what would you do?

[diablo01 0]

Cliff Note Version also available.. :-) I posted this in the general forum a few weeks ago before I noticed there was a strategy forum. After discussing the details with my opponent, I have revised the details slightly to more accurately reflect what actually happened. I thought it may make for a good read here too.“This situation came up over this past weekend. Heads-up NL hold-em freeze out for a total pot of $60. The structure we used was 300/each 3/6 SB/BB going up 1 every fourth hand. The first 13 hands were either folded to me from the SB or I had raised with quality cards, my opponent folded, and I showed. My opponent, a good friend of mine was playing pretty tight and getting horrible cards but was doing a nice job not to tilt and was down only 80 chips. On the 14th hand he made it all back and we were dead even. I was playing pretty loose, as we had been drinking and playing all day and night, trying to get some loose calls from him, shake him up or just plain rub it in, and this is what happened on the 15th or so hand:5/10 and I’m in the BB. Before he deals I decide to see if I can play the whole hand blind and tell him such, and announce ‘raise to 20 blind IF you limp’. I started to ask if that was ok but he was already calling, and why wouldn’t it be ok, he gets a free peek right? He gets ready to deal the flop and I announce 50 blind and in the dark. The flop was Qs6s2h. He thinks for a second and calls. Ok, what I was really looking for here was a quick fold on his part so I could pat myself on the back like I had accomplished something, and proceed to the next hand. What I got was one of the biggest pots we had played for so far. The flop of Qs6s2h was not bad for the random blind hand I thought to myself. I may have a spade draw or a small pair or even top pair. Who knows but at this point I started to be concerned. Before he deals the turn I think to myself that if he just has two big cards like KJ, or a gut shot 35, 54, or even AsX, Qrag (no spade) or a small pp, I may be able to push him off the hand if I bet about ½ the pot. Before the turn-card is dealt I announce 75 in the dark and stare him down to see if I can get a read. The turn was the 7s for a board of Qs6s2h 7s. He pauses for a fraction of a section while looking at the board and says “…I call”. The pot is now at 290. There may have been a tell here in the way he said ‘…I call’ with the word ‘call’ at a higher pitch than the word ‘I’, as well as the nanosecond it took to say ‘…I call’ as if omitting the word ‘hell!’, as in ‘hell yeah!, I call’ as in he has a monster. But I missed it. Maybe due to the 3 flush out there which I thought increased the chances that I was still capable of making a hand. Maybe also I was thrown off my plan to get a read on him when he surprised me by calling fairly quickly, as it didn't give me the time I thought I would have to study. Damn, I wasn’t really prepared to get a call or go this deep into the hand. Now what’s he got? Top pair with a nice kicker? Middle pair with a big spade? Who knows, but he has to have something being that he is so tight. My problem lies in the fact that instead of thinking about his actions I was focused on his personality. That maybe he doesn’t have a made hand yet and IS just on a draw, that he is a proud person, more importantly a true gambler, and may call it down just to prevent me from pushing him out blind, or so my thinking went. In any case my betting blind AND in the dark is over for now. I will still try to play the hand blind but maybe I should come into the light and see the river card before I act. The river was a beautiful Js for a board of Qs6s2h 7s Js. Now I may well indeed have the flush. I start to analyze my options. If I check and he checks, it would suck if he won with a small pair which I may have been able to push him off of. If I check and he does have a decent hand, he probably will bet. (In hindsight this may not have been such a bad play since, from my read on the turn, I put him on at least modest hand. So let's say I check and he bets an amount less then all-in. What do I do? Look at my cards of course! Now it doesn’t help my credibility after saying I would play blind but hey, its poker, and it may have just helped me to win the pot. Now it probably doesn’t even matter what my cards are at this point but If I have a high flush I am all-in for sure, and even if I have rags, if I can convince him that now that I have looked at my cards and confirmed the strength of my hand, I am all-in over the top for sure, maybe he will fold his cards even if he has a small flush. (Later on he did admit that even if he had made the 8 high flush he would have folded to my all-in blind.) I told you he is conservative!)So at this point I should have considered looking at my cards, but I had declared that I was going to play the entire hand blind and also felt like gambling myself, so I didn’t. Now if I check and he DOES play all-in, then he’s forcing me to either look at my cards or gamble. I don’t like the idea of him dictating the action, as this whole hand was designed in my mind to demoralize him and set him up for later. One way to do this of course is if my opponent misses me checking my cards at some future point I could pretend to make the same play. It helps if your opponent is sleep deprived, which mine was.Anyway, I decide that checking wasn’t my best play. I didn’t think of making a small or medium sized bet here at all either. So I decide that maybe all-in was my best play. Since he is so tight, if I go all in and he has anything from two pair to trips (no spade) I may be able to push him off. Maybe even if he only has a low spade he will muck. As I said earlier, taking my extensive knowledge of my opponent into account, this actually may have been the right play under the circumstances. Unless he has one of the four remaining spades higher than an 8, he folds. I push the last 150 or so in (actually it was in a pile and I didn’t realize it was so much) and he calls pretty quickly. He turns up As8s. Ouch. The nuts. So I’m dead, but I tell him ‘This would make for a much better story if I actually made a decent hand there at the end.” He replies “Yes”, but I think his mind is elsewhere at this point. I recall a sly grin and an otherwise very satisfied look on his face. I will have to remember that look of ‘I have the nuts’ for later. Anyway, I flip my first card and it is the 4h. I flip the next card and it is the Ks for the second best possible hand. Looking back I REALLY think I did spot a ‘tell’ there on the turn, and maybe my best play, to keep along with the object of the hand which was to play it blind, was to FOLD blind on the river, flip our cards, and then wonder at my brilliance for getting off that second best losing hand based on my read! When I had announced that I would play the hand blind I halfheartedly meant that I would play aggressive and look for ‘tells’ and act appropriately and hopefully win. I never considered that a great play made on pure intuition and reading ability would include me folding blind to his call on the turn. I had a great chance there and I blew it.Ok so it’s a sad story because I didn’t win but we started to analyze the hand and came up with a few questions. One of which is the followingLet us say we are at the river and I am all-in blind, which I was, and for whatever reason he has called my previous two bets down, maybe with a pair or something, and he is left with just an 8 high flush at the river. What would he do? And what would YOU do if you found yourself in that similar, but somewhat rare situation, holding only the 2 high flush with a board of Qs6s2h 7s Js against a random blind hand all-in for all your money/chips? Try to answer before you read any further.He said he wouldn’t have called with the 8high flush! HUH?! Now he is about the tightest player I know but that’s waaaay too tight I thought at first glance. And after doing the math, isn’t the 8 high with that board a 9-1 favorite against a dark hand? (5 of 52 cards can beat you) But I have two cards so I don’t know if that changes the calculation.He was surprised the advantage was that large, and we decided to figure out with what spade it would take to make it a break even prop. Well if he has the 2s there are 8 cards in the deck that can beat him, 8 of 52 = is like 84% to win isn’t it. So am I doing the math correctly here? Are you 84% to win if you have a 2 high flush against the random dark hand?Statisticians please respond.”I got a few responses to the post and I, of course, did do the math wrong but I wasn’t that far off.This is how most people responded:For the 8 high flush:For the first card I flip there are 4 of 45(unknown cards) that can beat him.For the second card I flip there are now 4 of 44(unknown cards) that can beat him.4/45 + 4/44 = 18% chance for the random hand to have a higher flush, or 82% probability to win with an 8 high flush with that particular four flush on the board against a random hand. A 4-1 favorite.This seems pretty intuitive as I would probably never have folded down an 8 high flush to a blind hand with the Q and J out of play.For the 2 high flush:For the first card I flip there are 8 of 45(unknown cards) that can beat him.For the second card I flip there are now 8 of 44(unknown cards) that can beat him.8/45 + 8/44 = 36% chance for the random hand to have a higher flush, or 64% probability to win with a 2 high flush with any four flush on the board against a random blind hand.To me and my opponent, and to most of the poker players I have asked what they would do in that situation holding a 2 high flush, this seems very counterintuitive. I guess since of course most opponents look at their cards, and if you are put all-in and you’re holding a 2 high flush with a four flush on the board, it’s probably a good idea to fold in most cases.But in this scenario it does seem that a 2 high flush is almost a 2-1 favorite. I know there are plenty of situations in high stakes games or big tournaments that a good player may not put his entire stack at risk being only a 2-1 favorite but in this particular example it seems to be a slam dunk.

[Actuary 3]

oh my godplease give me the cliff's notes versionyou expect people to read that?some will.sorry to waste anyones time with my pointless response.just trying to help OP understand the key to forum posting-for-responses:"It's not about you. It's about letting others think it's about them and then you get more help"this is ridiculous.

[FOOSE1 0]

So basically he folds the first umpteen hands and is playing super duper tight . . . he then calls your blind bets, actually looking at his cards with some authority no less, and you decide pushing on the river is the best move? Let me sum up what you should have been thinking . . .(1). My opponent is super duper tight.(2). I don't know what my cards are.(3). My opponent is super duper tight.(4). He knows what his cards are.(5). My opponent is super duper tight.(6). I don't know what my cards are but he knows what his cards are.(7). My opponent is super duper tight and I don't know what my cards are.(8). He has called all my blind bets and knows what his cards are.(9). My opponent is super duper tight so he might actually have a hand since he is super duper tight and I don't know what my cards are.(10). Maybe I should check/fold because my opponent is super duper tight, has called all my blind bets, might actually have a hand and I don't know what my cards are.End of story . . . much shorter version

[diablo01 0]

Did i mention he was tight?