In this post we are going to look at hand from the late stages of an EPT main event, the hand takes place right before the dinner break, so players are rushing off to get food and the table is nearly empty.
There are just 58 players left in the tournament at this point and whilst we should always be playing to build big stacks in tournaments, these are the spots when the most aggressive players will come out on top, poker is about making great decisions in tough spots, that’s what separates the best players from the average tournament grinder.
Preflop
In this hand, Reixach opens UTG with K♥ J♥
Heidorn flat calls from the Big Blind with 4♦ 3♦
Both players have similar stacks at the beginning of the hand with around 40BBs effective.
The flop brings something for both players with an open-ended straight draw for Heidorn and Reixach having top pair with a strong kicker.
Heidorn starts with a check and Reixach bets small placing 30,000 chips in the middle.
Heidorn then opts for a check-raise to 130,000…
I like both plays from these guys, if we have KJ here we want to build the pot for value, we can get calls from worse pairs and draws all over this board.
As for Heidorn’s play, I like the check-raise too, he can apply maximum pressure on a board that he will hit hard sometimes with holdings that Reixach won’t have in his range like 56o 78o J6s J5s.
With a check-raise he can win the pot right here with his 4 high or he can hit his hand and play a really big pot or set up potential bluffs on future streets where there will be more pressure due to the bets being larger making ir harder for Reixach to continue with what often is going to be his one pair holdings.
Alternatively, just a call here would be fine too he has good equity in the pot so the only mistake here would be folding.
Reixach does call the German’s check-raise and we are going to play a turn card…
Turn Action
This is where things slow down a little, which in my eyes removes many hands from Heidorn’s range…
Reixach has just 445k remaining in his stack with 354k in the middle, so in this position if we had a value hand like two pair or better in Heidorn’s seat we should be protecting our equity from being outdrawn, however, he continues with a check, so we can remove some hands from his range here in my eyes, I think any combination of J5, J6, QJ, 55, 66, 56 would bet here and look to play for stacks with this shallow SPR.
When Heidorn checks here he is almost saying I have a semi-bluff and I cannot commit to this pot by betting here. If he is playing truly balanced he could mix in some checks here from time to time to play for stacks on the turn when he faces a bet from Reixach.
So, now Reixach has a decision, he can bet and look to just win the pot here a lot of the time and deny equity from the many draws that Heidorn will have in his range still when he checks, or he can choose to give him a little rope here and check back and look to catch some bluffs on the river…
He does decide to check back the turn and so we see the River.
River Card
Brings the 4♥
Not exactly a blank, any of the combinations of 78 just got there… however this isn’t a huge part of the German player’s range. So Reixach still has a good amount of equity here in the long run with his pair of Jacks on this board…
Not one to shy away from missing a great spot to apply the hammer, he piles all in here a slight over-bet around 1.2x the pot.
We need to take a look at what Heidorn gets to this river with in his range because we checked back the turn card and basically told him our hand isn’t super strong and we are looking to get to showdown he is going to have a wide range.
So we can give him any missed combination of two clubs, including missed straight draws like the one he has that includes a pair he is turning into bluffs, we also include all the value hands in this range like sets and top two pair which he might slow play on the turn at some frequency.
So if this is still how wide his range is, how much equity do we have with KJ here? Can we correctly call?
So we need to do a little math here, we will have to call 445k to win a total of 1,316,000 which means we will be getting almost exactly 3:1 on a call, so we will need 33.8% equity here to call profitably against our opponent’s range.
Tip: We get this number by dividing the amount we will have to call into the size of the total pot, in this case, 445,000 ÷ 1,316,000 = 0.3381459
So how much equity do we have with our hand?
We will have 52.5% against our opponents entire range on the river with this run out, so we will have to call here a good percentage of the time, we could mix in some folds with some weaker Jacks maybe, but with this particular holding where we don’t block any of our opponents missed straight draws or flush draws we should be calling here nearly always.
The problem with not calling here is we have allowed our opponent to be able to get to the river with all these bluffs by checking back the turn card, so we have induced the action, we just need to find the last piece of the puzzle and click call and we win all the chips and can go on to progress through the tournament with a huge stack.
These are the spots where we need to be very carefree with our tournament life as if we value it too much like Reixach ends up doing in this spot by folding the river we are allowing our opponent to exploit us over folding good hands on this board.
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