Hero call with AK on Q-high board vs LP.

We can, but I think we should raise. It seems exceedingly unlikely that V would take this Turn and River sizing with trips or a boat, and those are the only hands that can call a River check-raise.

I don't know if this is the definition of "button clicking", but this is about what I was thinking. When we raise huge pre, c-bet flop, then check turn, it looks like we're giving up. A lot of loose passive V's may take that as an open door to just start betting any pair, without necessarily understanding what they're doing or why.

Like, does V think he's value betting 66 or turning it into a bluff? Is he trying to charge hero's draws and AK to see the river, or does he think hero's folding out 77-JJ?

If we think V can show up with any pair, we don't need him to have an understanding of what it means to bet too thin for value in order for us to find a fold with AK, when we have a lot of better hands in our range that can call down.

If anything, when the FDFD bricks, I feel like a loose passive V is more likely to bet 1/3 pot on turn and 1/2 pot on river with some ultra thin value than to be doing that with some completely random air-ball, or to double barrel with his own missed flushes.

It would be brutal to put V on a busted flush draw, make the hero call with AK, and have him sheepishly turn over A5dd or T9dd.

Late to the thread. I'll read the results after I reply.

I don't like the line you took. You have to bet the Turn. I would have bet 3/4 PSB OTF and bet 3/4 PSB (150) OTT.

AP OTR I get the whole block/unblock thinking about the Ad. But it's just like MDF. This guy is a LP. Unless you have seen this V make a move, we shouldn't be calculating how many bluff to value combos are in V's range. Blocking/unblocking isn't applicable. Seems like an easy fold to me.

I agree mostly with what you say here, except for the random 66 mistake (i.e., bluffing with best hand). The LP will definitely call flop and bet 66 on turn to protect their equity against AJ-AK but they’ll take showdown on the river (and not try to get 88-JJ to fold).

In respect of exploits, yes, I like playing QJ, 88-JJ as a b-x/c-x/c. I’m just effectively widening this range to include AK because I don’t believe we’re losing to better hands that have been mistakenly turned into a bluff. We’re just losing to some value (e.g. 3x and some Qx).

Villain isn’t button clicking. If he was, well, then he’s not a LP. He is betting turn to protect against over cards, as I stated above, or to steal the pot with a draw (which he’s afraid will miss). To say otherwise is to overthink his strategy.

As for, losing to a random A5 or 9x, I don’t believe he’s betting these for thin value or mistakenly betting them as bluffs (unless he literally misreads his hand).

Yeah i mean, idk that loose passive is the exact terminology id use for such a V. That describes their preflop play but not really postflop.

fish actually overbluff the river because of two things. 1) they have heard the old adage “cant win unless i bluff at it!” 2) they get to the river with way more junk, so even if they bluff a lower % of their air than a gto opponent, the air still makes up too much of their betting range just because they have so much of it.

I still think your turn call is terrible. It sounds like you made a read based call, which is fine, but not something we on a forum can say was a strong line.

This is true for when they double float or blocking bet OOP or some sh—, but for someone to be accurately described as “passive” postflop, they should be less likely to run a multi street bluff IP. Not that it never happens, but it should be underbluffed enough that any bluffcatchers that mix in calls in theory just become yawn folds.

I really just take this as a lesson that few people have very good reads on each other at these stakes, and even when they do broad terminology like “loose passive” has enough relative meaning to each poster that it can’t be used too exploitatively except for some straightforward river call/fold decisions. (And apparently not even here).

You just don’t see a lot of HHs around here that are like “Villain is Lazy Eyed Rick, for my people in the DC area IYKYK. He can get feisty when he’s there for a big high hand promotion, but this is one of the slow days when he’s got the paper out betting the ponies, so trust me: he’s loose passive.”

I agree with your view on why fish overbluff rivers and this villain definitely fits that category. As for whether this villain fits the LP sub-category I'm confident he did, given the 30 or so hands I saw him play when i was at the table. I can't recall him raising preflop and he called a bunch of flops and turns without showing any winning hands. That I didn't see any evidence of him bluffing is a fair criticism, and, in a vacuum, yes my turn call was not advisable. The reality is that there were clear live tells in this hand and another that I saw, which would be negligent to ignore. In live poker, especially at lower stakes, we have to take these into account; we can't just pretend that, hey, this player type aligns with mass data analysis category (a) and therefore we should exploit him by doing (b). We simply can't do so because we don't have the mass data. What we have is a very small sample of hands, often with limited showdowns, information relating to game flow and body language as well as a general and somewhat intuitive assessment of a player's understanding of theory/strategy. So, yes, a player can be highly passive but still occasionally take a poorly executed aggressive action, which, largely because it is poorly executed, we should be prepared to exploit.

I wish there were more HHs with such profiling, although I'd probably not include the old "trust me" line. It's easy to say all categories are relative and therefore redundant, but the reality is that we need categories or heuristics to reliably navigate situations where we don't have perfect information. If you considered this turn and river a "yawn" fold then I'd say you're probably sacrificing a bunch of EV. Perhaps if you ignored the LP label, in your mind, you might have made the call; so, yes, sometimes categories can hinder more than help.

I get the diamond but why are we not calling with the club?

A lot of V1's "worst" flop floats should be BDFD hands (in theory), so even a single club in H's hand blocks those significantly.

But that's like saying lots of AdXd hands in V's range should raise the flop, and V shouldn't bluff the river with missed diamonds ... so it's fine to call the river with the Ad.

Which is to say, that's the theory but I'd be much less sure in practise below known decent 5/10 regs.

And yet you ignored telling us of any of these tells in OP. Like folding the turn is unbelievably standard against V as described. Im all for calling the turn based on reads, but then why post it here? You didnt call turn based on ANY of the described action. I do all sorts pf wacky stuff like 3 bet T6o because i got a read, but i dont post it here with no explanation and ask for critiques.

“Hero raises 6c6s from co, old man V calls from btn. Flop comes AdKdQd, hero checks, v goes all in for 20x pot, what do we do?”

Everyone “fold”

OP in responses “by the way he exposed 4s3c as he jammed, you guys are sacrificing a lot of ev folding here”

To be fair, this whole HH feels rhetorical

I tend to agree. The description of V as loose-passive doesn't jive with his line. According to a truth bomb @Garick dropped on me recently, "they don't bet with nothing, they call with nothing."

Above is post #12 in this thread, so while not in the OP, there's still some information for you. Regardless, you're assuming that these live tells were pivotal to the extent of them being the same as an opponent showing you their cards (e.g. 4c3c); the live-tells were a factor along with other information, particularly bet-sizing and board texture.

Why not take some time to consider whether your initial (and subsequent) conclusion of "fold river" was/is so clear-cut. If you're saying a decision is "unbelievably standard" and yet you get it wrong, shouldn't you at least question some underlying assumptions? Instead, all you're doing is claiming that the information I provided is misleading. Villain had been playing over 80% of hands, shown no aggression preflop or postflop, which to me suggests loose-passive. As you have acknowledged, loose-passives do bluff; the combination of small sizings on the turn and the river as well as the presence of a busted flush and straight draws, in addition to live tells, indicated that this villain could be bluffing even though I hadn't seen him bluff previously.

If we're talking about "unbelievably standard" decisions, we're talking about folding 72o utg, or maybe bet-folding top pair to a uber-nit, but if you're saying this river decision is like these auto-decisions, well, I think you're assuming spots are effectively solved when they are not, and, as a consequence, you're missing out on some valuable exploits.

DrTJO,

Please don't be too discouraged by the tone of Tomark's post. He gets pretty frisky/testy in a lot of his posts. I remember one time where he angrily insulted me in another thread. I would just chalk it up to him being a younger guy posting on an Internet forum.

I personally really like this kind of strategy thread. It seemed like you were mainly interested in the river decision for strategic discussion. We got sidetracked into discussing other parts of the hand because people were questioning your turn decision, but you had some good live tells related reasons for how you chose to play the turn.

Nicely played.

I had to read the excerpt twice. So succinct that it hits hard. I'm thinking that I'll call that Garick's Theorem to go along with Zeebo, Baluga, et al...

He said he got it from someone else. I'm too lazy to find the post. But it was in response to me saying I'd barrel turn after c-betting flop with middle or bottom pair on a wet board, to avoid giving up the betting lead and getting blown off my hand. The point he made did hit hard, the loose passive / calling station isn't going to start a bet with air, he's just going to call a bet or check it back and take his equity.

If you set the line at 35 I'd snap take the over (hopefully Tomark takes this comment well if he's 25 😉.

I often understand his frustrations though, even if I'd often be less direct expressing them.
For example there might well be some useful knowledge we could all apply from this thread, about how people who are often passive will sometimes decide they have to bet when they are checked to in position and have a low value hand currently (maybe with some equity) and can then follow up on the next street without realizing that they'll rarely be betting for value. However I don't think that point was clear from the start, and again it's still not clear when OP thinks you should apply it and when it overrides (or not) the fact that players will also value bet hands they shouldn't just because you started checking (or even the fact that if it happens as much as 15% of the time, it just isn't enough even if you were right this time).

tl;dr After 4+ days into the thread saying "I had a magical live read" won't be received that well by most participants, IMO.

Folding the turn (check/fold or bet/fold) vs this V is… ok the sizing is smaller than i remember but id still say standard (not unbelievably). And look man, i think it was a reasonable OP, but didnt think you played it quite right (with live reads you played it fine). your subsequent unveiling of live reads that led you to a correct hero call and then your didactic responses about all the EV we are losing makes me feel like this is a thinly veiled brag post.

I most likely insulted the content of your post, not you. People tend to confuse the two because they take an insult towards their opinion as an insult to their person. I lean towards saying “what you said is stupid” (or whatever insult), not “you are stupid”. And hey, smart people say stupid **** all the time. The only recent insult i remember putting in here was in a spoil tag in response to pigbills spoil tag, most just cuz i thought it was funny. If i did insult you, my bad. Im sure my posting comes off as brash and direct and sometimes insulting, and whelp im sorry about that if it makes you not like me. I dont intend to troll or make you mad, even if it may come off that way sometimes. its not really intentional, its how i talk in real life too, which seems quite polarizing on how people react to it.

I had an influential high school teacher who said good writing is writing with confidence and i think it shaped the way i write and speak to this day. I dont have the overconfidence in my poker knowledge that I may post in here from time to time. Im here to learn, and here to teach others and give back because ive learned a ton of what I know about poker in these forums.

My account was made march 2010, so even if i made it right on my 21st birthday id be 35 so id say thats a safe bet.

I like you.

I like you too bro

Credit to @illiterat for finding the post:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showp...

Demerits to @garick for not naming its source.

In fairness to OP, Garick, me (for also using the LP term as a read in my thread), and anyone else - I frequently find myself thinking that our use of labels like "whale", and "station" and "loose-passive" may vary from person to person, so trying to nail down the definition of what "loose passive" means is less important than actually observing and understanding what our opponents are actually doing in-game, and then making the correct adjustments.

So, maybe V was "loose-passive", maybe he wasn't really all that loose or all that passive. Not really sure knowing how loose or passive he was matters as much as knowing if V's actions in this hand align with past observations of him bluffing with air, or betting some weak value hand. Whether he knows he's thin-value betting or thinks he's bluffing also wouldn't seem to matter, if we're just trying to decide whether or not to bluff catch with the nut no-pair.

Tomark,

I have a pretty thick skin. I am not taking offense at your previous posts. I could see how some people are defensive when you reply to their posts though.

As far as "loose passive," I think that posters here need to update their terminology.

Someone who counts as a "loose passive" Villain in 2024 probably bluffs (especially in terms of barrels when checked to them) significantly more than a "loose passive" Villain from 2016.

I don't really see why we can't acknowledge the fact that live Villains have become more aggro on average in recent years versus previous years.

Many of the older posters who are "respected" in this forum are also people who used to play a lot more in 2016-18 and don't play much volume nowadays.