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Paul Lambert

Here is the hand:

Imagine you’re in Malta playing the 2015 PokerListings Battle of Malta. Lucky you!

You are close to the bubble.
The blinds are 1,000/2,000/200.

 

Preflop

Everyone folds to the player in middle position. He’s an aggressive Swedish pro, with 136,250 chips, and he raises to 5,000. Two hands earlier, the villain lost 20% of his stack on a bluff on the river.

You’re on the button with K♥K♦ and a stack of 130,500.

 

You decide to 3-bet 12,000 chips.

The small blind and the big blind both fold.
Villain calls.

The pot is now 28,800 chips.

 

Flop

The dealer reveals Q♠K♠7♠.

Villain bets 12,000.

The action is back on you. You now have a 118,500 stack.


What do you do?

So we've 3bet and an aggressive villian has just decided to flat call out of position, which means we can generally cap his range as he's very very likely to be 4betting with hands like AA, KK, QQ, AK and probably JJ.

The villian has now decided to act 'out of flow' and lead into us for a little under half pot. The first and most important thing to do now is to try and assign him a range.

Now this flop hits our range better than it does his so he is going to expect us to cbet quite a high percentage of the time, for this reason, I think he'd check/raise his more vulnerable value hands like K7, Q7, KQ and maybe 77. He should almost never have QQ after flatting preflop and of course he can't have KK. He's also likely to act in flow and just check/call is very very strong hands, namely flopped nut flushes like A5 of spades.

So if we assume he check/raises or check/calls almost all of his made value hands, (and there are very few combos of his value made hands due to us have 2 of the kings), and it's unlikely he has any total airballs, it's fair to assume that his range is very heavily weighted towards draws.

We are in very good shape against all draws, apart from a massive combo draw like JT with a spade so we want to get more value here and attempt to get all the money in on the flop if possible, while not allowing him to set his own price to draw. So we will definitely be raising the flop.

Some other important factors to consider are that 
1) it's the bubble
2) he has us covered
3) he is very aggressive

All of these factors mean that he is even more likely to take very aggresive lines in order to try and make us fold because no-one wants to be the bubble boy and he can put us under the threat of bubbling.

He has bet 12,000 into 28,800 and we have 118,500 behind. We don't want to give him a great price to outdraw us, but at the same time we want to give the illusion that if he jams over the top of our raise then he could make us fold.

I would raise to around 35,000 total, this means that if he does decide to flat we have set the pot size up on the turn to be around 100,000 and with only 83,500 behind it leaves us a perfect stack to shove on most turn cards. If he does call, he will be calling another 23,000 to win 75,800 which is not a good enough price with any flush draw or any straight draw like JT so he is making a mistake (flush draws have an 18% chance of hitting the turn, and straight draws only a 16% chance)

It also has the added bonus of giving the aggressive villian enough room to be able to jam some of his draws and think he has some fold equity, which would be a big mistake for him.


#HandMalta & #BOMflop.

 

7 Comments Display all

Finally got round to giving your flop play a like bigslick

cheers bud : )

Been thinking about a few ventures in poker, one of which is maybe offering some coaching. I'm also thinking about writing some poker strategy articles so in that vein, what kinda things would people like to see?

Early stages of MTTs
MTTs when stacks are <20xBB
Microstakes cash
Bubble play
Bankroll management
Things like note-taking, table selection etc

Just a few of my own ideas, but you can suggest your own of course, what would people find most helpful? Let me know what you'd like to see

8 Comments Display all

Very good idea perhaps very deep 100BB+ theory. It seems the toughest part of the game for tournament play.Opening wide but then what? Or maybe the key is not opening really wide?

Ok, cheers for the input Jason. When it comes to opening wide with deepstacks, it's all about how comfortable you are playing postflop really, the deeper you are, the more decisions there will be postflop and the tougher they're gonna be.

I've spent most of my time playing cash and only recently started grinding MTTs full on at the start of 2015 so I'm a lot more experienced/comfortable playing deep so I'm happy playing a wider range in early stages. Just try things out, adding in just the top end of hands you'd normally fold, try to do it in position as much as possible of course, and if you're unsure about anything, discuss the HH with someone.

Fwiw, a huge thing to thank for me progressing as far as I have with poker is having poker friends, people I can discuss hands with or using forums to post HHs for advice.

That being said, if you're gonna have one leak, then being too tight in the very early stages is far from the worst you could have.

Thank you Paul for your quick response. I had untill recently been registering late in tournaments to avoid this problem. I did however in Monaco and Bucharest how much value I am missing. It is now my aim to register earlier and play tighter.

I've been speaking to Elena and Pedro about this but with little success, not through lack of help from them!

Basically I want to add my aliases to my account on here for Pokerstars (UK and .fr), Winamax, Fulltilt, Partypoker and Unibet but for some reason it just won't have it.

Elena and Pedro have told me both ways of doing it... on my own profile and by going to the individual pages of each of the above sites and neither way seems to work. On my profile it just says nothing, and when I try it on their pages it keeps saying my user ID is not a valid name on the site.

I know they're all valid/correct aliases cos I use them everyday and I've triple checked on Pocket5s etc

http://www.pocketfives.com/profiles/lambert180/


Lambert180 - Paul Lambert - Poker PlayerPlays online poker as: Lambert180, Paul676, Lambert567, Lambert1986, Joh_Johh. Real name: Paul Lambert.www.pocketfives.com

Anyone had similar problems?

Hi Paul,
We found out that it'is a bug and the team is working on it.

Thanks :)

Imagine you’re in Malta playing the 2015 PokerListings Battle of Malta. Lucky you!

You are close to the bubble.
The blinds are 1,000/2,000/200.

 

Preflop

Everyone folds to the player in middle position. He’s an aggressive Swedish pro, with 136,250 chips, and he raises to 5,000. Two hands earlier, the villain lost 20% of his stack on a bluff on the river.

You’re on the button with K♥K♦ and a stack of 130,500.

 

 

What do you do?

 

I'd definitely be 3betting here. It's already a great spot to do so because we have a very very strong hand and position, but on top of that, 3bets from the button tend to get a lot less respect these days which is great for us when we have the top of what will be a very wide range. We know the guy is aggressive and has also just lost a chunk of his stack too so it's likely he won't want to give up on this pot too easily

I'd be inclined to make it around 13,500-14,000 total pre which is larger than I would normally 3bet these spots but think it's a fine adjustment given the factors above, and stacks are pretty deep so it's certainly not a size that looks committing so we still give him plenty of room to 4bet us light in which case I think we should just flat in position and give him the rope to hang himself postflop.

#HandMalta #BOMpreflop 

7 Comments Display all

Ok cool Elena. I've only just realised but the main event in Malta actually starts on my birthday (4th Nov)

This would be a fantastic birthday present if I win :D It'll give me something exciting to blog about too... fingers crossed

 wow yeah the perfect present !!! :) wish you luck!

And finally, me winning the $55KO on 888


Watch live video from Lambert180 on Twitch

This is winning a £22 Bounty Hunter on Sky Poker


Watch live video from Lambert180 on Twitch

Tonight there will be a RankingHero Twitch of the Unibet Grand Final tournament :) Do you think to join us ? A 2000 package for Unibet Open Glasgow is in the game :) 

Don't wanna be too 'spammy' so I'll only upload a couple but Elena just mentioned I'm able to upload videos here of my past broadcasts from Twitch so will do a couple where I've had FTs/wins.

This one is me FT'ing the $11 rebuy on 888 and FT'ing the $35 6max turbo on 888 at the same time


Watch live video from Lambert180 on Twitch

Thanks Lambert :)

Hi guys and gals,

I'm gonna be going live again tonight on Twitch from around 7:30pm. For anyone that doesn't know, I play MTTs generally ranging from $11 - $55 and £11 - £55 and my schedule tonight will be something along the lines of....

www.twitch.tv/lambert180

Sky Poker
7pm - £22BH
7:45pm - £11BH
8pm - £11 rebuy (main event)
8:15pm - £11BH
8:30pm - £5 rebuy (mini event)
9pm - £55BH
9:30pm - £11BH
10:15pm - £22BH
10:30pm - £55 Turbo BH

Party
7:40pm - $50 6max Turbo BH
8pm - DTD Mini $27
8pm - DTD Micro $5
$10 rebuy (not sure of time)

Stars
7:30pm - $13KO
8:30pm - $27 Turbo KO
9:30pm - $27PKO

888
7:30pm - $22 Deepstack
7:40pm - $11 Rebuy
8:35pm - $35 Challenge
10:15pm - $35 6max Turbo
11:15pm - $55KO

I may add in some more mid-session if I bust some early etc.

Follow me here www.twitch.tv/lambert180 now if you want to get an email notification when I go live.

Hello @Lambert180 :)  Do you know that you can share your video on RankingHero. You need to copy the embed code and paste it here:

Cheers Elena, I'll upload a couple of my past broadcasts where I've FT'd/won stuff.

When I posted  my comment about my blog it seemed to appear on the front page (I assume the only place where everyone can see it as oppose to just people that 'follow me'), but when I posted about my Twitch it didn't and still isn't there, doesn't matter now because the stream is finished but do you know why it didn't appear to everyone?

Lambert, I don't see any reason why one of your posts didn't show on the home page. Normally there you can see the most recent posts.