Thursday, December 20, 2007

A Squeeze Play that Actually Worked!

I just woke up from sleeping off my 18 hour session at Hollywood Park last night. It was a very weird session indeed. I started out at the $400 game and made a litte progress up to about $1000 off my first buyin and then yoyoed back and forth on that until I left that game with about $900 on my original $400 and went to go play in the $500 unrestricted buyin game which is usually a much better game. This specific instance was no different and I bought in my 2nd $400 buyin to give myself about $1200 to start with because there were some incredibly bad players in the game and I wanted to get full value on any bet I made. Well, throughout the night I wasn't able to play too many hands but I was making a small profit in a game where any second I could win $2000. Unfortunately, that second never came and all the bad players eventually busted to this funny Bostonian in town for business named Fred. Now Fred was the big stack at the table and the only other one besides me who had any idea of what he was doing. Like I said, he managed to bust the majority of people who didnt leave with money and I didn't get any of it. In fact, we got down to 3 handed and I managed to lose a good majority of my stack and got stuck down to about $400. Then the only fish in our 3 handed game left and it was Fred and I. There was no $400 game going and neither of us wanted to play heads up NL so we managed to change the game to heads up 10-20 Limit o8/Stud8 mixed game. We played that for about an hour and I was up nicely in O8 but managed to lose all my o8 profit and a little more back to him in stud 8. Fred ran pretty ridiculous in stud 8. In 10 hands of Stud 8 play he managed to show up with trips 3 times and a boat once. 60-70% of our hands were contested high only (as is more likely in heads up) and I was "stuck" with Aces up vs trips, Kings up vs a hidden boat, etc... So i was down some after our mixed game session. Then I decided to teach Fred how to play chinese poker. Which sounded like a good idea at the time. We played for $5 a point with naturals and the first hour or so he paid me $200-$250. To be fair, though, he is a very fast learner and my early hands were monstrous with something like Boat-Boat QQx so even an experienced player would have trouble not getting scooped there. As that Chinese session rolled on for about 3-4 hours he again managed to come back and break me. I was down to $30 in the early morning (7-8am) when Rick walks in surprisingly. I managed to borrow $200 from Rick, win a double scoop on a special 1 hand only 3 way Chinese hand between me, Fred, and Nick ( a daily regular in the $500 NLHE game) while the NLHE game was starting up. That put me up to about $280 and since I was technically part of the broken game from the previous evening I was able to sit in the $500 game with a short buyin. Fortunately, I started off nicely when on the 5th hand of full 9 handed play I had 5-7 off in the BB when it was limped around. Flop comes 8-6-4 with two hearts in a 5 way pot. I checked and it went around to Fred on the button who pots it for $50. I c-raised him $95 more and Rick (who decided to sit in the game) told me later he folded the A high flush draw in the cutoff vs my c-raise. Fred put me all in for the ~$140 I had left and his 6-8 didn't outrun me.
After that I played my usual game as I was back up to about $600 and the quality of the table was fairly low. Made a few hands and stole a few pots, nothing too special to speak of. I had managed to build my $600 up to about $1000 when this nice hand came up. Nick (the regular day player who is mildly crafty) had a big stack of about $1600 and limped in 2nd position, two other people limped in , and it came to me on the button wtih Kh 10h and I also limped. Richie who had about $1100 (another regular but much less skilled than Nick IMO, was a bit steamy) raised to $75 out of the SB. Nick called, one limper folded and one limper called so I was getting >3:1 with Kh 10h on the button with deep stacks so I called. Flop comes pretty for me: Ah 8h Qd. Richie quickly leads out for $200 into the ~$300 pot. Nick calls fairly quickly. Now, I have monster draw with as many as 12 outs to the nuts (9 hearts plus 3 non-heart Jacks) so I can easily call here without a second thought. If I am seeing both the turn and the river, then I have most likely about 40-43% equity in the pot (assuming I am not up against a set which full house redraw potential). Now obviously, I have no fold equity if Richie has AA or QQ and most likely if he has AQ. He is fairly straightforward so I did not think he would raise SB after 5 limpers with 88, and Q8 was definetely out of the question. I would have said A8 was out of the question as well but he claimed to have had it after the hand. Anyway, I was thinking about how to play the flop and as I am thinking Richie tells me, "you can make alot of money if you hit your heart". Now I thought that was a weird thing to say, in that, he is trying to convey strength to me but I read it as weakness and with Nick only calling behind I didn't give him credit more anything more than AK at best. So I figured my fold equity to be up in the 40% area as Richie would be the type that could and would fold AK if he thought he was behind. So I pushed all in for about a $700 raise on his $200 and Richie thought for a long time. I was trying to represent 88 as that would be the only legitimate hand I could represent, but it was also the most logical for it to be 88 or a big draw. After a long think, Richie folded and so did Nick. Richie claimed to have A8 while Nick claimed to have AK. Afterwards, Richie said he would have called if we were heads up but he said that since he was squeezed between me and Nick and very well Nick had an A so if I indeed had 88 he was drawing to 1 out. During the hand, I also pushed because I thought there was a chance that Nick had something like QhJh or a similar heart draw that might be stealing some of my outs so the chance of me making my hands would be slightly decreased. Therefore, a fold by both parties would have been a more desired result. This is a clearcut example of a Squeeze play although I was surprised to learn that A8 folded, if he indeed at that.

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