Not Quite Threadworthy--Low Stress Strat Questions

I dislike flatting because cutoff can just come in with range, we can 4b to 320 so cutoff still has a price to pay and spr will be roughly 1. If cutoff folds its fine, btn flats and we can just jam on every flop at that spr. If they both fold its fine too.

And i would do the same with AK in this spot.

agree with others - shoving lets him off the hook and going smallish sets it up for a nice flop shove

Yeah, I think this is what I think I should have done. I went 420 and immediately felt awkward about it. It took him a while but he folded. I reckon for this guy in this spot, the goal is keeping QQ and AK in.

Grunch:

I'm torn between a normal raise which is most likely to keep in bad villain and encourage good villain to either fold or shove; and simply shoving because that's what I'd do with AK and it therefore achieves the joint purpose of a) keeping our re-raise range strong and b) doesn't provide solid players with information so that they can distinguish our play with AA vs. AK.

I used to have this reasoning a lot ... and it's worked out a few times where I shove and people call.

But having looked at too many solver spots ... robots don't care about balance in this way, and will often shove KK/AKo and a bunch of other hands but never shove AA. Then AA always raises smaller, AKs mixes but it also has a bunch of mixed ATs/A4s/whatever to balance the AA raise.

Feels unimplementable by humans, unless you are very good at memorizing the mixes and have a random number generator. But it also feels weird to be shoving a hand that a robot never would.

IMO you don't really need to memorize or even implement the mixes until cash games even come close to picking up the tournament "oh that's a minclick, must be AA" paranoia. It's hard to balance a split raising range but equally hard for anyone to pick up on it.

Interesting, I guess the takeaway if we want to play differently in massive preflop pots, is then we also must balance AA. I imagine that the exact mix probably doesn't matter too much, like if I was going to implement this I'd probably use exactly A5s because 6 nuts out of 10 combos should do the job. And you could also switch to a different Axs combo if you wanted, as long as you decide before the hand. And would obviously only matter if we're playing the same player pool.

yesterday utg straddles to $6, new player who just sat down and i have no read other than he has 500 in red (max buyin) and is an asian male in his 20s raises to $30 from utg+1

he likewise has no read on me but i'm a middle aged white guy with a beard but dressed in a blazer with a stack of about 2k

it folds to me in the sb and I make it $100 with AKo and he quickly calls

pot = 209 pre rake

flop Q73ss - we're dealing with an spr of 2 and i'm out of position so i put out a bet of $40 and he calls

pot = 289 pre rake

turn is 4x - no spade

I put out $150, expecting to take it down or give up and he jams for his remaining $360

i don't see how i'm ever good here with ace high and fold

i did tank a little and considered if he was just spazzing out here with spades or a worse ace high and happened to say "i bet you're relieved i didn't snap" and he started asking me if i had something like QJ or KQ - which struck me very oddly because i felt i was repping hands much stronger than that and couldn't imagine he'd be here with 33 or 77 so i basically had his range down as spazzing with TT/JJ. semi bluffing a spade draw, or he had QQ, AQ, or maybe an overplayed KQ - so his talk of me having Qx felt off but readless and with A high i had to fold

later on in the night we get a bit chummy and i say "so i'm guessing now you didn't have a queen, but i have no idea what you were were betting with there because a bluff made no sense" and he told me he had A7.

i asked him why he turned his hand into a bluff with middle pair and he told me something that stuck with me

"i couldn't tell what you were trying to target, like what hands did you think i had that would call if you had the AA/KK/QQ/AQ type hand you were representing"

and he's right, I wasn't thinking about that, because I thought most of the time here he has something like TT or AJ and by continuing to show strength i could induce a fold

but now i'm wondering if this a big leak in my game - where perhaps my line above doesn't make sense - i think it does, i think i would have played those AA/KK/QQ/AQ stuff the same way (just without folding the turn shove)

just looking for a sanity check over if i got owned here or i'm getting too resutls focused from the input of a guy who thinks opening large utg+1 with A7 and flatting an sb 3x+ 3! is a good idea

This.

Although FWIW I probably would have bet 50 on flop and checked turn.

Also I did watch this today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQj5sJmn...
and I'm pretty sure the flow chart doesn't use your line.

funny you mention that, i have that opened up in my other tab to watch later 😀

i think he's mirroring something you see a lot on poker youtube

"we don't have top pair, but i'm going to bet here for value because we can still target some worse middle pairs and even some ace highs who are non-believers"

2/5/10 there’s an open to 25 and a call to me in cut off and I go 135with JJ

Folds to bb who is young Asian reg - has been decently TAG to this point and he 4 bets to 300.

I’ve been playing pretty snug TAG without showing anything down to this point

We’re 900 eff. Fold call, (shove?)

I call.

Flop 615 is 862r he checks. Check or Bet? I check

Turn is an offsite 9, he shoves

thoughts on each street?

I fold pre to this action but that's from 2/3 dynamic where we're either flipping or crushed.

AP I guess I call, we need 33% and we have 43% against QQ+/AK.

I just feel that he’s more likely to bet AK on flop and check back bigger pairs if he’s going to have a checking range?

Like…what would you c bet and check after 4 betting here?

I probably just shove every hand OTF at this stack depth but then I'm bad at poker.

I guess if we can discount his AK by 50% without also discounting his overpairs we can fold, I just don't know how we can conclude that.

You have 90bb in a 2/5/10 game ... not sure looking for reasons to fold overpairs on the turn in 4bet pots is a good idea.

I guess if I was looking at this as my hand I'd concentrate on why I called preflop and if I had a plan for how I could use having position to play the hand better than fold/shove.

Also hard to think of what your 3bet/call range will be here, and where JJ falls in it on the turn ... do you have any AK or AQs? Do you have any KK+?

I'd assume you probably have 99, at least sometimes. So not top of range, but would still be v. worried about MDF on turn.

Also wonder if V has AQs ... then flop could be a give up with AK and turn could be random shove where maybe you fold the same hand.

A5s/A7s also kind of makes sense, if he can have those preflop.

AA might play this way pure though.

i dont play this high so i dont know what 4b ranges are here but in live poker 4bet = nuts most of the time in my experience, so fold pre

he has AA a lot here. but if hes clever then he has AK alot too. tough spot. probably why id fold pre to the 4b.

This. Its the boring answer,but the correct one. From a tight rockish reg that rarely gets creative cold 4 bet is QQ+ a huge percentage of the time.

as played you got to call, otherwise why are we flatting the 4!, just to set mine?

this is one of the best non set flops out there so we need to bluff catch and pray for AK/AQ or some random spazz

but i'm definitely folding pre to a milky minclick plus cold 4bet

The short of it, which has been said, is that there's no point calling pre if you're not going to get it in with an overpair post.

Pre is marginal. I usually credit higher-stakes Villains not tagged as fish to at least start from equilibrium and ignoring the call/fold this is a zero-EV mostly-call. The extra money might encourage calling, but in general I would expect Villain to be tighter than equilibrium if anything (which is QQ+/AK/AQs plus some AJs/ATs/KTs/A5s and JJ/TT). Unlikely we have a notable skill edge in an SPR 1 4bp, so I would probably lean fold but calling is ok. Will note V's sizing is smaller than solver so this maybe also supports calling.

Equilibrium strategy is to mostly check overcards and balance by checking AA and some KK. In reality I am probably shoving range from OOP here, but I really doubt you can be certain enough that his checking range is unbalanced one way or the other. You're supposed to bet the smaller pairs OTF when checked to - the solver uses a smaller size to charge the overcards that are drawing.

By the turn I think it's a clear call; as said up top if you're not willing to GII and frequently lose to a better overpair like this, just fold pre.

Some probably results-oriented musing.. do fish overfold to small raises and how long can you get away with overbluffing them before the fish catch on?

Three HH that prompted this musing which are kind of an extreme example. All villains are stock fish (loose-passive pre, weak-tight post, not egregiously so), and perhaps most importantly they've seen me get paid handsomely (and some of them did the paying) with some big hands earlier in the session so some of this is almost certainly fear-driven and not how they will play with no history. Nonetheless (1/2 NL), abbreviated HHs:

Quite possible I am making mistakes here at value extraction multiway, but the theme seemed to be that fish were scared of me and in particular very scared of even small raises. Part of this is almost certainly a results-oriented missed-value rant as the time I get paid big from these hands (as even happened earlier in the same session) overwhelm the little results, but had I not gone home I was thinking I could probably get away with bluff-raising quite cheaply here against some of these fish.

Do you guys do this? Are the fish going to catch on quickly (they might, honestly)?

Other problem with that table is I couldn't go too LAG pre to punish these fish because the table had 3-4 very solid regs at it so had to stay in line until they folded.

thanks for all the comments guys. Agree with the POV that if we're calling pre, I don't think we can fold on this flop.

really felt though that he would have (should have) c bet with AK there and his range seems stronger when he checks flop and then bombs turn. ie, I'm also not checking back AK on the flop, so if he's shoving the turn is he doing it with KK+ to get value from 1010-QQ?

I called and he also had JJ. Not sure if he was shoving turn for a bluff or for value or just because 'i have to fold if he shoves, so might as well shove'? either way, not sure I like his play

but I did also think wonder if JJ is actually a losing call there

and yep, I probably can and should fold to the 4 bet with JJ against most villains and I think it was a loose and probably slightly losing call

WTF sizes ... you opened to $5 at 1-2?

Against almost all as described 1-2 villains, flop is a fold. Esp. with your image.

Would consider checking flop, instead of small cbet, with two behind. Don't hate the bet though.

It's 3 ways to the flop, $8 open with $4 raked and only one left to act behind. I was using a $6 open from EP though in part due to reg density that was going to play intelligently pre.

I guess pertinent to the topic but are you really folding TPTK to basically a tiny minclick (r32)? This V was the least known of the fish and had sat down pretty recently. I can see folding to future barrels, and I think the river was honestly more paying to see cards than an intelligent call, but really fold the flop?? Seems like this can be worse Tx at least 25% of the time..