Needless fake-tank, or understandable?

Very reasonable spot to tank. V1 has a legit decision whether to jam or just call. V2 can definitely overcall if V1 flats. There is still plenty of money behind with you too.

It’s also an unusual sizing to face, so that might require some extra time to process.

I guess after the hand I viewed his decision as pretty automatic. Maybe it seems close between call or jam because I could have some draws, but he's not folding at any point, no matter what the run-out is, so the flop seems like a straightforward call to me. Even if he decides to jam, I probably can't fold at that point, so it doesn't seem like a spot to spend much time thinking.

In game, I didn't think V2 was calling in a million years. If he had AJ he'd have raised, and he's not over-calling the $200 with worse.

If he'd only taken a few seconds to consider, it wouldn't have struck me as unnecessary. But in game it seemed like he went overboard and was just holding up the game with bad acting.

I don't keep track of such stats, but I'm almost positive I'm stuck this year setmining with medium pocket pairs and smaller. I mean, I get it, we're getting a good price so obviously whatever. But unless our opponents are going to pile in heaps with lol hands, I'm just not convinced these hands are worth much to a raise, OOP, and only going 3ways. I'd really prefer position and also really prefer much more multiway (thus getting way better immediate odds getting us almost what we need in IO right away, although with the smaller pairs the more multiway does introduce RIO). Anyhoo, just a rant @ small pocket pears as I'm sure I'm down gobs on them this year.

I would probably just donk smallish on the flop. This is one of the real drawbacks of being out of position in that if a street checks thru that setmining pretty much becomes unprofitable.

As played I probably go a little smaller with the check/raise (like $150ish which still offers very poor 2:1 odds). Still, I think so many release Ax to this sizing that we really have to hope we're up against a huge combo draw (which actually ain't too far behind) or have coolered AJ (which still has outs). Course we're drawing ~dead to AA/JJ (which are real things).

Tank call from V1 is perfectly reasonable, imo. Not sure why you think it isn't? He's also allowed to tank call AK too.

Aside, if V2 is "never calling an 8x check/raise in that spot" then doesn't that suggest we've made too large of a check/raise?

ETA: So I'm guessing the HH is mostly about the fake tank call and holding up the game. Look, if he does this every single time he makes a call, obviously this would hold up the game. In this case, he made it in the biggest pot of the night with huge money on the line in a very specific configuration (facing a huge bet with the ~nuts with someone behind he'd like to eke money out of the best he can). This spot is going to come up like once every five sessions, so the fact that he tanked for 40 seconds instead of 10 and wasted 30 seconds works out to an extra 6 wasted seconds per session (or approximately 1 wasted second per hour). Nothing to see here, imo.

ETA#2: Once and a while I'll see a raise and a bunch of calls and I'll look down at a piece of junk that I'm going to fold 100% of the time. But every so often (once every ~5 sessions or whatever) I'll cap my cards, go into a 10 second fake tank, think better of it, and then fold. I'm simply trying to give off the vibe that I'm perhaps capable of squeezing every so often with a hand that is bad enough to not even call, and perhaps that will swing some folds to calls when I look down at AA next time. Misdirection is part of the game. Obviously if everyone did this every single time the hands per hour would suffer hugely. But everyone doing this every once and a random while / big situations isn't going to have any real affect on hands per hour.

GcluelesstankcallingnoobG

Of all the ways people slow down the game and otherwise act like jackoffs, fake-tanking for less than a minute when facing a large raise is pretty low on the list of things that annoy me.

And I get annoyed pretty easily. 😀

Reasonable with a player behind.

Seems fine, I would fold preflop by default although it does sound like there's money to be made from these opponents so calling isn't outrageous

Kind of hard to answer without knowing how long he tanked, but even without a player behind there’s merit to taking some time with the “decision.” It impacts how often you blast turn when you’re bluffing, you don’t want to be making snap decisions with some of your range and tanking with other parts.

For sure in the moment there was some tilt from getting set over setted. But I've had more than a week to think about it, and posted it here to ask for opinions because I still wasn't sure if the tank was excessive.

I think part of this is that I'm projecting my reads of V2 onto V1. I know V2 would have jammed over the $25 c-bet if his hand was strong enough to stay involved, because he was constantly over-bet jamming whenever he had a nutted hand. But V1 may not have been as observant, or may have simply been hoping that V2 would make a loose call if he could feign enough indecision.

Also, because I tend not to tank much, and generally act quickly, any tank that doesn't seem genine is going to annoy me. A genuine tank for a full minute annoys me less than a fake tank of ten seconds.

In hindsight, it wasn't that he tanked for an egregiously long time. It was more that after seeing his hand, it seemed to me that he shouldn't have needed more than a brief moment, because it was obvious to me the theatrics weren't going to win him any extra money, when V2 is never calling, and I'm pot committed.

Trying to be objective about it in retrospect, I was probably projecting too much, and as Raise Announced said, I may have been out of line with my after-hand commentary.

Having second set in a 100bb pot is rare. You could give everyone permission to take 1 minute to take any action where the above is true, and it would not kill the game. Aside from nitrolling, angle shooting or (maybe) in cases where I'd like to protect the feelings of a whale in a mid-to-high stakes game, I'm fine with anyone doing it for any reason really.

(I don't love the tanking for promos shenanigans that go on, which is kinda arguably angle shooting/gaming the system, but I'm kind of a promo grinch in general so whatever let them have their fun, whatever keeps them coming out.)

Now if everyone took 10 seconds to open fold 72o like it's the final table of the WSOP, obviously we'd have a problem on our hands.

i believe this post wasted significantly more time than his tank lol. brother we are here for strategy, not to vindicate your tilt outbursts at the table.

also believe flop x/r size is (significant) ev mistake from smaller sizes and still unnecessarily large even if the idea is you want to play 2 street game. it looks like weird node lock gone awry assumptions- he will never fold anything regardless of size! this was before i checked and saw effective stacks were even smaller than what the hh made it look like initially. you have extremely good equity vs the weaker parts of their ranges and have playability on every turn, you don't need or want to do this imo

I would tank too, I guess maybe 30 seconds? But anyway, in a multiway pot with the effective nuts, I find that shouting "woo hoo!" and doing a quick victory lap around the table is counter-productive. Tank seems reasonable.

Also remember and use the read about his acting. I can think of at least one spewy player whose look of 'I am so confused by this bet' means 'my garbage hand hit hard and I'm trying not to look happy'.