$200
Action: I open Ad9s to $525 in the cutoff, older guy calls OTB, BB calls.
Flop: 3d 9h Td (Pot: $1675)
Action: BB checks, I bet $1100, button shoves ~$5500, BB folds, I call.
This is a fairly straightforward equity-vs-range situation, but I used to have some trouble with those live when you’ve got to count or reconstruct the pot, estimate the other guy’s stack, and do the math in your head while everyone’s waiting for you. Fortunately after playing a decent amount live I’ve gotten better at focusing in spots like this.
The pot was a bit under $8500 and it cost me about $4400, so I was getting close to 2:1 and therefore wanted about 35% equity against his range. The key is that I don't actually have to put him on a specific range. With a roughly 6.5 out draw if behind, I’ll improve about 25% to a likely-best hand. So what it really comes down to is whether this guy’s sometimes semi-bluffing or value-shoving worse, or whether the vast majority of his ranges is TX or better value-shoves. Against a random 70-year-old that's a real concern, but I’d seen him open-shove an 11 bb stack from the hijack with K8s earlier so I figured he'd be making a play often enough that I had my equity.
I called and he flipped KsJs. Turn Qd and I thought my extra 1.5 flop outs might be coming in handy, but wasn’t to be. Fortunately I made up for my devastating $120 donkament loss at the cash tables. One strange 2/5 hand:
Loose-passive 60-year-old hijack open-limps, button calls, SB completes, I raise to $30 with AcKc, hijack thinks and makes it $60, folded back to me. Really wasn’t thrilled with the spot, but since he’d seen me attack limps a number of times before and (more important) he only started the hand off with about $320, I just 4bet shipped. He snap-called.
Board ran out: 3d 3c Jc 8h 9c
I quickly tabled my flush and he mucked without showing before storming off from the table.
I was playing at KillerEV’s table which was a lot of fun, but he left at around 11 so I did the socialable thing and table-changed to join Machti’s where he was crushing en route to what would end up a +$950 session, not bad at 1/2! It was great getting the opportunity to meet him and talk poker.
Also great to have Katie75013 in Vegas, as well as see KillerEV like always, but now I've hit awards show speech territory so I'd better call it a blog.
Heads-up in the $33 turbo on Merge against a good reg:
Merge Network $3,000 Guaranteed Deepstack Turbo Freezeout No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t6000.00/t12000.00 Blinds + t1200.00 - 2 players
MeEatCookies: t429276.00 M = 21.04
TheMoshMan (BTN/SB): t190324.00 M = 9.33
Pre Flop: (t20400) TheMoshMan is BTN/SB with A 2
TheMoshMan raises to t24277.00, MeEatCookies calls t12277
Flop: (t50954) 7 7 3 (2 players)
MeEatCookies checks, TheMoshMan bets t23777.00, MeEatCookies raises to t50000.00, Hero raises to t172047 all in, MeEatCookies folds
Final Pot: t150954
A comment on a recent video I made argued strongly to c-bet/call ace-high HU short-stacked on an 888 flop instead of checking back and calling turn. The benefits are that you give him a good opportunity to check/raise bluff at a time when you're almost always good on a dry flop, since a reg is super-likely to 3bet shove pre with better ace-highs or any pair. So in this spot, while occasionally he'll show up with Q3s, 75s, KK, etc., way more often he's bluffing with 9-high or something reasoning that I'm very likely to have missed and he's getting a good price on a check/raise bluff.
My initial plan had been to bet and call a check/shove, but when he c/r's small another option presents itself, namely flatting with the plan of letting him fire again. Since I'm usually giving him a 13% chance to hit 6 outs and win a large pot, and there's no guarantee he'll fire again, I think it's reasonable to just ship the flop even though it doesn't take much advantage of the fact that I have ace-high.
Opinions?