$0.50/$1 NL home cash game

Last night we went to a cash game someone was hosting at a local house.  50c/$1 NL.  I should look out for these kind of games more often really, as I think they are going to be much better than casino games.  The game last night had a couple people that were somewhat competent, my wife who I think is decent, and a bunch of others that were just bad.

I ran really good and ended up winning $120.  I had a bunch of huge hands.  Flopped a set twice, including one where I got all in against the nut flush and rivered a boat.  In that hand, I had K-K in the small blind.  A bunch of people limped, and I raised to $8.50.  Really big raise in that game.  2 callers, so the pot was relatively huge.  Flop K-x-x with all 3 diamonds.  I bet $15, guy goes all-in, I call.  I probably should have paid more attention to how much he had because it might not have necessarily been a insta-call, although I did call.  Thinking about it now, I think he could do that with:

AK with the ace of diamonds.

Flush with a suited ace, although what suited aces is he calling 7.5x more with?  ATs+ I think, at most.

Flush with a suited connector.  Although again, what suited connectors is he going to have?  T9s+, and since I have a king that takes away a lot of combos.  So only T9, JT, QJ, let's add in 89 too, why not.

Lower set.

Against all of those, let's run it in PokerStove and see how my equity works out.

Whoa, sick!  I don't remember the exact board cards, but assuming it was K-6-4 and he could have the hands I mentioned, I'm a big favorite!  Then I took out the non-flush AK combos, and it only changed it a very small amount which I find confusing.  I thought I might have had to factor the pot size in to determine if I was right, but no - I'm just straight up a huge favorite against that range.  Probably because I'm crushing the lower sets, and even against the flushes I have decent equity.  I'm actually really surprised that this is a no-brainer call regardless of pot size.

Yeah, sometimes he might be calling with a lower suited connector too, or lower suited aces.  But overall I think especially with the huge size of my raise, and the fact that nobody else had called yet, my range estimations really aren't that bad here.

OK - PokerStove is the bomb!  I can't believe I've never used this tool before, because I've heard people talk about it so much.  But now after watching just a couple videos and watching how they do the range calculations, I'm starting to figure it out.

Another one I wanted to look at was this one.  I had AKo and raised to $3.  Lady next to me, pretty tight old lady, reraised to $13.  She only had $10 more, so she was essentially all-in.

I was thinking OK - this lady's range is incredibly tight here.  I think she would probably do that with aces, kings, queens, and maybe AK/JJ.  If everyone else folded and I got all-in with her, I would have to put in another $20 to win $47.

Against that range, I'm not quite as bad off as I thought.  60/40 dog.

So even without anyone else calling, here is my expected value in that pot:

($47 * .397) + (-$20 * .602)  = $6.62

So even if everyone folds, it's way +EV to call there.  So I guess the analysis really ends here.  But I was actually going to fold if nothing else interesting happened.  As it turned out, this other TERRIBLE player called $13 cold.  I put her on basically any pair, and probably not a huge one.  And maybe like AK/AQ.  She had about $60 or so more, so I just reraised all-in to push her out and go heads up with the dead money in there.  I reraised all-in, the lady with $10 left obviously called, the other lady folded. We both had AK (although hers was suited), nobody got a flush, and we chopped it up.

I played pretty well overall I thought.  I also did some things like not c-bet into a bunch of people.  For example in one hand I raised with KQs, got 3 callers.  Flop came T-6-7 with the 10 of my suit.  I'd generally c-bet here, but I just thought the board was pretty drawy and there was no real purpose to betting.  So I checked.  Not a very interesting story I know but in the past I probably would have bet that a high percentage of the time even with a bunch of people in.

I also did some things that were looser closer to the button.  Like I raised with K-7 suited in the HJ.  Got 2 callers and I had to check-fold the flop, but not the worst move I think.  And then later on the button or one off the button I raised with Q-9 suited.  Again lost the pot (got reraised to $13 from the big blind, folded, she showed QQ) but I think those are reasonable moves.

I'm just really looking forward to playing some more poker and trying to really think about ranges, board textures, etc.  Should be fun!