Disillusion this banana during his downswing

Grunch:

PRE - 3B bigger. At least $75. Could even go $90.

FLOP - I'd mostly check multi-way and OOP. If we're betting, not sure if we should go big or small. Your small bet seems ok, maybe.

TURN - the problem with c-betting flop is we haven't capped V, so I guess a small bet makes more sense than a big bet.

RIVER - at this point, we're mostly just guessing. Hard to get called by worse than KQ, unless V just thinks we're always FOS. It does seem pretty thin otherwise.

If you think he's calling with KQ or worse, or that he ever folds a chop, or that he never attempts a bluff when we check, then the jam doesn't seem bad. You're basically free rolling in those scenarios.

On the other hand, if he's likely to trap with 2P+, or he's over-folding worse, or he's capable of stabbing when we check, then the jam is probably lower EV than checking.

I think a lot of your post flop decisions are made more difficult because of your stubborn refusal to use bigger sizes pre, and your tendency to favor more aggro lines with your entire range post. If you raised bigger pre, you'd be able to play more two-street poker post.

Just to illustrate my point, if you make it $90 pre, the pot is $195 on the flop and you have $360 back, for 1.8 SPR. You could bet $75 on the flop, and just jam $285 into $345 on the turn.

thing is, I think at my game, people start folding out hands like ATs, AQo for 90 pre..

Could this guy be trapping you & you walked into the trap.

Opening UTG is a strong range
Calling a 3bet is a strong range and I doubt he thinks you are 3betting light.
He may be letting you bet for him

I’m only learning this recently, but OOP this may be a good time to check the turn and see what villain does.

Better to pot control, even with great one pair hands, because when the money goes in it usually takes more than that.

A caution, more than a few times I have seen very strong players take a couple of beats and then I scratch my head and watch them stack off making a terrible river call against a guy with the nuts. A play they would never normally make.

Also, A5 suited is a bluffing hand, not a great open under the gun. At some point you might consider tightening your ranges until you start to run better.

Playing AK profitably separates players.
It comes up a lot. You’re telling a consistent story that you have a big hand, but I’m not sure a better hand will fold.

Then we deny equity, and take down the pot pre, without paying rake or having to make a hand. Those are all good things.

But, honestly, I don't think people are over-folding pre at 1/3. V opened UTG. The other opponent called. They both like their hands. They don't want to fold before seeing a flop.

They tend to call 3B's too wide, and 4B too tight. You're making things easier for them and harder for yourself by 3B'ing small when you're OOP.

If we raise big and they fold pre, it's fine. If we raise big and they call pre, it's also fine. It sucks to raise small, get called, and have to navigate higher SPR situations OOP post.

In the one hand you mentioned that you had straddled UTG. Is that something you've been making a habit out of? It's pretty massively -EV. If you feel the need to straddle maybe try limiting it to button straddles only, if those are allowed where you play?

Sometimes when you're on a downswing it's good to focus on the fundamentals. Look at some rake-adjusted preflop charts and make sure you're not playing too many hands and that kind of thing. I've dealt with this myself where I'll play kind of tag, run good and crush for a while. Then before you know it you start playing more hands and taking thinner spots until you're on a big downswing and realize you're just leaking money in a bunch of spots.

As for the hand, I do think jamming river is too thin in a vacuum. I would have probably checked turn a lot for pot control. When you think about it there are a lot of hands in his range that beat you. He can have straights, sets, and lots of two pair combos.

I guess the argument for playing the hand the way you did and jamming is that this guy thinks you're a maniac and might be prone to making hero calls? The other side of that is he could also be trapping more though, expecting you to barrel off aggressively.

Anyway, I also like Doc's idea of 3-betting bigger. If the SPR had been smaller going to the flop I think stacking off here would be more standard, but as played with the higher SPR I think you have to be a little cautious with 1 pair hands on a dangerous board.

Pre is fine. You don't have to raise bigger. Yea default would be 5x here (4x bc OOP, +1x because there's an intermediate call). But it's totally fine to go smaller if you have a read. I deviate from default preflop sizings all the time.

Flop is perfect (we're not multiway @docvail). Turn is good as well, imo. Really think this hand was played well until the River.

River the jam doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Seems like this gets called by all better hands and not called by most worse hands (could get called by some). I'd probably check-call or check-fold this, depending on whether I think opponent is good enough to run a bluff here. Most people are really not good at turning pairs into bluffs, so if he jams after you check, you can fold. It's only one pair. Your hand is mediocre. It loses to KJ, KT, JT, AQ, Q9, and 97. That's a lot of combos. It's not bad, it's more than a bluff catcher, but it's not strong enough to go for more value, like there are more stronger hands that will call this than weaker hands.

Pre is fine, wouldn't mind $75 either. Flop is entirely fine. I think we want to do a lot of checking on the turn with our range. Also not convinced that's the sizing we want to pick if we did barrel.

As played I don't think river shove is good, I'm genuinely not even sure what we're hoping to get called by? KQ?

Going to mostly generally comment on downswing like things...

8 sessions is a meaningless number ... if we try to convert it into something better and assume 10 hour sessions then:

1. That's only 80 hours ... so that should be super expected.

2. It is -$85 an hour ... which isn't small, but depending on the games it isn't insane either (Eg. if you are often playing in 400bb 2/5 games that's probably nothing).

...but if you correctly quit games when running bad then the hours will be lower (so even more likely to happen) and the lossrate will be higher, but again it's difficult to say if that's "normal" or bad.

I understand the desire to default assume "almost everyone playing 2/5 is bad, and that's 10x true at lower stakes" ... but using fish is probably a bad mindset.
I think this is a form of tilt, where we think we've studied a lot more (or in better ways) than another player and so they have to be much worse and we deserve to win often.

The middle point seems unlikely to be true ... like maybe there are spots where V is not going to evaluate ranges correctly, but for Eg. the last point is basically evaluating AKo vs. a tight range and coming to the correct conclusion.

Both of these points seem relevant to both HHs. Where you take the most aggressive action, but you can just not.

Yes, with solved preflop charts, A5s specifically is close to a pure 3x 3bet BB vs. SB, and ~75% 3.2x 3bet STR vs. BB ... but in those cases SB opens for 2.5x and BB opens for 3x. Also your history/image/reads suggest the ending before it happens, and he might well be value shoving 66 ... which isn't GTO, but probably isn't terrible either.

So the "actual fish" who called IP complicates things, but if we ignore that for a minute: BB is supposed to call EP opens with AKo a decent amount in GTO land (like 35-40% for 100bb and pure call at 200bb+). BB wants to call/defend a lot, so calls a lot of strong hands to balance.

Now, again, the IP caller changes things a bit (but given relative positions maybe not a lot and if EP calls your 3bet then the hands IP folds are probably heavily weighted towards hands which hit boards you miss anyway, and there's obvious value when IP has A9 and you both hit). Then the fact V opened 5x (assume std. sizing) instead of 2.25x and the rake both mean GTO would do things differently, but ...

tl;dr IMNSHO it's fine to just call preflop.

Esp. if we think we're on a downswing and might be tilted.
Esp. vs. a tight EP open from a guy who isn't folding to our 3bets.
That doesn't mean we turn into an OMC, just that we don't need to take the most aggressive action every time.

As to the hand: I think preflop sizing is within acceptable bounds, flop is std. ... we can also check turn to see what V wants to do, because it's not like AA/AK/QQ are the nuts here, but this sizing is also fine at least some of the time.

River looks like some kind of tilt to me, where you expect to get paid a lot by one pair hands because "you are always drunk banana" but lots of V's hands that make it here have a pretty easy decision vs. a shove unless his range is very wide and he thinks/understands "he's forced to call QJ" or something (but this requires a large range to get to the river, and then a pretty good understand of his range and an assumption that your range is very wide too ... or him just being a station).

tl;dr 2x ... If you listen to old school pros. they all say that when they went on a downswing (and TBH I'm not sure yours counts as a real one, yet) one thing they'd do is tighten up and play more conservative, esp. OOP, and nobody would adjust.

Yep, wanted to run hand through a solver but not behind my computer atm but I'm sure we want to do some checking somewhere. Wouldn't be surprised if we checked with some frequency on the flop but definitely we'll be doing some checking on the turn. Triple barrel vs a ''reg'' just seems like torching money.

Result: V tank calls with AKo and I feel dumb for shoving

Prob would start checking on the turn. Pf is still too small. Don't call like some others are suggesting. And don't fold A5s utg.

This is really accurate thx I need to sharpen up pre for sure

I guess you likely have a LAG reputation in your room, so if you nit up you should crush. It’s always about using your image to create villain mistakes.

I don’t think people realize how tight you have to play to win consistently. They think they’re playing tight ranges, but not even close. They think they won’t get action but somebody always calls.

Most players at 1/3 see all the ways the marginals could hit a big hand, instead of realizing that it will miss too often to be profitable.

Play strong hands in position with the initiative. Otherwise, play premiums or fold. Anything else is unnecessary fancy play.

You shouldn't feel dumb, if your read is that you probably have the best hand, he'd probably check back with worse, but also sometimes call with worse, won't ever bluff, and might fold a chop, as he probably should.

He flat called pre, rather than 4B'ing to push out the other opponent. Then he called river just to chop, after tanking. He should feel dumber than you.

its gonna seem like im being dismissive and condescending but im not. if youre questioning your play and actually trying to get better what do you think you gain by writing up these creative writing exercise op's and posting them here as opposed to playing online / using a solver? the hand should take 5 mins to look at and figure out thresholds (ill bet the original post took longer). i think the hand is (large) punt in squeeze pot vs utg without looking at a solve fwiw. to me it looks like you're not really looking at nuance at all when you do this

think huge misconception most of the board has is that talking about hands here is useful and counts as working on their game. think its fine for community purposes but yeah. buy gtowizard or pio and if you dont want to do that, sign up for rio or look on youtube for the handful of good players that are giving out info for free (think clanty / benabadbeat / maybe uri, not hungry horse)

the sizing argument is kind of interesting but i mostly see gtowizard trending towards around a 5-6x here in most of the pre sims. am looking at 3x open 100 bb stacks which seems ok to mimic here. i looked at both 8 handed 10% live rake and then 6 handed pre solved and 6 handed research mode so yeah. i think if you did want to use a smaller size you would want a better / more playable hand to do it with

What about flop and turn? First instinct says we check sometimes on flop and probably check a lot on turn when we bet flop. It's def not a 3 barrel.

post is trickier to look at because its going to be range dependent. hes supposed to be insanely tight here given its full ring utg and hes sandwiched (we usually do alot more 4b / folding when stuck in the middle as opposed to calling when we close the action) and i not really sure if he knows that or not. just really doubt there are many hands you can actually even get value from that plausibly call down - maybe kqss? and qq? given positions. hand just looks like typical live player syndrome - he didn't raise me so he cant beat tp which is an ok heuristic in some spots but obviously not this one

i think the hand looks like someone that is not differentiating pre from like LP open and 3b out of the blinds. (and even still you're mixing checks ott or river). spr a bit lower i guess than those so i do see solver just putting it in vs lp w this stack depth (sb 3b vs btn open) but i do think the 2 biggest factors here are utg open and that its a squeeze pot, not the litany of reads in op that really dont factor in much here at all (notable exception being the 6s but i dont really see how that impacts this decision)

I dont get the solver talk here - it's live 1/3 - using the solver to make any decisions is not good. I think a lot of people misuse solvers - if you want a baseline that's fine, but 99% of poker is exploitative situations especially in the live game where no one is picking up on intricacies. You should use sizings for a reason - here we 3bet to 60 but why not 80, 100, 40, etc. If you can 3bet to 100 and they call with the same frequency and think your range is the same as 60 you should do it. On the flop we bet small on a very connected texture - I think we should be sizing up if we bet as this is a board that never gets bluffed and contains a number of value hands that will call down. If we had AQ on this board we clearly shouldn't be betting 35 - I think OP bet like this as he wasn't fully comfortable if he was ahead or not. I would use different sizings depending on board texture - KJT vs A72r or K35r etc shouldn't be played the same esp at these stakes.

you are overaggressive and impatient.

i mean yeah if you have perfect omniscience over someone's game and know exactly what they're going to do with every hand vs every node in every sizing you should probably just do that. unfortunately that's pretty difficult even with people you play thousands of hands against. given that you don't and won't, you probably want to understand poker theory and figure out the basics of strategy. i mostly find the im smarter than a solver argument to just be justification for laziness / overwhelm

i get its a public forum and everyone is doing their best but like this hand should be fairly easy. theres nothing about the hand or spot that really makes it confusing / requiring input. the most difficult variable here for me is how to range ep. is clear based on the AKo showdown he doesn't understand the dynamics of squeeze ranges (or he has some kind of burning need to keep the guy in behind / trap banana but this likely isnt the hand for it either way). but its like ok now we know that and probably instead of looking at a squeezed pot we just look at EP open and it folds to bb and we 3b and he calls (maybe we swap squeeze range for bb 3b range but doubt theres large diff between them). the issue is mostly no one really know how to evaluate hands from a theoretical level, so they always just sort of make binary strategies from the reads provided in op - i believe this is why people get so angry at banana. he posts that villain is capable of running a big bluff so then people decide we should call in a spot with a bluff catcher bc v can run big bluffs without being able to evaluate ranges / blockers / the spot on a micro level. but its also why most of the dialogue on here ends up fairly unproductive. and why whenever ppl start getting good / doing work on their own they inevitably dissapear (tomark, mlark, chaosequilibrium, probably a handful of other decent posters. primrose probably next tbh) and the people that are left more or less never improve (few exceptions, if you're reading this and think its you, it isnt).

I probably 3bet a little bigger preflop to like $80 (offering poor 8:1 IO, more cool with taking the pot down preflop thanks to being OOP without a pear, we have a FOS image versus this guy, etc.) but whatever.

Kinda weird postflop spot. On the one hand, we have TPTK (with a draw no less) in an SPR < 3 pot. On the other hand, this might be the nut low (non flush / flush draw) flop versus an EP raise/caller.

In the end, he thinks we're FOS and I don't think we're going to be able to fold at this SPR (even though this flop sucks so hard), so I probably just bet the flop to shove the turn (which I would most definitely do with a flush draw, but without one I guess not quite as imperative). At a much deeper SPR I would be checking this flop a lot and playing cautiously / inducing.

I probably don't take the 3 street line to get chips in, but I do think overall shoving ourselves is better than check/calling. Yes, he has us crushed a lot but at this SPR we probably can't fold. Meanwhile he happily checks back stuff like KQ/QJ/QT that will sometimes consider calling it off against FOS us.

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