Overjamming for value

Hand played on Pokerstars
Seat 2 is the button

Seat 1: Bowl 1 ( $1314.00 USD )

Seat 2: Bowl 2 ( $783.00 USD )

Seat 3: Player 1 ( $2996.00 USD )

Seat 4: Hero ( $1560.00 USD )

Seat 5: Player 2 ( $1047.00 USD )

Seat 6: Player 3 ( $1300.00 USD )

Player 1 posts small blind [$10.00 USD].

Hero posts big blind [$20.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to Hero [  Ac 7d ]

Player 2 folds

Player 3 folds

Bowl 1 calls [$20.00 USD]

Bowl 2 raises [$40.00 USD]

Player 1 folds

Hero calls [$20.00 USD]

Bowl 1 calls [$20.00 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ 9d, 2c, 3c ]

Hero checks

Bowl 1 checks

Bowl 2 checks

** Dealing Turn ** [ Jc ]

Hero bets [$75.00 USD]

Bowl 1 calls [$75.00 USD]

Bowl 2 calls [$75.00 USD]

** Dealing River ** [ 5c ]

Hero bets [$1445.00 USD]

Bowl 1 calls [$1199.00 USD]

Bowl 2 calls [$668.00 USD]

Hero wins $246.00 USD

Hero shows [Ac, 7d ]

Bowl 1 shows [Ts, Kc ]

Hero wins $1062.00 USD from main pot

Bowl 2 shows [Qc, Ad ]

Hero wins $2359.00 USD from main pot

So I found myself in a rather sweet looking $200 game with 3 very fishy looking players. Fortunately for me, two of them decide to get involved in a big pot that develops early on in the tournament.

PRE-FLOP

So I’m dealt A-7o in the BB and facing a limp and a min-raise. I’m getting 4.5 to 1 immediate odds which are pretty good but there’s close to 0 chance the limper will be folding when the action is back on him since he’ll be getting even better odds than he was before entering the pot, so giving effective pot odds of 5.5 to 1, I feel this is a mandatory call. I will just have to proceed with caution upon hitting an A and realise it definitely may be no good. In the 8 hands of this tournament the limper’s VPIP is 75% with a PR of 13% so I’m not worried about him pumping it up when the action’s back on him since he seems the passive type. It costs me very little to play, and on the chance of hitting something good I can potentially gain an excellent return on my 20 chip investment. Oh, and I also have both opponent’s marked a “red” colour which in my system means “HUGE FISH”, so my implied odds could be pretty devastating too.

FLOP:  9d—2c—3c

There’s really not much to talk about in this street, I’ve got a backdoor flush and straight draw but still only a fairly weak A high which could easily be behind. Given this and the fact I’m OOP my plan will be to check-fold to any bet from any opponent. The action checks round.

TURN:  Jc

I’ve now turned the nut flush draw, and given there was no interest from either player on the flop, I figure this is a good semi-bluffing spot. This is preferred to check-calling a bet since it offers me the chance at winning the pot immediately and if I’m called I still have the chance to improve on the river. So I fire a bet of 75 into 130, just over half the pot, and not really surprisingly both players call.

RIVER:  5c

BoOoOooOm, I’ve backed into the nut flush, so the question now is how to play it? How can I maximise my $EV with the nuts OOP? For the record, it’s not strictly the nuts, 4c-6c is a straight flush but quite frankly I’m more worried about being hit by lightning than running into that hand. So I considered the fact that both opponent’s called my bet on the turn – this makes it reasonably likely one of them was holding the K or Q high flush draw, and a quick peak at their red rings reminding me they’re both huge fish I decide to make an uncharacteristic bet of 1445 into a 355 pot. I figure it’s unlikely either player will be able to fold the 2^nd or 3^rd nuts to any bet, so if I’m going for value, I might as well go all out – it would be pretty tragic to pot 355 and only receive a flat from a Q high flush which may well have called an all-in. I did mention Bowl 1’s VPIP was 75% in the short span of the game didn’t I?

The Result

Bowl 1 calls…and then bowl 2 calls, oh-oh, time to get worried by that 4c-6c? Nope, bowl 1 shows the Kc and bowl 2 just couldn’t resist donating the rest of his stack with the Qc with two stacks all-in before him in a 4x overbet pot. Sometimes against fish who aren’t folding #1’s biggest fan, the best play is just to shove it. Needless to say, such a bet doesn't need to get called a high % of the time to show decent profit; if I were to have bet around the size of the pot I would need to get called around four times more often than the overbet to show an identical profit in the long run. My 20 chip investment before the flop allowed me to take down a pot worth 3421 in chips, yielding a nice stack which would later help me go on to win the tournament.

I told you my implied odds pre-flop were pretty devastating.

Live long and prosper