Poker Out Loud: Episode 3

This post was originally published on February 17, 2020, on my personal website, Lukich.io. I have since consolidated all of my poker-related content by reposting it onto Solver School.

Being card-dead isn’t fun. Being card-dead on Poker Out Loud is far worse. I touched on this in my part 1 and part 2 recaps, but this game flow is much different than that in a normal casino environment. Stretches of cold cards are simply a lot easier to manage under normal circumstances. For one, I’ll see the next hand within several minutes. When the stretches last a bit longer, and I begin to lose focus, I can occupy myself with several possible distractions. This includes talking to others at the table, going for a walk, looking at my phone, listening to music, or other things.

On Poker Out Loud, “the next several minutes” before the next hand starts can last upwards of 10-20 minutes. When not in a hand, I can’t talk to anyone else to pass the time. I can’t get up and leave the table to walk around. I’m stuck in my chair inside my head with my phone as a crutch. As a result, there’s a lot of downtime. Stretches of poor cards are amplified in your mind considerably. As a result, it’s very easy to drift outside a planned strategy and force action.

As I watched this week’s episode, I distinctly remembered this stretch in gameplay. We were a couple of hours into filming, so my adrenaline rush at the beginning of the session had died down by this point. I made it through the part of my playlist I had spent the most time putting together. I was starting to lose my focus and patience. At this point, I was eager to err on the wider side of range construction and insert myself into the action.

Berkey nicely described this in an analysis of my play for his most recent course on the S4Y TV site. I was getting swept up in the action — a challenge that I face from time to time at the table. Rather than staying in the game with my finger on the pulse of the action, I can sometimes force things too much and let emotion take over my decision-making process. It’s a humbling reminder to myself that despite all the off-table preparation, it can be easy to fall into poor habits when things don’t go according to the plan that I envision. Consistent training in this area is necessary, and even with that, I’m not immune to mental and meta-game struggles.

The 3rd episode of the season dropped on Friday night. You can catch the latest episode every other Friday by subscribing to the S4Y channel on YouTube. Here is the episode in full:

I only had one semi-playable hand in this episode. Even the one I did play, I should have just folded preflop. In the 2nd hand of the orbit, I was dealt K9o in the HJ. I fully acknowledge that this hand is not a good open from the HJ. Going into the day, I had already planned to widen my ranges slightly. While I realize that I would likely give up some EV, I also realized that we were only going to play ~50-75 hands throughout the day. I wanted to get an opportunity to challenge myself and play more hands. Even still, K9o is too wide from this formation. For reference, below are my standard HJ and CO opening ranges.

As we can see, opening K9o is a significant deviation from my HJ baseline. Even if I widened my ranges to reflect my CO opening range, K9o still sits on the outside looking in. In retrospect, I think the CO is the earliest spot I can play K9o, and it’s more likely that it should be exclusively reserved for Button and SB opens.

In particular, the configuration of the remaining players should make me lean towards folding this hand. While I expect Chris K to play a bit tighter in his particular position, Berkey will defend his button widely, leaving me playing a hand out-of-position against a very skilled postflop player. Fausto will also defend his BB often, so it’s rare that I have an opportunity to win this pot without a postflop fight. When that’s the case, I’m better suited to choosing hands with 2 of the 3 characteristics of showdown value (high card value), connectedness, or suitedness. K9o only checks the showdown value box.

If I do decide to deviate and widen ranges, I think I would be much better served to add suited kings from K8s to K2s. In retrospect, they all may be better than raising K9o in this spot. With K9o, I can easily face significant reverse implied odds, as I’m often dominated by hands that call against me, such as KQ-KT. Since my kicker value is diminished, the suited hands will increase my ability to play well in larger pots.

The good thing was that I recognized this in-game and acknowledged that this was a bit outside of construction. However, I wanted to play a hand for the reasons I mentioned above. Berkey defended his button with 44, everyone else folded, and we were heads up to a monotone club A42 flop.

Despite the poor open, I was pretty happy with my real-time analysis postflop. While A-high flops are often advantageous for the original raiser, the monotone component neutralizes that effect. In particular, these boards tend to freeze the action and result in a lot of checking. Both players will likely have protected checking ranges containing stronger hands. Typically, a lot of money can only be put into the pot with a flush, a set, an Ace, or the King (or Queen) of clubs.

I will check a high frequency of my hands in this spot. I’d likely only consider a bet on the flop if I had a flush, a set, two-pair, or a club (with or without a pair). I also won’t bet all hands that fit these criteria, reserving a portion of them to protect my checking range. The rest of my checking range will be filled with all of the other hands not mentioned above.

I expect this hand to check through very often. Berkey is going to realize that my checking range is protected and bluff less often. As a result, I think the hands that Berkey does bet will also likely be from one of those aforementioned hand classes. I also think he’ll include some of these hands as check-backs for deception to keep his checking range strong. He does choose to do that in this instance by checking back his set of 4’s.

On the turn, I said that the 2 didn’t change much in the hand. This is somewhat true, although not entirely. The paired board quality now shifts the top end of ranges. Flopped sets now beat flopped flushes, and any club draws may now be drawing dead. However, since we both carry so much of our ranges from the flop to the turn, the strategic incentives of the majority of both players’ ranges are roughly the same as they were on the flop.

After his flop check back, I think I can expect Berkey to be slightly weighted toward value on the turn. While I think he’ll bet some of his value on the flop, he’ll also bet a lot of his club hands. The turn does not bring much additional equity to drawing hands, making it harder to find enough bluffs. I think that his turn bet will likely include any top-end value that did not bet the flop, some Ax, and lower clubs that chose not to bet the flop (middle pocket pairs with a club make a good bet here). I have a clear fold when he chooses to bet, which I assessed correctly.

Despite my poor decision to open K9o, I feel good about the rest of the hand. While I can articulate reasoning better after some thought, my intuition and logic were sound in real time.

The rest of the episode was fun, with three sets during the orbit. Other than Berkey’s set of fours, Chris Price rivered a set of Queens vs Chris Konvalinka, who then flopped a set of Nines vs Fausto a few hands later. Also, surprisingly, we haven’t seen huge fireworks yet. They’re coming (spoiler alert), but the gameplay in the episode was relatively more straightforward from a strategic perspective.

To catch the latest episodes, subscribe to the S4Y channel. Stay tuned for the next one, dropping on Friday, February 28. I’ll have a recap of that episode on here a couple of days afterward.

If you have any comments or thoughts, please feel free to leave any comments below. You can also contact me at [email protected] or reach me on Twitter or YouTube through the links in the footer below.

-Lukich