QQ at 1/3 vs a maniac's flop raise and turn barrel.
1/3, $100-$500 BI, 9 handed, Parx Philly on a Friday afternoon. No high hand promotion at this time, but the bad beat JP is over $200k. Rake is 10% up to $5 with a $2 promo drop.
Think I may have muffed this one. You tell me.
V is a special piece of work. Retired gentleman, perhaps early to mid 60's, who apparently nade a fortune with his own construction related business. He plays in a number of private games in NYC, plays 1/3, 2/5, and 10/10 NLHE, as well as 2/2 and I think 5/5 PLO.
I've played with him once before, about a year or so ago, but he made an impression. He's in almost every pot, and can show up with almost ATC. He plays like he literally has no care for money, and is just there to cause max pain for his opponents.
He'll open raise from EP or over-call from LP with garbage, and will pounce on any sign of weakness with big bets and raises. He's not afraid to run big bluffs, even multi-way, and will call down light.
To be honest, as bad as he may sound, I'm not sure he really is. I've seen him make some solid plays and disciplined folds. A friend of his and other regs tell me he's super high variance. He can run up a huge stack or torch multiple buy-ins in whatever game he's playing.
A few HH's from this session which I think may be relevant:
HH1 - hero just sat down with $500. This is only the third hand I've played, maybe only the eighth I've been dealt. I lost a small pot and won a slightly larger pot, so around $550 effective, and V with a huge stack covers. I'm in the BB.
UTG straddles for $6. V opens for $20 UTG1. Three callers (one semi-nit, one splashy rec-fish, and the semi-tight PLO lady who gave me fits the first time I played with her a few months ago). Hero sees JJ and raises to $175, choosing this large size because I can already tell how splashy this game is. UTG folds.
V looks at his cards, asks me if I'm going to chop the pot with the dealer if I win (apparently she's his favorite, and that was his plan), takes about 30 seconds to play with his chips, then calls. Others all fold.
FLOP ($413 after rake/drop). 9c8c5d.
Hero thinks and x, V quickly xb.
TURN ($413) Jh (bink!).
Hero jams. V beats me into the pot. I turn over my hand, V reveals 97o, drills a T on the river to make the straight, says "chop it up!" with the same level of excitement a fat kid gets when someone in the neighborhood hands out full size candy bars on Halloween, and gives dealer half the pot, while I reload for $300.
(Told you he likes causing pain.)
HH2 - after losing another big pot and doubling up a short stack due to a ridiculous suck-out on the very next hand (hero's QQ loses to opponent's 55 when he goes runner runner to make a flush after getting stacks in on the two-tone 742 flop in a 3BP), hero is down to $100.
$6 straddle. A few limps. Hero jams AQo on the BTN. V in BB looks at one card and calls. Others fold. Hero flips over his hand. V turns over an ace, claiming he still hasn't looked at his other card.
Flop is ace high, but the board is ugly, all low cards, straightening and flushing. V says "you win" and mucks, saying he still hasn't looked at his other card.
HH3 - UTG straddles $6. Loose splashy rec-fish opens UTG for $25 off of about $300. One or two calls. Action folds to hero in HJ, who's got around $225. Hero flats with 88. V calls on the BTN with a mountain of chips. Others fold.
FLOP ($100-$120 after drop). K84rb.
UTG1 c-bets $45. Folds to hero, flat call. V calls.
TURN ($245-ish) 2x (full rainbow). UTG1 barrels for $80. I jam for $155. V calls. UTG1 rejams for about $60 more.
RIVER is a brick. UTG1 has AKo. V has K8. Hero scoops main pot and is back up to $710, now stuck just under $100 on the session.
What struck me about this hand is that I've seen V play flopped 2P this way before, and call off in multi-way jam-rejam spots when most people would see they have to be behind. Like, other than 53, there are no draws on the turn, and as played, I probably never have worse than K8 here, absolutely no bluffs, probably only sets for value, and UTG1 didn't have enough behind for V to want to get the rest in.
HH 4 - hero opens 77 in HJ. V 3B huge from the BTN. Hero goes for a super-punty "eff this guy" 4B jam. V folded TT face up. Hero didn't show.
HH 5 - hero makes a stupid open with JsTc in MP. V calls from LP. Flop is king high, rainbow. Check-check. Hero picks up a gutter on the turn 9 that also adds a BD club draw, and makes a delayed c-bet for around half pot. V calls. River is a brick. Hero punts $225 into around $300, and V makes a fair catch with KJo.
OTTH...
So far, hero has only been caught bluffing once, and has otherwise had it every time he's put money in and gotten called, only losing big pots on ridiculous suck-outs.
Semi nit in EP opens to $10. Three calls. Hero in HJ (still around $700) 3B to $80 with QhQd. V still with a mountain of chips on BTN calls. Folds around.
FLOP ($200) Tc8c4d.
Usually I'd range check here, but I didn't want to give up the betting lead to V, who can show up and blast off with anything from air to a set, but seems to like checking back with thin value and draws.
Hero $60. V $150. Hero considers raising, but decides to just call.
In retrospect, I think I should just check or bet larger here. This c-bet size wouldn't seem to accomplish anything other than possibly inducing V to raise with some thin value or a bluff. Raising seemed like a massive over play, even against this V.
TURN ($500) As.
Hero briefly considers turning his hand into a bluff and jamming for $450-ish, but decides to check.
V bets $300, effectively putting hero in a jam or fold spot.
Hero?
I went deep into the tank on this one, because at this point, I had no idea what he's doing, and didn't want to punt after being stuck $700 in 20 minutes and then grinding my way back close to even. It's literally only an hour or two into the session and I'm reeling from the insane suck outs and massive swings playing with this guy.
Flop would just jam vs this guy.
We can get value from worse hands and our hand doesn't mind protection there given SPR is already low and the board is pretty wet. We'd rather just call with a hand like AA or TT or QQ with a club (still rather just jam)
As played donk jamming turn is a massive punt. Our hand is hoping to showdown as the winner or bluffcatch. You're never getting him to fold a better hand there.
Turn I'm really not sure tbh, heavily depends on your experience with him.
Feels close if you give him all the Axc, sets, 2p as value and ATo. That's about 25 combos I think. But then he has all the straight and flush draws and maybe some Tx one pair. With the pot odds I guess it's a call. He can be bluffing because the ace isn't a good card for you here, do he wants you to fold what had been an over pair
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Hero $60. V $150. Hero considers raising [the flop], but decides to just call...In retrospect, I think I should just check or bet larger here. This c-bet size wouldn't seem to accomplish anything other than possibly inducing V to raise with some thin value or a bluff. Raising seemed like a massive over play, even against this V.
I'm confused by your reasoning. We're at the flop with an overpair HU against a spewy LAG and an SPR of 3. We want him shoveling money into this flop, and if you're even thinking of folding this flop to 4-bet shove, I would take a guess that you're recent downswing is messing with your head.
The only way I'm not raising here is if I'm planning to simply call any bets on nearly any runout.
It's also important to remember that when we only call rather than raise OOP, we're allowing Villain to maintain his equity and to not to have to worry about how to split his range here among folding, calling and reraising.
doc - don’t take this the wrong way. You add value to this forum but almost all of your posts and replies are TL;DR
I find my self quickly scrolling through and saying “nah”. I think you’d get more input if you are more concise.
doc - don’t take this the wrong way. You add value to this forum but almost all of your posts and replies are TL;DR
I find my self quickly scrolling through and saying “nah”. I think you’d get more input if you are more concise.
Some battles aren't worth fighting, although in this thread, in lieu of giving multiple prior hands, Doc could simply have said "Villain is a thinking LAG who often plays garbage, seems to not care about money, and frequently puts people in difficult spots with his aggression."
Yeah I’m not trying to be a dick. I honestly would like to engage more in his threads but they are too verbose and not worth the effort. Just constructive criticism.
I bet bigger on flop. As played, gii on the flop. Now as played, it's a table read. He usually seems to have something, and an A is very much in his range, so from my computer I fold and kick myself for not gii on flop.
I assume he has no tells, so go with your gut.
FWIW, in HH2, I'll bet he looked at his other card. If not, he just wanted you to double up out of kindness. Seriously.
Flop would just jam vs this guy. We can get value from worse hands and our hand doesn't mind protection there given SPR is already low and the board is pretty wet. We'd rather just call with a hand like AA or TT or QQ with a club (still rather just jam)As played donk jamming turn is a massive punt. Our hand is hoping to showdown as the winner or bluffcatch. You're never gettin
You'd suggest jamming as my first action on the flop, or jamming over his raise? There's $200 in the pot, with over $600 behind. Jamming from up front seems extreme.
I thought about 3B-jamming over his raise, given how wide he might be here, but this is the first I'd seen him raise a flop c-bet from me, when he's IP, and it seemed like a way ahead / way behind sort of spot.
I suppose we could credibly rep TT/88 here, but if he has T8 or 44, he's snapping. Not sure he folds any of his draws on the flop, so I thought it would be better to just call and see the turn, allowing me to get away from my hand on another club or straight-completing card.
Donk jamming turn didn't seem crazy to me at the time, given the hand history, especially the first hand, where I jammed turn after making top set on a wet board. I wouldn't expect him to fold better, but given what I'd seen, I also didn't think he'd fold any of his draws (he didn't in that JJ hand), and might not fold any worse value, like Tx, on this wet board, where I could conceivably have some bluffs.
Feels close if you give him all the Axc, sets, 2p as value and ATo. That's about 25 combos I think. But then he has all the straight and flush draws and maybe some Tx one pair. With the pot odds I guess it's a call. He can be bluffing because the ace isn't a good card for you here, do he wants you to fold what had been an over pair
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I was weighting his value range heavily towards T8 and 44, possibly with some slivers of 88 that didn't 3B pre, and maybe TT that didn't want to 3B after getting 4B-jammed on in that earlier hand, but I figured he'd still 3B TT pre anyway. Occasionally maybe he shows up with T4 or 84.
For bluffs and worse value he could have all 16 combos of J9 and 97 for an OESD, 16 of 76 for a DGSD, every Tx combo from KT down to T6, maybe even T5, a good bit of 8x (I learned not long after sitting down that "8's are hot tonight" - V won a massive pot as soon as I sat down with 86o when he flopped a boat, and I tripled up with 88 in that earlier hand), 96 or 65 for a GSSD, every possible flush draw, and maybe even some 4x, like 64/54/43.
His value range has me crushed. But I think I'm doing okay versus his range as a whole, when we give him what seems like a hundred combos of bluffs and worse value.
It definitely felt like he might be smelling weakness with my small flop c-bet, and wanted me to fold JJ-KK.
...[the flop] seemed like a way ahead / way behind sort of spot.
...I thought it would be better to just call and see the turn, allowing me to get away from my hand on another club or straight-completing card.
Do you see the contradiction here?
Hero $60. V $150. Hero considers raising [the flop], but decides to just call...In retrospect, I think I should just check or bet larger here. This c-bet size wouldn't seem to accomplish anything other than possibly inducing V to raise with some thin value or a bluff. Raising seemed like a massive over play, even against this V.I'm confused by your reasoning. We're at the flop
I'm confused by the part in boldface. I bet $60 into $200 with $520-ish behind, he raised to $150. If I 3B, I think it would just be a jam. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I suppose maybe we could min-click it and fold to a 4B-shove, but the thought didn't cross my mind.
I have been on a pretty soul-crushing downswing the last few weeks, but I didn't feel like I was tilted from the insane suck-outs on the first two hands. I was playing fairly solid overall.
What probably was messing with my head is the history with this V, where I started thinking he can take this line with the nuts or air, whereas with most opponents, it's just always the nuts once I call his flop raise.
The ace on the turn made me regret my decision to flat the flop rather than deciding then and there if I was just going with my hand. If I thought about it in those terms, I would have just 3B-jammed flop.
doc - don't take this the wrong way. You add value to this forum but almost all of your posts and replies are TL;DR
I find my self quickly scrolling through and saying "nah". I think you'd get more input if you are more concise.
Understood.
In my defense, a lot of threads have an OP that describes V in some way, without any history, prompting others to ask why OP describes V as such. And I thought the hand histories were relevant.
doc - don't take this the wrong way. You add value to this forum but almost all of your posts and replies are TL;DRI find my self quickly scrolling through and saying "nah". I think you'd get more input if you are more concise.
Understood.In my defense, a lot of threads have an OP that describes V in some way, without any history, prompting others to ask why OP describes V as su
Agreed. Happy medium I’m sure.
I bet bigger on flop. As played, gii on the flop. Now as played, it's a table read. He usually seems to have something, and an A is very much in his range, so from my computer I fold and kick myself for not gii on flop.I assume he has no tells, so go with your gut.FWIW, in HH2, I'll bet he looked at his other card. If not, he just wanted you to double up out of kindness. Seriou
I definitely regretted not GII on the flop. His range is super-wide, so yeah, there's some A in it, but also a lot of bluffs and worse value.
I didn't put it in my OP, but as I was tanking, I started talking, basically saying he could show up with almost anything - T8, 84, etc. He jumped on that, enthusiastically agreeing, saying he could have T4, 44, whatever. Then he says "I'm not screwing around", "I'm okay with a fold...or a call...", and some other stuff. Eventually I just asked him to shut up and let me think, but he kept talking.
Unfortunately nothing he said indicated anything one way or the other. The only "tell" I could take from his talk was that he seemed pretty comfortable, likely an indication of strength from most opponents. But with this guy, who is capable of taking this line with air, and not worrying about doubling me up if I jam, I wasn't sure it was reliable.
Funny you mention that about H2. That was exactly my thought, that he probably did look at his other card, but also maybe he felt a little bad about stacking me with that JJ hand, and since I took it well, maybe he didn't mind gifting me $100 back of my own money.
I'm not folding against this guy - you bet relatively small OTF, a great turn card in his mind comes to bluff, plenty of draws out there. If he has it he has it - he's too splashy to consider folding.
I have been on a pretty soul-crushing downswing the last few weeks, but I didn't feel like I was tilted from the insane suck-outs on the first two hands. I was playing fairly solid overall. What probably was messing with my head is the history with this V, where I started thinking he can take this line with the nuts or air, whereas with most opponents, it's just always the nuts
Exactly. And I know you know that sitting in a deep-stacked game with this type of player is going to be +EV for you but very high variance. Trying to play it safe will often cause one to leak away chips against these types of players.
I honestly don't.
Do you disagree that the flop is a WAWB spot? If so, maybe I've been playing them wrong, but my general approach is to play defensively in spots where a raise only gets called when we're way behind and folds out everything else when we're way ahead.
Or is your point that this V isn't folding no matter what, so we should just get it in and let the poker gods sort it out? If that's the point, yeah, I can see the reasoning, and it's why I think this hand was muffed on the flop.
I think we agree that something was messing with my head here, leading me to make a poor decision by not GII.
The question is - what do I do on the turn, after I muff the flop?
ETA - is it too late to GII when the ace comes, and now we should fold, or should we still just GII?
You see i play online but i always dreamed of playing live but i dont have a big enough bankroll and other reasons too but reading these posts is so great because it really makes me feel as though im in the action chopping it up with these crazy characters…Honestly docvail is one of my fav posters in this forum
doc - don’t take this the wrong way. You add value to this forum but almost all of your posts and replies are TL;DR
I find my self quickly scrolling through and saying “nah”. I think you’d get more input if you are more concise.
Maybe you need to try actually reading the whole post and you might find it as enlightening as i
How can it be WA/WB if you're considering folding the turn if either draw comes in? That's the opposite of WA/WB 😀
Pride?
Honestly docvail is my fav poster in this forum
doc - don’t take this the wrong way. You add value to this forum but almost all of your posts and replies are TL;DR
I find my self quickly scrolling through and saying “nah”. I think you’d get more input if you are more concise.
Maybe you need to try actually reading the whole post and you might find it as enlightening as i
Maybe I’m just lazy
How can it be WA/WB if you're considering folding the turn if either draw comes in That's the opposite of WA/WB 😀
Maybe you can help me find the flaw in my logic. Please understand I'm not dumb, but occasionally dense, and could use some explanation.
In game, when he raised flop, I wasn't exactly thinking about what I would do on this or that turn card. My main thoughts were that he could have 2P+, some worse value we beat, and a $hlt-ton of draws as semi-bluffs - every conceivable OESD, DGSD, ISSD, and flush draw. It's not impossible he could be turning bottom pair into a bluff here.
So, ON THE FLOP, we're way behind 2P+, and way ahead of everything else (unless your point is that we're not way ahead of all his draws, which is fair). But if the turn comes another club or a card that completes a straight, I might check-fold to a big bet.
In that scenario, we're not only losing to his flopped 2P+, we're also losing to his semi-bluffs that got there, and it becomes a much easier fold, because we're mostly just WB, only occasionally WA.
On the turn A, we're still WA/WB, but we did pick up some extra outs to make a better hand if he's got 2P.
I guess we're using the terms differently, because to me WA/WB suggests a flop that's so dry and static that few-to-no turn cards will be nut-changing, and we feel confident that neither of us is likely to improve without hitting a 2-4 outer.
