They are playing the standup game, where you have to win a pot or you pay everyone at the table a decent chunk of money. So far, Brown Balla has not won a pot, which may make him a little more inclined to try to win one.
All right, we are playing $50/$100 with a $200 straddle.
- L is on the button and calls with . That’s a little bit loose.
- Brown Balla, in the big blind, calls $100 more with . That’s fine and reasonable given the excellent pot odds he’s getting.
- Mariano, who’s known to get in there and fight hard for pots, checks with .
So far, so good. Three terrible hands going to the flop. Let’s see what it brings.
The flop comes .
Brown Balla opts to bet $200 in the dark, a tiny bet into the $950 pot, with his open-ended straight draw.
I think this is reasonable enough. You have to recognize that in limped pots, ranges are typically far weaker, especially in loose, splashy cash games. A lot of players will limp hands like six-five offsuit, which often miss here, or five-four offsuit, which also miss this spot a lot. So I don’t mind betting, but I probably would have gone a little bit bigger to try to maximize fold equity immediately. Still, he does go for the $200 bet.
Mariano, with top pair, opts to bump it up to $800. This is a little bit risky because you have to recognize that on , Brown Balla did call preflop. That makes him less likely to have total garbage like . And if he’s betting here, he probably doesn’t have total air anyway. So he likely has something.
Typically, you want to play somewhat cautiously in this pot, because if you raise and get reraised or even just called, could very easily be in terrible shape. If you just call, that forces Brown Balla to stay in the pot with his entire range, which queen-three top pair should do perfectly fine against.
One other issue here is the sizing. Brown Balla bets very small. As your opponent bets smaller and smaller, you generally want to raise wider and wider for value. And look, top pair with a bad kicker is a hand that rarely raises for value when you’re playing deep-stacked. But in a loose, splashy, battly Hustler Casino Live game, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to put in the raise. Mariano does exactly that. folds.
Brown Balla then bumps it up to $3,200.
This is an interesting line, because when you lead small, you’re often saying, “I have a medium-strength range that includes some premium hands, a lot of medium-strength hands, and some bluffs or draws.” When you then reraise to $3,200, though, you’re suddenly saying you’re very polarized toward a strong made hand that’s happy to play a big pot, like a straight, two pair, a set, maybe if you limped it preflop, or a draw. And the logical draws here are hands containing a or a .
I’m not sure Brown Balla is telling a very consistent story. If he’s leading small with a lot of medium-strength hands, the super-nut portion of that range should be quite small. You also have to consider that if he really did have a monster, he might have chosen a much larger bet size on the flop. If that’s true, then his small bet could mean he’s capped around a medium-strength hand or worse, which makes the reraise difficult to justify from a range perspective.
Back around to Mariano, holding top pair with a bad kicker, this is already a nasty spot.
Given that the players are very deep, around $30,000 effective, I think calling is reasonable. You do have to accept that you’re probably going to under-realize your equity here. If Brown Balla is on a draw, he’s going to feel very inclined to keep betting, which will force you off top pair on a lot of runouts that complete straights or bring overcards. Still, you’re getting a decent price, you’re in position, and folding immediately would be too tight in this environment.
This is exactly the kind of uncomfortable spot you need to get used to if you play deep-stacked live cash games, where players are often too loose and too aggressive, especially at high stakes and even more so on a streamed game like Hustler Casino Live. Mariano is very experienced in these situations, and he opts to call.
Let’s head to the turn.
The turn is the .
Brown Balla continues betting, rather chunky, $5,500 into the $7,150 pot.
Now, on the turn, you have to ask: does this card help Brown Balla’s range all that much? And I think the answer is pretty much always no.
Remember, Brown Balla just called preflop, so he can pretty much eliminate hands like , , or from his range, as well as . He bet tiny and then raised the flop, so he really doesn’t have many hands containing an ace. Once again, he’s representing a very condensed range of premium hands, which I’m not convinced would have bet $200 on the flop to begin with.
So, if I’m sitting in Mariano’s shoes, I’m not sure I buy this as a premium, made hand. Brown Balla certainly could have ten-nine, queen-ten, or queen-nine, and I think those are reasonable and probably would be played this way, but there just aren’t that many combinations of those hands. Meanwhile, there are tons of combinations containing a random , which would likely call the extra $100 preflop, a random that would do the same, and possibly some backdoor diamond hands as well.
There are a huge number of draws here and very few premium hands. This is a spot where, if Brown Balla is trying to play anywhere near GTO, he has to be very concerned that he’s drastically over-bluffing. Still, he fires $5,500. Over to Mariano. Dicey spot. Second pair, no kicker. Let’s see if he has the same read I do.
ReadMariano clearly isn’t buying what Brown Balla is selling. Either he has the same read, or he’s an extreme calling station. One of the two. You might say, “Of course it makes sense when you can see the cards.” And sure, poker is a lot easier when you can see the cards. But you should always try to analyze poker as if you can’t see them. Ask yourself what other hands make sense to play this way.
If you practice this over and over while watching live-stream games, instead of just sitting back with a drink thinking, “These guys are blasting it off,” you’ll start putting people on ranges and drawing logical conclusions.
Anyway, Mariano calls.
The river is the .
Think about what we just discussed. Does this change anything? Brown Balla thinks for a moment and then goes all in for a little more than the size of the pot. Look, if you find yourself with jack-high here on the river, you have to find some hands to bluff with, and I suppose this one is okay.
That said, Brown Balla has to be extremely careful. While Mariano doesn’t have many hands containing an , he may have a few, and those are never folding. If he ever has a straight, he’s never folding. And you might even run into some hero calls.
Still, if you’re going to bluff, you really want to have a , and Brown Balla does. So sure, go for it.
Full credit to him for having the courage to pull the trigger.
Now, let’s see if Mariano can summon the courage to call with a and no kicker.
And he does. An incredible call. A sick bluff and a sick call. That was fun. A $68,000 pot heads over to Mariano.
Mariano later said in an interview that he called primarily because Brown Balla had not won a pot, and he thought he was fighting extra hard because of the standup game. And that may very well be true.
If you get the read that your opponent really hates paying the standup game, that should make you far more inclined to find hero calls. In general, loose and aggressive players despise paying or losing the standup game, and that psychological pressure can push them into over-bluffing.
Add that to the fact that it’s genuinely hard to find many value hands for Brown Balla here, and this so-called hero call maybe isn’t quite as heroic as it looks at first glance. It’s still an excellent call, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a spot where many players would simply fold without giving their opponent the chance to run the bluff.
Mariano didn’t, and he was rewarded for it.