Not Quite Threadworthy--Low Stress Strat Questions

He's giving away free information, you've tried to help him and he's not interested. I'm either looking at his cards and using the information, or calling the floor. Depends how I feel on the day.

It's different if the guy is senile or drunk off his face but if you want to play for money while waving your cards around, and I told you what you're doing and you want to do it anyway, OK buddy I guess we'll play for money then.

I give people 1 warning and after then, I take what I’m given

I agree that letting him know, especially twice, should be fine, especially if he's grumpy about it. I might let the table know if they are a nice/good group. If they are also grumpy or a bunch of regs w/ earphones, I just keep it to myself 😉

Double-board bomb pot. V is new to the table but has already established a play-everything-and-bet-most-of-it strategy.

I'm dealt A♥ 10♥ on the button. Flops are ATx rainbow and K♥ 7♥ 7x. He bets $40 in early position (way too big regardless of what he actually has), folded to me and I raise to $105, he goes all-in for $361 and I snap call.

He has KK and rivers his one-outer on the top board to beat my two pair.

****!

If I'm allowed to crosspost from the other thread (since this one is much more poker-focused and seems to have mostly different people), does anyone have an opinion on this situation?

You're at a 2-4 game and a new player shows up. Before you see him play a normal hand, he open-raises 120€ of his 600€ stack (you cover). How do you range this? Specifically if you have KK and it folds to you, do you put him on KK+ and fold, jam over it, flat the raise, or 3bet and fold to a jam? (And if KK is a jam, where is the cutoff? QQ?)

I rip over with KK and fold QQ. It's a very strong play but its also bonkers which I think tends more to AK than AA. Also we're 150bb effective which is below the threshold where I get unhappy about KK going in.

marchron: That's just a cooler.

primrose:
I don't have quite the same reasoning as WereBeer (I don't think it leans more towards AK) ... but I also sigh fold AKo/QQ and shove AA/KK/AKs.

i actually forgot, at that same table i looked down utg and see AKs and put in a raise, the table maniac who was vpipping 100 and raising most posts pre 3! and as i'm preparing to 4! i see this guy flip up his cards and see AKo and put in a call

what do you do here?

I ended up shoving hoping that despite having 2 less outs i was still well ahead of the maniac's range and figuring since his cards were offsuit i was freerolling vs him with the possibility of getting him to fold given how he only put in a call

he did fold and maniac who i covered made the call, i flopped a wheel gutter with a flush draw and sealed it with an ace on the turn - maniac mucked his cards and left

later the guy said "i folded AK" and instead of saying "yes I know you did" i said "wow what a lay down"

unless you think he's one of those guys who will do this all the time then at worst he has QQ+ here but much more heavily weighted to AA - i'm happy to fold KK here, in fact, I've folded KK plenty of times when I'm 3! or 4! large simply because the overwhelming majority of the times they have AA at this stake level

and importantly, the maniacs who will do this with J7o usually straddle or put it in blind

i'm also never just calling - otherwise i'm going to be very uncomfortable post flop - if i'm playing, i'm jamming 100% of the time

you see this a lot in low stakes where people notice fish are a lot likelier to put in chips with mediocre holdings preflop than post and so have linear bet sizings

it's the same concept as "never go broke in a limped pot" here imo - you have nothing at risk, worst case scenario you miss out on some ev but lose nothing

having said that, when people shove blind - if it folds around to me i'm calling super wide - a month ago called off a $400 preflop blind shove with Q8o

2-5 Mohegan
V1 has been limping or raising big, has a short stack. CO

V2 just sat down, never seen him before. MAWG. BB

H in SB, effective stacks vs. V2 are roughly 550

V1 open limps
BTN fold
H makes it 22 with A5s
V2 snap calls, but it takes a while as he only puts 20 in.

Pot: 47
Flop: 552
H bets 15
V calls

Pot: 77
Turn: 552 A
H bets 35
V raises to 80
H stares at V and calls?

Pot: 237
River: 552A 9
H x
V bets 125
H?

I take it V1 folded pre? Don't understand "snap calls" but takes a while? Did he call one white chip at a time? LOL.

Shove the river. Not much else you can/should do. If he has it, so be it. You played to induce and it worked.

Please go $25 pre -- why make it $22 in a 2/5 game?

Yesterday in cash (2-4), we had the following. UTG limps, UTG+1 I think bets 20, three people call, including me at the BN. SB makes it 110 with KQo.

Do you think this move is good? SB is a shark, so I don't want to easily dismiss it, but it's not a move I'd ever make. If I'm making a squeeze, I'd (a) make it much bigger, but also (b) I'd never make it with a medium-strength hand like KQo; I'm either stronger there (probably AQo+) or I'm bluffing. KQo is so awkward because callers could easily have AQ. (And in this case because the open is so big and I'm only in for about 500, I wouldn't have a bluffing range; but maybe if it were 12-call-call-call I'd consider raising to 110 with 8♦7♦.)

Yeh, one of the things I wondered about is if it's better to 3bet turn or just call ... it's such a weird spot because I don't see WTF his value line is supposed to be (slow played AK/AQ pre?) so wondered if he's 90% trying to get me to fold 99 that decided to bet again, and the other 10% has a random 5 or 43.

But I probably don't even have one combo. of 43s ... so it's 55/AA/A5s.
Not sure what bluffs I would have 3bet turn (or, to be fair call turn and x/r river).
Do we ever want to 3bet turn with AK?

Game was kind of weird. Bad smelling unkempt whale was playing 80%+ of hands and randomly limping or raising to 30-50 preflop, and stacking off post (but also hitting and refusing to stack his chips, so game was running at half speed at best) so the game was playing around him ... but he'd just been escorted out of the casino by security, and the table is now a bit confused and opening smaller.

I threw 20 out ... but as I'm SB it is 22 total, BB snap threw out 15 more but it took the dealer about 40 seconds to convince V to put out another $2.

Yeah I don’t think I would ever be 3betting turn with a bluff which is why calling is better in theory. But, at the time, I think BB just has way too much 5X here (calls stuff like 65o and T5s pre, defaults to slow playing flop) so I want to make it easy to stack that hand. Could see BB checking back weak 5X on some rivers. Also, sometimes BB might bet river for a stupid small size with 5X and then correctly fold to a jam because it looks so strong.

Confused by v1 bio etc as it seems like he folded pre

Love how you played it but not a fan of mad dogging the opposition

Easy shove on river with so little behind imo

I’m ok with it

There’s not too much of a range that calls for $100 but folds to $150-200 and only villain he needs to worry about is the or

This lets him squeeze fold cheaply and play comfortably post flop since aa and Ak will raise not call and he’s going to mostly be facing JJ or worse and really only real worry is someone playing aq passively and getting sticky on a q high board

Much prefer the squeeze to the over call

True because overcall would be straight up horrible.

Yeah when I said I wouldn't make this move, I meant I'd just fold the hand. I'd never call here.

Yeah, my reaction to the HH was something like "wow, you've got some guts to flat and check the river" but not clear to me you didn't choose an optimal line. I would be hard-pressed not to 3b the turn but I agree it's hard for you to be bluffing here or have worse than a straight for value. Guessing a solver probably finds bluffs with hands that get here with a gutter or a fd if that's available?

You probably got max value here given that he didn't x back the river.

Very table dependent, but I don't hate it. My instinct would be to go bigger, but a school of overcallers tend to be very capped and need to fold to a squeeze and (1) original raiser could certainly 4b QQ+/AK sometimes and (2) the overcallers probably would have 3b that, so you can play post reasonably intelligently. AQ is likely the worst thing you have to worry about running into. I think it works less well if the table is loose-passive and everyone has all 16 combos of AK in their flat-flat range.

Failing to take this line sufficiently often is what makes serially overcalling these spots with good multiway hands profitable, and a squeeze that forces A8s or 55 or whatever to have to play heads-up or fold punishes the overcall.

I guess what I find odd about it is just that we're taking a hand that's not even strong enough to open UTG+1 (or if it is, then barely) and we're... 3betting an UTG+1 open. From worst position no less. Like what?

But the dead money makes it attractive, and in this particular case, UTG+1 was definitely opening too much. So yeah maybe it is +EV.

I am definitely opening KQo from all positions (and a solver will too, albeit for 2bb) and I feel like I am on the nitty side for most live regs.

But yeah, the dead money is a big factor and also the table dependency. If +1 is actually opening a GTO 5x RFI range and is aware of our deviations from equilibrium, then sure KQo is an easy fold from SB. But realistic ranges for actual LLSNL players are significantly different, and the squeeze tends to work more often than it should (at least vs the right target) because the only player with an uncapped range has to face the "scary 3-bet" next-to-act and tends to fold quite a bit. The dead money and the tendency for the crowd of overcallers to fold if the opener folds tilts the odds in favor of squeezing.

GTOwiz 100bb 9max NL50 will _mostly_ open it for 2bb (about 75% of the time). But EV of open and fold are both 0.
Dito for AJo at 45% of the time, and dito. EV of open and fold being 0.
AQo is a pure open for 2, and EV of open is 0.04.

Smash live cash 100bb, no rake, EP opens maybe 10% of AJo and about 55% of KQo (for 2.25bb)
At 400bb it basically never opens KQo/AJo although opens AQo pure.
SMLC with rake opens it about the same as GTOwiz (I feel like this is relying on Vs behind knowing that calling and hitting flop/rake is bad so they'll fold pre. more).

The open being 5bb over a limp seems like a significant factor, as are the 3 callers.

Everyone will probably be shocked to find out that if UTG+1 opens and it folds to SB then SB basically never 3bets KQo from SB (GTOwiz does it at 2-4% of the time, but it's 0 EV -- same as folding).

Saying all that, I've def. done this with KJs before. I'd lean away from doing it with KQo for a few reasons. Also would go bigger, like 160, when/if I did.
As the saying goes ... it's not spew if it gets through /s.

Oh, I didn't know my proper ranges; I had it in my head that AJo is about the break-even point for UTG 9-handed and just assumed KQo would be worse, but it seems like KQo is actually marginally better. Though even so, should still be a very borderline open with rake.

But I think I'm coming around to liking the 3bet now because UTG+1 range is probably one of the most important factors, and if the GTO 3bet is already 0-ish EV, then UTG+1 opening too wide (not to mention misplaying post-flop) should be enough to make it profitable.

bet sizing spot from yesterday I wasn't sure about. I'm making a comeback after 2 years of non regdom. I'm very rusty and there's lots of player turnover at my stake

2/5/10

UTG (1k) opens to 30 - he has just sat down, is Latin guy who seems reggy

Button (1.1k) calls. he is 30ish white guy who has called very wide pre several times and seems nonsensically gambly/spewy - eg he is stradding to 205 rather than 10, even though it makes the straddle a blind raise and I know he's on the 10/20 list and is fishy because a good pro keeps coming to the table to ask him if he'll play if the game gets up

BB (1.8k) calls. he is 40ish Chinese guy with a mohawk who plays big PLO and regularly plays bigger holdem. Weird guy who I have a lot of hours with...knows how to play good poker but also can't resist gambling on draws and can really spew and tilt.

Straddle Hero (1.2k). MAWG - BB will think I'm nitty, others don't know me but I've been talking with a friend at the table who is a pro so assume they think I'm at least an occasionally regular player.

Hero has red AA and raises to $185 all 3 call!

Flop (742) is Q 10 3 rainbow.

I have 1k behind, UTG and Button have 800

sizing?