Am I Really Weak Tight?
I played my first losing session of the year last night. I didn’t realize how much I had lost until I looked at my Pokertracker stats and saw I was down almost an entire buy-in. This seemed odd because I really only had one big pot I lost where my set of Kings lost to a flush. I dug a little deeper and found that I lost several pots in the $4-$7 range. Looking at these hands I found that I was playing very passive, doing a lot of check-calling and trying to draws without trying to fold out a better hand. This hand in particular really bugged me-
Poker Stars, $0.10/$0.25 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 7 Players
BB: $20.70 (flops seen 41%/preflop raise 7%/aggression factor 3)
UTG: $25.30
UTG+1: $30.75
MP: $52.70 (flops seen 50%/preflop raise 28%/aggression factor 2.2)
CO: $23.15
BTN: $45.05
Hero (SB): $24.75
My two opponents in this hand are super loose and pretty aggressive. The Big Blind has an aggression factor of 3 which means that he is three times more likely to bet or raise than he is to call. It is going to be hard to play this hand out of position against both of them.
Pre-Flop: ♣ar♦♠ T♥ T♠ /♣ar♦♠ dealt to Hero (SB)
2 folds, MP raises to $0.75, 2 folds, Hero calls $0.65, BB raises to $1.50, MP calls $0.75, Hero calls $0.75
I hate this spot. I have a good hand but I am going to have to play it out of position. I really think I should have re-raised to about $2.50 – $3.00 here to try and end it now or make MP define his hand better. That however brings up more problems if he calls by building a big pot out of position with just a pair of Tens. The re-raise from the BB is a pretty bad play here as well, neither of us is going to fold to a min-raise here. It builds a pot while he is out of position and it gains no information.
Flop: ($4.50) ♣ar♦♠ 9♠ 8♥ 7♠ /♣ar♦♠ (3 Players)
Hero checks, BB bets $4, MP calls $4, Hero calls $4
I check to the raiser and he fires out a nearly pot-size continuation bet. MP’s flat call gives me just over 3 to 1 on my call, and it closes the action on the flop. I consider going for the check-raise here, but I am really afraid I won’t get a better hand to fold. With the pot this big already I think I would have to move in here if I do go for the CR. I don’t know what to do so I just call.
Turn: ($16.50) ♣ar♦♠ 5♣ /♣ar♦♠ (3 Players)
Hero checks, BB checks, MP bets $5.25, 2 folds
I do not improve and I check. The BB’s check makes me think he has two overcards, probably something like AK or AQ. The small bet by MP just screamed value bet to me. I tanked forever on this one. I really wanted to move in here, but I decided that after thinking for so long he wouldn’t fold anything I could beat, including two pair hands like 97. I also thought there was a good chance he had a 6 here which would never fold. Even getting 4 to 1 here I can’t bring myself to call either.
Results: $16.50 Pot ($0.80 Rake)
MP mucked and WON $15.70 (+$10.20 NET)
I really hate the way I played this hand. I made so many mistakes here but I really have no idea what hand to put MP on. His opening range is so wide here you really can’t put him on anything preflop. When he calls the flop I think he has caught a piece of something. The turn completes a lot of hands and I can’t pull the trigger. I hate being weak-tight.
The question is, what can I learn from this? Well it is hard to say without knowing what my opponents held. I do know what range of hands to put them on here though because of my PokerTracker stats. I decided to try to analyze this hand using Pokerstove, which is a powerful tool you can get here. Pokerstove lets you plug in specific hands or ranges of hands to calculate how well they do against each other. You can get results for preflop, flop, and turn as well. Let’s see what I can come up with on this hand.
The first player to enter the pot was MP, and we know that he raises 28% of his hands preflop, which is a huge range. I put his range as-
- Pocket Pairs AA to 55, Any two Broadway cards, all connectors T9-65, and all one-gappers J9 down to 75
This range is 28.7% of all hands which matches his preflop raise % and I think gives me a good idea of what I am probably up against. If I do the same for the Big Blind I can come up with something pretty close as well-
- Pocket Pairs AA to JJ, AKs-ATs and AKo-AJo, and KQ
This is 7.8% of all hands, and I think I could even toss out KQ and AJo considering this was a three-bet. Now that I have an idea of their cards I can put them into Pokerstove along with my hole cards and see about where I was on the flop-
Looking at the numbers now I really think I have to check-raise all-in on this hand. If you take the equity of my hand (44.274% against their range) and add the fold equity when I get a better hand to lay down I think I should win this pot well over half the time. I need to do some more work to figure out the true value of my hand, taking into consideration what hands will actually call my shove and how my hand holds up against their calling range, but I will save that for later.
I may be completely wrong on all this as well. I am scared to death to open The Mathematics of Poker considering I haven’t taken a math class in about 12 years, but it would help a lot in these calculations. Speaking of books, maybe I just need to brush up a bit on the classics, I seem to remember something about “putting a man to a decision for all his chips.” Yeah, that sounds a lot better than check-call. I think I would have been better off losing an entire buy-in on this hand than calling and folding it away over the entire session. This has more of a tendency to happen when I am mixing limit and no limit, so maybe I really need to focus on being aggressive when switching back and forth.
I hope I didn’t ramble on too much here, and I would love to know what everyone would do with this hand if they were in the same situation. Am I weak-tight? I don’t think so, but I do think I played this hand that way.
Once again, thank you for your time.
Chris
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Comments
argh. had to sign up to make a comment. you’re lucky, i’m a fan of yours ;p
i have to agree with riverrun. after a bet and call on the flop, the pot is large enough to make a check raise reasonable. the pot was 12.50 and you had around 22 dollars. if you believe your equity is close to 50, fold equity is going to push that way over. remember, you’re not only check raising (a strong play in itself), but check raising into two people (1 of whom 3-bet preflop). you pretty much have tons of outs vs anything except JT which is highly unlikely since you hold 2 tens and b/c of the preflop action.
also, i think you narrowed the BB’s range too small. it was a 3-bet, but 2 things:
1. it was a squeeze play (although retarded in size, a squeeze play nevertheless)
2. it was a retarded size
both these facts make for a larger range (giving you better equity with your TT. he could have any pocket pair and was just c-betting.
i think you are used to playing with a larger stack in a live setting where check raising all in is not optimal.
What are your PT stats? It sounds like you do play a little weak-tight. I would probably raise PF there if you are going to play the hand out of position. The range of openers is pretty big with a LAG and you can get your opponent to define his/her hand or just take it down there.
I don’t understand why you fold the turn either. You’re getting 4:1 on your money and you’re 4:1 to hit, plus your hand might be good, plus you’re getting better implied odds on your money since if you hit your card you will probably get paid a bit on the river. If he has j-10 and you’re drawing to a chop, he’s playing it horribly as he is giving a flush draw the right price to suck out, so unless he is a very poor player you can rule that out of his range. It looks like a naked 10 to me.
If you’re going to play tight, you can’t let your stack bleed like this. I see so many people do this and by the time they catch a hand they are so low that they either double up back to where they started or get sucked out on.
Thanks everyone for the replies. Joethepro, if you mistake my work for someone you’re a fan of I will take that as a compliment 
I really hated the way I played this hand and I am glad you all agree with me. My PT stats are 25/12/2.6/18,000 hands and I am running about +6ptbb/100. Most players in these games are tight/passive and I bully them pretty well, but when I run into a LAG I seem to tighten up too much and play like this. Guess that’s why I have had trouble moving up.
I agree with the check-raise line here. You have the perfect stack size for it too, just about a pot-sized raise. You may/may not get an overpair to lay down here, though certainly a hand like QQ is possible. But even if called you are in a decent spot to not only win, but win a stack. And you enhance your image to be somewhat loose/aggressive, an advantageous image for someone who is not actually loose to have.
Also, think of it this way: By calling, how likely does that same overpair pay you off on a board reading 6789 or 789J? And how unlikely will you win with a set on a 789T board? And how likely does an AK outdraw you on the turn when he would have folded the flop, or bet the turn when he misses and then you fold? In other words, you’re getting minimum positive advantages and maximum negative ones with the check/call here.
Also you mentioned position, realize that OOP like this is a better spot for you to get the money in since it prevents any future OOP mistakes in this hand. For instance, what if a ten came on the turn, how do you proceed OOP with still a pot sized stack remaining?
Pre-flop, I agree with keeping the pot small there by calling. By raising, you put yourself in a spot on a J95 two diamond board of what to do? Bet/fold? check/fold? bet/call? check/call? They are all bad options. With a much smaller/larger stack you might reraise.
I’m check raising the flop all in every day of the week. When you call with your tens preflop you can’t get a better flop then that other than hitting your set. It’s been a couple years since I played that level and maybe the aggressive play of higher limits is clouding my judgment but if I was playing that hand at NL100 FR I would 4x his continuation bet all the time. We have outs to an over pair to make it worth while to see if you can get A8, A9, AK AQ AJ, 66 (which i think is likely for MP) I also think he folds to our bet on the flop. MP could also just try to bet out his flush draw after both ppl check, your line is so weak hes not scared of you, and since the aggressor checked he obv missed with AKish.
As for folding for $5 more to to win $21 is crazy when you could have 10 outs to improve to the best hand. Your implied odds are good too because if you hit and he has a 2 pair/set hand you stack him on occasion with stats like his.
This is very weak tight and you played it like scared money. I don’t know you and this is the first time ive read your blog so take it wish a grain of salt.