In this continued piece about Spin and Go’s we are going to review some hands from another game played recently at the low limits. If you missed Part 1 CLICK HERE to check it out
Let jump straight into the action…
Hand #1
A relatively easy decision, we want to defend from the big blind Vs button fairly tight compared to hands we will play against the small blind raises, this is because we are going to be out of position for the whole hand with our hands we play against the button.
However, JTo is going to make for a fine defend especially getting 20/120 or 6/1 on our money here. We are going to want to defend wider against minimum raises and tighter against large raises as we will be getting a worse price on calls in those instances.
We make the call and it’s off to the flop…
And what a flop it is, we flop top two pair on this rainbow board. In some circumstances here we would want to just increase the size of the pot as soon as we get a chance however we want to keep our opponents range wide and let them catch up a little, we lose value when our opponent has a hand like KQ, KJ, QQ, KK, AA, however, this isn’t going to be enough of the time compared to all the rest of the hands in our opponents range, most of which we have drawing almost dead with our top two pair.
So we start out with a check and our opponent bets around a 3rd of the pot, we just call here and under rep our hand looking to set up a larger check-raise on the turn against barrels…
Sadly our opponent checks back the turn meaning they have probably shut down their bluffs and have given up on this pot, however they might be pot controlling with a pair like J9, J8, QJ, 99, 88… so with the King hitting on the river we need to go for value, our opponent has already shown that they didn’t want to bet the turn so its time to go for a value bet with our two pair now.
We bet around three-quarters of the pot betting 140 into 208, leaving ourselves with 276 chips. In some cases against a tight player, it is good to go for a big sizing on this type of run out where some straights and better two pairs get there because any raise over this bet sizing would nearly always be a nutted hand. This will allow us to make some very solid bet folds, however not to be in this pot, our opponent makes the laydown and we drag the pot.
Hand #2
The next hand we play we limp with A9o in the small blind, against our opponents stack size we have a nice ratio to re-raise any bet from them and move all in. This is exactly what happens, we want to limp hands like this A9o so we cannot be exploited when we limp our weak hands and cannot call a raise, so by limping with both good and bad hands we are continuing sometimes and other times not.
In this hand, our opponent folds their steal attempt hand and it’s off to the next hand…
Hand #3
Our opponent to our right gets knocked out of the game and we begin heads up play with a button limp with K6o, we could just raise this hand, however my style in these games is to gain as much information against our opponents for the minimum cost, so just flatting the button is going to be a big part of this strategy when we are deep stacked.
We limp, our opponent raises to 60 chips and we flat call in positon, flop is 4 5 4 with two hearts and we have the king of hearts in our hand.
Our opponent checks the action over to us giving up the betting lead, we could C-bet here and apply some pressure, however most players will not just raise out of position with a junk hand, so I want to keep the pot small here with our back door draws and try and realise some equity by seeing a turn card, so we decide to check back which I think given the action is a decent line, we have some showdown value, we don’t want to be bluffing with what may well be the best hand here.
The turn brings an offsuit deuce, which gives us a gutshot. At this point I don’t mind a bet with our draw, we can fold out some better King highs, however my thinking in this pot was that any Ace high or pair will call our bet and we will need to fire two streets to get folds from better whilst we still may have the best hand.
So we check to the river, which brings the 9 of hearts, completing the flopped flush draw which we block having the King of hearts in our hand, however neither of us represent the flush with the action the way it is.
Our opponent now chooses this card to lead on which could be a hand like Q9, K9 or A9, however not much else makes sense from a value point of view. So we decide our King high will be good enough a high enough percentage to make the call and we see…
A classic Value Bluff! QK high! which is either a genius value bet or a bluff that will never fold out a better hand at this point even Ace high hands would be content to call with the action the way it went down.
This is a classic mistake from recreational players that they just don’t know what their bets mean, they may have made this a bluff or a value bet, but both don’t really make sense, their hand is better used as a bluff catcher with the Q of hearts blocking the flush at this point in the hand.
Hand #4
We are going to have to defend a wide range heads up and whilst T4o is not the prettiest of hands we can profitably defend this against weak players with stacks at around 20BBS effective, so we call the minimum raise and it’s off to the flop again…
We flop a piece!
It might not be pretty but a pair is a pair heads up, we are not going to defend these holdings and then fold to bets just because we might not have much of the board. We hit a 4 which is good for middle pair and have a back door flush draw.
We check to the preflop aggressor and let them bluff with worse hands hopefully, in this case, they fire out a half pot bet, which we have already deduced doesn’t necessarily mean strength, so we call the bet and see the turn…
The turn goes check, check, meaning we can remove all huge hands from our opponents range as they are not wanting to play for stacks, so straights, three of a kinds and full houses are out of the equation, we are still beat by any 6x that wanted to pot control on the turn however and we now chop any 4x hands with the exception of A4, however such a large bet on the river will not often be a 4x hand, it’s more likely to be a random Kx hand that caught up or just a complete bluff like a missed flush or straight draw that wanted to hit their hand by checking back the turn and now wants to buy the pot.
We make the call expecting to see nothing or a hand like AK, KQ, KJ etc…
Hero call is good!
Our opponent tables the 85o for a double gutshot with any 3 or 7 making them the straight on the flop, but on the river meaning they just have 8 high. No match for our huge two pair fours and deuces!
Hand #5
We decide to keep with our liming the button strategy and flop an open-ended straight draw and flush draw! A monster with unlimited equity, we want to bet hands like this, as we only have Queen high right now but our hand can withstand maximum pressure and facing a check-raise we could just get this all in, so we bet the flop looking for action but our opponent sadly mucks.
Hand #6
Once again we defend wide heads up in Spin and Go’s and T7o is going to make the cut, so we call a min raise from the button and flop second pair on an all spade board. We don’t love this spot at all, but once again we are all pair up, we beat random one spade C-bets and any straight draws looking to just bet and win the pot. So we call the one third pot sized bet and take a turn card…
Not a great turn, all Ace high hands just got there Vs our hand, KJ also got there and if we were beaten with a pair of Queens on the flop we are still beat, this is probably a good time to give up the hand, we are going to have many better hands in this spot such as just any hand with a spade or Queen for example.
Hand #7
The next playable hand we get is a real beauty! Two queens, we continue with our strategy of limping, we have done this with weak hands against our opponent so it makes sense to do it with our strong holdings too so we get to 3Bet in position against a raise.
Rather than making a normal raise though our opponent just moves all in, great news for us, we make the call and it’s time to fade the variance with our huge range advantage against this type of move…
Our opponent has around 27% equity in this case with the AJo however this is not going to be one of the times where we are beaten and our queens hold up, giving us nearly all the chips in play and almost locking up the win with our opponent just having 2 blinds left.
Final hand
As we discussed in the first part of this series of posts, it’s important to know which hands to call all-ins with when you are heads up and your opponent is short stacked, it can be a big leak in beginners games calling with too tight of a range and letting your opponent chip up, we don’t make that error and call the first all in with 73s and get there Vs J3o for the chips and the win!
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