13 Responses to “Andrew Brokos Reviews Carlos Welch’s Bovada 100k Win (Part 4)”

  1. cfarmerga

    Thanks for yet another great video!

    At 31:30 Carlos raises from the cutoff with A8s and the small blind folds his 77. I understand your comment that it was a terrible fold on his part, but I was hoping you could elaborate on what SB should do in that situation. With the 20-blind stack that he has here, I assume shoving here is the best option for him. What if he instead had a 30-40 blind stack? How much should he worry about the big blind? I guess my question is mainly about playing smaller pairs from the small blind against a late position raiser when stacks are a little too big to shove.

  2. Carlos

    I would say that because small pairs play well enough when called, you can shove even something like 30bbs over an aggro LP opener. As an alternative, you can 3-bet them if you have a guy who is likely to A. fold to either the 3-bet or c-bet B. 4-bet fold to a 5 bet shove from you. The HUD will guide you to the best play.

    One thing you cannot do is flat to set mine because LP opening ranges are not strong enough to pay you off when you hit a set and you are out of position. You dont have enough implied odds for this.

    That said, maybe you can just call with a pair as big as 77 because it would not be a pure set mine. Calling with 22 is bad for sure. 3-bet or fold small pairs in this spot.

    Also, take into account how likely the BB is to squeeze a flat. If he’s a squeezer, lean towards shoving.

    Good question man.

  4. Foucault

    Good question. Carlos is correct that small pairs are good shoving hands vs wide ranges even at somewhat large stack depths. There’s also a big difference between 77 and 22 when it comes to calling. Facing a raise from a good player on CO/BN with, say, 40 BB stacks, I’d probably call 77 and fold 22, and it would not be a pure set mine, although that’s still where most of the value comes from.

  5. subfocused

    22:31 with KK and a little over 7bb, you min raised. Button shoved and bb called. You said nothing really to talk about there. I disagree. You had been taking the hands in the upper part of your range and just jamming. So not AA-1010, AK, but when you had hands like A10o. I think you need to be aware when you just rip a 25bb stack in pre, uncontested, people take note of that. In that hand those players just happened to wake up with hands. So your range there is completely unbalanced. I would be extremely suspicious of a strong hand if you min raised a 7bb stack, after shoving so much before. What I’m saying is, there either needs to be more balance in your opens or you should have a bluff occasionally in your range on that min raise. I would almost certainly end up shoving the AQ on the button, but I don’t think I would be loving it. AJ is probably my cutoff and fold A10.

  6. Londolozi

    Thanks for the great series and congrats Carlos, nice score. Andrew says on numerous occasions that Carlos should be defending more to a min-raise in BB. This would imply that opponents should also be calling us in the BB a lot if we are min-raise opening. Would this then result in us wanting to opening bigger than 2x or does being to open more often for less out-way this? Also thinking that maybe even though a small open is exploitable we can get away with it against weaker opponents that do not defend with the correct frequency.

  8. Carlos

    If we can get away with 2x, we should. If not, somwhere between 2.5x to 3x would be better. Unless, they give up too easy post, then we may want them to defend.

  9. Foucault

    “Unless, they give up too easy post, then we may want them to defend.”

    I used to think this, but I’m starting to doubt it. I mean, if you are getting 5:1 on a preflop call, it’s pretty hard to fold the flop so often that this becomes a losing call. You’d have to routinely check-fold pairs.

    It feels like you are winning more if your opponent calls and then check-folds 2/3 of flops, but in actuality it’s probably even better for you if he folds preflop immediately.

  10. Carlos

    That makes sense and seems to argue for bigger raise sizes.

    It begs the question of how can so many pros minraise crap hands profitably if we defend the BB and flop a decent percentage of the time? My guess is that they make up for it on later streets. I personally defend preflop and flop wide, but I am folding a ton on turns and rivers.

    Maybe I should be calling them down with worse than top pair on turns and rivers once I call the flop bet. On the offensive side, maybe I should be triple barreling more in hands where I decide to minraise preflop.

  11. Foucault

    They, too, are getting a great price to play the hand, still have some chance of winning the pot immediately, will usually realize more than their share of equity postflop because of position and range advantage, etc.

    When there’s a lot of money in the pot pre-flop, as there is when you’re playing with antes, it’s correct to fight for them. I suspect some of the raises you’re referencing are in fact -EV, or easily could be if the rest of the table played well, but it’s not too surprising that two players would both profit from playing wide pre-flop ranges when the pot is large.

  12. Jon_Allan

    Looks like Bovada’s replayer does not keep antes in it’s “total pot” when someone shoves (I was looking at the 99 fold vs the short-stack shove at 49:16 when I noticed, but it happens in the hand before that too for example)

  13. Jon_Allan

    …and the 99 fold vs the short-stack shove at 49:16 – if villain does have TT+ AQ+ we make 0.21bb on a call with our 37.26% equity. If, however, we think they wouldn’t shove AQo then the call looses us 0.65bb; in fact, if we take out 4 combos of AQo (they are gun-shy 1/3 of the time) we are almost exactly break-even at -0.035bb. The spot is closer than it seems if Carlos has a correct read.

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