Turned nuts faces board-pairing river with around 40% pot behind...
1/3, $500 max BI, 9-handed, Friday night. Rake is 10% up to $5, plus $1 for high hand and $1 for bad beat, once the pot exceeds $10.
High hand promotion of $500 every 1/2 hour, and bad beat for quad 6's or better.
Reads - hero just recently joined the table, and has played 3 hands - got caught bluffing once and lost, folded before showdown once, and took down a pot without a showdown, leading to a debate about whether or not I had it or I was bluffing (I had it).
Some of the table talk when hero sat down centered on my taking 2nd in a tournament held in that room 2 weeks earlier, and some strat discussion. Based on V's comment about the table talk, he was paying attention, and so he shouldn't think hero is a losing player, even though I lost 2/3 of the pots I've played so far.
Main V / BTN - $475 effective - never seen him before. Late 30's / early 40's white guy. Based on his VPIP/RFI and limited table talk, he seemed fairly solid, not expected to get too out of line, too often.
CO & HJ - I forget which one joined the party here. Both were loose-passive pre, but TAG post. Both on somewhat short stacks. Neither is overly relevant in this hand.
Hero - early 50's WG, new to table. Per the above, probably not perceived as being terrible. A little over $500 in my stack.
OTTH:
Folds to hero in LJ, who opens $15 with Tc9c. Either the CO or HJ flat calls. Main V on BTN 3B to $50. Folds back to hero who calls. Call from CO or HJ behind. Three-ways to the flop with $150-ish in the pot.
FLOP ($150) - Jc8c5d.
x, x, BTN $50. Call, call.
TURN ($300) - Qh.
Hero leads for $150. Fold. BTN calls, with $225 left behind.
RIVER ($600) - Qs.
Hero?
Check-call? Check-fold? Bet? Size?
Should I have folded pre? Should I have played the flop as a check-raise or donk-lead? Should I have donked bigger on turn, or jammed, or played it as a check-raise instead, or just a check-call?
Fold or call pre is fine. Id lean fold.
Raise flop. 2 outer to pribsbly $500 is like $20 equity, i still prefer raise
Turn i dont get the lead at all. Overcard is way better for 3 bettors range, AQ, QQ+ are in his range not yours. Let him bet it and jam.
As played jan river.
Fold or call pre is fine. Id lean fold.
Raise flop. 2 outer to pribsbly $500 is like $20 equity, i still prefer raise
Turn i dont get the lead at all. Overcard is way better for 3 bettors range, AQ, QQ+ are in his range not yours. Let him bet it and jam.
As played jan river.
Turn - I was scared that it would check through. I check, the middle guy checks, V checks back because neither of us folded flop and his spider sense is tingling when T9 comes in. Sort of the opposite of MUBS, I guess. Or reverse MUBS.
Also I figured I had the nuts and wanted to set up a river jam, before seeing that 2nd Q roll off.
Jamming turn imo
I think I would fold pre but I understand calling.
Flop is a clear raise. Super happy to get it in against AA on this board and equally happy to get AK to fold.
As played, why would you check here? You aren't losing to many hands, just a couple combos (3 JJ, 1 QJs, 1 QQ). Villain should not have very many bluffs in this spot and will check back almost all of the hands you beat (Qx is an exception, but that calls when you jam anyways).
Might fold pre. to 3bet OOP to both the caller and 3bet.
Flop I need a shovel to put chips in. Esp. vs. third pot, I probably just go 200 and plan to stack off on any turn.
Turn if we are going to donk then I'd do it for way more than half pot (we don't donk often). Another good reason to not donk, as I think probably just shove is the only reasonable size.
I guess shove river, or probably better to bet 150 again because I doubt AA/KK calls off now ... sucks because I probably don't find the fold if I make it 150 and someone shoves.
I fold the first time preflop. LJ is way too early for me to come in with something speculative unless there are some real droolers behind, especially since there are at least two loose guys that will have position plus a solid Button.
I also fold the second time preflop. We're only getting about ~14:1 IO and will be OOP to a solid player, a very meh spot.
I also check the flop. With our huge hand equity I would attempt to flex some FE here. At this SPR of ~3 I think a check/jam is fine. Could also make it $150 to leave $275 into $450 on most turns. Even against a tightish 3bet range of QQ+/AK about half his combos will have an extremely tough time continuing and even the top part of his range will fold out some small percentage of the time. Really don't see how preflop is profitable if we're not leveraging FE on flops like this.
Think I'm ok with donking the turn due to being scared it checks thru. Again, one of the massive problems of being OOP preflop (and really hurts our IO).
Not the best river card but with just a 1/3rd PSB I jam. Big pairs/trips can easily put us on busted flush draw, he's unlikely to bluff a missed draw himself for so little, etc.
GcluelessNLnoobG
Turn - I was scared that it would check through. I check, the middle guy checks, V checks back because neither of us folded flop and his spider sense is tingling when T9 comes in. Sort of the opposite of MUBS, I guess. Or reverse MUBS.
Also I figured I had the nuts and wanted to set up a river jam, before seeing that 2nd Q roll off.
I mean, sometimes you slowplay and it gets checked thru, thats poker. This exact reverse mubs mindset is SO strong with the regfish and bad pros, which is exactly why you can value bet so thin OTR in position. Not finding any value check raises is a huge problem.
id xr flop pure if u have oesfd. given its a 3b pot i dont really think btn ever has u beat otr when he flats turn. turn lead kind of interesting tbh, i think its too big but maybe btn is just inelastic with overpairs so idk, 1/3 (100) makes more sense to me intuitively
turn lead kind of interesting tbh, i think its too big but maybe btn is just inelastic with overpairs so idk, 1/3 (100) makes more sense to me intuitively
Kind of interested in why you think that?
Just checked GTO wiz UTG vs. BTN HU 200bb (terrible stack size, but my default and can't change until tomorrow).
UTG ~pure checks flop
BTN 33% pot
UTG calls Tc9c 65% (way more than the other suits).
UTG ~pure checks turn after call flop
Kind of interested in why you think that?
Just checked GTO wiz UTG vs. BTN HU 200bb (terrible stack size, but my default and can't change until tomorrow).
UTG ~pure checks flop
BTN 33% pot
UTG calls Tc9c 65% (way more than the other suits).
UTG ~pure checks turn after call flop
yeah i mean that doesn't have much relevance here i don't think outside of maybe? looking at pre solutions. i do agree pre here is probably difficult to turn a profit on and wish i'd said something about that in my prior post. id expect button to be way too tight and guy in the middle is going to make u really struggle to realize your equity, some % of the time they backraise, hand really kind of sucks to play oop in bloated pot anyways blah blah.
anyways, post, cbet size doesn't look particularly value heavy to me, and given the 3rd player in the pot would just xr and get it in and be whatever about it. when u look at sims, the amount of bb people start the hand with don't really matter as much as the spr. youre looking at like an spr 9-10 sim when this hand takes place at spr 2.8. its almost more analogous to a 50 bb sim in terms of spr. would not worry much about solver solution in a 3 way 3b pot vs people with large imbalances that you don't play with regularly. my guess is button is w/e rec and is going to make mistakes in the cbet and defend vs x/r nodes (granted at this spr maybe he can just bet range otf vs one but i think he's going to think omg 500$ is going into the pot instead of spr 2.8 lets go)
i think turn lead is interesting because button may get gun shy about betting one pair / air / draws into multiple people. if he's the type to just bet / call off overpairs or whatever here i don't think you really lose much by just leading the turn since i still expect him to put a large / all of the money in and you get to potentially trap the guy in the middle with whatever equity he has. i like the smaller size because a lot of their individual hands have like 0-10% equity here so you really want to incentivize them to put in money with those hands. also given stacks you're still setting up like a ~1/2 pot river jam, i just don't see the necessity to funnel a larger amount of money in ott.
dont see how u do anything but jam the river for 1/3 pot now and let him call with whatever because stuff bricked and the board paired (both of which people over call vs). honestly im struggling to find combos you even lose to that don't just jam the turn for basically a minraise. id think in a vacuum you have something like 90+% equity vs button's range here and maybe honestly 100 vs large amounts of the player pool otr. does he really not jam the turn with JJ? QQ? there's one combo of QJss left and i doubt this guy is squeezing pre too often and then betting flop, 88? doubt he squeezes. the rest seem like 0 vpip's from most people
I'll do the reveal in a moment, below. First I want to thank everyone for taking the time to respond with your thoughts, and I want to respond to a few points, as briefly as I can...
"Fold pre" - With two opponents, with their combined stack depth, folding T9s to what seemed like a smallish raise size seemed a little too nitty, at least for me. If I thought main V was going to be playing an overly tight 3B range, even on the BTN, I could see folding, but I didn't have that as a read.
"Raise flop" - it occurred to me, and while I know I shouldn't hesitate to get stacks in with an OESFD, I thought if I raised, the most likely outcome is our middle opponent would fold, and the BTN would jam with all his over-pairs, or fold all his AK and draws. It just seemed better to wait until the turn. But I'm open to hearing why raising flop would be better.
"Jam turn" - honestly, I think I may have lost count of the pot size vs remaining stack size, leading me to bet less than all in. In hindsight, a donk-jam may have been a better bet.
Also, I didn't want the middle player to see me eyeing up his chip stack, so I was trying to side-eye it and come up with a bet size that would be close to an all-in if he were to call. I realized after I posted the OP that my turn bet was actually $125, not $150, not that it would seem to make a ton of difference. I was struggling to find a size that wouldn't look too small to be anything but thick value.
"Why check river" - I didn't, but I was wondering if anyone would, assuming it would be a check-call, not a check-fold. Just curious if anyone would prefer checking river to look like we were bluffing turn and are now giving up, while hoping to induce BTN to bet.
"Reverse MUBS (fear that my opponent will think I have a monster and check back when I actually do have a monster)" - I think I may have it pretty often. I've been trying to work on not over-playing my thick value, and checking to induce more. Here, I think my read on the middle position player being kinda loose and the BTN being kinda tight just got the better of me, so I led out instead of checking again.
BTN's range - I was mostly putting him on big PP's when he 3B pre. I didn't think he'd be 3B'ing QJ, J8, or 55, so on the river, I was mostly worried about him having JJ, or maybe 88, though I wasn't sure if he'd 3B 88 pre.
Spoiler
Figuring I could get value from AA, KK, AQ and KQs, I jammed river. V snap called with 88. After the hand, he said he would have called if I jammed flop or turn, and would have checked back turn if action checked to him. So, it appears I was right to be concerned about slow-playing with a check.
I don't know if he really would have called if I donk-jammed turn, but the turn seems to have been the only decision point where a different action might have led to a different outcome.
i mean you are going to get stacked regardless of what you do. would be concerned with how to get the maximum value from the guy in the middle and the weaker parts of button's range, and if we can find some assumptions that would shift our strategy to xring flop (would guess random 1/3 guy is going to be too linear which i think works out well for us - too aq / ak heavy, not enough Jx / higher flush draws, obv mistaken assumption given he has 88 but would not imagine most people are doing that)
also if u mess around a bit with solutions you're going to see the guys in the middle end up making this much more of a fold just because so hard to realize equity and going to be dominated alot. its just not a spot you're going to have much of a flatting range and this is the wrong sort of hand to do it with (you want pairs and higher suited hands basically). its different if there aren't guys in between but their presence shifts our strategy a ton. you can look at this really quickly if u open gtow or whatever and take a look at a few stack depths on general and give ep open vs btn 3b then look at the same stack depths with ep open co call and btn 3b and watch what happens. it's counter intuitive bc better pot odds but its similar to how we defend the bb wider vs a single raise when it's hu as compared to multiway - its not a perfect 1:1 translation but its a comparable heuristic
i mean you are going to get stacked regardless of what you do. would be concerned with how to get the maximum value from the guy in the middle and the weaker parts of button's range, and if we can find some assumptions that would shift our strategy to xring flop (would guess random 1/3 guy is going to be too linear which i think works out well for us - too aq / ak heavy, not enough Jx / higher flush draws, obv mistaken assumption given he has 88 but would not imagine most people are doing that)
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I think part of the reason I post on this forum is that I intuitively suspect I should be folding more pre-flop, and am just posting to see if the crowd confirms it.
If BTN had 3B to $60 or $75, as I would have done, I think I could have found a fold. Or maybe if I had more time to observe him, I might have still continued, if I saw he was capable of 3B'ing 88, especially for a smaller size.
Some of this must surely be ego. I saw the opponents as weak players, and decided I had a strong enough hand and enough of a skill edge to continue. Even now, thinking about the hand, I think I out-played my opponents, and just got unlucky with the run-out.
Regardless, obviously he wouldn't have folded his set to a flop x/r, even a x-jam, and he's not folding a boat on the river. I think a flop x/r-4B-jam would have been fine, and I would have been fine losing the hand with the run-out we got. I can't help but wonder if I could have taken it down by just donk-jamming flop, but even if that would have worked, it doesn't seem like it would be the highest EV play.
I dunno. I lost a few pots that way in this session, making good plays on flop or turn, yet getting a bad river. I wonder how much of the variance stems from being too wide pre, and how much is just plain old unavoidable variance.
yeah i mean that doesn't have much relevance here i don't think outside of maybe? looking at pre solutions. i do agree pre here is probably difficult to turn a profit on and wish i'd said something about that in my prior post. id expect button to be way too tight and guy in the middle is going to make u really struggle to realize your equity, some % of the time they backraise, hand really kind of sucks to play oop in bloated pot anyways blah blah.
anyways, post, cbet size doesn't look particularl
My 2 cents on the turn lead is that its fine for THIS HAND, because you can do it with all sorta of stuff (flush draw, turned pair + FD like JT, sets, straight, etc), so it puts V in a tough spot, but if i saw a V lead out on a turn card thats so much better for my range than his, id assume his turn checking range is WAY too weak (something thats already true of most people’s river checking range), and be exploiting him with double barrels rest of the night (but of course you can counter this by just not donking out the turn on a card like this rest of the night. And also of course others might not think this deeply about it).
Also as far as preflop, ive found that people very very rarely slowplay with a flat to try and back 4 bet, and also people squeeze wider than they 3 bet a single V, which is opposite of GTO, but makes sense with the previous point.
My 2 cents on the turn lead is that its fine for THIS HAND, because you can do it with all sorta of stuff (flush draw, turned pair + FD like JT, sets, straight, etc), so it puts V in a tough spot, but if i saw a V lead out on a turn card thats so much better for my range than his, id assume his turn checking range is WAY too weak (something thats already true of most people’s river checking range), and be exploiting him with double barrels rest of the night (but of course you can counter this by
the possibility of exploitation is less of a concern multiway esp when the guy in the middle is short (button cant really just barrel if the guy in the middle has like 1/3 of a psb) and its a random person at 1/3 lol. is probably unlikely you will even play another 3b pot oop vs this guy in the next 4 hours, let alone him observing what we did, understanding the implications it has on range, and him understanding the proper exploit. and you can still just call down at whatever frequency with bluff catchers if that's your concern
I think part of the reason I post on this forum is that I intuitively suspect I should be folding more pre-flop, and am just posting to see if the crowd confirms it.
If BTN had 3B to $60 or $75, as I would have done, I think I could have found a fold. Or maybe if I had more time to observe him, I might have still continued, if I saw he was capable of 3B'ing 88, especially for a smaller size.
Some of this must surely be ego. I saw the opponents as weak players, and decided I had a strong enough ha
don't think pot odds or skill advantage are enough to enter into spr 2-3 situations oop vs tight ranges. save that stuff for ip / when it's going to be hu. there's alot of spots where you can get away with playing too loose pre bc opponents are going to leak ev in other nodes or play too passively but the stuff like calling 3bs while sandwiched oop and cold calling 3bets are going to be really really hard to not lose money immediately / be in impossible situations later in the hand. the corollary of course is to do the same to opponents. his hand is like a 50/50 mix pre but would imagine most people just pure flat it but maybe its worth thinking about if squeezing is higher ev esp if opponents going to miss 4bs / play 3b pots too transparently
Check call otf is fine, check raise is loose but might get thru. If you check raise. go to 200 and put in the 250 on all non J turns.
As played bet more ott. Jam the river.
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I want to bet like $140 here but coming off a $225 effective stack into $600 every Q obviously calls and maybe KJ/AJ I think it’s an easy jam. I get wanting V to hang himself with a x/c OTR but that seems FPS with 0.4 SPR.
don't think pot odds or skill advantage are enough to enter into spr 2-3 situations oop vs tight ranges. save that stuff for ip / when it's going to be hu. there's alot of spots where you can get away with playing too loose pre bc opponents are going to leak ev in other nodes or play too passively but the stuff like calling 3bs while sandwiched oop and cold calling 3bets are going to be really really hard to not lose money immediately / be in impossible situations later in the hand. the corollar
Understood and agreed. Thank you. I keep coming back to seeing that being too loose pre is hurting my results.
Check call otf is fine, check raise is loose but might get thru. If you check raise. go to 200 and put in the 250 on all non J turns.
As played bet more ott. Jam the river.
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I want to bet like $140 here but coming off a $225 effective stack into $600 every Q obviously calls and maybe KJ/AJ I think it’s an easy jam. I get wanting V to hang himself with a x/c OTR but that seems FPS with 0.4 SPR.
Yeah, I wasn't exactly thinking about checking the river. It was more wondering if checking would be higher EV, if V ever finds a bluff or bets thin for value, whereas if I jam he folds all his busted draws, and maybe some of his over-pairs.
I was planning to jam any river card before the board paired, but then I had to stop and think about whether or not I could get called by worse, if I should ever check-fold, how often he just checks back, etc.
Ultimately, I decided that his range was weighted more towards AA/KK/AQ and maybe KQ than boats/quads, and I wasn't confident he'd bet all of the weaker value hands in that range after I donked turn, so I just jammed, sort of indifferent to a call, figuring I was probably ahead but occasionally behind.
I wouldn't have been shocked to see JJ. I was a little surprised to see 88.
Honestly after reviewing the hand once again the clear play is to open jam OTT. It's 400 into 300. All other plays are a mistake.
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"Fold pre" - If I thought main V was going to be playing an overly tight 3B range, even on the BTN, I could see folding
When we currently have T high (i.e. ahead of pretty much nothing), and if we're mostly calling to bink a hand postflop (extremely meh OOP at this stack depth, imo), then we'd actually prefer our opponent have a tight 3bet range so that he'll often have something (i.e. overpair / TPTK / etc.) to pay us off with. If he has a much wider range then much less chance he has anything to pay off with when we bink, better chance he dominates on some hands (such as with JT on TTx flop), and meanwhile he ~always wins when we both whiff (due to initiative + position).
"Raise flop" - I thought if I raised, the most likely outcome is our middle opponent would fold, and the BTN would jam with all his over-pairs, or fold all his AK and draws.
Getting him to fold AK on the flop (about ~half the combos in a tight 3bet range), or any of his draws in a wider range (most of which are currently ahead of T high) is a massive coup. Adding FE to our hand equity makes us a massive fave instead of just ~flippy. FWIW, I don't think we're outplaying anybody if we're just check/calling this flop.
GcluelessNLnoobG
the possibility of exploitation is less of a concern multiway esp when the guy in the middle is short (button cant really just barrel if the guy in the middle has like 1/3 of a psb) and its a random person at 1/3 lol. is probably unlikely you will even play another 3b pot oop vs this guy in the next 4 hours, let alone him observing what we did, understanding the implications it has on range, and him understanding the proper exploit. and you can still just call down at whatever frequency with blu
Agreed on 1/3 players, but i dont agree on the 3 bet pot part, i think this turn bet would be indicative of V donking too wide across the board, not just in 3bp. Can exploitatively donk the turn here is fine. Its still just…the exact type of move i constantly see from bad regs, and docvail is playing 2/5 as well, and this type of move can get you into more and more trouble as you move up.
As an aside, i do especially LIKE having a bag of tricks of stupid or nonsensical or weird ass moves to do exactly once per session. So i guess my point is, its fine to donk out the turn on a turn card that helps V more than you, but if you do, i wouldnt do it again for the rest of the session.
Fold pre. XR flop mostly call is ok. Turn lead is terrible. As played shove river.
