Thanksgiving Pokers

So I had like a dozen hands from over Thanksgiving I was going to post, but Cake sucks and they're all "currently unavailable" (ie: lost to the void).

Instead I have a single hand from today which involves a few situations that I completely suck at. I'm out of position against a tight player and almost two buy-ins deep. How's my play?

KK

My image was aggro but not insane. I went into passive check-call mode as soon as he min-raised me on the flop. I'm not betting again because I do NOT want to have to call a raise for my stack, whereas if I just had 100 BB I would have no problem with getting it in on the turn. Is THAT a mistake? There isn't any difference other than the amount of money that's on the line, it's not like his range changes.

Anyone else turn into a total nit when deep?

ONLINE POKER IS RIGGED (No, really)

First of all, I've never, ever seen any evidence that online poker is unfair. I love typing 'RIGGED' in chats when someone gets a beat put on 'em, but I've never been serious about it. Until now.

First, read this blog post at freakonomics:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/how-not-to-cheat/

Then, if you want to, wade through the massive megathread at 2p2:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12127403&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1

Basically, a group of players on AbsolutePoker has been discovered, all of them with completely ridiculous poker-tracker mined stats. They play 80-95% of their hands preflop, win over 66% of their hands at showdown, and have a river aggression factor of 20, 40, even infinity (this would means that they only fold or raise on the river, NEVER just flat call).

Hand histories have been posted where they make 3x the pot calls with (a winning) ten high. They raise every hand preflop, and then open limp with TT when another player (yet to act) has AA. Time after time, they make a ridiculously thin river over-value-bet with a shaky hand (I'm talking third pair, here). More than once, they've raised preflop and check-folded a flop where an opponent has flopped a boat.

They have made literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last three weeks. When discussion about their play came up, they started dumping money to people in heads up matches (presumably for money laundering purposes), and then intentionally playing bad to draw attention away. One hilarious hand involved the 'DOUBLEDRAG' player calling $5k on the river with 4 high.

No one knows what the entire story is here, but something strange is definitely going on. AbsolutePoker has not acknowledged that any cheating is going on yet, and from all accounts is completely incompetent as far as security goes. Some people think it's an inside job, others think
it's some clever hackers who have somehow compromised the site's security.

I don't know what this will mean for online poker. I am convinced that this is an isolated issue only affecting AbsolutePoker, so I don't plan on pulling my money out of cake. However, with the recent crackdowns on online gaming, I can't imagine our lawmakers will handle this in a rational manner. Ideally this will cause us to form some sort of regulatory committee to keep online poker safe and fair, but I feel that it's more likely that it will give someone a reason to shut it all down for good.

Very interesting times are ahead.

lol internet

A few internet hands for you guys to ponder.

All of them are short handed (5-6 players) with $0.25-$.50 blinds. No reads on anyone I'm playing against because I'm a multitabling superstar who doesn't have time for reads.


Hand 1

Hero's got J♦J♥ on the cut-off. MP folds, I raise to $2. Button and SB fold, BB re-raises to $6.50. (No reads on him at this point)

The flop comes 4♦9♦2♦. BB bets $8 into the $13 pot.

Hero calls, turn is a Q♦. BB pushes his last $37 into the $29 pot.

Hero...


Hand 2

Hero has 3♠3♦ on the button. Villain raises it to $1.75 from the hijack. Cutoff calls, hero calls.

Flop is 6♥8♥9♦. Villain bets $2.85 into the $6 pot. CO folds.

Hero calls. Turn is T♠. Villain bets $5.85 into the $11 pot. Hero calls.

River is A♣. Villain bets $5 into the $23 pot.

Hero raises to $25... Villain has $50 left and covers hero. Good or bad?


Hand 3

Hero has K♠K♦ in the BB. Three people limp, SB folds, and hero raises to $3. Two callers to the flop...

8♣5♦J♠. Hero bets $6 into the $9 pot. Button calls.

Turn 3♣. Hero checks, button bets $2 into the $22 pot.

Hero...



BONUS BAD BEAT HAND!!! (I'm 'tgijvs')

Stupid river. Worst street in hold'em imho.

They have poker on computers now

Here's an online hand my roommate played yesterday.

He was in the small blind and got K♦K♥. One d0nk in early position limps. Dude with a big stack (covered us and we're up to about 150 BB) raises from middle position. He calls, d0nk folds.

The flop is 2♣3♦4♠. He checks, bigstack checks behind.

Turn is Q♦. He bets $3 into a $4 pot, villain raises to $8. He calls.

River is a J♣. He bets $10 into the $20 pot, and villain calls.


Normally I'd reraise this preflop but smoothcalling can trap the limper and disguise our hand. The flop is great for us, since he raised preflop so he probably doesn't have a set or twopair or a straight. Most likely he has either an overpair to the board or two unpaired big cards. There's only one hand in that group that beats us, so we should be trying to get paid off now.

So how do we get our money in? We could bet out here, but Andrew argued that we're blowing him off too many hands, which is true since most of the hands he's raising with are unpaired and he'll likely just fold here. So we check, but do we check-raise? Check-raising is going to make the turn awkward. Plus, either he'll just fold and we'll win a small pot, or he'll slow way down and we won't get as much as we can. Check call seems really weak but I think we need to give him a little rope before we can pull the trigger.

He checks behind on the flop, which means he's probably got two big cards. Here's where we have to put out a bet and start building the pot. Either he just hit the queen or we weren't getting paid anyway. So Andrew bets 3/4 the pot, and the dude raises us, which is sweet. Do you call here or three-bet? He could have something like AQ and think he's sitting on the nuts, but he could just be testing the water.

The river's interesting, I'd probably just check call here. QQ, JJ, and QJ have just caught up to us, and all of those would reraise us hard if we bet. But on the other hand, you're missing a lot of value from Qx hands if he ends up checking through the river.

If you do end up betting out, do you call a reraise? What about a push?