PAHWM - AA facing flop x/r from ABC tag-fish

Also, IRT your take on the strat, I agree that it is a significant deviation from solver strat to fold here. However, live ABC tag-fish are among the most exploitable players you will ever face. If you are not at least considering big deviations to max exploit, you are leaving money on the table.

In this situation, I would never consider a flop fold online, or readless live. With the read we were given, though, if we trust the read, AK is the very bottom of his flop range, and it's only a few of the combos, as most often he won't want to lose his customer on such a dry board. Admittedly, sets are discounted for the same reason. He likely has all of the combos of 2p that made it to the flop though, probably about 3/4 of k9s, half of k7s, and a combo or two of 97s. We are not doing well at all against his range, if he is really an ABC tag-fish.

Now, as I said above, given that our read might be off, I don't hate the flop call. But if we're very confident in our read, I believe a fold to be the correct exploit against this player type on this bone dry board. Whatever he has, he *really* want to set up a big pot.

AP, once the board pairs, I'm fine with the rest of it. He lost a crap-ton of the combos that were beating us, and we improved over another set of them. Sure, the combos that are still beating us are now much stronger, but we're not really looking for drawing equity at this point.

In defense of posting this hand as a PAHWM vs just putting the whole hand history in the OP - I think once the 9 rolls off on the turn, it sways people away from saying the flop is a b/f, so I thought it would keep people's responses from being biased if they didn't see the turn before commenting on the flop.

There's an argument to be made that the flop could be b/f if we're 100% certain V is a super face-up uber-nit who's never x/r'ing the flop with anything but a set. I didn't think I had anywhere near enough observation to b/f the flop here. That's just too big a deviation, IMO.

Even if V is an uber-nit, a middle ground approach might be to call flop, and then consider folding turn or river if he continues to barrel off, especially with geometric sizing. Even if V has 2P+ for a flop x/r range, our over-pair still has some equity, probably / usually enough to call and see what V does on the turn. Occasionally someone does this with air, and is one-and-done.

Speaking for myself, I did learn something here. I've sometimes opted to flat call in the blinds with AK facing a raise from an aggro V in LP, with plans to fast-play if I flop TPTK. But this hand has forced me to re-think that approach. If V had 3B pre here, or just check-called post, maybe he doesn't go broke by the river.

I also think it's a good exercise to consider how we'd play the other strong hands we could have here. Do we 3B the flop with any of our sets or 2P? Maybe only 99.

I absolutely think V could have 99 or 77 here. I went with my read, fully knowing I could have been torching $200 unnecessarily.

Allow me to apologize if the read I gave in my OP seems like an attempt to mislead anyone here. That wasn't my intent. Perhaps my wording wasn't perfectly accurate.

I only had a few orbits to observe his play, and only one memorable hand, the one I described. My read was developed quickly, with limited info, and back-filled with experience against similar types within the population.

Based on his age, his likely point of origin, his buy-in size, his VPIP rate, his mannerisms, and the one memorable hand I saw him play, I mentally labeled him as a slightly bad but trying TAG, someone who is probably slightly less than break-even in today's game, because they're still playing it like it's the early 2000's.

When I say someone is ABC, I mean they tend to play very straightforward, under-bluffing, and often enough they'll slow-play to trap. When I say someone is a TAG-fish, I mean they try to play tight pre, and will bet or raise with their strong hands, but they struggle to hand-read as a hand develops, and will often paint themselves into a corner, as V did here.

If those descriptions don't align with how most people use the terms ABC or TAG-fish, then clearly I've been using those terms incorrectly, and I'll happily accept guidance on how they should be used here.

Good call, IMO. I likely wouldn't have been able to put that foreknowledge out of my mind and made the same argument.

Actually, though, it wasn't the amount of nittyness that made me advocate a b/f, it was the ABC part. This is not a board that a live ABC tag-fish check/raises almost ever, not because of how nitty he is, but because of his lack of creativity makes it seem like he can't rep anything, can't have any combo draws, etc. Therefore, he really only does it when he's afraid of getting counterfeitted, and/or is willing to take the risk of getting only one bet in service of his goal of getting stacks in.

Probably could. Few live low-stakes Vs have a raise/fold range. But board is so dry that we can easily call, and wait for his turn bet that should be committing before we raise.

Yeah, maybe I was too descriptive, if the ABC part threw you and others off. I was sincerely trying to give everyone a good summary of how I saw V when the hand started. And in my mind, "ABC" just means he tends to play somewhat face-up.

Which of course leads to debating what face-up means. I'd argue we can include playing AK this way, when or if we think V is the type to prefer flatting with AK out of the blinds, and then blasting off with TPTK.

I don't think that line is creative, and just typing that makes me feel embarrassed, because I've taken the exact same line.

We're in danger of getting lost down the rabbit hole, but I think if V sees me as being overly aggro and possibly creative myself, then his fear is not just being counterfeited, but also letting me get there with all the trash hands in my range that flop OESD's or can make weird 2P, or leveraging a "scary" board to make him fold his pretty AK.

I don't like admitting it here, because I expect to get flamed, but I'm prone to raising from LP and c-betting IP with a lot of combos that can connect with this flop in ways a lot of recs wouldn't expect. I'm going to have T8s and 86s here sometimes, and obviously 97s, to go along with all the combos of KQ, KJ, KT, QJ, QT, Q9, JTs, J9s, etc.

Maybe we'd argue V isn't likely to give me T8 or 86, but I think the counter-argument is a lot of bad recs are just terrified of seeing any draw-completing card and not being sure what they should do now.

And maybe this is too much to extrapolate from the one showdown I saw, but when I see he just flats in the BB with AJ, in a multi-way pot, I think he's not only got a VERY tight 3B'ing range, but I also think that aligns with having a fairly tight flatting range.

Like, if he's flatting in the BB with AJ, he doesn't need to get involved with K9, K7, or 97, because those are "trash hands" to a guy who can't find the 3B button with AJ facing a raise from an aggro player in LP. That's why I wasn't worried about him having 2P.

Once the 9 rolls off on the turn, if he has a boat or quads, good for him. I'm not getting away from AA at that point, and it's just a matter of how the rest of the money goes in.

Anyway, thanks for playing, everyone. Hopefully some folks found this educational, or entertaining.

I mean, obviously he can, because he did. That said, I expcet most people with TAG anywhere in their description to usually 3-bet AK pre OOP against an aggressive V, so that reduces the AK combos a ton in my mind.

Still, I've noticed a bunch of hands showing up in threads that I either didn't have in Vs range (usually airballs) or that I had very discounted. So I might be guilty of some mirror-imaging myself.

I can say this hand post definitely helped me think about bet sizing tells, to the point I got more money in on one hand I might have called down sheepishly, and kicked myself for calling down on an overbet/bet line against the 2nd nuts. (It was duh obvious and I felt it) Bet size tells are gold if you can pin them down and act accordingly.

Agreed. There was nothing in Doc's OP to suggest that Villain, who was a relative unknown, was such a nit that he'd never c/r this flop without 2p+.

SPR's high enough that I think a flop x-r is pretty much mandatory if V wants to play for stacks. If V just calls Doc's b50 cbet, turn has a pot of ~80, with either 360 or 460 back. That's going to require overpot bets on at least one street.

As it is, V went b60, and should've gone b75-ish for river. Flipping those would've been wiser for V, if V wanted to play for stacks, but the bets would've had to have been much larger w/o the flop check-raise.

At equilibrium, isn't V 3! pf with a lot of the Kings that H is hoping V is x-raising with? Which goes back to Dan's observation and questions: What's the Venn diagram of rec's who call instead of raise almost everything from the BB, and the rec's who will x-raise a bare King on K97r? It obviously exists---this is a thread---but it's not a large intersection, IME. Nor Garick's, Venice's, or GG's.

Leaving aside the theory point that, at 6.6X opens, does BB have any pure calls versus 3!s? Besides PPs of course.

Your approach means you can be a low stakes game short stacked for low variance / high Sharpe ratio, although probably not maximised hourly return. You cannot win deep stacked or in tougher games and you will never learn how to get better. There's a reason the top players don't play your strategy! Your advice is basically terrible for anyone actually wants to improve beyond beating the lowest stakes for the smallest buyin.

Like submersible said if you fold the flop it's ridiculous. Then the rn out is good for a check call line. You have e other hands you can fold at each street to get your msd right.

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I don't know if it changes anything, but there was a limper before my open. I'm not positive, but I think it may have been the same guy on my right from the previous hand, who was kind of sticky-paasive-trappy pre and post. Ordinarily I'd just RFI to $15, but went to $20 over the limp, in a game that was somewhat splashy.

As for the Venn overlap, no way to measure it, but I think it makes logical sense that if someone is flatting AK from the blinds that they're doing it with the intention of winning a big pot when they make TPTK post. Whether that means slow-playing or fast-playing would seem heavily dependent on stack sizes and the actions. I think looking at the SPR on the flop provides a good rationale for V deciding to fast play with a x/r-bet-bet line.

While it's true that if Villain wants to play for stacks (I'm assuming for value and not as a bluff) by the river then a check/raise of the flop is probably necessary... should Villain want to play for stacks? What worse hands call a check raise + barrels for stacks?

GVillain'slineishorribleagainstmost,imoG

Sub didn't just say that. He took it a step further and said you have "literally have no chance at winning at poker" if you bet/fold in this case.

I win at poker. I'm pretty sure V wins at poker. I'm pretty sure G wins at poker. And yet we all thought that bet/folding the flop wasn't completely unreasonable (although admittedly we're all old skoolers where bet/folding in general is a bread and butter play, although you can certainly argue it's merit in this particular case, noting even further how I qualified my flop response).

GcluelessillogicalnoobG

Neither agreement nor argument here...

If V wants to play for stacks, he's basically banking on hero A) not having a better hand, and B) stationing with worse KX, or C) being horrible enough to not fold some lower PP.

However, we're looking at this from the perspective of thinking players trying to apply logic. A lot of low stakes recs aren't thinking ahead from pre-flop through the river, and are just playing street-by-street. It's possible he just wanted to get more money into the pot with TPTK on the flop, and wasn't thinking about how he'd play the rest of the hand if I actually call.

That's why I said it seemed like he painted himself into a corner here, where he loved his hand on the flop, but wasn't as enamored with it by the river, when it starts to become clear I may have AK beat.

That's also why I said this hand made me re-think flatting from the blinds with AK, planning to blast off when I flop TPTK. It's just a bad line, because we're rarely ahead if we get called down the whole way, and especially if stacks go in, unless V is going to station with worse KX or not fold some worse PP.

If we were all only interested in being ruthlessly objective, we'd require everyone to post their charts before posting their advice, and we'd only pay attention the biggest crusher.

I think we'd all lose something in that scenario. Maybe the biggest crusher still has a leak, and we could identify it through robust discussion. That sort of discussion requires us to disregard people's actual results, in favor of applying logic to the situation at hand.

I believe b/f on the flop is objectively problematic against the population and / or without more observation of V. To the extent my description led you or anyone else to think the flop is a standard b/f, that's entirely on me, not on you or them.

But I would at least hope you and they can acknowledge that we probably didn't have enough info to make that big a deviation here. I'd think a better defense of b/f would be to say it's your default approach with a non-nutted hand, against the low-stakes population, even on this fairly dry and static board, until you have enough info to venture a call.

I'd argue that approach seems overly nitty, but obviously it limits our losses, which would seem to align with what I perceive to be your overall strat of playing defensively with non-nutted hands.

As for Sub, harvesting the value from his posts requires us to sift through some snark. It is what it is, and he's certainly not the only one here who goes light on courtesy and heavy on 'tude.

Unfortunately the internet doesn't have the real world's potentially severe consequences for being discourteous.

I actually disagree with this conclusion. Everyone has their own strengths, weaknesses, tolerance thresholds, etc. and should follow a path that works decently enough *for them* and their skillz set. It won't be the same path for everyone.

If someone came on here tomorrow and posted irrefutable proof of the best way to beat full ring NL (and the accompanying crushing giraffe), it wouldn't really change much since the solution would undoubtedly be so complicated that it's doubtful whether any of us mere plebs could implement it. We'd still have to find our own way using the lol percentages of our stoopid brainspower that we're currently using. And that's ok.

Ggoodlucktoallofus,imoG

i genuinely dont think i had attitude in this thread. i posted what i would do at every decision point, explained why i would usually flat the river but this time is different, and attempted to explain why making 5+ bb deviations (i actually underestimated this, i looked at the hand as a ~75bb hand bc spr was similarish and the actual ev of b/c the flop will be higher than 5) based on 40 hands is a really big and likely unovercomable mistake both in process and practice. then i apparently struck a nerve with several people as a result of that and the rest is history. for everyones sake im not going to respond to the last 20% of the thread.

perhaps my debriefing was a bit much :( but i think it was an accurate summation of the thread

i still believe i should be allowed to comment on peoples claims but is not really that big of a deal

Yeah, let's just let it go. Critiques given and received. No need to beat the dead horse. I've edited out part of GG's last post.

But even this seems odd, since anyone who is a "winning short-stack player" is either leaving once he doubles up or is spending a significant amount of time playing with at least a normal size stack after having won money over the first few hours.

Consequently, it's hard to imagine how someone can be a winning player who only feels comfortable playing short-stack unless this person leaves as soon as they start approaching 100 BBs. Or maybe people who are only comfortable playing short-stacked simply go into lockdown nit mode with their winnings until the boredom leads them to go home.

I think he said before he will leave if he wins a lot.

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Agreed, with V's actual hand. I don't want to play for 160-190 bigs with just AK as it is. I do want to see 5, if possible, but I don't want to risk stacks with it by itself.

So, since V did call, then check-raise, and bet biggish on turn, looks like they're playing for stacks. Or they should be, had they just shoved river. I continue putting myself in their shoes---I should stop that---and not knowing V's actual hand, it looks better than top/top. Something like 77, OTOH, does want to go for it all when they hit.

I agree with you, that getting this many bets in with an unimproved OP by the river, isn't what we ideally set out to do. I'm glad it worked out and I'm sure Doc saw something we couldn't, that aided his perception that V's wider than just K9/99/77/97.

Only just saw this dumpster fire that's apparently been raging for a bit, and without trying to re-feed the flames...

If we take GTOwiz CO vs. BB 100bb deep: CO opens and BB pure 3bets AK.

Yeh, after a K97r flop and... BB check, CO bets 50%, BB raise 100%, CO roughly pure calls AA/AK/KJs/KTs/K8s.

But the BB here is raising:
JTs close to pure (maybe I'm that good, some days)
T8s/86s over 50% of the time (sure)
QJo/QTo/JTo/J8s/J7s/T7s/98s/96s/76s/75s/74s about 15-25% of the time

...and, again, GTO V never has the hand V had.