2/3 500 max bi vs Agrro Whale
Hero is in the BB with
A♦Q♣
Folds to LJ who raises to
$15
Folds to
Agrressive Whale OTB calls, sb folds
Hero 3B to $65
LJ folds, Aggressive whale calls
$500 effective
Flop: 9♦7♠3♦
POT: $141 (after rake)
Hero x/c $75
Turn: 3♠
Board:
9♦7♠3♦3♠
Pot: $291
Hero checks, Villain bets
$165
Hero has $360 left
*Villain covers Hero
*Villain pfr: 0 /vpip: 100 /fld to 3b: 0
*Villain has shown aggressive tendancies on all 3 street
*Villain bluff raised $100 from $15 otr with flopped 2nd pair after called down flop and turn $15 bets.
*Villain donk shoved turn with bottom pair and oesd as pf caller and flop called c bet
*Villain bet/fold $110 in $155 3b pot 3 way and claimed he has runner runner outs.
*Villain raised river bets all in for value
*Hero has shown tight agressive style of play
Pf: Hero wants to go heads up with whale and uses broadway hands to 3b and isolate whale.
This is %100 3b squeeze
Otf: Hero has A hi and bdfd. Hero elects to call vs whales wide range. Villain could be betting entire range
Ott: board pairs. Unsure if i should call or fold. Jamming seems spewy but denies villains equity vs draws.
14 Replies
Ooof, tough spot. That Turn should remove four of his value hands (not just the two pocket 3s but the two 97s really can’t still bet for value), which pushes him further in the direction of bluffs, which makes our folding worse.
The argument in favor of shoving—denying equity (any River card not on the board below a Q either gives him a pair or a straight if he was on a straight draw)—is strong, but one argument against it is that players will (correctly?) over-call on these double-flush-draw boards; you have very little Fold Equity even if he’s betting weak-ish made hands on the Turn (87, pocket 66, etc). But: you will occasionally get him to fold better, of course.
I think calling is best. My one big question on the River is whether we shove on a Diamond. I think we need to. V is getting a great price on a call, but we’re just going to have sooo many flushes (or boats!) here—and of course we have the blocker—that I think we need to. Occasionally we will be bluffing with the best hand, but we can’t risk check-check-losing to pocket 5s if the River is the Kd.
A non-Diamond River we’ll just need to check-decide. I think we check-call 100% of the time on an A or Q. Usually call a 9, 7 or 3. And probably fold the rest.
This is an interesting problem. Would love to know more on LJ too,
None of our options Pre feel great.
Fold seems way too nitty
Calling OOP is hardly great either and feels nitty too
Raising means we're liklely playing a bloated pot OOP against a whale to a hand that misses most flops with an akwward SPR.
I think I might just flat pre, and hope multiway keeps people more honest.
One other option (depending on LJ) is a massive 3b (~200), and shove most flops, but uber high variance of course.
Flop - what about check shove, if we think he's betting his whole range here? Let him make the last decision, and if he calls with his J7 or some other nonsense, we have some outs.
As played, I dunno, I think I make a tight fold, but who knows?
Preflop good.
Bet flop. As played, CiB flop.
AP, it’s a pretty easy x/f once you get over the creeping feeling that you’ve been owned.
How wide is his vpip? That would be the main driver for my decision.
If it's high enough I'll check call turn and river.
Preflop was way way too small. I go 5x+1 per limper from OOP, which puts it at $90, but with a whale on the btn i might go $100 cuz hes calling anyway.
The big dick play is you check jam the flop. Hes way too wide here and folding out his air is tons of equity denial, you got 6 outs against a lot of his calling range, and honestly might surprise you and find a fold even with a hand as big as 9x and proudly say “your aces are good”.
Its not a big overbet either, $290 pot and $360 behind. I mean itd work better if you had gone $90 or $100 pre.
This is relying on the whale part here. I just recently played against an aggro whale and jammed over his flop bet with marginal holdings, so im sorta imagining that guy. Id say he was playing a 50% raise pre, fold to 3b 0%, and hed make a lot of big bets, probably was betting 75%+ when it was heads up. If a player like this folds all their non pairs to a jam, your FE is massive, and obviously with AQ youre happy for the non pair hands to call you.
Aggro whale isn't going anywhere. He's going to make money when his, say Q9 holding hits a pair and AQ calls him on 3 streets. Find a better spot. Personally, I do that quickly on the flop. Wait until you call him with 99, hit a set and let him bet you 3 streets.
The A diamond combos give up a lot on this turn - I'd just let him have it.
Merit to even fold flop for that sizing (It would be a standard call if the sizing wasn't so big). Kind of annoying to go so big pre and flop and have to fold turn, but that's the issue with sizing up pre sometimes. Losing 50bb with out show down is pretty annoying, but that's the way it is sometimes.
Sometimes you just don't hit any hands vs these wild donks, and you can't do much.
Preflop was way way too small. I go 5x+1 per limper from OOP, which puts it at $90, but with a whale on the btn i might go $100 cuz hes calling anyway.
This doesn't make any sense. You're assuming we always have the best hand with AQo pre which we may not - and why would we want to make the pot so big that we have such low post flop play ability? We don't need to make it very big pre to get stacks in by the river if the flop is good. If you think the whale is always calling, make it bigger with your really good hands and normal size with your good but more speculative hands so you aren't pot committed on every flop. The Size to $65 is big enough - I might even go just $55 or $60 - or even just flat sometimes unless a 5bb open is what this guy does every hand.
I would just flat call preflop with this hand and players OOP.
I don't see how you can flat call the half pot flop bet. You could cbet 1/3 pot, representing an overpair.
CRAI is interesting. You are about 26% against a pair without and A or Q, You might be ahead and take it or ahead and he would call with a draw. That play looks like a draw and/or AK/AQ, and it might be hard to get this player to fold a 9. He should worry about an overpair, but and overpair might just bet/bet/bet.
Also, OK to x/f to the 1/2 pot bet.
Aggro whale isn't going anywhere. He's going to make money when his, say Q9 holding hits a pair and AQ calls him on 3 streets. Find a better spot. Personally, I do that quickly on the flop. Wait until you call him with 99, hit a set and let him bet you 3 streets.
This is just nuts to me. Like lets put the guy with an 80% range at the very tip top of it and say “nothing we can do”.
In GTO, lets say btn raises, bb 3 bet, btn call (which gives btn a tighter range than id expect the aggro whale to have here), GTO calls flop (i put 33% of pot just cuz thats the more common bet size) and turn (75% of pot? with AQ the vast majority of the time. Youre recommending folding the flop cuz he could have Q9???
This doesn't make any sense. You're assuming we always have the best hand with AQo pre which we may not - and why would we want to make the pot so big that we have such low post flop play ability? We don't need to make it very big pre to get stacks in by the river if the flop is good. If you think the whale is always calling, make it bigger with your really good hands and normal size with your good but more speculative hands so you aren't pot committed on every flop. The Size to $65 is big e
Youre misunderstanding the purpose of the sizing. First and foremost, this is GTO’s 3 bet sizings, not mine. Im not mr “gto is always the best move”, so im not claiming that makes it correct, im just telling you the source, and I happen to agree with gto here. Just in general, not just here, larger sizings are meant to be for a more polarized range. BB in particular is ripe for an extremely polar range, because cold calling to close the action is enticing, so it makes sense to build your bluffing range with the bottom of your range rather than playing something more linear. This isnt true of the SB, and isnt as true when facing a larger raise such as this, but there are other advantages. A lower SPR plays easier OOP than a higher SPR. Also be ause its harder to realize your equity postflop OOP, youre OK just turning your equity advantage into an immediate win more often.
Anyway, AQo is in fact a value raise here against opponent’s range. I mean im not saying we WANT a call, winning $30 preflop is a great outcome for AQo, but id expect us to be ahead of their range, ESPECIALLY the whale.
To be honest the most concerning thing you said is “youre assuming we always have the best hand”. What kind of fish logic scared money statement is this? Of COURSE i dont. I play against a range, and sometimes you run into the top of that range, oh well thats poker. You need to go out there against these whales and be ready to get stacked if they are running hot, several times.
Saulo Costa has an absolutely EXCELLENT video on playing against maniacs, it was a game changing video for me. He goes thru the multiple steps of adjustments to maniacs, and then the big reveal at the end is that the player played an exact GTO strategy. Whats wild is you dont need to adjust (compared to gto) against maniacs. You simply need to remove the adjustments youve made to your game from playing a lifetime against players who are too passive.. In my opinion, certain call downs GTO does are complete spew money donations against the typical Vs we face, and we are so used to it being spew that we snap muck hands that are calls at equilibrium even against complete wackos.
This is a premium call down spot vs a whale (so call down)
Youre misunderstanding the purpose of the sizing. First and foremost, this is GTO’s 3 bet sizings, not mine. Im not mr “gto is always the best move”, so im not claiming that makes it correct, im just telling you the source, and I happen to agree with gto here. Just in general, not just here, larger sizings are meant to be for a more polarized range. BB in particular is ripe for an extremely polar range, because cold calling to close the action is enticing, so it makes sense to build your bluffi
That was the general consensus for quite some time but GTO squeeze ranges are actually incredibly linear
BB vs BTN vs CO
compared to BB vs CO (13bb size)
The large size is fun because 100bb deep you force people to make either ridiculously small 4-bets, 4-bet normal and be pot committed, or shove. I assume live players will mostly have just JJ+ AK in all of those which is great for you.
Whats wild is you dont need to adjust (compared to gto) against maniacs. You simply need to remove the adjustments youve made to your game from playing a lifetime against players who are too passive.. In my opinion, certain call downs GTO does are complete spew money donations against the typical Vs we face, and we are so used to it being spew that we snap muck hands that are calls at equilibrium even against complete wackos.
That's a really interesting perspective and definitely fits with some of the ridiculous suggestions I see here
Interesting. Guess im wrong about the reason for Pf sizing. It must just be that being oop requires you to offer worse odds to call?
PRE - I don't hate the 3B with AQo in the BB, but against an aggro whale who likes to splash about, I think I'd prefer a flat call.
FLOP - HU against this V, I think I'd prefer to keep control of the betting, by c-betting 1/3 pot. When we check and he bets >1/2 pot, we can already see that the stack depth is going to get awkward on future streets. I'm not check-folding, but I prefer c-betting to check-calling when we know he likes making big bets.
TURN - We can either jam as a bluff with what could be the best hand, or we can call, but only if we're committed to either jamming river or check-calling a river jam. Calling turn to check-fold river seems worse than just jamming.
I kind of like jamming here when the bottom card pairs the board. It counterfeits 97, if he's that wide, and adds the BDFD, making it look like we're jamming to protect our over-pairs. It would be awesome if he folds out all his PP's, and we don't hate it if he folds a lot of hands with good equity.
I kind of hate calling this guy down the whole way, only to have him show us some weak 1P, or let him get there with his draws. This sort of V tends to not like it when opponents play back at them.
Jamming is only a spew if V is playing normal ranges in a normal way. This guy ain't normal. Jamming seems like a pretty reasonable play to me.
