[Closed] chenny8888's Beginner SNG Coaching Sunday 1030-1200 CET

didnt realise that was your first coaching, I thought you did a great job.
Look forward to seeing your next one

For the 2 minutes and 37 seconds I was in the coaching you sounded like you knew what you were doing, welcome to the coaching illuminati chenny ^^

I'm gonna find time to visit this coaching next week. Nice write-up btw.

Goodluck in the future coachings,
Stiev

Hi Chenny

Nice to see your first coaching was mine also... and to have a coaching at a nice time for us Antipodeans ♦

You mentioned you use a looser SHC in the earlier levels of the SnG. I'm a recent subscriber to Poker Strategy but have been playing a while. To date I have been using a starting hand strategy derived mostly from the Harrington books, adjusted based on reads from Poker Tracker stats. It's still a reasonably tight starting hand requirement that usually gets me to the later levels with an intact stack. I take its okay to use something slightly looser but not way looser? Or is it recommended to stick pretty rigidly to the SHC until you've successfully implimented the whole strategy?

As an aside, I find the range of hands the ICM trainer recommends pushing hard to get my head around as I've always played a bit nittier, and usually raised 1/2 - full pot rather than just pushed with my hands (unless that leaves me short stacked of course). I guess thats all about maximising positive equity edges?

Cheers

Waiboy

PS - should've stayed to see your last SnG - the Warriors sucked

Nice review!
As Terrorblade said: Welcome to the coaching illuminati ♦

Haha yeah, I heard about the game. Though I'm not a massive league fan myself

for your questions:

We should shove because we need to maximize fold equity.

Harrington's charts are good :). I would play slightly tighter than him, actually, in the early stages of a sitngo. For example, I would always fold AQo and AJ to a proper raise in front of me. But I don't follow PokerStrategy's articles where it says we should limp JJ UTG, because I feel this is way too weak. For the same reason, I don't fold AQ in early position.

hi chenny loved the coaching. Will see you the next coaching. Already have some qeustions for you're next coaching ready ♦.

Originally posted by sirilidion
hi chenny loved the coaching. Will see you the next coaching. Already have some qeustions for you're next coaching ready ♦.

Hi unfortunately I will not be there today. I am away at a friend's bach at the moment (didn't have any idea it had internet! :P). Unam1337 is taking my coaching. I'm sure he is more than happy to answer any questions you may have. I will be back on the job next week.

Hey everyone.

Another interesting-ish coaching for the beginners. And by interesting I just mean I ran incredibly bad (still up though ♦).

Today I played 2 18-man Sit'n'Gos and basically just illustrated how we adjust our ICM-based play to different payout structures. For single table sit'n'gos, the payout structure is very steep. The payout structure is 50% for first, 30% for second, and 20% for third. This means that from fourth to third, we can't call off our stack very lightly, because we risk so much (20% of the prizepool). Meanwhile, when we get into the money, we should try to get as many chips as possible so we can have a good chance of coming first, because there isn't a big difference between whether we come second or third.

In the 18-man SNGs on Stars the payout structure is 40% for first, 30% for 2nd, 20% third, and 10% fourth. This means that we should just play a very generally tighter form of poker, where we push slightly tighter towards the end, and we call quite tight in the money. Once in the money in these, we generally aim for second place in these sitngo's, and let other players kill each other in the process.

Besides this, there was one particularly interesting hand in the STT. Our opponent here openlimps in with a wide range of hands (I estimate 50%), and I decide to make a shove with 96o. I will process this in SNGWizard and see what range of hands he has to limp/call with in order for this push to be profitable. We're going to also assume here that he raises the top 5% of hands, therefore raising TT-AA, AQ+.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00+$0.50 Tournament, 200/400 Blinds 25 Ante (4 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t3875)
Hero (BB) (t3215)
UTG (t3450)
Button (t2960)

Hero's M: 4.59

Preflop: Hero is BB with 6, 9
2 folds, SB calls t200, Hero raises to t3190 (All-In), SB calls t2790

Flop: (t6480) A, J, J (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: (t6480) 7 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t6480) 7 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t6480

Results in white below:
SB had J, Q (full house, Jacks over sevens).
Hero had 6, 9 (two pair, Jacks and sevens).
Outcome: SB won t6480

Here we can see that the push becomes +$EV when villain calls with about 18% or A7o+, A3s+, KTs+ and 33+. Unfortunately for us, in this case, villain decided to call with an even wider range (a range that included QJo, zomg 2 facecards). But this is the challenge with sit'n'go's: we have to estimate our opponent's range, and adjust accordingly. In this case, our estimate was wrong, and we bubbled.

On another note, his call with QJo was incredibly horrible of course. He would lose a similar amount of $EV calling with this in the longrun as if he called with hands like K5s.

Originally posted by chenny8888
Hand 1:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00+$0.50 Tournament, 15/30 Blinds (8 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop | saw showdown

SB (t1290)
BB (t1920)
UTG (t1875)
UTG+1 (t1260)
MP1 (t1470)
MP2 (t3115)
Hero (CO) (t1345)
Button (t1225)

Preflop: Hero is CO with A, J
UTG calls t30, 2 folds, MP2 calls t30, Hero calls t30, 1 fold, SB calls t15, BB checks

Flop: (t150) 4, 10, Q (5 players)
SB bets t120, 3 folds, Hero raises to t360, SB calls t240

Turn: (t870) 10 (2 players)
SB bets t900 (All-In), Hero calls t900

River: (t2670) 4 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t2670

Results in white below:
SB had 6, Q (two pair, Queens and tens).
Hero had A, J (two pair, tens and fours).
Outcome: SB won t2670

Here we have AJs with 2 limpers at an early blind stage in front of us. Raising puts way too much into the pot with AJs (which isn't that good a hand), so I opt for a limp behind here, which is pretty good, because we have often position.

On the flop I don't like to play flushdraws aggressively (we should just play them passively as per odds and outs), but here we have the nut flush draw, the nut-gutshot draw, as well as an overcard for a total of 9+3+3 = 15 outs. After equilating this, we are actually a solid 55% favourite against our opponent. Our raise in this spot has a ton of fold equity because our opponent has to realise it's a multiway (5-way!) pot, and his kicker sucks. Then if he calls us on the turn, we can often check behind unimproved on the turn, effectively buying us a free card. If he reraises us or shoves us, we will also shove, and even though we are up against a set quite often in that case, the dead money means we can make a call profitable.

Unfortunately, on the turn he puts us all-in. Here we still have our 15 outs, so roughly 30% chance to win, with the chance that he has a flushdraw here as well, so with so much dead money, we can make the call. But if he always makes this play, he is going to get owned in the long run, because we have a hand that is 90/10 or 80/20 favourite to his very often also (as opposed to only 55/45 favourite on the flop here).

You have about 30% chance to win against (weak) made hands, while his line suggests a pretty strong hand (could be a perfectly played monster, pushing on the turn to protect on this drawy board) and you call 2:1? Looks like a bad play IMO, and way to risky for this blind stage.

Sorry i missed this earlier viewer88, but like I said earlier, there is the off chance he is on the flushdraw himself, or straightdraws, etc.

As for his line: uhh.. it doesn't look like a strong made hand at all.. ??? Strong made hands will usually check/raise or even check/call the turn after the bet/call on the flop, hoping to get as much money as possible into the pot from their opponents.

While my equity against his specific hand in this case was not enough to justify a call, I think my equity against his range of hands in this spot will be more than the required 38% (approx. 5% ICM tax taken into account). So I stand by my call.

Hi everyone,

A rather spectacular coaching today in terms of the quality of suckouts we managed to dish on our opponents (refer hand 1 ♦), but nothing really to talk about in terms of interesting hands.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00+$0.50 Tournament, 200/400 Blinds 25 Ante (3 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t3922)
BB (t3198)
Hero (Button) (t6380)

Hero's M: 9.45

Preflop: Hero is Button with 7, 2
Hero raises to t6355 (All-In), 1 fold, BB calls t2773 (All-In)

Flop: (t6621) 2, 7, 2 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: (t6621) A (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t6621) A (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t6621

Results in white below:
Hero had 7, 2 (full house, twos over Aces).
BB had K, K (two pair, Aces and Kings).
Outcome: Hero won t6621

Here the small blind is sitting out, and we have effectively 7.5BB with a suited hand (72s) on the button. We have a ton of fold equity, but unfortunately our opponent wakes up with KK and obviously calls us. But that's ok, we can always flop the nuts.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00+$0.50 Tournament, 100/200 Blinds (4 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t2030)
BB (t835)
UTG (t8255)
Hero (Button) (t2380)

Hero's M: 7.93

Preflop: Hero is Button with A, Q
UTG raises to t8255 (All-In), 3 folds

Total pot: t500

Here is an interesting spot where we have AQs on the button, and the aggressive chipleader puts us all-in. Our calling range here is something like JJ+, probably QQ+, even though our chipleader is shoving a massive range of hands here (at least 50%). This is because we are on the bubble, and we don't want to risk busting out with the presence of a shortstack in the BB. So we make an instant fold with AQs. It's important to not fall in love with the pretty cards!

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00+$0.50 Tournament, 15/30 Blinds (8 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG (t1530)
UTG+1 (t2880)
MP1 (t1240)
MP2 (t1140)
Hero (CO) (t1470)
Button (t1470)
SB (t1690)
BB (t2080)

Hero's M: 32.67

Preflop: Hero is CO with K, A
4 folds, Hero raises to t90, 1 fold, SB calls t75, BB calls t60

Flop: (t270) 10, J, 5 (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: (t270) 9 (3 players)
SB bets t30, BB calls t30, Hero raises to t240, SB calls t210, 1 fold

River: (t780) K (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

Total pot: t780

Results in white below:
SB had 8, 9 (one pair, nines).
Hero had K, A (one pair, Kings).
Outcome: Hero won t780

We raise AK preflop, very standard, and we get 2 callers.

Here on the flop we check back because it's a multiway pot, and we have just a gutshot, a backdoor flush draw and 2 overcards. Which means there are a lot of turn cards that will increase our equity, which in turn means we want to check and take the free card.

The turn brings the 9 :diamond:, giving us the nutflushdraw and the player first to act makes a minbet out into the pot, and the second player calls him. I think the second player will never have a strong made hand here, so I opt for a raise with the amount of dead money there, and a ton of outs if called (Q is almost always live, diamonds always live, A and K usually also live). If our opponent then makes a reraise, we can assess by odds and outs, and generally fold it, which is unfortunate... but often we will win the pot there.

When the offsuit K rivers, there is now a straight on the board. We really don't want to get check/raised here, so we just check behind, and take down the reasonable sized pot :). Sadly, looking at his hand, we weren't able to win a massive pot with a rivered Q, but oh well.

OOh, missed this hand!!

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00+$0.50 Tournament, 25/50 Blinds (7 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t4040)
BB (t2270)
UTG (t1465)
MP1 (t1230)
MP2 (t1400)
Hero (CO) (t1390)
Button (t1705)

Hero's M: 18.53

Preflop: Hero is CO with K, K
UTG calls t50, MP1 calls t50, 1 fold, Hero raises to t300, 2 folds, BB calls t250, 2 folds

Flop: (t725) 4, 10, A (2 players)
BB bets t150, Hero calls t150

Turn: (t1025) A (2 players)
BB bets t400, Hero calls t400

River: (t1825) 2 (2 players)
BB bets t600, Hero calls t540 (All-In)

Total pot: t2905

Results in white below:
BB had A, K (three of a kind, Aces).
Hero had K, K (two pair, Aces and Kings).
Outcome: BB won t2905

We have KK in late position with 2 limpers, so we make our standard raise. BB calls us. Flop comes ATx dry, and our opponent makes a weakish donkbet out (donkbets are generally with weak made hands). We call here, because we often still have the best hand. On the turn another ace comes, which means there's a ton less of Ax combinations he could have. I opted for another call here, with a third call on the river. This gets the most value from Tx hands, as well as from the rare bluff. Unfortunately in this case he flipped AK.

Originally posted by chenny8888
Sorry i missed this earlier viewer88, but like I said earlier, there is the off chance he is on the flushdraw himself, or straightdraws, etc.

As for his line: uhh.. it doesn't look like a strong made hand at all.. ??? Strong made hands will usually check/raise or even check/call the turn after the bet/call on the flop, hoping to get as much money as possible into the pot from their opponents.

While my equity against his specific hand in this case was not enough to justify a call, I think my equity against his range of hands in this spot will be more than the required 38% (approx. 5% ICM tax taken into account). So I stand by my call.

I agree, it doesn't look like a strong made hand, but Q6 is one of the worst hands in his range; you're even behind against that hand. Every pocket pair and every Q are ahead of you, imo you only beat other draws (and a total bluff, but i always assume my opponents have "something"). Usualy this line suggests a made hand of some sort, villain just wants to pick up the pot.
Perhaps this would be a good spot to minraise the flop (in my experience people usualy fold to my minraises, depends on table image and table dynamic ofcourse). You would not be pot commited and you usualy get to see a free river card (check behind the turn).

BTW, I like the calldown with KK you show in the last hand

I have no idea why calling down there is a good play. Calling down for value? I dont see him ever having any Tx here. He wouldn't double barrel without an ace imo. I would have folded the turn and waited for a better spot with my (at the time) 19BB's.

Donk betting on these low limits is often a strongish hand. I dont think donk betting actually shows weakness until around the $55's imo. Just my thoughts anyway.

Regards,
Stiev

@cannell55: Mmh, could be lower pocket pairs, and Tx still IMO. I think the second ace is a great card for us, because it really decreases the amount of Ax type hands that he could have, and increases the likelihood of worse hands in his range. And obviously in that spot once we call the turn we have to call the river. I will pay closer attention to the donkbets at this limit but I just have to say that when I did play the 16s a while back, they were indeed very weak.

With regard to viewer88: I don't like a minraise on the flop with our AJs hand because our equity there is simply so good. We should make a larger raise, because we know our equity there is good, whereas on a blank turn our equity plummets. As for Q6 being the bottom of his bet/call flop, shove turn range (against our hand)... I really disagree here, because I feel if he had better hands he would play differently and not so scared on the turn.

Hi everyone, this week's coaching was quite interesting because I was in the same room as TerrorBlade as he was losing lots and lots of money in FL HU. So occasionally we'd hear "ARGHH, HOW COULD HE CALL THERE". This overrided the pretty much boring session we had in terms of hands; I'm pretty sure there were absolutely no interesting hands we had. We ended up playing a total of 4? 9-man SNG, 3? 18-man SNG and 1 HU SNG, but nothing interesting on anything ( ).

I think through this coaching we can see simply that in order to win SNG we do not need to be playing a ton of hands and acquiring a ton of hands early on (in fact quite the contrary), and even with just our starting stack we can win a ton of pots without showdown, and build up our stack slowly as players start playing tighter in the mid-late game.

Hi everyone, this week's coaching again went by without anything particularly interesting. I ran sort of bad? losing a couple of pretty crucial flips, but then sucking out with 44 against 99 in a 9-man SNG so... sort of evens out. Anyway today we played 2 double or nothings, as well as 2 heads up SNG. We filled the rest of the tables with standard 9-man SNG. Unfortunately we didn't get many interesting spots, but here we have quite a close decision. I finally decided to push A3o.

Format is Double or Nothing, with top 5 paid 20% each:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $10.00+$0.40 Tournament, 75/150 Blinds 15 Ante (9 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

CO (t2085)
Button (t1220)
Hero (SB) (t925)
BB (t1065)
UTG (t2100)
UTG+1 (t2625)
MP1 (t1915)
MP2 (t1250)
MP3 (t1815)

Hero's M: 2.57

Preflop: Hero is SB with 3, A
4 folds, MP3 calls t150, 2 folds, Hero raises to t910 (All-In), 1 fold, MP3 calls t760

Flop: (t2105) 7, 7, Q (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: (t2105) 6 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t2105) 7 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t2105

Results in white below:
Hero had 3, A (three of a kind, sevens).
MP3 had 6, A (full house, sevens over sixes).
Outcome: MP3 won t2105

Our opponent here openlimps in late position (MP3), and we have A3o, a respectable hand, in the small blind with 6 big blinds. I think we have enough fold equity (especially because his hand is often so weak) to make a push here. It would be a very easy push with A3s because we have more chances to suck out, but even with A3o we can ship it in. Unfortunately for us, our opponent calls and although our equity is not so bad (keep in mind the 6 doesn't usually play), our opponent spikes his 6 and we lose.

An interesting hand in the HU SNG:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00+$0.25 Tournament, 10/20 Blinds (2 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (SB) (t1310)
Button (t1690)

Hero's M: 43.67

Preflop: Hero is SB with 9, 9
Button calls t10, Hero raises to t80, Button calls t60

Flop: (t160) 3, 5, 7 (2 players)
Hero bets t90, Button raises to t240, Hero calls t150

Turn: (t640) 4 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets t200, Hero raises to t990 (All-In), 1 fold

Total pot: t1040

Results in white below:
Hero didn't show
Outcome: Hero won t1040

Reads here is that our opponent is playing very aggressively (and IMO spewy).

He completes preflop, to which I raise. I cbet on the flop and he raises us. Here we have to estimate his range and adapt best against it. The board is extremely drawheavy, so if we feel his range is weighted towards draws, we should shove and expect him to call with those draws. If his range is really strong, we can even call and check/fold on the turn. However because he was playing so LAG, I decided the biggest part of his range was air, in which case he often has at most 5 outs against us, I opted for a call and check/raise on any turn. So even though the turn was very ugly for us, I carry through with our plan, and unfortunately he doesn't call. But we still win a very nice pot.

Lastly a funny hand in the same Heads Up SNG:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00+$0.25 Tournament, 10/20 Blinds (2 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (SB) (t1810)
Button (t1190)

Hero's M: 60.33

Preflop: Hero is SB with 2, J
Button calls t10, Hero checks

Flop: (t40) 9, 4, J (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets t80, Hero calls t80

Turn: (t200) 10 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets t240, Hero calls t240

River: (t680) J (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets t320, Hero raises to t1470 (All-In), Button calls t530 (All-In)

Total pot: t2380

Results in white below:
Button had 5, 8 (one pair, Jacks).
Hero had 2, J (three of a kind, Jacks).
Outcome: Hero won t2380

Obviously we had taken the exact same line just recently with our 99 and now we flop a monster again (top pair heads up = niiiice). Again, because such a large part of his range is air, I opted for not 1 but TWO check/calls, and a check/call unimproved on the river, simply letting him bluff into us the whole way. Obviously the river giving us a third jack was nice, and I decided to check/raise here. He ends up calling to see what we had... with 8 high :). Ship ship! Apparently he was really wasted though, so oh well.

Hi everyone. Pretty interesting coaching with some good running at the start ♦. We lost our 2 HU SNG though unfortunately (against nits no less), but shit happens. No real interesting hands popped up although I was asked to comment on this one:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00+$0.50 Tournament, 100/200 Blinds 25 Ante (4 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (SB) (t1580)
BB (t8165)
UTG (t1955)
Button (t1800)

Hero's M: 3.95

Preflop: Hero is SB with Q, 9
2 folds, Hero raises to t1555 (All-In), BB calls t1355

Flop: (t3210) 4, 2, 3 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: (t3210) 3 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t3210) 4 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t3210

Results in white below:
Hero had Q, 9 (two pair, fours and threes).
BB had J, 6 (flush, Jack high).
Outcome: BB won t3210

Here we can see that if our opponent calls us with more than about 25% this push becomes unprofitable. I didn't think he'd call us so light, so I decided to go for a push in this spot. I was wrong, when he called with J6s (just over a top 50% hand). Because our opponents are unknown though, we have to make these assumptions every now and then: that they are not crazy spewtards or people simply out to get us. If they do indeed turn out to be, then it's just bad luck. However if we can get reads on them before the hand, that will of course help us in our decision.

(On another note, for him to call my push with J6s, he has to know that I'm pushing at least 85% there. My range there is about 50-60%, so for him the call is about -0.4%$EV. Which is obviously really really really horrible being the chipleader on the bubble)

So yeah. Other than an extremely sore throat from commentating so many heads-up games at once, we made a profit of 6-7 buy-ins, which is nice :).