Dump 99 or keep investing more in wishful thinking?

I think the standard for set mining is 15-1 stack to call ratio but it would need to be even higher with the possibility that this happens. I wouldn’t mind a snug fold.

pre really is the most clear call

no need for math, you are getting good odds with good hand vs sf nit fish and ip deep vs maniac. yeah nit number 2 is going to backraise some amount but idk man you are printing when you see the flop. like if you are talking about sims or what u think set mining percentages are, im not sure you understand where the money comes from in poker

if you think calling 45 more with 99 is "bad" can you estimate how much you think it's losing? or is it just a binary this is terrible you lose 100% of your call

I don’t think it’s bad necessarily, I think it’s close. Most of the time (88%?) we lose 45 and 12% we probably average a few hundred. Maybe more, I’m not great at estimating EV based on future actions.

Then there’s the EV of when nit jams and maniac acts.

i think if its close u should do it since some amount of the time the maniac blunders 550 into u postflop

My initial reaction was that it was a massive punt, like losing $25 on the $45 call.
After reading a few replies and seeing subs reasoning/plans/reads, I'm much less against it ... would guess it's closer to -$8 to +$8 call long term vs. fold, depending on how well you play. It's still going to be high variance and I think most people will have a binary opinion of how good it was after the fact based on how it turns out.

Like if you ever hit a set and don't get 550 from someone, I'd go back to my original opinion. The problem is this kind of spot happens so infrequently you'll never know, for sure. Also still not convinced calling 22 is just as good as calling 99.

There is some image value in calling along too.

Maybe, the problem is if he's punting 550 when we hit a set he's also "punting" 550 in when we don't ... which happens a lot more often.

I will also say that this seems like a very GG spot, where he's going to have a lot more experience than most of the people in the thread both pre. and post (incl. me) ... and he thinks it's meh. So all the people still saying "lol, snap call" ask yourself why you think you'll be playing a low SPR multiway spot better than GG.

The GG part about this spot is what the GG-type nit just did (which would be my standard play in this configuration). It should come as no surprise that he just flat/backjammed and this isn't being factored into the EV-of-setmining convo enough, imo.

Gnothatin',justsayin'G

Yea this is well said. OOP vs Girl with a naked overpair isn't super fun. I'm probably saving more long term by just folding to her 3-bet, I was thinking in the moment about my 3-bet calling range OOP vs the field and low PPs (okay maybe less 99) are squarely in there as set miners. The people in my room see AA and go bananas on boards like 8-7-6FD and never slow down until maybe the river. Deep enough I call with hands like 56s somewhat.

i mean if you look at ev's in a solver preflop decisions are usually very close ~ like within .1-.5 of a bb lol. theres just no way u can lose 25$ here calling unless nit 2 jams out of turn

as for this actual spot, 99 is a really good hand you aren't just pure set mining. some amount of the time the hand just checks down and 99 wins ui, i'm pretty comfortable putting in money vs the maniac if the girl is uninterested on most boards, occasionally we can bluff and / or value bet our hand, i'm not really sure what the set mining thing is but we can just play poker lol. in this hand i would be alright with folding if the maniac doesn't cold call oop, but playing these sorts of pots deep vs players willing to make bad decisions while we're ip is where we're going to make alot of money. i think people are somewhat results oriented with nit 2 back jamming, you're welcome to come up with a %age you think that happens. here we could have stacked off anyways if we wanted. there's also some chance this goes 4 /5 ways to the flop. the stacks behind us make it less thrilling but i think the maniac doing maniac things is going to compensate for that (look what happened in the actual hand).

i think i'm going to play better in a low spr multiway spot than gg because i've probably played 100x the hands he has minimum and i study and he doesn't? i dont mean that disrespectfully but i'm not really sure how else to answer the question

in terms of analagous pre sims~
if you take a look at either 100 or 200 bb pre sims, when it goes HJ open CO call BTN 3b you don't really see hj doing a ton of calling (at 100bb low rake its mostly folding 99 and playing 4b / fold oop as a simplification is alright i think, at 200 we see it becoming indifferent between all the options with 99) however if HJ calls, co ends up basically pure overcalling all of his pairs at 200bb(indifferent leaning towards call at 100bb). the takeaway would mostly be once there's a caller things change significantly and this is really the type of hand it's going to change for. another semi analagous one, 200bb co opens btn 3bs bb coldcalls a very tight range and co is going to pure call pairs / speculative hands.

again this is going to get a bit trickier in real life because nit 2 and short stack fish behind. but at least the ev of actually facing the 3b is very very very close to 0ev. if you assume nit 2 is going to back raise 15% of the time? again we don't have much reason to think that's going to happen with regularity except that it happened here and GG said well lol i would do that all of the time so people have decided nit2 must play exactly like GG (i get the description refers to him as GG but even the description doesn't imply he's all that tight pre), we lose 15% of 45$ when that happens (although occasionally print when maniac does this) so like -6$ on the call. my argument is we're going to way over realize our ev postflop as both the girl and the maniac are described as bad for various reasons. i think the presence of the maniac has to add something like 4bb? maybe more to our call if i had to guess. like look at what actually happened in the hand and imagine if you're going to make $ seeing the flop ip vs him. the best possible outcome for us in the hand is the girl checks back / gives up any flop and he just starts blasting, you really don't need a set to call down in that case. would think the girl being too passive adds a good amount of ev to our hand / range as well

idk for me i'm pretty happy to put consistently myself in positions where whale is going to have the opportunity to blow up for 200bb. is really the point of poker / live poker in general, also life is short, you're ostensibly there to gamble, it's go time.

I'm sure I'm going to get flamed for not wanting to gamble it up with the maniac, but...I kinda want to just fold here.

I'm assuming we'd 4B QQ+ and AK, and fold 77 and worse PP's, and all our other AX, so we're kind of left with 88-JJ as our range here, and 99 seems like it's going to be way behind the Nit's range, and flipping at best against the maniac's combos of QJ / JT and similar "just too good to fold" trash.

Just skimmed through the rest of the thread.

Opening 99 and calling off the 3B to $55 with the maniac cold-calling behind TAG-girl seems fine to me. We've got some showdown value, and getting decent odds to set-mine, we'll block a lot of straight draws the maniac is likely to have when he cold-calls with the usual Tx-Jx-Qx BS, and the TAG-girl is likely to let us know how strong she is on the flop.

I'm not surprised the nit had AK. It's annoying AF to call off the 3B, and then see the Nit jam, because I *KNOW* AK is in his range, but we're flipping with AK, and he could play JJ+ the same way. This is right out of the GG play-book - limp, let the rest of the clown show raise-call-whatever, and then put in the back-raise, and not care about what happens post-flop.

If the positions were somehow different, and we were able to re-jam to squeeze the maniac out of the pot with a lot of dead money in it, I'd love re-jamming with 99 after the maniac cold-calls a 3B, but once the nit jams, and the maniac re-jams, I'm just not willing to gamble that everybody else has everyone else's outs, and 99 is going to miraculously hold up by the river.

At best, we're flipping against un-paired over-cards in two spots, trying to dodge [counts on fingers and toes]...12 outs, and all the potential draws. Just as likely, the nit has us dominated and we're flipping at best with the maniac.

i think if maniac is wide enough its better for us for him to be in the hand. i feel like i get caught up in threads trying to justify what i'm saying when literally no one is interested but i do enjoy talking about poker lol.

if you use openpoker tools or something and give nit2 {JJ+, AKo, AKss} we have 33% vs that. if we add maniac to the mix and give him honestly a conservative 44-JJ, AJo-AQo, and all the suited broadways, we have 26% 3 ways. Vs his range headsup we have ~57%. the thing is i think in actuality hes much wider and might just jam his entire cold calling range here to gamble or whatever. but regardless if he folds, wed need 30% to breakeven in the main pot. however if maniac does this rejam (or even just calls, bare with me for a second) we need 23% in the main to call off but we're pushing equity in the side pot.

given the side pot here would be 740 (370 + 370) and we think we have 57%, we are making 52$ in the side pot. the main pot is (230 + 230 + 230 + 55 + 10 + 1) so 756 and we're calling 175 with 26%, i think we're making 20$ by calling. so the ev of calling off here looks like 72$ or 24bb. the wider you make maniac and potentially the more unpaired hands even like aqss u have nit2 jamming, the better it gets for us ev wise.

fwiw if maniac folds and its just us facing nit 2 jam, the pot would be 230 + 230 + 55 + 55+ 10 + 1 so 581 and we'd be calling off 175 so we'd be making around 16$ or like 5bb.

anyways you're welcome to do the math on your own or look at it or whatever. these threads are annoying bc no one has any idea how to do the math or any desire and op doesn't care but yeah. pot odds spots you can't really just rely on intuition.

I don't do the math because I go to the card room to play poker, not gamble with guys who can't play post-flop by getting stacks in pre with 99 and hoping we're best and hold up.

It's not that I don't understand the math. It's that I reject the notion that if the math dictates we have to call, then we actually have to call. It's not like we got half our stack invested and can't fold now, or some other situation where it would be wrong to fold any two cards.

We don't need to get stacks in pre with marginal holdings when we have a skill edge against our opponents and can out-play them post.

It's an interesting take.

1. Firstly, unless cards are face up, Math is only ever an estimate, because our range is going to have variance. Obviously in some situations based on actions and past behaviors we reduce that variance.
2. Secondly. it's close to impossible to calculate in real time. Plugging into some tool here is great to work out if we have the odds, but none of us do that at the tablke. We use heuristics (15x for set mining, rule of 2 and 4) that provide good estimates.
3. You're occasionally going to have situations with things like sidepots that are mathematically quite complex even when you have time, let alone when you have to do it live in your head
4. As for marginal. I think the general take is go for EV, but we are all familiar with risk/reward tradeoff. GG is a great example. He trades lower EV in exchange for lower variance. This is completely legit. We all do this all the time in investments.
5. Skill edge is interesting. I'd love to know if anyone has ever caclulated it and have heuristics for calculating it.

a decent heuristic for you: if someone shows you that you can make 25bb by calling off here and you decide not to take it because you came to the card room to play poker, you probably don't have a skill edge. most decisions (ignoring blunders) are worth less, sometimes much less, than a bb. this could potentially be one of the most profitable spots for you of your entire year in terms of ev. granted the math is kind of hazy, but i think it's worth enough that you accept the uncertainty and the variance given how +ev it looks with pretty much any assumptions.

i get im being kind of flippant but it's irritating to do the math / post it (to correct a misconception) and be told "i don't believe in math"

i mean the actual math is near impossible in real time, is why you try to do some of them out of game so you have some feel for the situations when they come up. alternatively, hang out at the table and pray maniac picks you when he decides to torch his stack into a set.

I would call the 3! to 55 and fold to the allins. It's nice you would have won the hand, but you really can't call.

I look at the decision to not call off the jam as being akin to game selection, much like flatting raises pre from good regs, with fish in the blinds, rather than 3B'ing and squeezing the fish out.

Do we want to play heads up with a good reg, or multi-way with a reg and some fish? Do we want to play posts post-flop with a skill edge, or risk our stack trying to win $25 in EV pre?

It's not simply saying, "find a better spot." It's recognizing that we'll have plenty of opportunities to capitalize on opponents' mistakes in the future, but we'll be less able to maximize the value of those opportunities if we torch a buy in here.

Like, in my last 1/3 session - I somehow got priced into calling a $100 3B pre and ended up playing a $325 three-way pot with 5h4h. One of my opponents donk jammed the monotone flop for around 2/3 pot, and I called off with my flush. He turned over black TT. The other player was all in for the $100 pre, and had AKo, no hearts. The guy with TT was bemoaning his bad luck, but I was just thinking that if he 4B jammed pre, I'd have folded everything that wasn't better than TT, because he was so bad and face up with how he played. Every hand he and I played that got to showdown, I showed him a winner.

i mean i just want to make money lol. if calling off here is worth 25bb you should do it. thats an edge you really can't pass up. it's very unlikely you're going to find many spots that are worth 20+ bb in ev.

Unless you're on a limited bankroll or realize that you're unable to manage tilt, this is just another version of "I'm scared to flip for stacks even though I know it's a significantly +EV play."

FWIW, I sometimes chicken out when I know I should take a more aggressive play, but I have the insight to know I'm passing up $, rather than trying to act like I'm waiting for a better hand to showcase my "skill edge." (LOL)

Let me write some notes down...

fold 99, better spots.
somehow call it off with 5 high.

Well played.

Tell me if you don't call it off in this situation:

$6 UTG straddle. UTG1 fold, UTG2 fold, three limps from weak-passive fish, hero raises to $40 in the CO with 54s, BTN jams for $100, SB cold calls the $100, with ~$250 behind, folds back around to hero in CO.

There's $280 in the pot, $250 behind, and we have to call off another $60 to see a flop in position on the worst player at the table. Maybe the $40 raise over 3 limps with 54s was ill-advised, but getting almost 9:1 implied odds, in position, I think it's better to call that bet off than it is to call it off here, getting less than 2:1.

Fun epilogue to that hand - after flopping the flush, the board ran out runner-runner hearts for a three-way chop. True story.

I mean maybe this is sometimes okay with a 5-10% mix, and I know robots do weird things in some spots where they'll call/fold 98s/87s but mix going nuts with 65s/54s ... but I basically never do this anymore, will mostly fold and sometimes limp along if the right players/conditions are there (but even then that's often more because I'm bored and know it's bad).
If I was in a game with the same players a lot and nobody was short, I might get behind it with 10% mix (but 100% showing if I win) as a "no expects I'll have this in range" thing ... but vs. randoms I just fold.

I can't help myself. When I see dead money in the pot, I go after it. If I was getting punished for it, I'd stop, but I'm not. Like, almost never. I'm generally crushing 1/3 for >20bb's / hour. I made $150 in two hours at that table, before the game turned bad and I table-changed.

With $40 already invested in a $268 pot, closing the action, getting almost 7 to 1 on a call, in position, with another $250 behind, please tell me you don't fold there.

Yeh, I don't do the raise but if I'm teleported into the hand after that point I play it the same.

All I got out of that is I have more fun at the table.

Lighten up, big guy. Live a little. Raise 54s over a bunch of limpers. It'll put hair on yer chest.