Not Quite Threadworthy--Low Stress Strat Questions

if i checked turn then i think i can get away from calling a $300 river bet for a pot of almost 1k

but i don't think i'm ever folding to a $300 river bet to a pot of $1600 - there's just way too much random spazz factor involved where AQ can suddenly think they need to bet for value

I dunno, he's described as a solid/tight player and he seemed to have a decent handle on where he was at the finish line. What worse hand is he expecting to call if he somehow spazz bets (and somehow shows up with) AQ? But yeah, I guess pot odds would make it attractive for you.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Less texts than my usual posts 😉

Wed. late-ish afternoon at Mohegan with a $600 high hand promo. running:

V1: Never seen before, newish to the table (at least 30m, maybe over an hour). Limping basically everything (don't think I'd seen him raise before this hand), calling a bunch, mostly seems to be playing fit or fold post (so little showdown). bought in for $400 and has won with a random limp and hit a set or 2pair to be basically even.
I'd def. raised his limp at least once and then won post without showdown.

H: Std. raise or fold pre. ... probably annoying everyone else at the table, been mostly losing and recovering. Covers by a bit, but might still be down $50.

1-2

folds to...
V1in HJ who makes it $10
H in CO makes it $35 with A♣K♣

...I kind of raised automatically, and as soon as I raised I started thinking "Wait, have I even seen this guy raise once yet." and then, "whatever it's AKs, and be extra careful as I doubt he's folding a pair easily":

SB folds
BB folds
V1 snap shoves $400

Against someone who has literally never raised a hand yet (yeah, yeah, small sample size, whatever) I'm not 3betting, especially next to act with no significant dead money in the pot. AKs also plays a lot more awesomer than AKo multiway, so perfectly fine if that happens too.

Trivial fold for me to the jam versus this guy. Blockers don't matter here. IMO.

GcluelessfaceupABCnoobG

easy fold

pre is standard 30 minutes is not enough time to not 3b this hand pre unless youve seen him limp stuff like QQ. if youre that worried about his range just like make it 2.5x instead of 3.5, so you still get initiative.

I snap fold here, except I don't because I spend a few seconds sulking about it first, because my hand is so pretty.

3bet pre is reasonable with less than 1 hour. I've watched a guy not raise for an hour +, then iso a limper with KQo. Reasons to 3bet:

1. We're still probably EV+ when we consider his range, playing in position and versing a face-up player.

2. We often get heads-up and/or collect the blinds.

3. Very passive types usually will try to GII when they have the nuts so we're likely to see this exact type of behaviour when he is actually ahead. Further increasing our EV when he flats.

I would want more info to not raise in this situation.

EDIT

I agree with the above poster to reduce 3bet sizing in this situation. I would probably go 3x.

You played the hand great rat.

Sometimes in poker, you need to pat yourself in the back while losing.

Me, I started in the mud

I explored a lot

I can tell you, if you was doing what hes doing, you'd be losing huuuge chunks of money, and winning this one particular hand

Also I find this play to be very honorific, hes basically saying, you are a better poker player than me, I have to get it in now and win at all costs. I know this because when you play good, some recrational players begins to respond like this. They just cut away everything it sucks but youll catch him later

I would also respond to this by playing tighter. Aint no way I will allow t him steal too many juicy 3bets, regardless of him having a better hand or not

U know, if you think about it for 2 seconds, you can now actually only play aces and be a winner

Theres a whole lot of 10$ opens, if you get shoved on that often, a near nut pedal approach begins to become Real ****ing Juicy

Im saying he shoves a lot cuz u got AKs, kind of reversing the grid and going meta. If you was raising random bullshit and he shoves you dont learn much about how he plays, but this yeah.

As for experience of what I see, he might have kings here. I think.... Im trying to think.... I think, I think its possible that i havent seen a single dude bluff exactly like this in my life, not saying it cant be a bluff but, its really really low

Bluff, chop or no bluff, what hes doing is not optimal, and since hes playing for stacks just go for the best hand at showdown, so back to playing tighter in response to his massive threats

Results:

"..but 200bb was just too much to assume it was that, so I folded and showed ... and he showed AKo.

...so wondered if anyone thought the bad player population read was enough to think more about calling."

We're a slight dog against exactly AKo + QQ + JJ so nothing he did here makes me excited to call off 200bb with AKs.

We need him to be doing this with AQ before it becomes a clear call.

4 ways with AKo I'm happy to give up unless I bink. I xb and hope the poker gods reward me with a Ten.

Preflop sizing is the first thing we should talk about ... there's $60 in the pot when it gets to you, also V1 and V2 are v. likely want to see a flop. $60 is over 10% of your stack, but $100 might well be less than 10% of others.

My default is 2x-2.5x pot IP ... if you are going to downsize due to not wanting to stack off or whatever, I'd go lower like 65 ... more likely you'll be 4 ways, but that's the "1-2 life" 😉.

On the flop I 1000% can't help myself from betting $100, or even $150 here, even on my very best "B game". Maybe if I see something, or suspect V3 is upto something ... but we are mostly just worried about someone having QQ/JJ and maybe QJs. Like imagine you are beamed into any V's seat after the flop and have KQ here ... how much do you hate any bet.
Yeh, if you check you get a free pull at an ~8% chance to hit the turn ... but if you bet $100 and get called that goes to ~16% chance to see if you hit, and you see how everyone reacts to the bet.

I think it's much worse if you are OOP, and I realize everyone does the "all check to the raiser" but you'd pretty much never not bet KK+ here for similar reasons.

Thinking about it even an extra 10m made me realize that it's very likely if _any_ of the players had QQ they are very likely to 4bet leveraging your stack size ... so you're looking at 3 combos. of JJ and 2 of QJs that want to raise your 100 bet. But lots of stuff like JTs or 99 starts betting the turn, if you check.

Also you have like 40% against 99.

Yeah after the hand I wondered if I shouldn’t have jammed pre or gone smaller. To be honest I really did not expect to get called pre-flop very often here. Especially not by all 3 players! I was prepared to get it in pre in this spot if need be.

Any reason you didn’t include AQ in your post as a hand to be worried about? Feel like anyone can have that hand and it should never fold at this SPR. V1 and V2 can have the offsuit variety too, so there are a good amount of combos.

In game, my first thought was that this was a spot to jam or checkback. Feel like people are way more likely to fold KQ vs an All-in on the flop vs $100 on the flop and $350 on the turn but maybe that’s wrong. V1 feels like the most likely player to have a naked QX hand and he is in a grim spot with two players behind him.

After the hand, the idea of betting $100 on flop seemed a lot more appealing. There is a lot of stuff like 99 as you mentioned that I can fold out on the flop and it is so much harder to win against those hands if I check. In game I thought I might be committed to call a jam if I bet $100, but in hindsight I don’t really think that’s true as my hand is in such bad shape against the range that xjams.

I'd probably c bet too although I'm not 100% sure that's correct. Go a little bigger preflop.

If you really want to avoid variance a shove pre is fine. Kinda turns your hand face up but it doesn't matter that much.

Nitreg almost certainly has a pocket pair or maybe the same hand since I know a lot of nit regs won't even 3 bet AK. So he likely didn't hit the flop and if a nit reg continues on the flop can easily give up. Nitreg should be folding AQ and KQ assuming accurate description. I mean those aren't even nitty folds.

Yeah main concern is AQ KQ or QJs, JJ 66.

I think it's better to keep the betting lead when people can have all sorts of garbage in live game. Can't rule out someone calling with 78 suited, any pocket pair. AT etc

AQ should fold pre but yeah I don't see anyone folding AQ and probably not KQ either post if they are going to call with those pre.

If they call flop c bet I'm probably checking back turn, probably checking river as well unless you have some sort of read they have a hand that can be bluffed off. (But I'd be worried AQ-KQ doesn't feel like they can bet river but will make a crying call almost everytime.)

For the "to be worried about" combos. of QJs/JJ ... those you should be worried to bet against because they might shove flop, or call flop and donk shove turns so we don't see two more cards.

V's are still allowed to call with a bunch of stuff we lose to, but I don't see them raising with any of them. But, yeh, I guess they could shrug and decide AQ is too big of a hand vs. the pot size and shove that.

Gotcha, that makes sense.

I think I agree that c-betting small here is best. I think I get 3 folds occasionally. Sometimes maybe I can double-barrel and get a Jack (or even a weak Queen in this player pool) to fold on the turn. My opponents, especially V3 as WPNDonk alluded to, are pocket pair heavy and PP's can't really hero on this board multi-way. V2 has a lot of garbage in range. V1 has the most QX and JX but he is in the worst position to defend against my bet. AK is the best hand occasionally and I might even get called by KTs or AJs with a backdoor. And I clear up a lot of equity by betting.

Two spots pre…10/25 5-handed loose fish limp utg tag pro otb iso $100 whale calls sb I AQo bb $1600 eff. $475. Limper folds. Pro jams whale folds.

5/10/25(straddle), tag pro raises bb $90 first in I have 44 in straddle $1,000 eff. He gets it in wider bvb in my experience when facing a short stacked opponent, snapping 22 versus a limp/jam in similar spot against me previously.

Pro's image of you? With almost 1/3 of your stack in already, IDK how much you can fold, but pro knows that and should thus be very strong unless he has a read on you that is tag-fishy.

Spot 2 I just fold in my games, but IDK the 5/10/25 dynamic.

I would say my image is tag as well.

You are pretty short here at 64bb, and 10bb is already in the pot then his open to 4x and you still almost make it 5x after a call ... so it's likely difficult to find perfect ranges, but I doubt AQo can be a fold in theory. If he's always got JJ+/AQ+ it's a small mistake.

Again, you are short and I wonder if this is a good game to be in ... most 2/5 games will be this deep and you'll have more than one or two actions.

If you are going to be in it I'd assume you need to memorize a bunch of charts for 3 blind small stack poker and big raises. Also variance isn't going to be fun.

If forced to guess I'd say this is a GTO call, but if so I'd assume it's doing that with a lot of better pairs too.

$1/3 $1k deep

UTG nit opens $15, fairly solid guy calls next in, i $60 MP with some JJ-AA hand, very loose guy calls CO, UTG calls UTG+1 calls

flop 663 rainbow. UTG check solid guys donks 1/2 pot, i call

turn Q he checks i check (i dont have QQ)

river 7 no flush. he bets 2/3 pot?

Is he somewhat creative? Would he possibly turn middle pairs into bluffs on the river? I'm calling with AA for sure and KK too. JJ can probably fold although it feels to me like he maybe has 77-TT here but maybe shows up with AQ from time to time too

Bet the turn?

I'm with feely here, to a certain extent. JJ vs UTG nit could have been beaten prefloo, even given that he just flatted your 3-bet, and of course it hates the Q now. KK and AA are calls, but should also be betting turn.