What do you think of this player/hand?
1/3 NLHE 8 handed
I'm not in this hand but it was played by a guy that comes by my room sometimes, let's make him the "hero". I used to think he was quite a good LAG but now I don't know if I've gotten better or he's gotten worse. What would your exploits be against this player (assuming this hand is representative)?.
H - young fat asian guy who is very arrogant and talks a lot of strat at the table. 600$. MP.
V1 - asian woman that is very straightforward and plays face-up for huge sizings. So with AA pre for instance she'll just ram her stack regardless of sizes, you could open 10$ and she'd ram 300$ or maybe make it 100$ to go and then ram all flops. She can read a flop so if she has KK and flop comes A-7-2 she's checking and check-calling. She has no creativity and tries to simplify her decisions. 500$. CO.
V2 - loose passive losing player, fairly standard, trying to learn the game. 325$ BTN.
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V2 straddles BTN, folds to Hero who sees A♦ A♥ (I'm proud to say I was only half watching this hand play out and I ranged him on exactly this hand), H makes it 15, V1 raises to 25 (there's a discussion as to whether this constitutes a raise after which people realize it's a legal raise), V2 calls 25, Hero calls 25. 3-ways OOP.
Aside: I have no idea what this "hero" thinks of these two Vs, these are my reads on Vs, here imo the woman has a hand like KQs or AKo, maybe AQs something premium but not something she wants to commit to.
Flop 75 - J♦ 6♦ 2♥
Check, check, check
Turn 75 - 8♦
H bets 35, V1 folds, V2 raises to 75 leaving 225 back, H calls
River 225 (225 back) - T♣
Hero checks, V2 bets 100, Hero calls...
7 Replies
I think the pre-flop call is horrendous. The click-raise from V1 and cold-call from V2 are disrespectful plays that can and should be punished by a wide variety of 4bettable hands, including bluffs and thin value. Calling to "trap" when multiway and OOP is just terrible. Anytime you are in this spot where you can and should have a lot of bluffs, you have to play your value aggressively.
The post-flop play is whatever. Guessing he lost to JJ or 88, maybe JTs that was going for a "stop-raise" on turn and then binked two pair. Check-raise bluffing river would be interesting if the players were deeper, but is definitely bad here. Shoving turn over the clickback is probably OK, too.
Pre-flop is terrible -- definitely need to raise the $25. Flop is 100% a bet -- can't imagine what he's thinking. The rest is whatever -- nothing else you can do.
"H" is definitely not a LAG.
H can still be a LAG—just a bad one.
In my experience, the thing with LAGs, especially bad ones, is that they know to value aggression, but very often they have the wrong answer to the question “what is the purpose of aggression?” Any bad LAG is likely to tell you that the purpose of aggression is to get opponents to fold their hand so you can win without a showdown. They do not really get the flip side of this, which is that aggression will induce calling mistakes from some players as much as folding mistakes from other ones.
I think this explains how a LAG just calls with AA here. This lady has raised an amount that suggests she isn’t really that strong. So our Hero probably thinks, “raising will make her fold, which I don’t want when I have AA. So I’ll try to trap now that I have a hand.”
I still think the call is atrocious, but if we can pin down the mentality we can find ways to exploit this down the line.
For example, if we are in position against this LAG, we should be bet/folding against him way less than against a typical LLSNL player. Whether that means not betting, or betting and then not folding, is probably best decided on a hand-by-hand basis, but this hand shows me that I should expect this guy to slowplay his monsters so much that his check/raise range is weaker than it should be.
Another less obvious way to exploit this guy is to troll his strategy talk. I want to shut him up or annoy him so he a) doesn’t tap the tank, and b) gets off his game because he’s thinking twice about how he usually acts.
(P.S. People who talk strat at the table are never good. That should have been a dead giveaway that you were overrating him before.)
Ha, I just posted a lol HH in the Chat Thread illustrating the new trend I've seen so far this year... overflatting monsters preflop.
I would limp in.
Assuming V1 meant to 3bet plus the dead fish money I would always 4bet here. But I've seen enough people loose their **** here against this overflatting play (including me who walked into this play last night) that I'm legit trying to figure out if this is actually not horrendous. My guess is that it is bad... but like most plays, they have their downsides but they also have their upsides.
My guess is that Hero is attempting to get V1 to overvalue spazz, so checking the flop seems to be continuing this line of thinking.
I'm fine with the turn bet now that the flop checks thru. And I also just call the minraise and attempt to bink.
Against a passive player the river is probably a check/fold even for this price.
Based just on this hand, exploit-wise I'd say (a) always be aware than an unexpected overpair is in the range (this actually applies to everyone, especially nowadays as per the trend I'm seeing) and (b) be aware that we're often being tarped (so careful of too thin value bets on later streets).
GcluelesstrendingnoobG
The beauty of being a good LAG is that when someone plays back at you, you can take advantage when you actually do have a good hand because they don't expect it. Not by being passive, but by being your normal aggressive self. I'm assuming this guy just isn't a LAG -- at least not anymore and definitely not a good one.
As to exploiting him, this hand doesn't give us enough info. He played AA passively... . However, I do love guys who talk strat -- I get them going. Agree with them a lot and half the time you can get them to show. They will also start giving info away.
