[2-4]: Flopped Straight but Flush comes in on the River

I'm not talking about all-in equities! (If I were, I wouldn't have agreed that 86s is better than QTo; with the ranges I've picked earlier, the all-in equity of QTo is actually higher than that of 86s.) I'm talking about actual equity when all streets are played. Afaik when you look at equities in a solver, they tend to run pretty close for middling hands.

I keep trying to explain to you that those equities you get from the solver are not a guide to what hands you can play. You won't listen to more experienced players and instead go by irrelevant numbers.

There are solver simulations of how certain hands play. There are also discussions in books and videos before and after solvers appeared on hand strength.

AQ/KQ are good hands partly because if a Q hits, you can win money for QT. You generally want to play AJo+/KQo/88+/suited broadway. In multiway pots, you can often play any pp and Axs. Suited connectors and gappers may also be playable.

Unsuited broadway below ATo/KJo are junk hand that are only playable in certain situations. They are good for losing money to better broadway hands that everyone plays.

Small pps and Ax can make close to the nuts, which can win a lot of money in multiway pots versus loose players. Hands like QTo make losing one and two pair hands. It doesn't matter what the equity numbers in your solver say.

I think those equity numbers you are looking at in your solver are allin equities.

A solver is not going to simulate well a live 1/2 game with 8 limpers. However, if you look at the hands it recommends open raising with or calling or 3-betting against a raise, you are not going to see QTo much in any of that, even for late position action.

We think the preflop call is -EV generally. We understand why it can be +EV exploitatively, when we have position on the whale.

The judgement that it's generally bad is objective - it's just always bad at equilibrium. The judgement that it might be okay is conditional - it's only okay *IF* you can make it +EV with your post-flop play.

You didn't make it +EV. You made it massively -EV. It's not just that the BTN made a flush, it's that even if he hadn't, you wouldn't have maximized the value of your hand, which you absolutely must do if you're going to make a generally -EV call pre.

At best, as played, you would have won a pot that would have been smaller than it should have been. As it happened, you lost the pot, which, by your estimation, was maybe only $10 bigger than it should have been.

You're focused on tiny details, while missing the big picture. You're focused on the last decision in your tree, glossing over all the wrong-turns you made getting there.

The evidence for every argument here is in what happened next. Going in reverse chronological order, the river shows that we should have sized up on turn and flop. The flop and turn show that we should have played raise or fold pre.

Not sure if this will be persuasive, but within this thread, there are at least four or five posters who routinely argue with each other - me, Pablito, Yamihere, Deuceblocker - we routinely go at each other, and yet here we're all unanimous in our views about this hand, along with just about everyone else who's posted in this thread.

The one voice of dissent is Submersible. And while I'll concede to his point that the pre-flop call can be +EV, it was only because we supposedly had a skill edge post-flop, which isn't supported by how this hand was played.

Like I said, if you continue to ignore your early street mistakes, and instead focus on late street decisions, you'll continue to bleed EV. Focusing on your river decision and betting $20 less would have saved you $20. Focusing on every decision leading up to it might have added a few hundred to your stack.

Sorry, but this isn't evidence. You're just pointing at one part of the decision tree. I know there are parts of the tree that are worse given the line I took!

Your post doesn't even show that the line was suboptimal. I don't think it was optimal, but even if it were literally played perfectly, what you said could still be true. Pointing at one part of the tree w/o discussing how often it happens doesn't prove anything.

You're not going to see it because it will be <0, but if you look at the exact EV you'll notice that it ia very marginally below 0 and other hands are marginally above zero, with a small difference between them.

I believe I pointed to every decision you made and gave you my thoughts.

I conceded that your pre-flop call could be fine, in this situation. It's not just that one decision that led you astray, and I don't think I was in any way involved in the painfully tedious debate that was had over it.

You posted the hand, presumably because you wanted others' opinions. You got them. But you reject them.

There's no onus on us to prove anything to you with evidence. We have no stake in your results. It's up to you to substantiate your own decisions (to yourself, really, not us), not demand we substantiate our opinions of your decisions.

If you don't want to consider those opinions without us supporting them with evidence, and the results aren't evidence enough, then I'd suggest you put in the work with a solver, using whatever assumptions you want when node-locking your opponents' actions in each node, and seeing what the optimal line would be.

There's just no value in posting your hands if you're only going to listen to those with whom you agree, and no value in anyone else bothering to try and help you.

It's extremely perplexing to me that you bothered to post this hand for discussion if your ultimate position is that you may have lost $20 more than you needed to on the river. Never have so many tried so hard to help so much, for a cause that was ultimately proven to be utterly pointless.

You very much remind me of the women in my wife's family. Reality repeatedly smacks them in the face, yet no matter how many times this is pointed out to them, they simply refuse to accept that they ought to reconsider their actions if they expect different outcomes.

ridiculous post honestly

In general, I think men are worse than women about not listening.

Agree with Doc that almost everyone said preflop was a fold and everyone said flop and turn should be bigger. There are important concepts in terms of what hands are playable and how to play the nuts 3-ways on a dripping wet board. OP seems like a fairly new player and should listen.

River is actually the interesting street. The other streets were obviously badly misplayed.

I would check back the river, but you are betting for value, so I would not go smaller. Plus as OP mentioned, I smaller bet might be bluff raised more. You probably get called by worse more than you get called or checkraised by a flush. You don't get bluff checkraised often, but it is enough that I wouldn't reopen the action to bet half pot.

Understandable perspective. I'm sorry for making you feel frustrated to whatever extent I did.

I agree you you have no obligation for, well, anything really. But uhhhm neither do I have an obligation to be convinced! I didn't make up my standards to annoy you you know. I don't think I've ever found these types of arguments convincing in any thread ever, independent of whether they happened to be pro or contra a line I played. RaiseAnnounced said that I have unusually high standard of rigor for arguments. (Actually he said he thought it was too high, dang.) Anyway that seems true. But idk, I think that's a good thing. At least when it comes to arguments that only mention a part of the tree.

I'm actually totally satisfied with the amount of strategy updates I made based on this thread. (One of my hot takes is that most people fail at poker because they don't improve at all. I think if everyone took in only 5% of advice, but it was the correct 5%, and they actually implemented it, then most players would improve way more than they do. I'm much more worried about accepting wrong advice than I am about accepting not enough advice.)

um, I kinda have to ask about this point. Are you actually suggesting that the result of this hand, like losing to a flush draw, is enough evidence to prove that the line was bad? I was already ??? at this a little when here you opened a point with "this is results oriented, but" and then made an argument from results. It sounded like you had to pay lip service to results oriented thinking being bad but then applied it anyway.

I mean either arguing from the result of a hand is a good approach in poker or not. I think it's not a good approach. And if so then I don't think acknowledging that it's results-oriented makes it a good approach. It's just another instance of just looking at one part of the tree. In any case, the way this hand ended really is not any evidence for me. I play poker full time, I lose and wins tons of hands every day, I posted this hand because I ran into the flush so it's not even an independent data point, it really doesn't make much sense to me to conclude anything from the result.

oohm you noticed that the solver wants to bet 4€ on Flop? Not that I think that proves anything, just that you seem to think it's a really relevant anchor point preflop (even though the EV differences between medium strength hands are actually very small as I keep pointing out) but don't seem to care about solver strategy on the Flop. I said from the beginning that the flop sizing I took was already unusually/exploitatively large.

I don't think you can get anything meaningful from a solver about how to play a 7-way limped pot.

Everyone explained to you why preflop is a fold and flop and turn should be larger. It is not taking it on faith.

It's not, what it is good for though is highlighting that perhaps you're not as good post-flop as you think you are, or sub thinks you are, and pre is actually a fold because you can't make up for the lack of playability purely with your skill. Which was my point all along which you keep ignoring.

I understand you need mathematically proven evidence before you accept any of this so I accept you'll just ignore it all. That's fine. It's hard to mathematically argue with ''I think there's 3 categories for bet-sizes and my bet already fits in the top(largest bet-size) category'' when arguing that flop and turn are too small and reasoning why will just be waved away as ''vibes'' or ''trust me bro''.

Actually, Sub told you he thinks pre is fine because ''from experience limping seems to work best.''. The post-flop advice you got was solver based which you admit you hate.

Trying to be as clear and concise as possible...

First, your OP is somewhat confusing regarding the two V's and their positions. I read it as V1 the whale is in the HJ on our right, and V2 the Asian reg is on the BTN on our left. I'm saying this because the flop action seems to indicate that V2 calls our flop bet before V1 does, which doesn't make sense if V2 is in HJ and V1 is on the BTN. Please correct me if I'm wrong about all this, but I've been basing all my posts on the understanding that the whale is in the HJ and the reg is on the BTN. If that's not right, it may change things, though I'm not sure how much.

1. In every position that isn't the BTN or BB, I default to playing raise or fold pre.

2. QTo is mostly just a fold from every position, including the CO. The argument for playing it is that we want to play with the whale.

3. If we want to deviate and play it, I think we should raise, not over-limp.

4. The argument for over-limping is that we're keeping the pot smaller and the SPR higher.

5. The counter-argument is that we're also inviting the BTN and blinds to come along. The pot is going to be bloated and the SPR lower anyway. Given the choice, I'd rather play a bloated pot and low SPR in position and HU as the PFR with a perceived range advantage, not multi-way and in the middle with a capped range.

6. We flop the nuts, but our hand is vulnerable and it's a very connected board that is going to hit everyone's range. We ignored the incentives to push people out of the pot and get this heads up pre. We shouldn't ignore this incentive again, since it's become larger. If the rationale for over-limping was that we can target the whale who'll be calling too wide and not folding enough, let's size up for value, and charge all the draws and worse value hands that want to continue.

7. We ignored the incentives to size up with our flop bet, and got an amazing brick turn. We really ought to size up for value now, after missing value pre and on the flop.

There were multiple reasons I mentioned being results oriented. It's not simply that someone made a flush and you lost.

One reason is that I think the result of someone making a flush supports the suggestion we size up with our flop and turn bets, to target all the inelastic hands in our opponents' ranges on the flop. Not just flush draws, but also all the 2P and pair + draws our opponents will have here.

Another is that even if no one made a flush, I think that result would support sizing up with our flop and turn bets, to maximize the value of playing a speculative hand pre-flop. They're either going to shut down when the flush comes in and they don't have it, or they'll shut down with their bricked draws, or the pot will just be smaller, and in any scenario, it'll be harder for us to get max value when we barrel off.

Last, if we believe those last two reasons are true, then both cast doubt on our rationale for over-limping with this hand pre-flop, rather than folding or raising. The flop and turn decisions don't support the rationale for playing this hand pre.

This hand and the suggestions made involve concepts like equity denial and equity realization, multi-way defense burdens, multi-way betting and calling thresholds, and probably some other concepts I've overlooked. To focus a lot of attention on pre-flop equity while overlooking the other relevant concepts at play seems myopic.

To be blunt - it's problematic to focus on our pre-flop equity and claim a post-flop skill edge, but then fail to take into account all these other concepts, and ultimately fail to actually demonstrate the skill edge we perceive having.

I don't think any of this requires solver output to support. It's all just based on logic. If logic isn't enough without a sim to support it, then I'd suggest you should just run sims with assumptions that fit the situation, and skip posting the hand. Run a six-way sim with a bunch of super-wide ranges, and see what the solver suggests you do on each street.

Or, maybe just say in your OP that no one should bother offering any opinions if they're not accompanied by a solver output, so that we don't waste time trying to persuade you with logic alone.

None of this is logically flawed. There's no appeal to authority or straw man. It's not simple "trust me, bro." But for one voice of dissent, the feedback here is unanimous, from people who play higher stakes and are very theoretical in their approach and people who play lower stakes and never look at solvers. We all agree this hand is just a hot mess.

Do what you like, vis-a-vis posting hands here. It just seems to me that you're limiting the value you gain if you reject logic in favor of solver output, particularly when solver output is based on logic. Since I can't memorize solver outputs for every conceivable scenario, I prefer to understand the logic so that I can employ it in game.

Best of luck to you.

Agree and want to emphasize the point being made here, relating back to the cognitive dissonance. Pablito nails it.

OP, you sometimes want to use solvers to justify your play, and you want us to provide you with proof (I assume solver outputs) to justify our suggestions. But you'll ignore solver outputs when you decide to make exploitative plays, and you justify those decisions using your own logic.

Don't even get me started on Sub saying "I can't prove this, but..." and then dismissing everyone else's posts as "trust me, bro."

If there's a cause of frustration felt by me and others here, it stems from your wanting to have things both ways. You say your deviations from GTO are based on logic, but then demand something more than logic from those suggesting a different course of action.

While you started out suggesting the only interesting decision is the river, I suspect you had your doubts about your earlier street play. It just seems like you have difficulty admitting you made some mistakes, and difficulty accepting critiques of your play.

v odd thread to me. everyone seems to be taking the whole conversation very personally

if you don't have any kind of math / proof for your ideas and play (the) low(est) stakes (possible), realistically why would anyone blindly trust what you're saying? it would be like going to the gym and taking lifting advice from someone benching the bar. is it possible they have good ideas? maybe but empirical evidence suggests they don't. and if you want to be taken seriously you're going to need to show your work. you guys seem to get your ego involved when you get told this which has led to 90 posts of screeching about nothing in this thread. i thought op was open to my feedback and honestly i wish i tried harder on the sim i posted (i think v2 has a flush more and v1 has a flush less than initialy ranges suggested) but i thought we proved fairly conclusively what river vb ranges *could* be supposed to look like.

@doc for a guy who has made threads (and handwaved away feedback) of 8bb isos from hj with 43ss and multiple hhs of coldcalling 10+bb 3bets out of position it may be worth figuring out why her overlimping for 1bb in the co triggers you so much.

its ok for people to have different opinions re poker strategy. realistically you guys ignore half of what i say in every thread despite me showing solves for it. the point of the forum should be to get better, not to convince other people of your views. even if everything you wrote in this thread is totally right (it isn't), who cares if she doesn't listen lol

do you think you can get anything meaningful from a docvail / deuceblocker / freecard / yamihere essay?

I read the ATs thread she referred to and the opposite of ''open to feedback'' was going on there.

Not asking her to blindly trust what I'm saying, I just find it amusing both of you ignore the 1 piece of empirical data we can't ignore. OPs hand(and hands before this) showing quite obviously she won't be playing QTo well 6-ways. By your own logic, what would be a fairly minimal -EV call at worst pre ended up with a fairly huge error on the river? My guess is, many more mistakes will be made post-flop playing junk-ish hands.

Again, not sure who you're talking about but I'll speak for myself, I don't ignore half of what you say, quite literally the opposite, I've asked specifically for your input in some threads because I'm curious what solver says when I am not able to solve it myself.

Not sure if anyone made this point yet, but I'm fine with moving on lol. This has been highly unproductive.

yeah i mean hands posted on here are going to be extraordinarily weighted towards spots with uncertainty / errors. i dont think making a mistake in a weird node with abnormal ranges necessarily means postflop disadvantage. i thought the hand was good enough to bet small with initially fwiw.

i mostly posted because i thought she was getting dogpiled by a few overenthusiastic posters and am also fine with moving on

We simply disagree with you and OP, Sub. It isn't personal. And we're not triggered.

Yes, I've been stubborn about accepting feedback on occasion. It's a character flaw I've been working to improve. I think it makes me uniquely able to recognize a similar flaw in others, and at the risk of being called a kettle, I'm not wrong when I accuse the pot of being black.

I don't know OP. I'm not invested in her success, beyond a vague notion of sort of wanting to see anyone who participates in this forum do well, and if possible, improve, assuming that person isn't just a total dick, in which case, f**k 'em. For the same reasons, I'm not upset by anything she actually does in game.

If there's any emotional aspect of posting to this forum, it's the understandable frustration of sincerely trying to help someone who professes to want help, but then that person refuses to even consider the advice being offered. It's not that she doesn't listen, it's that she asked for input, AND doesn't listen.

Beyond her stubbornness, I'm willing to believe she's a wonderful human being. No doubt better than me. But I'm an a$$hole, so the bar isn't set very high.

There's an additional layer of eye-roll that results from your habit of dismissing every / any opinion that isn't derived from a sim, but that seems to be hard-coded into you, not something that can be over-ridden. Speaking only for myself, I've come to accept it as the cost of receiving the genuinely good input you've repeatedly proven capable of providing. So, you get a pass.

a more diplomatic response than i deserved tbh

Just a suggestion here, sorry if it offends you, but somehow I feel kind of compelled to say this after reading some of your remarks in this thread about women: You might also need to work on your mansplainy and rather misogynist attitude. I know these are buzz words that might make me look like some sort of snowflake or whatever, but I can live with that. To be honest I genuinely think you're well-intentioned, but I also think you should have been called out for these unnecessary generalisations that had nothing to do with anything, but as it turned out, no one did that, so I felt the need to do it myself.

Not offended in the least. Good on you for speaking up. I was wondering if anyone would, and when.

I disagree, obviously, but I respect your taking a stand on principle. Moral courage, even if it's misguided, is better than no courage at all.

I adore women. Worked with many in the military who were more warrior than some of the weak men I encountered. I was raised by a single mom. Generally get along with the women I work with, blah, blah, blah.

My wife's family is of German heritage. The women in her family are remarkably stubborn, beyond any and all reason. If OP is a German woman, it's not unreasonable for me to wonder if the trait is common among German women.

It isn't misogynistic or anti-whatever to notice another person's traits and wonder if they're learned habits or genetically derived. If someone noticed some trait of mine, and wondered if it was due to some demographic factor, whatever that might be, I wouldn't necessarily jump to the conclusion that the person wondering is condescending to me because of my age, gender, race, whatever.

OP's stubbornness doesn't make me feel any ill-will towards her, no more than I feel towards my wife or her family. I don't think I was anything other than courteous to her, nor did I say anything objectively demeaning about her, aside from noting her stubbornness. If anything, I think I've demonstrated remarkable patience.

Her responses do lead to the same exasperation I feel trying to point out to my wife and the women in her family that they're walking demonstrations of Einstein's definition of insanity, doing the same thing repeatedly yet somehow expecting different results.

She's allowed to be stubborn. I'm allowed to notice it and wonder why. You're allowed to take a stand on principle. I'm allowed to point out that there isn't one to stand on here.