Top 2P facing a nit-reg from OOP

Clear as mud.

Something I've recently been noticing more is how inelastic low stakes players are pre, especially if you gradually start increasing the game size by nudging up the pre-flop raise frequency and raise size.

I'll sit down in a game where people are opening to $10-$12. I'll start opening to $15. Pretty soon, they're all opening $15. I make it $20, pretty soon, they're all opening to $20. If I 3B to 4x, they're not folding any more than they would if I 3B to 3x. They only over-fold when you make it REALLY painful for them to call.

But none of them are able to adjust their ranges appropriately in real time. So the fish who was auto-calling a $10 open with JTo is still calling the $20, but now they're getting stacked post, whereas before they were only torching $50-$60 by floating too wide with whack-a$$ 1P combos and BDGSSD's.

This is confirmed by some of the stuff I've been watching on YT. They start out really inelastic pre, and get more price-sensitive on each subsequent street.

So, to your point about them being able to reasonably deduce something from my pre-flop opens - they're not. My 3B size was a hard exploit. We had an EP limper who wasn't limping EP just to fold to a single raise, and maybe not a small 3B. We had a MP nit-reg who opened to $15 over the limp and looked nervous doing it.

I don't care what two specific cards I have. If I 3B there, I'm going huge, because I don't want to play OOP and multi-way against two poorly defined ranges. I'm either going to smash the flop or I'm going to x/f when I whiff (and curse myself for 3B'ing trash like ATo, maybe).

I'll vary my raise sizes based on the position I'm opening from, and the reads I have on opponents who limped or are left to act in the blinds, or the sticky guy on my left, or the guy who over-defends his BB. But they're not able to guess I have KK or 65s because I 3B 4.5x from the BB as opposed to just 4x or whatever.

It's 1/3. This V is probably one of the more solid players in the local pool, yet he still has crazy leaks.

BXB is often viewed as a bluffy line. So, yeah, if we c-bet flop, and then check turn, we may get more calls on the river. True enough, as far as it goes.

But we're typically c-betting flop for a small size. And we don't know what the turn card is going to be. The turn will sometimes change the board texture such that we'll want to continue betting for equity denial, so there goes our plan to BXB.

Even if the turn is a brick, the pot is still going to be fairly small getting to the river. If we want to get stacks in, we may need to over-bet. This guy is sticky, but is he going to be THAT sticky? We don't know. What if we check turn, and he bets? Are we x/r'ing? If not, are we going to B-X/C-Donk?

I do a lot of checking from OOP as the PFR. Yeah, we lose a street of value, but we get additional information from how our opponents respond, and I'm typically making up for that lost value by sizing up when I make a delayed c-bet on the turn.

Against most recs, who call too much, I'd do more c-betting here, for a small size, expecting them to float too wide. Against players who are more fit-or-fold, I do more checking, especially when I think my table image is LAG. They seem to think I'm always going to start bluffing whenever they check back, and they get fairly sticky with a lot of middling strength hands.

Like, here, if V wants to start betting the flop when I check. That's fine. Let him bet. If he wants to check back to pot control on this dry-as-toast, ace-high flop, with all his AQ/AJ/QQ/JJ and worse, that's also fine. I'm going to size up with my turn bet, expecting him to make a lot of mistakes.

He's going to call with too many hands, and I think he's going to start raising with hands that he thinks are strong but vulnerable, yet still worse than ours. I think it would be hard for him to fold AQ/AJ on turn or river in this XBB line. I think it would be hard for him to resist raising turn with A3/A6/AK when the BDFD appears. I think he could check back flop with TT, but I'd expect him to raise turn when I bet barely more than 1/2 pot.

Been a couple days since the last post.

Thanks as always to everyone who bothered to reply.

A nit-reg who's somewhat tight just raised/called-a-hugenormous-raise with 33 preflop?

GBanana'sreadshaverottedyourbrain,gohomeDoc,you'redrunk,imoG

What GG said. Top 2 vs bottom set at 150bb is going to result in H losing their money pretty much every time. Are you really check or bet-folding to a V ship on the river at that SPR? Me neither.

I'm late to the party and saw the reveal so won't comment on the hand BUT I do think it's worth mentioning that I am not convinced we get called by worse the way we played the hand regardless of our reads.

We're facing a nit-reg who might like bluff-catching too much but how many nit-regs will be calling 93bb river bets with AQ/AJ/QQ/JJ on this run out?

I see what you did there, GG. Well played, sir. Well. Played.

I've found that writing these hands out often helps me work through what happened and find answers to questions I wasn't asking. In this instance, I think the explanation for what happened here can be found in the reads.

I truly didn't realize how sticky he'd be pre in this spot. I don't know if my prior read of him being a nit-reg was simply wrong, or if he was in fact tilted and I didn't realize how tilted, or if my image was even more LAG than I may have suspected.

I thought I was doing a pretty good job ranging him on every street. Even if I considered he might not fold all his low PP's pre, I think I'd probably take the same line I did, at least on the flop. Not sure about turn and river.

Not sure if I said this earlier, or just thought it, but...I went over this hand in my head multiple times, looking for an alternative line.

"Fold pre" - doesn't solve much. If I 3B AK and the flop is AK3, we end up in the same place.

"Just call pre" - okay. The EP limper probably comes along, and I have to figure out what to do with T2P on the flop. If I'm thinking clearly, I think donking out on the flop is the correct play, and I don't see how I escape, unless V raises HUGE, which I don't think he'd do, when he's trappy. I think I still go broke, even if I flat pre.

"Bet flop" - wouldn't seem to avoid disaster. I'm not folding T2P to a flop raise. I don't think I'd slow down and check turn if I bet flop and he just calls. I'd probably over-bet turn on the 6d. I don't see how I'm getting away from it on the river if I bet flop and turn. Maybe if I bet flop and turn small, and check river, I can fold if he bets huge.

"Bet flop / check turn" - didn't really think about it until now. It's interesting. If I c-bet flop small, and check turn, I wonder if he would check back to continue trapping, or bet his hand for value. If he checks back, I might check the K river, and possibly find a fold if he bets huge. If he bets turn small, I'm just going broke if I x/r. If I could somehow figure all this out in-game, and check-call a small turn bet, I might be able to x/f to a big river bet on that K.

"Check again on turn" - I spent a lot of time thinking about a line that checks flop and turn. I think he has to bet turn with most, if not all of his range, if I check twice. I'm not sure what size he'd use. If I had the foresight to know he wouldn't fold all his low PP's pre, I suppose I could argue that I wouldn't x/r a small bet. I can't even force myself to imagine folding to a large bet. If I x/c turn, I might be able to x/f river, but maybe not, when my read was that he'd bluff when opponents showed weakness by checking to him.

"Bet-fold river" - C'mon. We don't have the stack depth.

"Check-fold river" - This is the question you're asking me, I think. Could I x/f river if he ships it? I don't know. Definitely not an easy fold. If I don't know he can show up with 33/66, I'd have to put him on TT or AK, and never worse AX, not even A6/A3. Sitting here thinking about it, I might actually get to the river with that read, and find the super-disciplined x/f.

The problem with x/f'ing river goes back to my read. I thought his range was heavily weighted towards AQ/AJ, and worse AX, including slivers of A6 and A3. I don't know if he'd bet any of those hands when I check, so I'd only be checking to check-fold, not check-call.

So checking river means only getting one street of value after flopping top 2P, or possibly folding the best hand, if he ever does bet a worse hand for value. We'd need to be very certain he's never betting worse for value.

I don't know. I've been making a concerted effort to play my absolute best game in recent sessions, and I don't like chalking big losses up to bad luck. If we're saying this is just an unavoidable cooler, I may reconsider if I even want to play anymore.

Thanks for chiming in. I think you make a valid point, which I was sort of alluding to in my post above, and which I was apparently typing as you were posting.

I'm not convinced we get called by worse on the river. I thought it was possible he'd sigh-call with AQ/AJ, if he thinks I have bluffs in range, and maybe also with whatever slivers of A6/A3 he may have.

I guess my implied question here is, do we / can we ever check-fold (or bet-fold) river? I'd think we'd have to be really certain he never bets worse than AT for value, and he would never bluff.

I think I had a decent read on him. I'm not sure I would have been able to dial it in to that extreme in real time.

If you flop top two 150BB deep in a 3bet pot and don't go broke you've probably got some major leaks in your game.

I think the challenge here is the title. The description doesn't read nit. When I think Nit, I think GG, and on no planet is GG playing like this or getting overly sticky.

Maybe. I dunno. I was thinking about it after my last post. I really want to get to the point that I could x/f river, knowing he has no bluffs or worse value bets.

That's totally fair. YOLO! shoving river for near pot does tend to compress their calling range...

I'm just pointing out to Doc that going B/b/b gets it in too, and is what I was advocating, then H'd be just as screwed. It's just a cooler/get coolered situation.

Me neither, not as played at least. Like Nh,gg said if you go bet/bet/shove you always get stacked and I'd be fine with that line but as played with the size of the river shove, I'm not sure worse calls.

I think approaching poker like this is a major leak. I also wasn't advocating for not losing 150bb with top two pair, I was making a point that as the hand was played, I don't think worse hands will call a 93bb river shove.

Yeah fair point.