Folding a Flush in Main Event?

Day 1 of the 2017 WSOP Main Event went about as well as possible for me. I correctly assessed most of my opponents’ tendencies and played a strategy designed to take advantage of their mistakes. I called down the overly aggressive players with a wide range and made big folds against the straightforward players when they decided to put a lot of money in the pot. I ended day 1 with four starting stacks, 211,300, which was good for fourth place in my portion of the field going into day 2a.

Despite winning most of my hands, I made what turned out to be an incorrect fold with a flush near the end of the day. With blinds at 250/500 with a 75 ante, everyone folded to me in the small blind and I limped 7c-2c out of my 100,000 effective stack. The big blind, who arrived to the table about 15 minutes earlier, checked. He came to the table with more chips than most of my opponents, but he seemed to be a recreational player, although it is difficult to say with no clear information.

Some players may question limping 7c-2c, but unless the big blind is overly aggressive, limping with all your suited hands will win a bit more money than folding due to the excellent pot odds. Notice I have to put in 250 chips into a pot that will be 1,675, meaning I only need to realize my equity 15% of the time to break even, which isn’t too difficult to accomplish. To compensate for limping lots of junk, I also limp some of my best hands, strengthening my limping range.

The flop came Jh-5c-3c. I bet 1,000 into the 1,675 pot and my opponent called.

I am fine with my flop bet, although perhaps a smaller bet would be ideal. In general, when you limp from the small blind and the big blind checks, you can make a 1.25 big blind bet and steal the pot most of the time when your weak, straightforward opponents fail to improve. Even if your opponent calls, it isn’t a big deal, due to your small bet size.

The turn was the (Jh-5c-3c)-5s. I bet 1,500 into the 3,675 pot, my opponent raised to 4,100, and I called.

The 5s on the turn is a particularly bad card to continue barreling on because now a 5 is never folding, whereas an unimproved middle pair may, but given I have a draw that has essentially no showdown value, I am fine betting. I would also continue betting with all my trips, top pairs, and some of my flush and straight draws, making my range quite strong. Once my opponent raises, I think calling is fine, again due to my pot odds. When my opponent raises, his range should be mostly trips and bluffs, most of which he should continue betting on most rivers, meaning I should have decent implied odds if I improve to a flush.

The river was the (Jh-5c-3c-5s)-Jc, giving me a flush, but also double-pairing the board. I checked, my opponent bet 6,500 into the 11,875 pot, and I folded.

While the Jc may appear like a good river because it improves me to a flush, it also improves my opponent’s oddly played top pairs to a full house. Clearly I also lose to the other obvious made hand, trip 5s, which also improved to a full house. I also lose to better flushes, which may or may not bet the river (given I should have all Jacks and 5s in my range). Since I know I would play all my full houses in this manner, the 7-high flush is actually one of the worst hands I should have in this spot. With no reads, it is rarely a bad strategy to fold the bottom of your range. That said, it is worth noting that many straightforward players only raise the turn with a 5 but then cautiously check behind on the river, fearing the better full house (which isn’t such an irrational fear). If I knew my opponent thought in this manner, it removes both Jacks and 5s from his range (because he wouldn’t raise Jacks on the turn), allowing me to make a hero-call.

I later found out that my opponent posted on one of the poker forums that he decided to bluff me on this hand to try to slow me down because I was playing more than my fair share of pots, making it difficult for him to enter the pot with a wide range. While that strategy is often fine, especially early in the day, this is not the best spot to do it because my turn bet/calling range should be quite strong.

When these plays work, they seem amazing but most of the time they will fail. Fortunately for my opponent, this time I had a flush draw and not a made hand.

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Disgruntled Poker

Like anyone who produces content that improves the lives of a large number of people, I get my fair share of haters. At first I just ignored them and focused on the readers who find my blogs useful. But I realize now that the haters have offered me a fantastic teaching opportunity.

The poker community is filled with countless amazing people. If you ever have the opportunity to get to know the people at the top of the game, you will quickly find out that almost all of them are kind, intelligent, loving individuals who want the best for both poker players and mankind. They strive to not only be good at poker, but also to impact the world in a positive way.

Unfortunately the poker community, especially in the small and middle stakes, is also populated with people who are disgruntled because their poker dreams have not been realized. Being disgruntled with poker is a common feeling that most poker players experience at times during their careers. Most humans irrationally think that they are supposed to win, especially if they used to win in the past. In my experience with helping disgruntled players, almost all of them used to be winning poker players who either no longer have an edge or have seen their edge diminish.

It is important to recognize that the average player’s skill is constantly rising. While some players learn much faster than others, everyone learns over time. If everyone is getting better, the people who improve the fastest will end up with the profits. Most disgruntled players learned how to play well enough five to ten years ago but have since become stagnant. Instead of spending time studying, they spent their time grinding out profit at the poker table. This resulted in them becoming break-even or losing players in today’s game.

I too fell into this rut about six years ago. When I first started playing poker, I was hungry for every bit of knowledge I could get my hands on. After building a sizable bankroll and having some success, I got lazy. While I didn’t understand this at the time, I realize now that I thought I was amazing at poker and that I no longer needed to study. My results eventually started to suffer. I found myself being jealous of people who were still having success. But instead of getting angry at them, I vowed to become a winner again.

I went back to spending at least a few hours each day studying everything I could get my hands on. I also set out to write down my poker strategy in order to identify spots where my thinking was flawed. I worked hard to fix the holes in my game. (This text eventually became my best-selling book, Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, which you can get in theaudiobook format for free.) I put in the hard work and sure enough, I started winning again. I continue to work hard to improve constantly at both poker and life. I came to understand that studying is part of the game that must be embraced, especially by people like me who are not naturally talented at poker.

People act out their frustrations in various ways. Some turn to drugs. Others start hating on people who have more success. Some quit poker. Others continue playing an outdated strategy until they are broke. Some commit suicide. The list goes on and on of what past poker players have resorted to. Fortunately, I decided instead to improve.

Today, I want to address the most obviously disgruntled group of players. These are the people who vent their frustrations by spreading hate. These players are angry and want to yell at someone. They want to bring the winners down to their level. They don’t mind looking foolish in the process. Clearly if you devote your time and energy to complaining about where you are at, you will not progress any farther.

It seems like these players fail to realize that in both poker and life, someone will always be higher up the ladder than you. Instead of working hard to improve to the level of those ahead of them, they get angry that they are not good enough or because they think they have failed. The haters turn to being vocal in a negative way in order to vent their frustrations.

Ordinarily when someone asks me for help, I do my best to help them. Haters scream loud and clear that they need help. Unfortunately, they are often so blinded by rage that they are unwilling to accept the help they so obviously need.

When I become a target of haters, I view it as confirmation that my coaching services are working well. If these mediocre, stagnant pros could still win, it would mean that the average amateur is not progressing very quickly. Conversely, if the average amateur improves quickly, it means I am doing my job well as a poker instructor.

Some people question why I want to help amateur players, when beating them on a regular basis is my primary source of income. The answer is simple. If I had not received a lot of help when I first entered the poker world, primarily through Sklansky’s books and the generous posters on the main poker forum at the time, I would almost certainly not be where I am today. I was eager to learn everything I could about the game and fortunately, a few open-minded people were happy to help. Their willingness to help an unknown random kid planted in me the feeling that I owe the same to the next generation.

While the haters only think about themselves, people who succeed work toward a greater good and look to impact the lives of other people in a positive way. I do not automatically dismiss a hater as a close-minded, ignorant person. About two weeks ago, someone messaged me on Facebook saying he was pissed that I was making his middle stakes games tougher. We had a long discussion and by the end of it, he came away realizing that his poker progression had stalled (just as mine had six years ago). He was no longer working hard to improve. I took the opportunity to transform him into someone who was hungry for knowledge. Successes like that are always gratifying.

If you find that you constantly have negative, self-defeating thoughts, I strongly suggest that you spend significant time working on both your poker game and your life. There is almost certainly something out of balance. If you are spending time and energy trying to tear positive things down, or are only working to benefit yourself, you will have a tough time living a fulfilled life. Instead, I recommend you spend some time helping other people. If you spread joy and kindness, you will find that you will live a much happier life, which in turn will help you realize your poker goals.

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I won the 5k MTT for 150k

Life has been swingy lately. I chopped the $1,000 PLO rebuy tournament at Bellagio for $18,000, which was nice. It only had around 25 people I think but a win is a win. I bricked off the rest of the tournaments, including the main event.

I decided to gamble and play some semi high stakes cash games on Victory Poker and did poorly, losing $8,000 in one night, which is a decent amount for me, as I have been playing fairly small online lately. I was feeling a little depressed about it and alllmost decided to skip the last $5000 Texas Holdem poker event at Bellagio. Good thing I didn�t.

I sat around most of day 1 with no chips. After around 6 hours of the poker tournament, I picked up AA when there was a raise, call, and reraise in front of me. I pushed and the small blind cold called with AK. I won that and from there won 4 more coin flips to end the day as the chip leader with 18 people left out of the 90 or so that started. Only 9 people got paid, so we would finish the tournament the next day.

Today, I ran pretty hot right out of the gate, knocking out a few short stacks. I had one lucky hand where a tight aggressive opponent raised and I called in late position with QsJs. The flop came JcTs8s. We got it all in and he was drawing almost dead with 7s6s. From there I ran over everyone for a while before we got down to 10 players.

There were around 4 online guys and 4 older amateurs left in the tournament. Oddly enough, 4 online guys were on my left and 4 amateurs were on my right. The online guys were going nuts trying to outplay each other so I just say around for waited for good hands. It was kinda funny because two of the online guys went on monster tilt for no reason at all.

I got up to around 500,000 chips out of the 1.6 million in play when we were down to 7 people when I lost a pretty big flip. I raised to 9000, one of the lag kids reraised to 26000 and I went all in for 270k or so. He snap called with AQ to knock me back to average. Personally, I think his call was terrible, but what can you do. Lucky for him, I had the bottom of my range.

From there I won with JJ vs AT when one of the other tilters pushed over me. Once we got 3 handed, the short stack, who is a high stake cash game regular, pushed for 15bbs, around 165k, the other player, a very good amateur from Europe called and I picked up AK. I pushed and the amateur folded. I beat hid A5 to enter heads up with 1.3 million to 300k. From there, I won a flip and the $150,000 first prize.

I decided to celebrate by eating Chipotle, one of my favorite meals, and playing Fallout New Vegas. I actually haven�t started eating or playing yet, as I just walked in the door. Im excited about both. All in all, this has been the nut day.

I am learning more and more about myself that I hate losing much more than I like winning. I feel so much more pain about losing the $8,000 online than I feel joy from winning the tournament today.

I realize this makes no sense at all. Clearly this is something I need to work at. I think I am also going to make a point to just grind mid stake cash games online for a while and not take any shots. I hhaaattttteeeee losing online. Life is ok for some reason.

I am going hiking with Hoyt Corkins and Tony Grappo tomorrow here in Vegas, which is always fun. A few days from now, I am heading to Chicago to play the $10,000 WSOP circuit event. They are getting large turn outs, so hopefully it will be a good tournament. Ok, video game time. Thanks for reading. Be sure to follow me, JonathanLittle on twitter.

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