Sometimes, I lead here, especially if I consider the initial opener to be looser and unable to fold a 7-6 or 9-9 that he checked multiway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t want to lead and have the nittier early position raiser call me.<\/strong> If that happens, I will be forced to check most rivers. When I do that, I will have capped my range<\/a>. Most players will intuitively understand that I would lead the river with most two-pair or better combinations, so they will know I have a missed draw or one-pair. This is bad for me, considering that\u2019s exactly what I have.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHere’s what you’ll find below:<\/b><\/font>\n Live poker is a different game, too. <\/strong>When that ace rolled off on the turn, I stole a sideways glance at the initial raiser. He looked quite interested now that that card rolled off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I check. The early position raiser bets now. Middle position and cutoff fold. It\u2019s on me. I call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The river is an offsuit deuce. I check to the early position raiser, the nittier pot controller. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are around 20,000 tournament chips in the pot. He looks at them. He goes to his chips. He thumbs his stack for a second, rifling up and down. He grabs ten thousand in 5k chips. He puts them on the felt next to his stack. Then, he thinks for a second more. He has a look like, \u201cOh, oops, I forgot something.\u201d He decides to rifle his 1k chips again. Thumbing them, he decides to grab four more of them. He puts his whole bet together now. 14,000 in all. He slides it into the middle. It has taken him no less than 15 seconds<\/a> to put together his river bet. Almost immediately I throw my hand into the muck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tell me, how did that last sentence make you feel? It shouldn\u2019t make you feel close to anything because this is a clear fold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First off, if you do want to call here, what is the most important thing to be thinking of? Honestly, ask yourself, what should you be thinking of? What is the most important question to ask yourself? Then, what is the answer to that question? If we\u2019re not putting these logic puzzles together we\u2019re really going to struggle on the felt.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDoes he do this with X?\u201d and X is the best hand<\/a> that you beat. If he doesn\u2019t bet X, then it stands to reason you don\u2019t beat anything!<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, X would be A-8s. That seems like quite the stretch. Does this nuttier player even open A-8s from an early position? We don\u2019t know. Does a pot-controlling style player value bet top pair with the fifth kicker twice in a multiway pot? That sounds like even more of a stretch.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But okay, let\u2019s say he\u2019s opening 15% of hands, which would be about the minimum we\u2019d need to give him to include suited aces. Well, now, if we include A-10o+ (which would be in that range), we need to count all those combos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The way this works isn\u2019t \u201cwell he could have A-10o, but we beat A-8s\u201d That makes it sound like it\u2019s one hand versus one hand. That\u2019s not how poker ranging works.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n So, let\u2019s say you think on this river, he value bets A-6s and better. Most pot controllers don\u2019t do that in multiway pots<\/a>, but for the sake of the argument, let\u2019s say this one does. Alright. Well, we have one ace in our hand, and there\u2019s one on the board. He probably bets queens on the flop and checks back fives and sevens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what that means is, once we account for card removal, he\u2019s betting eight combinations of AK, eight of combinations of AJ, eight combinations of A-10, one combo of A-5, one combo of A-7, TWO combinations of A-8s, and TWO combinations of A-6s. The all-caps were there to help you see what we possibly<\/em> could be beating. That\u2019s 26 combinations we can reasonably count against us and a whopping four that are in our favor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we\u2019re counting suited and unsuited combinations<\/a> of a two-different-cards hand at the beginning of this analysis, then there are 16 combinations of it: 12 unsuited combinations of the hand and four suited ones. So, if you\u2019re counting A-10 suited and unsuited, that\u2019s sixteen combinations at the start of the hand. A-8s, instead, would only have four because tight players don\u2019t open A-8o from an early position. Do you see the problem we\u2019re running into now?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You then ask how likely each combination is to be in his range. We\u2019re losing on the scoreboard 26 to 4, and I don\u2019t even know if we can count those four. This is looking pretty bad.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n So, if we can\u2019t beat any hand that he\u2019s value betting really, we need to ask ourselves: Is he bluffing there ever?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Poker players always want to see bluffs that aren\u2019t there because folding means consenting to a loss. No one wants to let another man beat them. This is referred to as loss aversion. If you want to be a professional gambler, there should be no more fascinating topic for you. But that is a topic for another day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What bluffs could this person have?<\/strong> He\u2019s a pot controller and tighter, so he\u2019s not leading into three players on that turn with nothing. So, he needs to be betting at least a draw. Due to how tightly we have him opening preflop, the only draws he can have are flush draws. By the way, if you\u2019re combo counting, each flush draw combination you can think of, such as J-Ts of hearts, is exactly one whole combo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We can\u2019t count those hands either because we\u2019ve never seen this guy bluff before. Also, there\u2019s a strong possibility that he would have bet that flush<\/a> draws on the flop. We\u2019re stuck again.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, his behavior on the river is extremely alarming. When people are bluffing on the river, they tend to grab the chips and put them in.<\/strong> It\u2019s like jumping off a cliff into a river. They get their nerve up and do it. They don\u2019t hem and haw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When a guy does take his time there and plays with his chips for so long, that doesn\u2019t scream bluff or thin value bet. There\u2019d be some tension in those bets. Bluffers tend to not want to do anything that could look suspicious. <\/strong>So, rifling your chips for 20 seconds and annoying everyone at the table doesn\u2019t exactly fit that MO. More likely, this is an awful attempt to feign weakness when hand values are set, and the man knows he has the joint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For these reasons, I thought it was a clear fold, and I didn\u2019t really think of it much afterward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, I started making this Texas Hold’em<\/a> hand quiz for poker players. I changed the kicker in my hand to a 3 make it even easier. I slipped in clues. I tried to help students along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of them could find the fold on the river<\/strong>. No matter how many times I said, \u201cwe\u2019ve NEVER seen this guy bluff, he is a SERIOUS pot controller\u201d they would still go on calling on the river. When I asked them why they did that, they couldn\u2019t articulate why they slid their money into the middle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I have come to learn about people and poker players, in general, is that while people say they\u2019re using logic to make decisions what they\u2019re actually doing is letting their emotions tilt them one way or another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Letting your emotions lead the way isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a case where a man had his emotional center in the brain destroyed, and he wasn\u2019t a cold calculating cardsharp by the end of it. Instead, he wouldn\u2019t show up for his kid\u2019s baseball games (because he felt nothing for his child), and it would take him three hours to decide on breakfast cereal in the morning. We need the push and pull of our emotions throughout most of the day. They only become a burden to us when we play cards, and our loss aversion is gutting us with valuable chips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This river call had 14 big blinds. Most great tournament players make 10 big blinds per 100 hands. It takes three hours to play 100 hands live, so 14 big blinds is like throwing away four hours of work\u2014for the hell of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The truth is, most people call on the river because \u201cI have a top pair with a good kicker, and I\u2019m only calling two bets.\u201d I used to say that to myself as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I used to say that to myself because I was entitled. I didn\u2019t want to see reality on reality\u2019s terms. I wanted my hand to be good, so I made it a good hand in my mind by sticking to generalizations as opposed to combination counting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only way to get rid of poker entitlement and not allow yourself to be gamed is to work harder than the other guy.<\/strong> You need to fight fire with fire and replace emotion with emotion. If you counted the combinations appropriately in this hand, you would be disgusted with yourself if you called the river. That\u2019s a powerful poker strategy<\/a> and motivator. That\u2019s what we need. We need to work up to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I played this hand, I thought through it in the way you\u2019re reading today. I wasn\u2019t born being able to combination count, however. I was able to work through this hand subconsciously while I consciously looked for the player\u2019s physical tells because I\u2019ve been practicing for over a decade. Whenever I get home from a tournament, I pick a hand and work through it. I think about the combinations. I do the math. I quiz myself. I started coaching because it allowed me to monetize my study time. It also gave me a platform to share my conclusions, so I could receive helpful criticism on my thought processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I believe anyone can play No-Limit Hold\u2019em profitably because in my high school, I got smoked by everyone when I played cards. I was a terribly mediocre pro when I came on the scene. I was a D math student in school. The junior college I applied to told me I had to go back to ninth-grade math. Combination counting is not that hard to understand it just takes good old-fashioned work to get to. <\/strong>That\u2019s how you avoid poker entitlement. That\u2019s how you see reality for what it actually is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nToday, I\u2019m not playing that guy.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The most important question to ask yourself is…<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Alex](\"http:\/\/pokercoaching.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/AlexBorgata.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nThe next part of this puzzle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Then, it occurred to me: This hand holds a secret.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"WPT](\"http:\/\/pokercoaching.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/WPTborgata.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nThis is poker entitlement, pure and simple. <\/h2>\n\n\n\n