SC OOP vs LAG crusher

I would just fold pre, not because I'm afraid of someone but I would fold because it's a high variance spot and we're OOP with a med SC against the best player in the room who has a positional advantage over us atm (and probably a skill advantage). If he doesn't 3bet us off the hand pre, we're still gonna be OOP with 9 high going to the turn if he calls a cbet (and look at the flop we got in the hand, we can't really ask for a better flop besides 998 but we're still on a draw and in a bad spot).

Hey am i reading this hand incorrectly? why is everyone suggesting hero folds 98hh pre from the LJ with 2 loose passive's in the blinds and only one potential agro opponent who clearly isnt a maniac but simply represents potential trouble? SPR isnt great with a straddled pot as its not less than 100BB effective so we DONT have a lot of room but our implied odds vs this trio should estimate higher than usual.

i have played more than 10k live hours if that's what you're asking lol

i think the open is w/e, i don't think it's great but i don't think its worth some crazy once off sarcastic comment where someone thinks they're dunking on OP because he opened the hand. what i think is concerning is how all of you think the button is this omniscient super hero who is going to destroy you in every hand. if you start looking at what different %s of hands look like, you're going to realize he's handcuffed and just can't really do much 50+% of the time. if he 3bs too much, you can 4b. if he calls too much you can bet relentlessly postflop. even if he calls the "correct" amount which we have no idea what it would look like, he's going to be at a large equity and polarity disadvantage on a bunch of boards and there just isn't anything that a receipt from a wsop event can really do about that.

the op descriptions are some what irritating in the sense any time banana plays vs someone decent they are one of the best players in the room, hs poker player, play the wsop! (i still have no idea what this means), overall crusher, nuclear physicist, presidential candidate, walking super computer, etc and yet he has a significant sample at 1/3 with them. im sure these guys are decent, but like come on. also none of you play vs good people, yet all of you know exactly how they're going to play (and how they're going to play in an environment thats insignificant to them), and despite them making what sound like large and exploitable deviations, you still are unable to do anything except play super tight / straight forward / nitty / terrified. it's just such a weird parlay to me.

According to his read he's a LAG who 3bets alot and we just made what should be a wide open from the LJ, giving him a perfect 3betting opportunity and I don't wanna jam over it with 9 high (I'd rather have AJ since I block Ax and I can flop turn or river an ace if he calls a 5bet/jam pre).

the description sounds like a standard tag. you guys are inventing things to justify avoiding him

Pre is fine if you have a postflop edge you have some fold equity and SB and BB are not too nitty.

Cbet this flop. We can range bet flop. It smashes your range and you have a strong draw, but 9 high. You said v 3bets a ton so the only set he is going to have should be 66. He probably 3bets a ton of KQo, and many of the suited kings.

As played I guess we can check raise flop and jam blank turns. If we bink turn we might get tricky with our value but we don't need to worry about how we play when we get there that much.

I'm not disagreeing with you. Someone who feels outclassed by the player on the BTN should probably fold there.

ok this is wrong looking at the thread title lol

Why is the best player in the room playing the smallest game in the room?

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good post. i would agree that banana’s reads are generally not that helpful if not completely incongruent to the reveal later on, but at the same time it’s all we really have to go off of.

i don’t fux with the solvers but it just intuitively feels like a -EV spot. like some of the +EV (if it exists) must come from scooping $18 rake free preflop, but in the described game i’d expect that percentage to be very low, ~15% at best and worse with the sizing he used (I woulda gone $35-40 with BTN straddle and two loose EP limpers).

and if/when the limpers come along we’re going to a 4-way $120 flop with 9-hi and an SPR of 3.7x. absent flopping well, which is not a skill in and of itself, there’s really not much you can do postflop to steal the pot which is why i want high card equity because TPTK/TPGK is going to be the most likely winning hand at showdown.

if everyone is $700-1000 deep which is not uncommon in a game like this then it’s a completely different story and of course i’d be raising 98s, but it’s not and raw equity is going to be the most important factor in a pot that can easily get all-in on the flop, as we saw here in a HU pot. if I’m playing speculative hands i want deeper stacks to be able to threaten one pair hands over multiple streets.

you can say that’s nitty or scared to not chase every last tenth of a BB of theoretical solver-approved profit, but to me this is like the 98th most consequential hand you’ll see over an 8 hour / 250 hand session. there will be significantly more profitable opportunities in the near future presenting themselves. if this specific scenario is -EV for 99% of the current 1/3 player pool than the odds are it’s -EV for you (generally, not you) as well. and considering most players are losing players, this is effectively plugging a leak that will be more beneficial to most players than the crumb of EV that can be extracted with perfect play which nobody at 1/3 is capable of in the first place.

It's OK to say, "I'm not comfortable making that play," without resorting to the tired trope there'll be better opportunities down the road, which doesn't even make sense unless you're on limited bankroll.

Banana's threads really bringing everyone together.

@stupidbanana -

As far as what to do with 98s pre, I suppose you could look at solvers and charts, and try to memorize, but I'd expect that it starts to get impossible when you add in variables like a BTN straddle from a guy we *think* is a "LAG crusher" and two players in the blinds we have pegged as loose-passive.

I think most of us would prefer to have our basic heuristics that simplify these situations in some way. In this spot, we might think, "98s is playable from our position, we should raise, to hopefully fold out the players behind us, and gain position on the weaker players in the blinds."

Alternatively, we might also think, "flat call, with the intention of calling a single raise," or, "98s is a trouble hand, and we're likely to end up playing the hand OOP against the BTN defending his straddle, so just fold."

They're all logically defensible, depending on how we view this situation.

As for the flop, it's a somewhat similar situation. Some will say we should c-bet the K-high flop as the PFR. Others will say we should check from OOP, even as the PFR.

Personally, I default prefer to check range OOP as the PFR. I especially like it on this board, with our hand. It's unlikely V is going to bet worse than Kx for value when we check, so he's either betting Kx for value, betting some draw, or stabbing with air.

If V is good, he's less likely to just stab 3/4 pot with air, more likely to have some equity. If he has a K or a better flush draw, he's not folding to a check-raise, and there's no need to start shoveling the money in on the flop with 9 high.

If the turn is another heart, a seven, or a jack, I think we can donk-lead for 2/3 pot, to set up a little less than PSB jam on the river. Otherwise, we can check-evaluate.

Thanks everyone - I'll point out that 98s isn't typically in my opening range from LJ but I have a fairly nitty image at this table (as in I'm the only one not really drinking and auto-raising QJs), V is very aware of this - what my image is and what I think it is. For example, the blinds would limp call me here as wide as 74s. A single raised pot HU was very unusual.

Result:

Glad you won the hand.

I think it's a mistake to check-raise when V bets 3/4 pot. That sizing is indicative of a value hand, likely a strong one, possibly strong enough to 3B over your raise. Even if he's bluffing, he's likely to be bluffing with some better draws. He's extremely unlikely to be bluffing with worse draws.

Not to jump on the Banana's reads are terrible bandwagon, but I question how good this guy is, taking this line. I'm surprised he didn't 3B the flop, if he's a LAG crusher. He's basically at the top of his pre-flop calling range.

i just assumed he was playing 1/3 becasue he was either 1) waiting to be called for a higher game or 2) there weren't any higher games available. There's still good players in 1/3 if they don't have the br to move up so it pretty much needs to be taken with a grain of salt that he sat in a 10/20 game a few times (I'm not making any deviations to strategy unless I know how he plays, but that's just me).

It has nothing to do with comfort level. It’s simply a -EV spot for the reasons listed.

his line is preferred. banana's has multiple issues.

i mean tipping is -ev and probably costs a similar amount of ev. :(

mix but calls more often. can gii on any turn. stab size is good too

i think oop should probably cbet range given assumptions about pre here but if you check this hand i don't see it checkraising in comparable stack depths either lj vs btn (much tighter than in the actual hand) or bvb (ip vpip prob similar amount but oop has 45% of hands instead of 20). u usually dont really see this type of hand showing insane aggression bc u get rekt by higher draws putting it in

FWIW pre i don't mind any of the options. Esp. on a BTN straddle some players just limping EP can be very strong.
Even if not, it's probably fine to limp 98s here against Tom Dwan.

However a lot of the value of raise vs. limp pre. is so we can bet 40 here.
I think the plan to x/r is better than the plan to x/c ... but against his size I really don't like either option much.

But also AIUI our x/r hands here are supposed to be more like AhJh because then we actually beat other draws he's betting.

He has fine equity on any turn H hits (like this), he's in position and H's draws are crushed on brick turns but are in terrible spots and might shove, H can't spazz bluff bad draws if you shove, if you aren't calling this wtf are you calling that beats one pair? It's not like V has any KK.

Over limp will over perform raising or folding in this game.

If BTN isolates wide or is very aggro then folding is better. But you can also use this strategy against him and start having a limp reraising range.

Flop is pretty trivial just don’t fold. SPR is 7ish and you flopped a very strong hand so do whatever you want, the important part of the hand is preflop.

I am not folding this hand preflop with no raise in front. Might also limp.

With read he is aggressive and he could be defending the button straddle with all sorts of garbage, easy raise x/r and shove turn.

Lol LAG crusher at 1/3, as others said.

I definitely don't like hero's x/r.

Right or wrong, I'd be very tempted to 3B 66 here as V, on such a wet board, if only because so few low stakes players are going to x/r-fold as the PFR. I figure we're never getting away from our hand, and want to get max value from our opponents' draws and worse value that might shut down on the turn.

It's hard for me to imagine a scenario in which the PFR check-raises the flop with a low equity draw, gets called, and then spazz bluffs the turn on a brick. I just want to get as much money as possible into the pot on the flop.

I think if we flat call an x/r as V, we're going to mostly have 1P + a draw, like ThXh, an OESD with QJ, and maybe 2P. But I'm not worried about what our flatting range looks like on this board, when we 3B jam over a PFR's check-raise, because it's such a rare scenario that we'd get x/r'd by the PFR and want to continue as a call.

all the hands hero x/rs with that dont fold the flop. what do you think they do ott?