I started working on this series just a few days after the tournament, which was on 7 December, so for me it’s been more than three months of on-and-off work. Then the past three weeks—in-between working on the Calendar, the weekly Planners, playing poker myself, and life, it’s been a busy time. Thanks for staying with it.

I could have wrapped up with the last hand, but after running the first sets of numbers on VPIP, I was intrigued by the stats I was getting on player 5, the winner of the tournament.

As I mentioned early on, the Six-Max format requires you to open up your range. Putting money into the pot an average of single hand per orbit, your VPIP is going to be about 17% (as opposed to 11% for a full-ring table playing one hand per orbit). A VPIP of 33% in full-ring would be considered very loose (playing essentially three hands per orbit), whereas in Six-Max it’s only a little loose. Player 5 had a VPIP of 57%, meaning he put money into nearly three-fifths of the hands played. Since the bulk of the hands where I observed him were five-handed, he was playing essentially three hands every orbit.

The possibility exists that he was dealt exceptionally good hands. As I showed in an article I wrote for PokerNews.com last spring, variance can truly make a difference in the quality of cards dealt to players in the short-term length of a tournament. Graphing the cards dealt to myself and player 5, however, the cards he was given were—if anything—worse than the cards I got.

The square charts show card combos, with aces at the top left and deuces at the bottom right, and colors/numbers indicating multiple instances of the same combo. Suited combos are above the diagonal line. The histograms show how the cards fall into the Sklansky-Malmuth hand groups.

I was dealt 150 more hands (that are in my hand history) than player 5 (my charts are on the left side), but the histograms between the hand charts show proportionally how the hands dealt fit into the Sklansky-Malmuth hand groupings. The classification bands are practically identical in size; I actually got more hands considered “good” than player 5 (the uncolored portion of the histogram on the right is larger than that on the left, indicating that  a higher percentage of player 5’s hands fell outside of the eight Sklansky-Malmuth zones).

I did get pocket aces twice in the course of 324 hands, but probably more significantly, I picked up queens three times. In just 174 hands where I observed player 5, he had aces and kings once each and pocket queens and jacks both twice, in addition to every other pair except for eights and threes.

This is the range of hands where player 5 and I put money into the pot other than for blinds. If you compare the VPIP chart for player 5 with his hands dealt, you can see that he  either raised or called with all of his suited aces (the top row shows AQs, AJs, and A5s) and all but one of his unsuited aces (the left-most column). Nearly the same thing can be said about his king-high hands: of seven suited kings (row 2 to the right of the diagonal), he didn’t add money to the pot with one of them, and he put money on eleven of fifteen unsuited kings (second column from the left, below the diagonal). He played about half of his unsuited connectors (combos immediately below the diagonal line). The histograms show that while nearly all of the hands in my VPIP range were in one of the 8 Sklansky-Malmuth zones, more than 40% of the hands player 5 put money in with were outside all of the zones.

I made a pre-flop raise (including re-raises) with about two-thirds of the hands I played. By contrast, player 5 only raised about half the hands he got involved with pre-flop, doing a lot more calling than me. Still the absolute percentage of hands he raised pre-flop was more than the percentage of hands I played. He limped the only pocket aces I tracked him on, and he limped deuces, but raised every other pair he played, as well as most of the other ace hands he played. He also raised 23o pre-flop, though that was in the late stages of the final table, as SB in an unopened pot four-handed at Hand 307.

Both player 5 and I won more than half of the hands where we raised (or re-raised) pre-flop without going to a showdown and both of us laid down about a sixth of the hands we raised. Players either laid their hands down pre-flop or we won with further bets on the flop, turn, or river. Comparing the histograms for these hands to the PFR chart above, you can see that an even higher percentage of “garbage” hands in what player 5 was able to win with—nearly half—made up this category, whereas the distribution in my histogram (on the right) is identical to the PFR range for all intents and purposes. Player 5’s histogram for lost raises shows that he didn’t fold any premium hands (green bands) when he made a pre-flop raise.

Both of us went to showdown with over a third of the hands where we put money into the pot. Player 5’s showdown hands are definitely more widely-distributed than mine are, with more than a quarter of them falling outside the Sklansky-Malmuth classifications. My win-rate at showdown was marginally better than player 5’s but he won as many showdowns as I did though he was dealt only half as many hands (that I could track).

Summary

Two different styles of play that get you to the same HU result. Our final hand was a race: [jd qs] v [6s 6d], where I caught a pair on the flop as he caught a set. Could have gone either way, though I like to think that I could have ground down his 9:5 lead given a better outcome on that hand.

Four hours and fifty minutes. 324 hands. +2,050% ROI.

Links to Previous Articles

• Hands 1-20
• Hands 21-40
• Hands 41-60
• Hands 61-80
• Hands 81-100
• Hands 101-120
• Hands 121-140
• Hands 141-160
• Hands 161-180
• Hands 181-200
• Hands 201-220
• Hands 221-240
• Hands 241-260
• Hands 261-280
• Hands 281-300
• Hands 301-324

Bovada $2K NLHE 

We’ve reached the last stages in a hand-by-hand examination of hand equities in a 143-entry online 6-Max tournament that started about four-and-a-half hours earlier.

UTG raises his small pair to 12.3K and I shove for 156.3K. I might not do that if I knew what he had, but he’d been playing pretty much every hand, while I hadn’t gotten involved in anything for more than five orbits. He folds.

D min-raises and SB re-raises to 27.6K to take the pot.

UTG min-raises again and D has an even stronger hand this time, raising to 35.6K.

D raises his king to 11.8K (he’s stopped using goofy random numbers) and the blinds fold.

UTG raises to 12K and wins, despite having the least amount of pre-flop equity in the hand. How do you not defend with king-nine and 35BB?

SB limps and BB checks. Considering BB’s propensity to bet out at any hand, I think that SB might have checked here, but he bets the bare minimum of 4K and BB folds.

Now I’m the wimp. SB raises the worst hand to 12K and I fold.

Who’s the aggressive one? Who’s the aggressive one? D raises to 12K, I call with eights, and BB jams his suited one-gapper. Surprisingly, D folds. I call, though I’ve only got BB covered by 9BB. If he’d shipped it with an actual hand, I’d be dead, and both UTG and D beat me on this run-out, but against short-stacked BB, I win, and he goes out in third. Player 5’s probably kicking himself for not getting to knock both of us out and go HU with a massive lead, but I wouldn’t have called a 3-way.

I’m back in the chip leader position. The SB is dead and I open to 12K to win.

Not sure why I didn’t raise this hand. Maybe just a little leery of tangling with BB at this point.

SB raises to 12K and I call. I have second pair and an open-ended straight draw on the flop and probably should have bet it. I pick up the straight and a straight-flush draw on the turn and bet 15K. With just bottom pair and drawing to two cards for a chop (the [8s] makes my straight flush), SB lets it go.

D opens to 12.6K and I call. I check-call top pair for 15.2K, then bet 30K on the turn, which D calls. I check two pair on the river and grudgingly call another 43.8K after he’s sucked out on me. Stupid nine.

SB limps in. Seriously. He makes middle pair on the flop and checks. On the turn, when BB makes a flush, SB checks. BB checks. SB makes two pair on the river, but any diamond of any rank beats him. He calls the 4.6K bet BB puts out and loses. Sure, it’s not a 200K pot like the last hand, but a diamond is a lot more likely than a jack.

SB limps in. Against me! I check middle pair on the flop. In fact, we check it all the way to the river where my nines win.

BB is walked with the best hand.

BB walks.

I’m kind of surprised player 5 isn’t doing a little more here with more than half the chips in play, but he’s quiet and I get a walk in the BB.

D finally takes some action and raises to 14.8K to win.

I raise my ace and win the hand.

SB raises to 14.3K and wins.

This is dirty. D raises a crap hand—no the crap hand—to 14.8K and gets called by BB with an ace. BB gets his ace but D flops two pair. BB should probably suspect something—even a bigger ace— when D bets exactly how much is in his stack,but he calls and fails to get a better pair by the river. Player 7 is out in third.

At a 2:1 chip disadvantage, I’m not going to draw this out. Hit hard and hit fast. Well, maybe not. I limp in (what was I just saying!!!!) and BB raises his crap. I call and flop very well. He check-folds to a 40K bet on the turn.

D folds to my BB, even though that hand did just get him a lot of chips.

A pretty even match to start pre-flop, I raise to 15K, he shoves and I call. I catch the queen and he makes the set. I need something over a nine to stay alive to make Broadway, a full house, or quads, but the [7s] seals my place in 2nd.

Summary

Most of the hands at my tables were dealt with only five players; only 66 deals were made with a full table, something that was exacerbated by a player busting on the first hand of the final table.

• The final table was set on hand 245, with the 6th place player eliminated on that hand. A total of 80 hands were played on the final table.
• The next elimination was on hand 285.
• Twenty-three hands were dealt before the fourth-place finisher went out on hand 308.
• It took just thirteen hands before we got to heads-up (which only lasted three hands).
• Play in the later stages was relatively deep, with the smallest stack having 40BB to start. The player in 4th went out unnecessarily shoving 30BB after the levels increased, even though 2nd place had only 10BB more.
• The top equity hands continued to win more than half of the deals, with 72% of the hands won by the cards having the most equity or the second-most equity as dealt. Even eliminating deals to fewer than five players, more than 50% of the hands were won by the best hand dealt, with about 20% going to the next-best hand.

On Sunday, we’ll look at more stats and some hand ranges.

Bovada $2K NLHE 6-Max

We’re closing in on the end of hand-by-hand coverage of a 6-Max tournament in this penultimate installment. When we left off Tuesday, we were down to 5 of 143 starting players. Player 5 had been fighting his way back from the bottom, the chip leader—player 32—had lost a chunk of chips, only to recover, and players 7 and 140 were struggling to get back in the game. I’m player 50, cruising along in 2nd place.

UTG raises to 9.1K and I call from CO. The big stack in D re-raises to 27.2K, the blinds fold, UTG shoves 99.1K, I fold, and D calls. You might think this is a “coin flip,” but it’s closer to 2:3. Nothing comes for D, and the former chip leader is cut down to third place.

How often do you see three-four with a better-than-average chance of winning a hand pre-flop? In this hand, it would would have beat everything else with a pair of fours, never mention the wheel straight. But I fold it. D limps in, SB calls, BB checks. They all check it to the river, D and SB split the pot.

CO limps in with eights, SB calls, I check my ace. CO flops a set and bets 6K, which gets called by SB, who’s drawing for a nine. They check the turn, then CO bets 22.5K on the river. SB has nothing and folds.

UTG limps in aloing with D. BB checks. Everyone checks down to the river, where the ever-ambitious D puts in a bet of 6K and gets BB to fold the best hand. UTG picks off the bluff and wins with king-high.

The short stack in UTG shoves his sixes and CO with the better pair shoves over the top. With one of the sixes dealt out, UTG is in even worse shape than he’d otherwise be. and he’s eliminated in 4th place.

D min-raises to 6K and gets called by BB. D bets another 6K on the flop with top pair and BB folds.

New level. And a new level of perfidy. SB opens to 12K with [6h 3d] and I fold. With everyone in the hand, I did start out with less equity than him.

D limps with his queen, and he goes to the flop with BB. On the flop, BB gets lucky in two ways. One, he makes top pair, even though one of the other nines is dead. Two, he’s up against Mr. Aggressive. BB checks the flop, then calls 5.8K from the man with nothing. BB gets even luckier on the turn, picking up one of the two deuces remaining for two pair. And, of course, Mr. Aggressive, who bets another 11.6K when BB checks to him. BB calls. The six on the river might concern BB, but he checks again and this time D checks behind, so BB takes the pot approaching 50K.

Action folds to SB, who raises his suited king to 8K. BB brings his suited connectors along for the ride. SB c-bets 8K on the flop, BB calls. BB is drawing exceedingly thin on the turn, but when SB fails to follow through with a bet, BB puts out 16K and gets the dominating hand to fold.

BB gets a walk.

SB opens to 13.6K and BB (that’s me!) folds.

D raises to 12K and wins.

It’s a big stack world and we just live in it. UTG limps, SB calls, and BB checks. Why SB just calls, I do not know. Four-handed, jack-queen is pretty strong. After the flop, of course, it’s too late, UTG has his teeth into the pot and bets 6.8K after the blinds check.

Everyone folds to the big stack.

UTG min-raises his ace, D and SB call with their pairs, and I sit out another hand. D lucks out with the case six showing up on the flop. He bets 20K when it’s checked to him and wins the hand.

UTG limps and D—as if he knows what the flop’s going to be—raises to 14.2K. Frankly, I think UTG should re-raise here, but I don’t think he should have just limped in, either. Anyway, he calls the raise and after the flop burns away his equity, he doesn’t have any choice but to fold to D’s c-bet of 18K.

BB wins when everyone folds.

SB limps in and gets blown off his superior hand by BB, who raises to 13.6K. For fuck’s sake, guy, you’ve got an ace with one guy behind you….

UTG raises to 8K and gets called by SB, naturally. BB doesn’t lead out, and UTG pulls off a free card, catching the ace on the turn before he bets another 8K to win.

UTG and D limp in with suited hands. Everyone checks the turn, even though BB pulls into a commanding lead with the flush draw. He falls behind on the turn, though he still has both wheel straight and flush draws, but D takes advantage with the Broadway draw and bets another 7.8K for the win.

Summary

Forty hands ago, not long after the tournament was down to only five players, player 5 was on relative life support, with 44K, less than 20% of then-chip leader player 32, who’s lost 90K. I’m down to 160K from just over 200K. Player 7 is essentially unchanged.

• 15 of the 20 hands in this batch were played 4-handed. The significant change with four players has been an increase in the relative percentage of walks. Only about a 5% increase compared to the five- and six-player hands, but that’s half again as many since the overall number is 10%.
• Player 5 is remarkably consistent. I’ve tracked him for 150 hands now, at a variety of different stack sizes. His low player number means he was among the first players to join the tournament, and it’s possible he plays the 6-Max regularly, registering early. His current VPIP is 57%, and he’s putting in a raise (either opening or re-raise) pre-flop with 28% of the hands he’s dealt. SO he’s limping or calling half his hands.
• Meanwhile, I’m playing just 29% of the hands I’m dealt, with a PFR of 21%.
• Player 7 is putting money into a lot of pots (29%) but he’s only raising 7% of his hands pre-flop.
• The chip leader is tighter than me by a bit (27% VPIP/18% PFR).

Day off tomorrow. Everything comes to an end in Saturday’s edition, and there’ll be some statistical mop-up on Sunday.