Hand analysis

Cripes, what 1/3 NL game plays $2K deep? These stacks are *way* out of my element, so my 2 cents may be pretty useless...

This insanely deep, I can actually get behind our preflop plan. Unless we've been 3betting a wide range (?), we definitely don't want to make our hand a little face-upish this deep OOP.

SPR is an insane ~30. We don't want to play for monster stacks (or huge percentages of them) with just one pear, imo. So overall I'd be pretty happy if just 3 postflop streets of betting went in. Against an aggro guy I might just let him do all the betting, or I might donk the river if I think that is best.

So I'm cool with our flop check/call.

The train really went off the tracks on the turn though. A crapload of draws ended up getting there and we're fine with letting him continue bluffing. I would just check/call and then check/evaluate the river. Wanting to "get more money in the pot" seems like massively overplaying our hand on this turn card. We have a very mediocre hand and want to keep the pot quite small at this point, not blow it up to play for lol 666bb stacks with one pear. I would actually fold to the reraise as our turn check/raise looks incredibly strong and yet he doesn't care.

I mean, you could argue we're committed by the river. But man, I would never get here this way.

Again, insane deepstack isn't really a thing in my room (at least during non-vampire hours) but in gereal playing for $2K stacks with one pear is just... yikes, imo.

GcluelessdeepstacknoobG

you overplay your hands.

Preflop: I am sorry but I don't understand the logic of not 3 betting preflop. I feel you should have definitely 3bet preflop especially because you are out of position. Did you want the LJ to call to build up the pot, is that why you you didn't 3 bet? Better way of getting the money in was to 3bet to $125-150, BTN would have most likely called.

Flop: As played, I would go for check raise to get the money in. I would want to get the money in now.

Turn: I don't think we should be thinking about wanting to get the money in the pot at the turn, we are not holding Ac I would be a bit worried that we are drawing dead right now. I would just call $75 bet and evaluate river.
Your raise size is a bit small as well. Did you raise as a bluff or were you raising for value? You make it sound as if you were raising for value however I don't think we are ahead right now. If anything I would be raising as bluff and raising to $300ish.
Villain's turn 3 bet looks so strong. I would fold here.

River: Easy fold, I don't see what we are ahead right now. Villain could be bluffing right now but even their bluffs are ahead of us.

Play differently on every street?

AA with no club is not a betting/raising hand on 4c9h7c Tc, would be much happier with check/fold than x/r nevermind calling the turn 3bet.

Preflop seems already very questionable to me. If you have a reasonable 3bet range overall, then this deep you can easily raise to 150-175 and move from there.

I might agree with a call only if you are almost never 3! from the straddle (which is wrong btw) or if V is overall way better than you and you don't want to play a potentially huge pot oop against him.

Anyway, if you just call pre, it is to pot control and try to go to showdown relatively cheap, unless you hit a set or better.

So, as played pre, flop is a standard c/c.

The c/r ott is a huge overplay, and even more so the call to the 4!
You are putting in 100bb with a pair, against someone who has almost all the possible 2p+ in his range.

Just c/c turn.
As played, snap fold to the 4bet.
As played turn, snap fold river.

You don't 3bet the aggressive player? I honestly can't understand why unless you are seen as a nit and he'll auto-fold?

Raise the flop -- you got your aggressive player to bet, that's what you wanted.

Turn sucks, just check/call now -- or bet/fold. As played, fold to the raise.

River is a fold unless you know something about this player we don't.

Totally fine with not bumping up AA preflop here for multiple reasons especially when its an agro player.

Given teh run out though and stack depth, villain connects with more hands more strongly than your hand on this run out. I think your max value comes from check calling villain on a runout where had you raised PF, you may have encouraged them to slow down heavily post in situations where they are not just abusing position with aggression.

You have a bluff catcher on the river.

but on the turn since your OOP i dont think ch/raising is the best spot to inflate the pot. I'd prefer a check call line to the river here against a wide range and then on runouts that are less likely to improve villain's range opt to wager larger ammounts.

AA's value decreases post flop as stack depth increases and so there are really 2 stages where AA's relative strength and intrinsic value are at the highest: pre flop and on the river once you have information about the # of potential of value hands knowable. in between, you cannot continue against perceived range defined by bets except in situation where villain is an absolute maniac playing A2C 100% of the time like its always the nuts perhaps.

We are the straddle vs. an aggressive player (and OOP). Unless we only 3bet our straddle w/ AA/KK/AK, this is the PERFECT setup to go to $100 or so.

Now, if OP is tight or a nit and never 3bets, the "trap" is OK, I guess, but flop is a raise.

Ok, so how do you perceive villains range to change from when they act in the hand to the range they would have that responds to the raise in the straddle?

And let me say - i'm not suggesting flatting AA there 100% by any means, im just saying its nowhere close tot he worst decision option at that point in time (in the general sense, not specific to this hand) or relative to other choices later in the hand.

I agree there are times to flat (not very many), but I don't think this is one of them 😉

Can you expand on why?

Or maybe better question: What conditions do you see as necessity to audible to flatting AA pre?

Its not so much what you think as much as it is WHY you think that in other words.

what 1/3 game plays 2k eff and opens 35?

i dont know but if its in driving distance to me i need to know where it is.

$5 straddle, so 1/3/5, but sounds like a great game.

Sigh...

Blinds $1-$3-$5

UTG folds
LJ limps $5
HJ folds
CO folds
BTN raises to $35
SB folds
BB folds
H $2k effective with BTN in Straddle with AA?

...can you just call here with AA ... sure, I guess. People are allowed to do anything with anything.
Being OOP; having a giant SPR if we call; facing a huge raise we probably shouldn't have a calling range vs.; knowing we have the nuts right now; and maybe getting enticing LJ to overcall, all heavily suggest you do almost anything else (folding does seem worse). Also "fighting back by calling", vs. agro. BTN when we are in the largest blind is a very difficult way to deal with the problem.
Also seems like shoving now would be better if you are going to pile money in when V wants and when you have bad hands for the board.

I've also yet to see a "super agro" guy on the BTN who will raise 7x over a single limper into 3 blinds and then just snap fold if we 3bet big. Like if we make it $200 does he just fold everything except JJ+/AK (40 combos)? From a starting point of at least 15% (~200 combos). Even if we are in bad shape for our $200 when he doesn't fold, it's probably printing.
Yes, if we are only doing it with AA he can just fold because we never do it ... but then play your other hands better too.

Yes, there's a point where our raise size becomes too big and most of the sane 3bet sizes make our life difficult on turn/river ... but at least it won't be a dumpster fire before then.

First of all, let me thank ALL of you for your responses. This forum is unbelievable for feedback. It has been an invaluable resource, to say the least.

With the hand, keep in mind that I mentioned I would ALWAYS reraise this hand with an exception, and the exception was met. When I have AA or KK, my first consideration is can I get someone into a head's up position, and if I can, then what's the best way to get their money into the pot? Knowing the player's tendencies and also only having one player behind, I felt it was worth the risk of playing OOP. Believe me, I don't want to be OOP, but...when I simply call preflop, I've taken AA out of the range he has put me on, and that's a very big advantage.

True to form, he C-bet which I counted on. On the turn, he upped it again which I also wanted despite the board texture. Remember, the guy opens to $35 which is more than usual for him. That's an indicator to me that he does not want callers. The flop is pretty much a blank except for the clubs and he continues to tell the story with his C-bet. Fine...tell it. When the turn comes, I feel that the three clubs fit better into my story of check-calling. So when he bets and I raise, it looks more like I've hit it. His $500 reraise was obviously not expected, but I still felt like I likely had the best hand. When the final club hits, now I'm thinking:

* Pot odds are not great.
* What kind hand opens for $35 and fires back for $500 on the turn and then shoves river? There is no two-pair on the flop. I could see a set of 7's or 9's. Obviously a suited connector that hits the flush. A small pair that he takes all the way and uses the board to get me out.
* None of this smells right, but do I make a hero call only to tell myself how stupid it was to do that and have him peel off a club?
* Another angle is that, he has no idea what I have, so if he's playing a club, it's got to be a pretty sizeable one and a suited ace also fits the story.

Anyway, I ultimately folded and he was kind enough to show me that he had 5d 5s. Part of me is proud that I sniffed it out, but another part of me wondered if there is a universe where this might get called. Based on all of the feedback, I was glad to read that everyone felt it was also a fold.

And to answer the question about where the game is held, there is a casino in Nashua, NH, called "Gate City" which has a $1/$3 match-the-stack up to $2,500. I've seen it where there's been over $15K on the table. Not often, but it does happen.

Thanks again, everyone. I GREATLY appreciate your time to chime in! :-)

You say you want to go heads up with someone, but you just call the preflop. Calling makes it more likely for LJ to call as well. But raising makes it almost a guarantee for it to be heads up.

You mention that with AA/KK you try to get heads up and try to get their money in the pot. Calling is not the way to get the money in the pot.
The way to get BTN's money in the pot was to 3bet preflop. What hand do you think BTN has that would raise to 35 and then fold to your 3bet of 125. Unless BTN is bluffing with air they are going to call your 3bet. And if BTN's 4bets, you should be more than happy to jam preflop. You are going to win 80% of the times.

By 3betting, you get the lead, that makes it easy for you to bluff if you want in the later streets as well.

This hand is a trainwreck and the logic is worse than Thrasymachus.

You're 400BB deep with AA OOP with a limper and a 7x iso...a situation most people dream of...and you've decided now is the time to get fancy. For crying out loud, get money in now while you're ahead. You do indeed want to get it heads up - calling is the best way to avoid that. You may not want to play this deep for stacks - yet - but you want to bloat the pot as much as you can now and reduce that SPR. If there's someone aggressive, you can 3bet big and then still pull off some creative play later on. Imagine how things would look if you 3bet to 150 and then check-raised this flop? You might have the pot at nearly 1500 when you're almost certainly ahead going into the turn, rather than 170 which is what you ended up with.

However, a bad card comes in, completing flushes, some two pairs/sets and some unlikely straights and NOW is the time to check-raise? This is classic pot entitlement and buyer's regret (I probably should have got more money in the pot before, but what the hell I'll do it now). What exact hands are you hoping will call your check-raise? AcKx? QQ/JJ? You probably fold those out and get only better hands to call. Maybe QcQx calls or something.

Calling the turn 3bet is even worse. On the river I'm now confused, you said you were 2000 effective but it looks like button has put in 1200 or so?

You beat 5d5s? What did you sniff out -- the fact that he bluffed you off the best hand?

Pre- I don't really understand flatting in this spot. We're really deep, and the V is "ultra aggro". At this point, we want the pot as big as we can get it, and we are in a position where we should be 3! fairly wide. Let's make it $150 and he has plenty of room to 4! us and still have room to bluff later. I might flat the 4! to trap, I don't like flatting a single raise when we have a monster and we are this deep.

Flop- Decent flop, we are almost always ahead. Checking 100%, but probably looking to x/r. What's V betting 2/3rds pot with? All the FD, some open enders, 9x, overpairs, JT - this is a very wet and very dynamic board. Cards we don't want to see on the turn: Any club, any 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, T, J. And since V could easily have QQ or KK, we don't really want to see those either. In other words, basically the only cards we are happy to see on the turn is an A or non-club 2, 4, 7. So rough math, like an 80% probability the turn sucks for us, while right now we have the best hand almost always. When that is the case, raise and raise big. I'd go like $400.

Turn - Not a great card for our hand as a bunch of draws came in and a bunch of bluffs just picked up a lot of equity. Right now we have a bluff catcher and we should be going into pot control mode. We are deep enough and our hand is strong enough that we can look to x/c, x/c as a bluff catcher.

I don't understand turning our hand into a bluff. If V has a flush, is he ever folding? Maybe if we had the Ac, but he has a lot of Ac in his range, since he is "ultra aggro" and on the button, I'd assume he has both suited and unsuited Ax in his range, 50% of the Ax he could have include the Ac. What hand better than AA is V ever folding? Maybe T9? That's the only one I can think of. I guess we can get value from hands like KK/QQ with a club or AcKd, but that is really thin value for a x/r.

Vs. Turn 3! - This is why we don't want to x/r this hand. In equilibrium this is a pure fold. We can only call if we have a really good read that V is bluffing with very little equity. V has so many made hands that we are drawing dead against and V has a ton of bluffs that have a lot of equity. We only have $450 behind? That makes it a jam or fold spot. If we are really certain that V is overbluffing hands that have little equity put those hands to the test. If V is overreaching with a hand like QQc, or QJ one club or JcT type hands, why are we letting him see the river? If we are so confident he is bluffing, we can get him to fold some equity, and the pot is already huge. Because what is our plan on any river? Again, like on the flop, almost every card in the deck is bad on the river. Our hand isn't getting better and we can't even feel good about hitting our Ac anymore. We have one card in the deck that improves our hand. So if we are super convinced that V is bluffing, jam now. Mathematically, it is torching, but maybe if this V is that far out of line, we can take it down enough right now or get called by a one club draw, or maybe QQ/KK will call often enough to make it worth the times we're just putting in dead money.

River: Why are we checking? We've come this far. Our best hope is that V was pushing value on the turn. This card might have saved us. Maybe V has a set or a straight. With the weird way we played this hand, us having Acx makes the most sense. Our best chance to win this hand is to represent the Ac and jam. The pot is huge so our bet doesn't look like a bluff. If looks like value trying to get paid off and maybe V will make a hero fold. Additionally, we take away the option for him to bluff.

At this point, the pot is way too big for our hand and that means we have two choices - jam or x/c. I'm jamming looking to sometimes fold worse like sets and two-pair. The way we played this hand so far has been with the assumption that V will just blast off with random bluffs. Now we're getting 4:1 on that bet so I don't see how we can fold if we believe V is that aggro. If we aren't going to call with these odds, what the heck were we doing putting in $500 on the turn? In my mind, we made our decision to commit to the hand on the turn. When we put the money in on the turn, we knew there was no good river in the deck. That means we fold or jam turn, and if we're going to call we certainly jam when a scare card rolls off on the river and just hope that the scare card is scary to V too.

OP - I play in this game a decent amount of the time. If the line-ups aren't good I'd avoid it, because the game's player pool is relatively small PM me if you want to go over specific player tendencies ( Talking about a specific player I believe it is not allowed in the thread).

Some advice for playing this game.

1. As mentioned prior the lineup matters. Sometimes there are players at this game who are legit crushers who I would never ever play against.

2. Because the stacks and players are well versed in playing super deep 500 BBs deep +, Id advise to keep the BI amount to about 500 and just 1000% just play a solid TAG game.

To anyone who is remotely noobish to the game (which I'm perhaps incorrectly assuming due to OP's post count), this is solid advice, imo. Heck, if there's a smaller minimum BI you should often do that if you're just getting your feet wet in this kind of game.

Also think most people's preflop logic is wack in a game that is playing this enormously big. Position + skill level >>>>>>> preflop hand strength. An unskilled AA is going to be eaten alive in this spot, and our best option is to keep the pot as reasonable as possible UI (and even that is going to be extremely difficult to do OOP to this guy).

ETA: Just really to expand on how dangerous this game is and how you really have to know what you are doing otherwise you will get buried. In this particular hand, OP got in a hugenormous $1550 as the fave only to fold, which is obviously a *massive* mistake (not hating on the fact that his opponent forced him to make this mistake, just stating it for what it is). If this mistake is made at any somewhat regular frequency, you will have zero chance of winning. So if you are otherwise a very good 10 bb/hr winner, simply making a mistake of this magnitude just once every 50 hours (once every 10 five hour sessions) will turn you into a breakeven player. And yet my guess is in a game like this you'll run into dangerous spots like this a handful of times per session; you really can't afford to get these spots wrong more than you get them right. You *really* have to know what you are doing in a game like this (at least playing this deep).

Ggoodluck,imoG

If our primary goal was to just manage the pot size to avoid playing a huge pot OOP with a large SPR against a player we perceive as particularly good, then I can get behind that logic. But then, when the flop isn't great and the turn is really bad for our AA, we should at most be x/calling, not bloating the pot. In this case, that strategy would have been going to the river after calling $35+$50+$75 = $160. The pot is under $350, and we can comfortably call most reasonable bets if we think V triple-barrels bluffs. If he jams, we can easily fold and only lose $160 instead of nearly $600.

Either a defensive pot-control approach or an aggro approach makes sense to me. But where it goes off the rails for me is playing the hand very passively, then suddenly amping up the aggression when our odds against his range are the worst on the turn. We go from passive to aggro on a card that really shouldn't be great for our range and is really horrible for our exact hand.

I agree that if an opponent has a skill edge, then leaning toward being defensive and taking lower variance lines when OOP is wise. Recognizing when you are outclassed is perhaps the most underrated skill in poker.

Sometimes I think players are so involved in the math that they forget (or at least minimize) the exploitative nature of this game. Let's look at this from the standpoint of what would have happened had I played this by the book. I would have 3-bet him to the tune of about $100. GTO says that he should call, but It doesn't mean he actually does that. Pocket fives are weak, especially against a UTG 3-bet. It's basically at the bottom of his calling range. If he chooses to let it go, then all I have to show for my aces is $45. But let's say he does what he's supposed to do and he calls. When the flop comes I'm going to C-bet and since his pocket fives aren't much of anything other than a bluff catcher, he's likely going to fold at that point. So my aces net me $110. But if we play it out where I call him preflop and things don't run out with four clubs, then he's in for $35, raises to $75, I bump it to $200, he goes in for $500, I call, he shoves, I call, I stack him. If the third club doesn't come up, maybe he doesn't call my $200 raise and he folds, but in either scenario, it nets $110. I just feel that I have a much better opportunity to get his money in by flatting his initial raise with an acceptable level of risk when it's combined with the weakness I have shown. Run that hand 10 times knowing the villain, and I feel that the majority of the time I will get his money into the pot and I will win the hand.

Here's another example of where I feel exploitation/intuition supersede pure numbers. This is one of my favorite decisions I've made on deviating from what most players would do. It's the same 1/3 game, different session, and I wake up with AA in the cut-off. As before, I've got around $2,500 behind. There are a few limpers and when the action gets to me, I open for $25. This is a somewhat smaller raise for me with two limpers behind (I know for most of you it's too big being 8BB, but it's the right bet IMO for this game with this hand), but I'm confident it will elicit a 3-bet from the button which is what I'm hoping for. I know this player very well and he is a seasoned veteran who knows his numbers. He is $3,000 effective.

True to form, he 3-bets me to $75. What happens next was a surprise. UTG goes all-in for $450. The limpers fold to me. At this point, I know many posters on this thread would absolutely go all-in as well. I don't. I flat the $450. Why? Because if I go all-in for that amount, there's a great chance I lose the villain on the button with his $3k stack and I want to get some $$$ out of him. We are so deep that he's likely only staying in with AA or KK. Another reason I flat is so that it disguises the real strength of my hand. Villain removes AA and KK from what he puts me on and thinks that I could be calling with AK, AQs, 10s , etc., So after I call, he tanks for a minute to weigh his options and then puts in his $450. Perfect! Exactly what I induced him to do. Flop comes 4h 8s Js. At this point I do a half-pot bet of $600. I could do a third, but with $1,200 out there, I don't want to take any chances so I'll charge him a lot to see another card. He folds and shows QQ. UTG shows AK, so I take it down.

I do find nuggets of help in everyone's responses, so thanks everyone for chiming in. I think that there is sometimes an overemphasis on the hard math and it's missing some of the human qualities that make this game far more sophisticated than what a computer sim is telling us. Those simulations are helpful, but to me, nothing beats getting a read on players so that you can get into their heads and get in front of their actions. As Gretzky once said, "Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been."

For those of you who care to see a monster 1/2 game, a vlogger came and did an episode of his vlog at a home game I play in which is as big as the 1/3 game I described. I think you'll all agree that the kid is good, knows his poker calculus, but found himself at times exploited by some of the tactics I've mentioned on this site. I was the guy who fired back at his 3-bet and made him fold his pocket jacks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV9yUGgF.... That was a net $2,500 night for me.