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PokerStars Game #15537259733: Tournament #78455880, $30+$3 Hold'em No Limit - Level II (15/30) -

2008/02/25 - 05:17:51 (ET)
Table '78455880 46' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Villain (2945 in chips)
Seat 2: (3250 in chips)
Seat 3: Hero (2505 in chips)
Seat 4: (430 in chips)
Seat 5: (3920 in chips)
Seat 6: (2350 in chips)
Seat 7: (3050 in chips)
Seat 8: (6070 in chips)
Seat 9: (2480 in chips)
Seat 2: posts small blind 15
Hero: posts big blind 30
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [Th Jd]
Seat 4: folds
Seat 5: folds
Seat 6: calls 30
Seat 7: calls 30
Seat 8: calls 30
Seat 9 folds
Villain: calls 30
Seat 2 calls 15
Hero: checks
*** FLOP *** [7c 2s Tc]
Seat 2: checks
Hero: bets 150
Seat 6: folds
Seat 7: folds
Seat 8: folds
Villain: calls 150
Seat 2: folds
*** TURN *** [7c 2s Tc] [8d]
Hero: checks
Villain: bets 420

Button is tight-agg over a small sample, no real reads. What does the size bet mean on the turn after he flat calls the flop bet? Why would he do this? You have lost a couple of pots but have been neither excessively aggressive nor weak.

If you were hero, what would your move be?

I don't like you leading out on that flop with a very weak hand against multiple players.

I check call on the flop. Check-raise the turn as played..

How would you play turn if you had check called flop, Boldie?

I don't know really. Just two of us in the hand I probably check call the turn as well if I check call the river.
It's a pot control/bluff on the river (If the club comes I always lead out) option. It's a tricky situation you're in and not a very nice one (not your fault obviousy..just the way cards go)..10 J out of position is a massive pain in the neck against someone who got in cheap.


I have been known to just fold on the flop here as well as early on in a tourney I don't like to loose too many chips with a weak hand.

This sort of situation is the weakest part of my game (and I have plenty of weak parts) so I try to make it easy for myself.

Yeah, it's tricky. But I don't like just passively folding - that way I often end up needing to push when shortish and having to race. So let's move away from hero's hand to villain's for a moment.

What does his call and then pot sized bet on the turn represent?

If he's potting the turn to get me off a draw, then why didn't he raise the flop to get me off a draw?

If he's just made a straight, why would he want to scare me off by potting it?

I agree.. If he made a straight on the turn here he would bet less. I still bet if i make the straight here but for pot buiding purposes only.

He could have the FD here and just bet the turn because he has position on you and you checked to him which he views as weakness. (in which case the checkraise should work if you ask him for all/most of his chips)

I have seen people play 99 this way. He calls the flop as there is only one over card.

A flopped set is a possible as he could very well play that this way. His turn bet being pot building. (in this case my "check raise" advise just cost you your entire stack...sorry)

Ace ten..possible but he probably would have reraised you on the flop.

89 is of course possible...

K10/Q10 more likely than A10 IMO if he's a poor player...less likely than the set or FD IMO.

For me it's a set, 89...or a flush draw. In one case check raising on the turn will win you the pot (if he's on the FD)...in the other a bet on the river if the club comes
would maybe give you the pot. (if he's on the set)

with the 89...well any bet would take it.

After a bit of thought I will just give this up.  His range is too wide i.e. it contains drawy hands that could be monsters, could be semi bluffs that check raising prob just gets us in when we are beaten so we are effectively putting our whole stack at risk for a 400 pot.  Check calling both streets does get some money in on the river against bluffs I think, but prob not often enough.

I don't mind betting out at this flop, your hand is likely to be good more often than not.

I check/fold the turn to this size of bet.

i think villian is raising the flop with any hand that would call a CRAI on turn so jammmmmmmm

Are you bluffing here or do you think your hand is best?

I jammed thinking I had the best hand as per actionman's thinking...

well you weren't bluffing - just trying to find out if actionman would do this with complete air (ignoring the fact that he would also have to have bet the flop into multiplayers with air) - which would be an interesting move.

Yeah i considered the crai but aren't we turning top pair into a bluff.The only hand we are getting value from unless villain is a real fish is 10 9, or some pretty big combo draw.

I like b/f flop and c/f turn.

Hate cr ai on turn, any decent villain is gonna recognise ur hand aint all that unless you have dinged 108/Js9c which are both tiny parts of your range. I guess most average oppos this works a lot.



Obv bluffing. This is the whole turning a made hand into a bluff thing again, but iv never had a problem with it.

Excuse me pswnio for hijacking the thread, but who would take Actiomans line with 53c or a bigger draw?

It doesn't really matter whether he recognises your hand ain't all that, does it? Regardless of what he thinks your hand is, he still needs one to call a raise, and the whole premise of you raising would be that you put villain on either air or a draw.

I wouldn't necc c/r with 53c, though, Longy, even if I don't put him on much. If he IS on a draw, and it happens to be one he calls with, and one of his cards has your 5 beaten if the river is a blank, then you have significantly lower equity than if you have a pair, no?

We are not bluffing by CRAI on the turn we are pretecting our hand vs various draws. By CRAI as opposed to making a commited bet on the turn we are giving our opponents the chance to semi bluff the flush draw, which they cannot call if we shove, we are also CRAI to represent a stronger hand than we have.

Again I ask, with the flush draw out, what hand is villain calling on the flop that he can call a CRAI with on the turn with. If villain has AT/KT  then would probably raise the flop, if he has a set likewise. Personaly i like leading the turn and folding to a raise... If he has a set of 88 which is possible then hard lines, he could even have 89c or 96c or some combo draw.

I feel check folding the turn is far to weak. As imo he should raise the flop with a flopped set.

The problem with checking the turn after you have bet the flop is that you simply open the door for your oppo to bet.....and most of the time he will. Because of this it is almost impossible to narrow his range any further than what it was on the flop. And what is was on the flop was any pair, any 2 pair, any set, any draw, or even 2 overs.

A lot of these tournaments are quick paced early doors as the wheat becomes seperated from the chaff. So you give an oppo a sniff that you are weak, or the pot is open to be claimed, and your invitation will almost never be turned down.

I think the flop bet is a good one. You have top pair and for a mere 150 chips you have cut the field down from 5 oppos to just 1. This makes life much simpler, puts you on the front foot in the hand, and gives you a much better chance of winning the pot. After making such good headway why check the turn, it just invites the situation you find yourself in, not knowing where you are or what to do.

That said I don't like your oppos pot bet at this point, it's too big for anything he played softly on the flop. The most likely holding for me is 8-9.

Erm not me you that have quoted. I like Alex would rather c/r 53cc here than j10o, turning hands that have showdown value into bluffs im not a fan of.
 

Sorry mate. Meant doubleup.

SURELY the size of his bet helps you to narrow the range?

I don't like betting the turn. I'm trying to control the size of the pot. If I bet and he calls, there are a lot of cards that will look bad to me on the river, and a check call could prove expensive. I'm wanting really to go into check fold mode. But the SIZE of his bet given the call on the flop smells all wrong. Normally I'd insta-fold this robotically, but I decided to tank for a bit and changed my mind.

Thanks to everyone for their analysis, by the way. V helpful. Most of it points to my play being -EV, but there's been some disagreement about both flop and turn, which is always good.

Why is your play -ev

Yes, I agree that his turn bet gives you info. But that said it's early and you don't have much history on your oppo and so the quality of that info can only be speculated at. Even so, I still view his turn bet in the same light as you do pswnio.

Checking the turn to "control the size of the pot" is going to be a tougher strat to prove though.....you are all-in on the turn after you check!. I think betting controls the pot size because it is very unlikely your oppo will raise at this stage.

The problem with checking the turn is that you would normally "insta-fold robotically" to a bet and this means you would be folding the best hand a lot.

He should but that doesn't mean that he always will, he might put hero on a flush draw and want to see a blank turn.  Normally I would think he would raise KT, QT as well, but you never know, certainly your line would fold out these. 

One question though- when you check the turn, how do you know that he is going to bet?

My play wouldn't have been to check the turn, i would have lead the turn. If i decided to check the turn it would be the plan of check/raising. if i had this plan and villian checked behind i would re-evaluate on the river.

But you are giving your "best hand" a great chance of being outdrawn if he checks behind wth his draw which he may well do.  Which might be ok if you are happy to get outdrawn in a small pot.  The thing is though that if I was villain, I would be wondering why you give a hand strong enough to checkraise, a good chance to get outdrawn for the sake of ungauranteed action from me.

The point is that if you anaylse hero's actions. his checkraise cannot have been planned which oddly enough he admits is the case.

My play would have been to bet the turn...

The Checkraise can indeed be planned as imo 85% of the time the villian bets the turn here after we check with any holding.

Why in gods name would you want to lead the turn then if you have the best hand?

Those who would lead on the turn ... how much would you bet, would you fold to a raise, and if called and a non club, non Q and non 6 hit the river, how would you play it? I'm most interested, I think the turn is a real weakness in my game.

Have just looked at stats and almost certainly not a wholly -EV move. Though am not a stats junkie so may have made a mistake.

If you ascribe range to villain as being any two clubs, any set, any overpair, and any ten with a jack or better (reasonable?), then my JT is a 49% favourite. Incidentally, with 53c you'd be 17% against that range. I'm therefore not at all sure that a c/r all in here is indeed turning a showdown hand into a bluff.

Let's assume that I get called 50% of the time and that 75% of those times I am up against a better made hand.

This means that:
50% of the time I win 900
33% of the time I lose 2500 (am 21% to win 75% of the time and 69% to win 25% of the time)
17% of the time I win 2500

This would make it 50:50.

OK, so it's marginal :)

You're right. It wasn't planned. I was going to check fold. But the bet size felt like much more like a draw than any hand that was ahead, so I revised my decision.

That's really my point and my question. Did the bet size feel like that to anyone else? Even if it did, how much weight can we really place on that reading? Whether or not it was planned is by the by. A piece of information changed my decision. Is that wrong?

I think the size of bet could mean the exact opposite, i think villain may well do this with a big hand trying to inflate the pot to get value from the hand, now and on the river.

As for the check raise discussion, its an interesting hand from this point of view. My general feeling is that a hand like top pair should almost never be played like this. We check raise for 2 reasons for value or to gain the most fold equity.

To do this for value our hand must be relative strong compared to our opponents range as our opponent must be willing to still put his money in with a relative strong holding, as our play looks super strong.

The second is to gain fold equity, essentially we can expect villain to fold the same amount of times no matter what our hand is whether its the nuts or 3 high. The interesting bit is what range villain calls with and how our hand plays against that range, thats why check raising all in with draws on the flop, less so the turn is not a bad play as our draws still get there quite abit of the time, even if villain has a set, overpair etc.

Hands like top pair have few ways to improve against a strong range and will have little equity. But do have showdown value therefore we want the bottom part of villains range to be still in the hand. This is normally best done by taking a passive line by check/calling.

Back to the hand, which has a bit of both it has top pair strength but also can improve by hitting the gutshot or making top two pair, or top trips. Im still in favour of siding with its top pair stength if we want to continue.

As said before I still like the check fold best.

no it is not. But you have to ask yourself how reliable that piece of information is when taking into account that you don't know the player.

Why bet the flop? The motivation for doing so is important imo. My reasons would be that....potentially I have the best hand and so check-folding to a bet would not be an option. Also, against 5 oppos you probably wont have the best hand at the end, so you must thin the field. I don't want to check-call, because the bets from the aggressor are going to get bigger through the streets and I am never going to know where I am or what it's going to cost me to get to showdown. So if I don't improve I am check-calling only to check-fold later. And also because I want to be the aggressor.

So if I want to play the hand, which I may not, I feel I must bet. So I bet and get one caller. My bet has successfully achieved the goal of thinning the field to just one flat-calling oppo. Good.

Why bet the turn? The motivation for doing so is important imo. To check the turn my reasons for betting the flop must now be redundant....but why are they? I can't assume I no longer have the best hand because one oppo called. Why would I now check-fold because the  8d arrives when I didn't want to check-fold the flop? It is still possible that I wont have the best hand at the end so I wouldn't mind thinning the field i.e. winning the pot. I also want to put money in with the best hand right? And of course I still see the advantage in being the aggressor.

So I don't get why my tactics would change so dramatically from flop to turn just because one oppo called 150.

All the reasons I bet the flop would still be relevant on the turn.....so I would bet. Furthermore I now have another reason to bet, and that is if I don't, my oppo probably will. So my bet is blocker/value rolled into one. The pot on the turn is 480 so I would bet 320. I don't think my oppo raises here because if he wanted to play a draw aggrressively he would have done so on the flop. If he does come over the top now I figure he had me beat on the flop. I can still get away from the hand....something you can't do when you c-r all-in.

I will probably check-call the river because checking the river gives my oppo a chance to bluff a missed draw which he can't do if I pot-commit with a bet. Calling all-in on the river is getting the same amount of chips into the pot by c-raising all-in on the turn. The only difference is that my oppo may fold a worse hand on the turn....but I may get that worse hand putting all his chips in on the river. It is quite possible a danger card may appear on the river and then it's decision time...but I don't think the  8d on the turn is such a danger card and so continuing with my motivation that leads me to bet the flop is still relevant here imo.

thats obviously not the only difference lol,  c/r allin on the turn gets him to potentially stack off with the draw that you want to bluff you on the river when it misses... and if he folds a worse made hand on the turn, then its highly unlikely he is gonna bet the river with it, as he will probably check it down and get to showdown... so check calling lets you get yourself into a negative freeroll almost


I also think a lot of people are getting addicted to fancy play syndrome, of course you aren't check-raising this turn on a bluff, you have top pair in a very small stakes tournament, the day people fold KJ/QJ with any regularity in this spot is the day that 4+4 equals an ashtray. You c/r here for value and for protection, if he folds a draw you dont lose out much in terms of equity, and people do call with worse made hands.

C-raising all-in on the turn is only ok if you DO have the best hand. If you don't have the best hand you are OUT. So this is the major disadvantage of that play. Also betting the turn doesn't deny your oppo the opportunity to stack off with a draw....he is still free to do that....in fact pushing with his draw is a million times more appealing to him than calling all-in with it.

Moreover you can bet the turn for value/protection as much as you can c-raise all-in for it.

Your check on the turn does allow your oppo a free shot at his draw however....something betting does not.

the same applies if you check/call the river and he shows you a set so i cant see your point.

Yes buddy, if he shows a set we both go out. There are a number of other advantages to betting the turn though and I have highlighted them.

yeah, im not saying that bettin the turn is bad, but I think pushing the turn after we check is far superior to just calling and then check/calling the river.

Absolutely agree, I wouldn't think of check-calling the turn.

ah in that case i apologise, for some reason i thought you advocated calling the turn after we checked and then doing the same on the river.

Am i the only one check raising the flop?

You would certainly find out where you were if you c-rsd into several bods.

I think check-raising the flop is a valid enough alternative.

Personally speaking I bet the flop here because I also bet a set in the same circumstances, and so it's a matter of consistency for me. In addition, I find that early in these tournaments people will call a flop check-raise as readily and thoughtlessly as they will call a bet or they will instantly jam instead. I would be more tempted to use this tactic later when the pots are meatier and the move has more of an impact.

How often do you bet the same players in online comps?



lol, trying to tilt me?

Posted by: Royal Flush

once a week.

Betsizing tells. BIG BETS = BIG HANDS these days. C / F the turn here. He isn't folding the vast majority of the time. And the times you get called and are ahead are lol rare.

It really is kinda simple, it is conceivable that 22, 77, 88, 87, 108, 107 would be limped on the button here preflop. The sick middler J9 just got there. And your opponent is betting like he wants to inflate the pot. Whether he should have raised or folded any of the above hands on the flop is irrelevant. People play bad. So just believe him, move onto the next hand etc, etc.

-----------------

I don't mind checkraising this flop. That said, if all the loot goes in on this flop we are in dreadful shape almost always. ZOMG we have top pair!! It's just not worth getting stacked in this hand.

Looking at a poker situation from your opponent's perspective is useful.

Villain identified our bb flop bet of 150 into a 180 pot as a marginal hand....and he would be absolutely right. So he is now free to call on the button with anything and everything, including floating with complete air, just to see what happens next. We check the turn.....bingo.....Villain pots.

Villain has absolutely NO evidence to suggest we have a hand that is going to stand this bet. We have limped pre-flop, taken a stab on the flop, and now checked the turn. We look weak. In response to that weakness Villain puts in a big bet. He is not betting like he wants to inflate the pot. He is betting like he expects us to fold....and most would.....so a successful play by Villain.

"BIG BETS = BIG HANDS these days" does not accurately account for the massive range of styles you're going to encounter early in a Stars $30 event. In fact, it is such a generalisation I suspect a wind-up.

While it is possible Villain has a hand, it is infinitely more possible that he doesn't.

Betting the turn makes everything clearer.

Christ Mantis, in a $30 tournament the best assumption you can ever make is that people are playing their two cards. Talking about our opponent "identifying our flop bet as a marginal hand that can't stand a turn bluff" or whatever is ludicrous. Don't assume your opponent is sophisticated. Assume he is ABC until you have reason to think otherwise.

When people bet close to the pot on a board that has multiple possible draws (even if it is logiccally unlikely that those draws are in their opponents probable handrange) it is likely that they are betting for protection rather than anything else. As such, just assume this guy has it now - even if he didn't have it on the flop. And fold.

Opponents who think is not a ludicrous assumption to make. In this example if Villain wanted to protect against multiple draws he is free to raise the flop. If Villain wanted to inflate the pot he is free to raise the flop. If he has flopped it, then his turn panic bet doesn't fit with his slow-play flop call. He doesn't slow-play so he can pot when we check.....because this isn't slow-play. It is possible the 8 has improved him to 2 pair and this would be clearer if we bet the turn. Not betting means he can do this with atc. Why bet the flop just to collapse to any resistance? If we believe our hand is this weak check-folding the flop is better imo.

Actually, no, nevermind. There is no point.

your original post was funnier though mate :)