I play a lot of live no-limit holdem, usually with two $5 blinds and an allowed buy-in range of $300 to $500. These games are available all over Los Angeles, including The Bicycle Casino, Hustler, and Hollywood Park Casino.
I was in the three-seat at The Bike with an insanely loose-aggressive fish in the one-seat. How loose-aggressive was he? On this hand he decided to raise to $60 blind.
But the action started on seat eight, a tight and reasonable player, who made the mistake of raising to $120. Seat nine, of course, folded and seat one took his money back.
Our tight and reasonable player didn’t like that and called the floor for a decision but a bet out of turn does not stand if the action has changed. The floorman issued a warning. Seat one took a look at his cards and immediately called the $120.
Seat two folded and now the action was on me.
There was $240 in the pot and $600 in my stack. The fish had me covered by a few dollars and the under-the-gun player had started with about $500. This is clearly an all-in or fold situation for me. The question is what range is it reasonable for me to go all-in with here?
The raiser was really the one I had to worry about. I needed to be ahead of his range to play this pot.
On one hand he had to assume he was going to get action from our fish most of the time. And against the fish’s calling range he’s good with about AT+, 88+.
But he is acting under-the-gun, with seven reasonable players yet to act, any one of them could wake up with a monster. For that reason I think his range was closer to AQ+, TT+.
I looked down and found A♣K♣ which was gold against this range so I raised all-in to $600.
He tanked for several minutes before finally calling with KK. Our fish of course insta-called with A♦4♣. I was in horrible shape.
Given that he tanked before calling with KK I was clearly very wrong in assigning a range to the under-the-gun player.
If we assume his calling range is QQ+ I only have 30% equity in the pot but need 33% equity to make it a break even decision. (I’m assuming our fish’s range to be any ace or any pair and that he never folds.)
If under-the-gun has any hand I beat in his range (ie. AQ) or any hand he would fold (ie. JJ) than the push is a good one. In this case, with this particular player that is probably not true and I should have just folded my AKs.
There is a happy ending. I didn’t win the pot, but neither did seat eight. A fourth diamond on the turn left us both drawing dead. Our wild fish raked in the $1700 pot and promptly proceeded to lose that and a few more buyins over the next couple of hours.
