Flopped Straight

Something that's going to happen one time out of five should not surprise you. It's annoying, but not startling or a sign of something being wrong. You want the fish to call you when not getting the right price. That's how you make money. The joy and frustration of poker is that sometimes they win anyway. Joy because them sucking out occasionally is part of what keeps them coming back and calling at bad odds. The frustration because we tend to think of our EV in these situations as all the chips, because we'll usually win them, but it's actually 80 of the chips because 20% of the time V will win.

No. You get value.

Yes

All you can do is maximize your EV. There's no way to keep the 2s from coming OTR. Yes, you could overbet jam the flop every time you have the nuts and usually get folds, but you'd lose a ton of value, and you'll still lose the whole thing sometimes. Coolers happen. 20%ers are nothing. I lost what was effectively a 10K pot (difference between first and second) in a tournament once when V had a 3.2% chance when the money went in. It doesn't mean that I made a mistake.

This is not a bad beat rant.
If I hadn’t posted this, it would be long forgotten. Just another hand….

Theme
When I flop the nuts, but it can be outdrawn

Takeaway so far…
I should focus on getting value from my hand and not worry about someone catching up.

I think I’m always looking for a ‘magic answer’ when the truth is right in front of me.

I don’t know how to explain it, but I see this coming sometimes. I know (gut feeling) my made hand won’t be good by the river and I wonder how to deviate. It’s like I see it coming, but can’t escape.

Should I forget instinct and focus on math?
Treat it like blackjack, because it appears that there are no good deviations anyway.

No, it really isn't. It's often unknowable, but it's not subjective. The part that is subjective is "how will V react to certain actions with certain parts of his range?" Even that is generally objective (to him), but it is so impossible to know that it might as well be subjective.

But sometimes the answer is very knowable. I've had people shove and then show me their hand, for example.

Yes. Instinct can be good for ranging your V or getting a feeling for how they might react, but it has no value in terms of odds.

It's subjective to the extent that the highest EV play may depend on our assumptions, which are driven by how we interpret our observations. But based on those assumptions, the highest EV play is logically objective, whether we see it or not.

Confirm your assumptions, and follow them to their logical conclusions, you'll find higher EV plays.

V is a rich, sticky, whale (observation => interpretation). He's likely to under-fold on every street, and be relatively inelastic compared to the rest of the player pool, even facing big bets (interpretation => assumption).

Getting more money in on the flop when we're nutted is going to objectively be higher EV almost regardless of our reads. Bigger pots getting to the turn lead to bigger turn bets.

If our read is accurate, then getting more money in on the flop when we're nutted is inarguably the highest EV play. The fear of not getting paid with the nuts should be supressed in favor of confidently exploiting our opponent's observed leaks.

If we're afraid that they over-fold when we show aggression, then we should be over-bluffing (are you?). But we already established that V is sticky. He's not a good guy to bluff, because he calls big bets. He's a good guy to get max value from when we have a nutted hand.

You gave us this description. But you failed to exploit him based on it...

Shoulda potted it on the flop, or x/r'd huge.

If you can't admit you overlooked the highest EV play, in favor of lamenting a bad outcome that had a 20% probability, you're wasting your time here.

There are things to discuss here, but not really in the way you've written it out. (but I spent 15m+ typing anyway, so enjoy...)

If we had perfect reads on V and knew what he had and that he'd call turn, you played it well. So /thread ?

For a more general discussion ... eh, I like lead flop for 15 (or even 25) much more than x/r ... because after the x/r I think you condense a lot of V's range into (strong) draws and/or strong value, where some people might include 6s5s in that range. You've kind of announced that you have J9+, so people will often continue with hands that can outdraw that but will fold J6 and maybe AJ. And that range for you is pretty much correct (or even too wide) because it's difficult for H to bluff raise into a 60% pot bet and two calls OOP with a bunch of money behind. Also given preflop a bunch of randoms will have 9 combos. of J9 and 16 combos. of QT, so you'd be perceived to need to find a huge number of bluff combos.

Given that I don't mind turn shove, because Kx hits some parts of the draw range (like here), and most draws are putting in $0 on brick rivers, and even medium value like AJ aren't going to call big turn and payoff a river shove on a brick enough of the time. So the only way more money goes in on the river, is if V hits or if you check and V bluffs. It also annoys V's a lot when they expected to get to a river with their flop call.

Also because of above flop ranges when you x/r ... make it a bit bigger, so you get more value when you shove turn and they fold. When it gets back to you the pot is 25+15+15+15 (70), so I would tend to start thinking around $80 then with one call you have 1.5x shove on a turn brick.

Jam flop? Don't do that. Your goal is win the most money.

Yes, I think the turn bet is too big, but your villain put over 100 bb into the pot on the turn with top pair and the NFD. That's wonderful! He hit his draw, that happens. You will take any all in with 80% equity 😀

It would be better to bet $100-125 on the turn, and then shove all bricks on the river. Much easier to get all the money in.

This time I was surprised at villain’s hand and that should never happen. I should have known his range better. Other than doc, who always thinks my play is terrible, most people acknowledge I was able to get the money in good, and got rivered.

But the times when I do see the potential to be outrun and my instinct tells me it’s about to happen, there’s really nothing I can do. This is the time to ignore the gut and play the odds. My gut could be wrong, but the math is always the math.

I appreciate the discussion
My leak was being startled by the result. I was already stacking the chips in my head. I probably knew the answers you’all are giving, but my failure to see it coming got me posting.

The thought process is so important in this game and that’s why I’m here.

As a defensive football coach, there were no surprises just take away what they do best. I don’t like surprises, and I don’t like mistakes, but I do make them.

Can anyone tell me how you take away what villain does best? That would be an interesting discussion.

Would have opened pre. Raise on the flop, we are not blocking anything with a straight.

Easy. What V does best is make a lot of money outside of poker so he does not care whether he is making a or -ev call.

As usual, there's so much to unpack in a FreeCard's thinking, but I'll attempt it...

Overall, I don't think we played the hand well at all. I think we're too loosey goosey and playing like everyone else at the table preflop. I think we should have either donked large or check/raised large on the flop. Turn is probably ok but i don't think we should have left ourselves with such a large sizing.

But, as usual, I find many things in the thought process that seem at best odd... and at worst a brilliantly trolled alt-account repping an OMC type thinking, although I truly (naively?) don't think that is the case.

FWIW, if I've mathed right, if our shove on the turn ended up taking it down, we win on average $155. But if our shove on the turn is called by AKss, we win on average $329 (my numbers seem different than G's, not sure where the discrepancy is?). So, from a purely results oriented viewpoint, we should be absolutely fistpumping when our shove on the turn gets called here as our EV is more than doubled versus when our opponent folds in this exact spot.

Does your cash game have some sort of weird rule where you can't BI again?

But if we're steaming / tilted / shaken / just not feeling it / etc. after losing a decent sized stack, then, yeah, ok, it probably is best to walk away from the game today as we're likely not in a good enough mental state to play well. But losing our stack in front of us is part of poker, so we should perhaps instead try to learn to shake that off better.

A constant theme in your posts is overjamming mediocre hands to win pots (never thinking we're going to get called), although often with a hand (a mediocre one with showdown value) where it doesn't make any sense to do so (where it's a disaster those times we do get called). Admittedly this isn't the situation here at all (as there are good reasons to overjam with the nuts as we want the call). But overall it's about winning money, not winning pots.

This is another constant theme in your posts. Everyone here is on their own point in their own poker journey and simply stating how they, based on their point in their journey, would play the situation. You can evaluate for yourself whether you think their input is valuable to you or not. But I see no reason why you constantly have to bring up the fact that you see some as helpful and some as not.

You don't think giving him terrible odds of 1.5:1 to have him chase his 4:1 draw was enough to "protect your hand"?

You're thinking you might be better off pot controlling when you have the stone cold nuts?

I mean, I guess you could have turned your hand face up on the table after you shoved and declared "I currently have the nuts". That would probably greatly reduce the times your nuts get run down, so do you think that would be good strategy?

Hate to break it to you bud, but you're not clairvoyant. If you were you'd be sitting on a sunny beach sipping pina coladas and living off all your lottery winnings.

For whatever reason, the pain of losing a big hand/session always seems 10x as painful as the feeling of joy we experience when winning a big hand/session. So when big stacks go in we get anxious about experiencing that pain. The pain was going to come 20% of the time here. So 20% of the time you'd be right about that gut feeling ("I WAS RIGHT, I KNEW IT!"), but 80% of the time you'd be wrong (and you would have moved on with not so much as a second thought regarding the inaccuracy of your gut). Gut feelings, at least with regards as to how the cards are going to run out, have zero place in poker. You can argue they have some place regarding picking up subliminal tells / information, but they mostly fall at the very bottom of the list of information in terms of importance.

Gnothatin',justsayin',goodluckG

Free, you remind me of someone I played a tourney with last week. It’s a live $40 buyin with unlimited rebuys, so you can well imagine how many people call with crap hands, especially early on. Well, this guy, second hand, with $100/100 blinds, jams $40K. Obviously everyone folds and he shows his AA. He says “I always get my aces cracked; I’m not letting it happen again.” Well, yeah it worked - he won a whole $400 or so chips with them. He did it again later (about $50K jam at 200/400 blinds) and again it worked - he didn’t get cracked.

You could always just jam massively when you flop the nuts. YouÂ’ll rarely get sucked out on. Hopefully you can see why thatÂ’s a horrible strategy though.

Mine was only value of the shove getting called itself, not the rest of the pot.

For the record, I said your turn shove was fine.

I think I've been pretty fair, and always courteous and / or respectful in my commentary of your play. What criticism I've given was not only intended to be constructive, I frequently went out of my way to couch it in terms no reasonable person would find objectionable.

I recently told you I was giving up on trying to help you. And yet, here I am again, freely offering sincerely well-intended observations and advice, without having any stake in the outcome. I may have worked harder than anyone here to help you improve, and ironically I'm probably also the biggest recipient of your ire.

You seem to find any / all critique of your play as overly harsh or unfair, if not a personal attack and an affront to your prowess as a player. You say you care about the thought process, but you refuse to let anyone challenge yours.

It's been pointed out to you, by me and others, that despite your requests for feedback, you frequently seem overly defensive of your play. You often want to limit the focus to a single decision, rather than accept others' opinions that earlier decisions may have been sub-optimal, leading to a point where you lacked good choices for what to do next.

I think it's best if I admit defeat, and that I'm ill-equipped to help you, for whatever reason. I should give up, so you can get whatever value you can from others here, without my unhelpful contributions. No hard feelings at all. I truly wish you the best, and I'm sorry for my failures of communication.

I am nothing like that guy
Getting value is an obsession, but thanks for calling me a stupid player - this place is really something

Agreed. The average player has to be well less than break even in a raked game, so there's plenty of room between that and a good player making 10 bigs /hr. Being above average is not necessarily a profitable player.

You are in denial. Pretty much everything you claim to be in this thread, you're not. And everything you claim to not be, you are.

You are results oriented. This whole thread is about you being results oriented. Suggest youbtake a break from this thread and come back to it in a week and read your comments about trying to get a guaranteed outcome.

You aren't clairvoyant. Your gut feels are the same tension we all feel when we just know our AA is going to get run down.

You seem to feel entitled to the pot based on a nut flop. Nope. I know, "get used to it" sounds cold and harsh, but it's an essential skill of winning players to learn how to handle their emotions when the poker gods curse them.

You aren't obsessed with getting value. If you were, you would be happy to get called by dog hands knowing you'll lose a minority portion of them but that it maximizes your winnings in the long run.

I wish you the best and much success.

When you discuss having the nuts and how you can get someone to fold so they don’t suck out on you, that is the opposite of being obsessed with getting value. That is being obsessed with winning this particular pot and not suffering a bad beat.

You also need to realize (and I know this is the internet so nuance isn’t allowed 😀😉 there is a very wide area between “you played everything perfectly” and “you are a stupid player”. In this specific hand, it worked out about as well as it could for you. You didn’t play it badly. But you did make some mistakes, especially in your sizings, that led to an awkward turn shove sizing. Likewise, I was using the guy I played against as a hyperbolic example of what you were talking about in this thread - avoiding bad beats. We should not be looking to avoid bad beats; that was my point, not that you are a stupid player. I thought that ridiculous example would make the point obvious.