I’m crushing 2/4 this month. Next month, I’m looking forward to crushing 3/6, knock-on-wood. I’ve only 400 more VPPs before my $1500 bonus clears and that’s going to put a nice big chunk of money into my bankroll and take me a good step back towards my old limits. This time around, though, I’m a much more competent player than I was - so I’m back with a vengeance.

A fun hand that took place the other day, by the way, that you might find interesting:

$2/4 6-max LHE.

Somewhat typical slightly-loose, slightly-passive player (35/15/1) opens UTG, a weak somewhat TAG player cold-calls in the cut-off and I 3-bet with ace-jack of hearts on the button. Blinds fold, UTG caps and me and the CO both call.

Flop is A-K-K, and now the UTG player checks. This means one of two things: He either has a pocket pair QQ or lower (and wants a cheap showdown) or he flopped a monster. CO checks as well. I consider betting for value - since it’s probable that UTG will take one off with TT-QQ and that CO will pay me off with a weaker ace, but decide against it since it’s more interesting to see what happens on the turn if I check.

The turn is another A, making the board A-A-K-K and I have the second nuts (behind only to KK) and now UTG leads out. CO calls, I raise. UTG 3-bets, CO coldcalls and I cap.

When to slow down on this board is a tricky decision. Had it been just me and UTG, I would have called down after he 3-bets the turn since I’m either chopping or losing, but the dynamics of the hand change when I have a third player in the hand who clearly doesn’t have the best hand. Is CO feeling compelled to call down with a naked king (for the sucker full house)? I’d have expected some aggression from him if he held the last ace, but he’s just calling. Come with me on some analysis of this problem. At the time at the table, I thought it was a close decision but weighted towards not slowing down since there was a third player in the pot, but I might have screwed up. Let’s find out!

The river bricks and UTG leads out. CO just calls. By now, my options for UTG are limited to AK or KK. It’s clear that he was slowplaying when he checked the flop, so he clearly has a monster, and the two available monsters are narrowed down to those two hands. There are four combinations of AK he can have, and there’s one KK. If he plays both of the hands the same way (and both hands would be the nuts on this board, so he would) then I’m chopping 80% of the time and losing 25% of the time. If we were heads-up, this means that I can only lose from putting in more money since I’d just take back what I put in most of the time, and I’d lose all that I put in one quarter of the time.

What does the addition of a third player do for me? Well, if he’s trying to get to showdown cheaply with a naked K as often as he’s holding an A but is paranoid about KK, then interesting things happen!

If he has an A half the time and a K the other half, then that changes the range of UTG to 50% AK and 50% KK. In fact, UTG’s range is exactly reversely proportional to CO’s. If CO can only have an ace after the turn action (and figuring that there’s no way he’s ahead with that sort of action) then UTG can only have KK (and some non-zero freakishly small amount of the time, UTG is just flat out monkey spewing with 72o).

What’s my guess as to the likelyhood of CO holding an A or a K given the action? I’m going leaning towards it being “more likely” that he has an ace than a king, without giving any specific percentages. And if he’s more likely to have an ace, then for every bet that goes in on the river, I’m chopping less than half the time and losing more than half the time. Clearly, I should just try to see a cheap showdown, and I should most definitely not raise and re-raise the river.

Which, being the dumb spew-monkey that I am, is actually what I did. I got yelled at by CO (I believe his choice of words was “fuucking idiiot” - go PokerStars spam-filter) because he, of course, felt compelled to call down all these raises and I ended up punishing him as much as myself, which was sort of funny, actually. He thought I was stupid because there was no other hand that UTG could have but KK, and I kinda wanted to know why - if UTG had to have quads - CO felt he needed to call down all these raises.

Well, regardless of whether or not CO played the river poorly, it’s clear to me now that I did as well. I thought it was a lot closer than it was, and it turns out that what I was doing was nothing short of dumb spewing of chips. Then again, I suppose it was nice for the guy who got to cap both the turn and river 3-ways with quads. I’m happy for him. I’m a philanthropist, after all - and I feel that big hands like quads should be celebrated with a nice big pot.

And I can’t help but feel some satisfaction that a guy who’d call me a “fuucking idiiot” got to help pay all of those bets as well. I’m such a petty human being. Muhaha