blonde poker forum

Above my level frankly but there were two tez players sitting with 50bb's in the £2/£4 game on Sky with one average okish reg (125bb's) so I can't turn down this value.

Been playing about 10 minutes when Redmond Lee sits down to my left which is annoying as I know he's quite good. Anyway this spot comes soon after.

5-handed: One of the bad players posts his sb and bb utg (yeah, I know) and then checks.

I make it £16 next to go with Ad Jc, Redmond makes it £40 (he's playing like £400ish at this point, same as me, has 3bet a couple of times, my image for him is probably fairly aggro) from the button. Passed back to me, I 4bet to £100 (It looks like he's making a play over what definitely looks like an iso-move from me). He then flat-calls (fml).

Flop: 8h 8d 2h

I check, he checks.

Turn: 7h

I check, he bets £116, I fold.

Should I be playing any different in this spot?

If u decided to 4 bet I think u have to bet out on any dry board

meh i kno what you mean about these spots. i always level myself into thinking they're just making a move with air and then they always have it.

How much did you start the hand with? I'd probably flat pre, cos I think a 4bet isn't gonna get through all that often if you're deep and he's goona peel most of his 3bet range and then yr oop with £200 already in there. it all depends on how deep you are, I don't know whether you can cbet/ call it off, you will probs have 6 outs if he choses to get stubborn with 99 or TT or 77 and could be in ok shape vs flushdraw. If you started with 100bbs, then you have 300 left at this point, I'd cbet 130 and call off the rest.

Even though you're underolled, I think your reasons for sitting down are fine in the first place, but once other good players come and sit down on your left I'd probs just walk away. 

This for me as well TBH. I understand why you 4-bet here but I thought you were after the money of the mugs which means that I would probably not 4 bet against a good player for the reason that Alex just posted.

Even though you're underolled, I think your reasons for sitting down are fine in the first place, but once other good players come and sit down on your left I'd probs just walk away. 

Very much this for me...don't want to add to the value that the good regs might perceive there to be on the table, unless you can really focus on the 2 bad players.

We're only 100bb's effective and I don't want to play a 3bet pot OOP vs a good player since I'm c/fing so much of the time, also I think my hand is beating his range.


Disagree, we only get him to fold A-Q here and even then he might still peel.

I would never leave just cos another good player sat down, I think thats shamefully nitty, just play under-rolled is irrelevant is you can afford to take a shot for 1/2buyins great spot to watch other really good payers, I wouldnt care about addnig value to the table, you can play the game well and even if someone thnks they are better than you doesnt mean you wont beat them this time.

tbh I think without enough history the 4bet pre is prolly where you went wrong, he's good he thinks your aggro etc but I doubt he is 3betting you THAT wide and there i sno way you can 4bet call 100bbs without significant history and 3bet folding is meh and always sets you up to play yucky hands like this OOP, just fold imo

I disagree again, he could be 3betting vwide range vs you if as you say he percieves you to be aggresive, 9Tss, KQ etc he'll fold a lot to a cbet, even if he's folding the worst hand, we still win the pot and don't get bluffed off by checking twice. he could well fold 99/TT even as if he doesnt know us at all, no reason to believe we don't have JJ+ here.

bet/call flop

Building a bigger pot oop and checking twice seems like burning ££££

You have to bet the flop. Gotta rep a big pair surely after you've 4-bet. Even if it's just 1/3 pot.

wp. without a read/history this is absolutely fine.

he's backkkkkkkk!!!!! whoop. though it must be an imposter as you didn't suggest openfolding pre.

spew much?

100bbs deep this is ok isn't it? He bets £130 into £210, guy ships for £300 effective. its 170 to call, pot 510. 3:1 = call no?

he has no history vs our hero and it seems reasonable to assume we'll have JJ+ most of the time and unreasonable to assume we'll fold. Not sure what Redmond jams that we can call off regardless of the price

also  dont think he's 3betting hands like  9h Th /   Ks Qh hands that play really well post flop, with descrbed image of you being aggro I think he'll expect you to be 4betting or folding most of the time (hardly ever peeling) so there is no value to him to 3bet/fold or 3bet/calling hands that play really well vs your opening range but are behind to your 4bets (assume he thinks your 4b range is tighter than AJo)

yeh i see.

It's Redmon fkn Lee, bet 1/3 pot and snap a shove. Or bet 1/3 pot and if he calls reevaluate on turn, I doubt he ever value jams when we bet 1/3 pot on flop.

betting this flop and then doing anything but shove the turn would be so horrible i cringe.

I think his 3-bet range can easily be as wide as, A2s+ A8o+ 65s+ KJo+ and any pair but I think once he calls my 4-bet his range is most likely 99+ AQ+. If I bet the flop, I have to jam the turn and that's just burning money in this spot.

FWIW, I played another hand with him a bit later in the same position where I opened to £12 from CO with Ac Qc and he 3-bet to £28 OTB, I made it £64 and he snap folded.

Disagree, I think he 3bets all these hands, peeling Th 9h when only 100BB's deep even IP is spewy.

whaaaaat? what if there's a fish in the blinds, or you giveup your cbets too often? or you go mental postflop and overplay hand? or you fold too often to a turn raise/river jam? 109hh is THE perfect hand to be peeling with otb imo.

he won't fold pairs anyway, so is c/calling (if he shoves) c/jamming if he bets better to keep in his floating range (very capable of this)

speshly if he thinks you're opening wide but not going to have a reasonably tight 4bet range (he DEFINATLEY thinks you're 4betting tighter than Ajo imo) 3bet folding  Th 9h or  Ks Qd would be ugy and 3b/5b vs you would appear to him to be rele spewy so he would peel these non premium value hands all day long imo, until a dynamic has established where ur peeling more 3bets or 4betting wider

and ye I agree with alex 100% that we cant not jam the turn if we cbet, but i dont see how we can bet/call the flop ever

He's got Kx sooooted.


He could be pounding on you like mad if you're a new name and haven't given him a reason not to yet. He can just be testing you out, Red plays pretty aggro as it is at 6 max with weak players so I would be fine with raise calling and being a stackoffmonster with any piece and or 4 ball getting the money in however he wants. I'd just bet call this board if I bet and he jammed.


You could always sit in with 50bbs too!  Also I personally feel like if you are taking a shot regardless of being underrolled that with the way Red will play against weak fishy players you should be able to create an edge as a competent player aware of what he is doing vs the fish.


what's your Sky name? is it same on your blonde one?

if he's good, he will double float almost everything, jamming river with his air and checking back all pp's and better A high's.

Fold pre.

End thread/

id probs flat 3b pre rest is fine i wouldnt 1 barrel tho expect him to be fucking with you a ton once he flats 4b

I've added an additional condition so I now agree.

far too much emphasis on it being redmond with what we know about him, and nothing considered about what he knows/thinks he knows about you imo, there is no reason for him to be out of line anywhere

fold pre>>>>bet/fold flop, bet turn>>>>dont cbet and give up imo

its a pretty damn good spot for him to be out of line preflop imo also he doesnt always 3 bet AQ here I dont think (and rightly so for several reasons)

I think he's always out of line here personally, if he has them premiums he can show me. We got us an ace blocker.

agreed, I dont think he  would 3b AQ here

everything about this hand makes me think he had a very good hand

we're you calling pre if he jammed?

which is it?

Haven't read the responses but I don't mind your line flops. I prob prefer swallowing on the flop than betting.

You know lolufold but doubt he knows you so I can't see him 3-bet peeling for 25 percent of your stack without the goods here vs a random.

I think I have seen you in the lobby at the 25nl games, if this is true then he could easily be 3betting wide pre and trying to win/own post.

Highly highly doubt lolu will be checking the 25nl games

He analyses them when he's a guest pro.

only once or twice, he won't be watching NL25 games lol.

I think he;'s more likely to just play straight up till he has info

the more I think about this hand the more I think he has  Ahrt  Aspades

it's  Kc Ks or  Kd 5d imo!

very possible. would probs play AA and KK exactly the same in this spot

few other hands make sense to me

we haz AJ sir.

KQhh

4bet pre is pretty horrid. AJo is marginal, against some you can peel against most probably fold pre and against a tiny % 4bet/call.

this is the tiny % i guess.

il lay you 5-1 that he didnt have  Kh Qh

He's flatting KQs with fish behind always imo

I disagree with that tiltybeans

So?

I've played tonnes with him, have you? :p

Not tonnes, I've played a bit with him though.

is this guy God or something?

lol not at all. just a good competent reg.

Just a saint or maybe one of the 12 disciples. Tikay is god obv in the church of sky poker ldo.

You're prob right tho titbeans if you've played loads of hands against him.

Also, I'm just guessing about his hands in this situation as he's not stupid enough to try and 3-bet me.

i dont know how sky plays. in the games i play ppl flat 4bets to try to credibly rep KK/AA. they rarely have those hands.

I agree with this

lulll

Massive jetlag sighs. Nothing much to do this early in the morning, might as well bash out some hand analysis.

Preflop

Dubai is of course pretty much spot on with his succinct analysis ("fold pre, /end thread"), assuming he has wordlessly taken into account hero's bankroll situation and is suggesting we sacrifice a small amount of equity in this hand in order to lower variance and preserve our bankroll, making our future play more profitable on average. However I think if we assume infinite bankrolls and just want to look at the most profitable way to play this hand in a vacuum, there are better lines. Villain can be very wide here BTN vs CO with a ton of dead money in the pot, if we're raise/folding AJo here we're gonna get run over pretty hard in the long run.

Rupert advocates peeling the 3bet pre, this is something I would never do but since Rupert always seems to suggest it, I guess it may be a matter of personal taste/style. The reason I don't like it is because it seems to me to be a pretty big reverse implied odds situation when we hit and it will be very difficult to win the pot when we miss, since a check/shove will be pretty big and besides with any c/r we rep only sets on dry boards (villain will be assuming we 4bet QQ+ I reckon) and get called by so many more pair+draw hands on wet boards. For these reasons I usually 4bet or fold CO vs BTN 100bbs deep.

After Chris 4bets I assume he is calling off, which I don't mind and would probably be doing myself. If we think lolufold has a big exploitable gap between his 3bet and 5bet ranges here (very plausible) then 4b/f becomes way the best line. However, it is burning money if we're wrong, if he is 5bet bluffing at all then 4b/c is essential. For that reason and because I think it is pretty impossible to speculate on villain's 3bet/5betting ranges, all we know about him is that he is a good player with great game selection, I would tend towards trying to play unexploitably, in which case I think we're pretty much indifferent between 4b/calling and 4b/folding. Once he shoves we'll be getting roughly the same odds to call as we have vs villain's 5b range, which could be anything from {JJ+ AK} to {88+ AQ+ with bluffs}. If we're indifferent between calling and folding then I might go back to the lowering variance argument and opt for a fold. Most people at this point are gonna be all "omg 4b/f AJo is SOOO exploitable, ur turning it into 72o", but imo there is nothing inherently wrong with 4bet/folding AJo pre, you can turn hands into a bluff preflop the same as you can on any street, when the situation warrants it, and which exact hands you 4b/f doesn't actually matter so long as you're balanced.

Postflop

I agree mostly with AlexMartin's posts on the postflop play, I think shutting down is ok without history as there is a good chance villain has a ridic strong range, but also he posts that the regs he plays against never have AA or KK in this spot. I would guess that villain's range is either {KK+} or it's entirely stuff like 97s that he wants to own us with. Personally I think we're still repping a strong range and if we don't want to get superowned then AJ should be in our cbetting range. I dunno why cambridgealex wants to bet £130 when £55-65 does the same job, needs to work less often, and then we can fold if we're shoved on (if villain wants to jam in worse hands than AJ after a random 4bets pre and cbets here then good luck to him). If called, I'm shoving the turn, as much for balance as anything else. If we don't have the stomach for this kind of variance then we ought to be folding pre. As to what hands we're folding out with a flop cbet, I think it's fair to say villain never has a pair less than QQ (that's not to say I think he has QQ+ very often) or AK. AQ has been mentioned, people seem to think it's too narrow to be trying to fold out only one hand, but I think it's fine when AQ is such a big part of our opponent's range and we're betting <1/3rd pot. Also I don't think there's anything wrong with betting to fold out worse hands, we're not exactly gonna be check/calling with AJ-high so if we're ahead we only get to showdown if it goes check-check twice (which will almost never happen) and even then we're giving our opponent 2 free shots to outdraw us, so getting a fold on the flop is way the better option. In conclusion: bet £65, shove turn.

Baby jebus itt

Nicely Nicely Put, thats how you make a mill-ball :p

although I still maintain lolufold's 3bets would not contain many mid-strength hands in this specific spot but then I seem to be in the minority here.

Malta friend!

fwiw, I think you're right having watched him play a bit more. I don't know the history against another player but I saw him get him 3bet/call 4bet Q9o and get it in for 100BB's on a JTx vs KK the other night so maybe bet/fold flop and then shove turn is best.

were you calling if he jammed pre?

I agree his 3b range is extremely polarised and nearly all of it is bluffs.  I also don't think we have bad RIO in fact I think he does when we call since he has a lot of Ax/Jx that he 3 bets which isn't strong enough to call as well as lots of hands that are going to make 2nd pair/a draw when we make top pair and we just print money when this happens.  Obviously it's negated a fair bit that we are OOP with an awkward stack size vs a strong opponent but I believe calling is almost certainly profitable with this and other hands in our calling range (stuff like 99 KQ AQ and we can widen this by occasionally showing up with JTs AA)  If we just 4b f/4b c we are just playing a guessing game as to whether he is 5 betting us light or not since we don't really have any other information.

If we are taking a rare shot-take into this game, why do we feel the need to balance so much?

Reading back, I don't think BALANCE has been the topic of the thread, more us trying to assign a range to Redmond for this spot, and give a perceived  range for ourselves.

@Rupert, becoming increasingly impressed by the merits of peeling the 3bet now

It wasn't a generic thread comment but James mentioned it twice. First to balance 4bet fold and then to shove turn for balance. Neither of which I would. Want to do when shot taking in a game against a player that is not a reason for being in the game.

I've sent the thread to Reds (LOLUFOLD) & suggested he might like to respond. He's a fairly quiet lad, but he may.

He recently did a "Sky Poker School" Show, & he seems to have a way of explaining his thought process pretty well, so it may be useful. Or not.

He plays on Sky Poker most nights, usually at £2.50-£5 or above 6-max. I think his preferred format is Heads-Up at £10-£20 & above, though he seems at ease with any format.

To G2L, no, he's not a God, far from it, but he's "tidy", & has a fairly eye-watering 'roll, all from poker. His 21st for $350k in last year's WSOP Main is his biggest score, but I fancy he wins a good deal more than that per annum Online. He ran deep - 61st I think - in the PCA last month, I think, & I would assume he's at DTD today for UKIPT.

Go & say hi if he's there - he's a most pleasant & friendly chap.

No, I think his 5bet-jamming range is probably still much tighter than his range for calling 4-bets.

arr, you see I think the two ranges (5bet/3bet call) are the same I this spot......good old pokers :) - looking forward to him coming ITT and telling us he had  Kh Qh and me having to eat my words lol

Whether he comes on here or not, I'm pretty sure he'll tell me what he had, & if so, I'll pass it on.

Hi Tony- wasnt meant in a insulting way. Have heard he isnt bad! Never got to stay long enough to say hi unfort!

The reason I prefer a balanced unexploitable strategy is exactly so I don't need to play guessing games as to villain's 5betting ranges since I am indifferent to whether he plays too tight or too loose. I think we're getting into worse guessing games by flatting, if it comes J-high we're not folding obv, but if it comes A-high do we check/call 3 streets? When we flat we hit the flop pretty much exactly 1/3rd of the time, so we're getting pot odds to call even if we always check/fold when we miss, provided we make a profit on our betting after the flop when we hit, which is something that is very hard to quantify.

Floppy now knows what Red's (LOLUFOLD) hand was, & it's up to him whether he wants to reveal.

I think Redmond preferred not to respond himself, he's not much of one for Forum posting. He was highly entertained by the thread, though!

one time have Aces and make me look clever pls :)

!

As it happens, Mr Skolsuper is on Sky Poker Channel 865 on Sunday evening, & as LOLUFOLD is a prominent regular on Sky Poker, I've sent the Thread to the Studio, as James may want to elaborate further on his analysis. Be quite good to do the reveal on air, & see who got it right. Or not......

It'd be good if Lol posted rather than just being sent our reads on him though!!

Quite so, but he's not one for Posting much on Forums, as you know, he's very much a GIQ guy. I told Chris I'd find out for him, & so I did.

If he doesn't read these boards he doesn't need to be sent hhs involving him! unless he wants to get involved with the discussion. Or do we have to be very 2+2 a few years ago and all stop actually posting anything useful incase other people read it?

I don't buy that, you are making it something it is not.

I thought the thread, & some of the analysis, was fascinating, & I was mildly curious to see if Reds would respond, so I sent it to him, as he's a decent mate. I hoped he would, to be honest. And I was curious to know the answer, & so was Chris. I did not need to send it to him, I just thought it was worth trying, because some analysis from him - the only missing part of the jigsaw now - would have been very interesting, imo. I wish he'd Posted, I really do, but I was never gonna pressurise him so to do. He would never have seen the Thread had I not sent it to him, of course. Not everyone reads blonde PHA.

You can understand why it's not good for us to discuss reads or reasoning if the opponent who I/we play with regularly will be sent the info but not respond! One way street.

Though tbf this sort of discussion is really normally way too OTT for the level of games anyway.

lolughey