H0H1 Intro & Part 1 Discussion

*Last edited by zook on Tue, 26 Dec 2006, 4:26pm; edited 1 time in total*

Nothing too complicated in these sections, imo, but a nice introduction. I wish every new FTR member was forced to read the "What is a hand?" section. A few questions to get things started...

1. How does the lack of a betting limit change your approach to no-limit vs. limit hold 'em? How different should your strategy be in the two games? (Huge questions that could produce books of material, I know, but let's get some ideas out there for everyone who thinks the two games aren't very different.)

2. Do you think about all of the "Elements of a Hand" Harrington describes on p. 18-23 before making a decision? Which ones do you think you over- or undervalue?

3. In the sample hand (p. 24-32), how would you have played each hand differently? (Forgetting that you know other players' hands.)

4. What do you think of Harrington's play in the sample hand? What do you think of his reasoning behind it?

5. Do you use probe bets as defined by Harrington? If you do, please post a hand history or two for discussion.

Feel free to respond to any or all of these, ignore them, or post your own!

In this hand i probably would have made a big re-raise against an aggresive player like sammy, because his raise doesn't really,IMO, mean that he has good hand, knowing how he plays i would have to assume that most of the time i'll have him beat right now, and if i re-raise then i will get position in the hand if Moneymaker folds and if Moneymaker decided to stay after a raise and re-raise then he would definately holds aces, kings, or queens and then whether i hit the flop or not then i would play the hand really slowly and defensively if i hit my ace, but as the flop happened then i would have lost a big pot instead of the smaller amount harrington actually lost.

could you post the sample hand and dan's thought process?

hey midas, i'll scan the harringtons thoughts on the handand the hand it self, later tonite when i get a chance.

Just my thoughts:

1. What’s the status of the tournament?
Everyone should pay attention to this, whether they do or not is one thing. In the under $20 MTT you don’t see this at all, first hand when 3-4 people go AI then you know your in for a donk fest. As you get close to the bubble, I agree with Mr. Harrington people TIGHTEN up just to get in the money. I was the same way, but have come to realize that you have to open up here and steal blinds, basically change your game to the aggressive. If I spend $10 to get in a tournament, what is the big stink about making $14.78 for 4 hours of play. I learned this the hard way but by reading books and this forum it has helped my game alot, but I by no means am a world class player!

2. How many players are at your table?
Yes this is important, if your at a full table 9-10 people, if your in EP or MP - A T offsuit is not playable, but the later you get in a tournament and your in MP at a 6-7 handed table A T offsuit is very playable.

3. Who are the players at your table?
IMO very hard to do at a small buy in MTT. That’s why I don’t like to play alot of hands early in a MTT, just to try to get a read on some of the players and see what there tendencies are. But it is still hard to do with players being moved all the time!

4. How does your stack compare to the blinds and antes?
Early in a tournament I don’t look at this alot I look at what the avg. chips are in the tournament, if I can stay in par with that for the first 3 hours I should be OK. But as the tournament progresses you have to look at your M (thats book 2 right) and every other M at your table.

5. How big are the other stacks at your table?
Again I don’t look at this very early in a tournament, mainly because 80% of the time these are just donks that tripled up with Q T offsuit with an all in call. But this is very important later in the tournament. You have to try to get involved with the smaller than you stacks or the middle stacks but if you can stay away from the big stacks (unless you have monster) than you should be ok. If your raising with AJ and the BB is the big stack your asking for trouble, because when he comes back and pushes, you will have to fold.

6. Where do you sit in relation to the aggressive and passive players?
Again tough to do early but hopefully you have the bullies on your right and the softies on your left. When you min raise from the BB with K9s and the 2-3 people that called you all fold put that in the memory bank, but if someone comes over the top with a reraise put that in the memory bank also.

7. What bets have been made in front of you?
This is definitely a big one, the gap concept applies here (for me anyway) especially early in a MTT. I like Harringtons example I think it is TT, it looks good when you have 5 folders in front of you, but if your facing bet-raise-reraise that puppy is trash!

8. How many active players are left after you act?
Early on this doesn’t apply to me, I generally play very tight in a MTT the first hour, sometimes 2. I may try to limp with suited connectors or small pairs but if it is raised behind me than I am folding, I want to see a cheap flop with the hopes of doubling up. You have to watch what kind of cards people are showing down too, In small buy-ins (MTT) you will see all kind of crap being played and you just have to put that in the memory bank or take a note or two. Later in a tournament again I try to stay away from messing with the bigstack unless I want to mess with him/her, because I want that reraise - because vie picked up KK.

9. What is your position at the table after the flop?
IMO this is the main one, how many articles can you read that talk about position in a MTT, so I won’t even elaborate on this one. But again this is the most important one to me!

10. What are your cards?
This is big one to me also. Where there are times like Harrington says that you can play virtually any 2 cards at any given time - when the time is right. If the tourney is near the bubble and you have 2 limpers in front of you - they asked for it by limping so raise 5X the blind or push it. 90% of the time you will take down the pot right there!

This one for me was really hard to grasp at first, playing to many hands and playing hands out of position. MTT is about patience, if you play in a MTT and don’t have the 4-6 hours to play in it DONT PLAY!! I don’t know how many times I would get in a tournament starting at 9:00 est and look at the clock and it is 1:00am and there still is 100 people involved and I have to get up in 4-5 hours. Than I would say I’m pushing with the next hand only to be going to bed about 3 minutes later wondering why I spent $10-25 bucks on that tournament and do something that @#$% stupid. Heck the 180 person MTT on stars take 3-4 hours to play, so what do you expect when 1200 are in it, granted 1/2 will be gone after the first hour and half of those after the 2nd hour but that is still 300 people left.

Fire away with the criticism!!
I’m a newbie,
ZD

Thanks for the post ZD, welcome to FTR.

midas, here's the sample hand. Harrington wrote pages of commentary, but I'm not going to retype that here.

2003 WSOP Final Table

SB: Amir Vahedi ( $865,000 )
BB: Tomer Benevenisti ( $645,000 )
UTG: Sam Farha ( $1,530,000 )
MP1: Yong Pak ( $215,000 )
MP2: Jason Lester ( $1,161,000 )
CO: Dan Harrington ( $1,080,000 )
Button: Chris Moneymaker ( $2,894,000 )

Everyone posts antes [$2,000]
Amir Vahedi posts small blind [$10,000].
Tomer Benevenisti posts big blind [$20,000].

Dealt to Amir Vahedi Ten of Diamonds

Dealt to Sam Farha Nine of Diamonds

Dealt to Dan Harrington Ace of Hearts

Dealt to Chris Moneymaker Ten of Spades

Sam Farha raises [$60,000].
Yong Pak folds.
Jason Lester folds.
Dan Harrington calls [$60,000].
Chris Moneymaker calls [$60,000].
Amir Vahedi calls [$50,000].
Tomer Benevenisti folds.
Pot = $274,000
** Dealing Flop ** Nine of Spades

Amir Vahedi checks.
Sam Farha bets [$80,000].
Dan Harrington folds.
Chris Moneymaker folds.
Amir Vahedi calls [$80,000].
Pot = $514,000
** Dealing Turn ** Six of Hearts

Amir Vahedi bets [$300,000].
Sam Farha calls [$300,000].
Pot = $1,114,000
** Dealing River ** Three of Clubs

Amir Vahedi checks.
Sam Farha bets [$300,000].
Amir Vahedi folds.

Answering my own questions seems pretty masturbatory, but at least that means I should be good at it, and maybe it will stimulate some discussion.

1. I'm hoping someone with a lot of limit experience will tackle this question. To risk stating the obvious, limit allows you to play more speculative hands because you often are getting the correct pot odds to do so. In no-limit an opponent is free to bet an amount that gives you incorrect pot odds and forces you to make your decision based implied odds. In this sense, no-limit requires more feel and limit requires more arithmetic. There are lots of other differences (i.e. starting hand requirements and post-flop hand valuation) I'm not that familiar with.

2. ZD posted the elements... after reading HOH1&2 I really started paying more attention to #1 (tourney stage) and #4 (stack size or "M"). I still have some trouble remembering to factor in #5 (other stack sizes) into my decision making process. For example, if I have a medium stack and 88 in the BB and the table big stack looks like he's stealing from LP... I'll often push without thinking about whether I have any fold equity in a situation that could easily be a coinflip.

3. In Sam's position I might check and slowplay here. There aren't really any draws on the board, unless Chris or Amir called with 87, and it seems like a tough flop to get any action, so it might be nice to give a free card and see if anyone catches up. I don't think slowplaying fits with Sam's image though, so it might be suspicious.

4. I definitely re-raise the flop with Dan's AKo. I do understand and appreciate his reasoning, it just seems like barring Sam hitting his set like he did, a re-raise sets him up for a c-bet and winning a good sized pot on the flop. It's clear he likes to play a low variance style though.

5. Not really. Something I should probably add to my repertoire.

about #3 the type of player that sammy is everyone on the table would expect to make a continuation bet with a flop like this, because he would assume that this totally missed harrington and Moneymaker, seeing as how solid the cards the play are and Amir might have hit something. See i think harrington, knows how sammy plays might have gotten suspiction if sammy checked that flop, so IMO it is a better play by sammy to make a bet that would that wouldn't look suspiction, so i believe against top players this is the best way to play it.

I think spending some more time on the probe bets would be very useful; like zook its something i hardly ever use (read: never). Not in an SNG anyway. Are they more suited for MTT's ( after the first hour / two hours) where u have more fold equity? (since in my experience) ppl tend to play a lot tighter specially with over cards.

What flops are good for probe bets vs continuation bets?
What opp r good to probe bet? Weak tight i guess but ne1 got ne other ideas?
Is there any room for probe bets in SNG's? Do they become +Ev at a certain blind level?
Sorry my above questions are covered in HOH1; I read it when it first came out, and have literally just lent it out to a mate.

*Last edited by Marcel on Sat, 22 Jul 2006, 10:03am; edited 2 times in total*

Quote, "4. I definitely re-raise the flop with Dan's AKo. I do understand and appreciate his reasoning, it just seems like barring Sam hitting his set like he did, a re-raise sets him up for a c-bet and winning a good sized pot on the flop. It's clear he likes to play a low variance style though. "

There's a lot to talk about but i chose this particual hand because of the reraise comments w/ AK by a few players on the flop. This is a big no no to me because the only two possible hands Dan would be representing would be 10 10 and JJ if he had done this move. He's known to be a tight player in the table so JUST calling the preflop raise would put him on big cards like AK AQ 10 10 JJ, but since he got a semi loose player yet to act Amir on the blinds that would call the raise from farha and a call from dan (pot odds), he would certainly not want 3 players w/ 10 10 JJ let alone 4 players in the pot, so he would prolly raise w/ 10 10 or JJ to isolate Farha in position.....other players would know this and know he doesn't hold those cards. so raising farha and two active players behind you plus you still don't know if farha has a big pair or not is no good to me.
i'm not saying i'm right, just wanted to show what went through my head while reading the hand.
the question i would ask is...if you raise farha on the flop, what are you trying to represent? AA QQ KK JJ 1010 99.....all those don't fit how you played the hand preflop so other players will be able to read that based on the type of player he is and the type of players in the table.
again, just my 2cents and my 2cents is often worthless =)

marcel

Posting to show my interest in this discussion.
Ive had the book ages now so itll be good to go back into it.

Anway. Just 2 points i found in the chapter which drew my attention.

Calling with the AK
and the probe betting.

Calling seems okay to me as i would usually do it at the start and early stages of an SNG or MTT because it lowers volatilty. If im right it was early at the start of that final table. His stack is deep enough to call and use position so i wouldnt argue that it should be a raise.

Probe bets i dont use so often. In SNGs i would bet half the pot most times if im unsure of villians holdings. I think in MTT it can be more useful especially in live MTT where opponents get more time to think what the bet might mean.

My 2c and later chapter will have more discussion.

I was wondering what parts of HOH apply to online cash games the most??

Thanks.

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H0H1 Intro & Part 1 Discussion