blonde poker forum

First night in I’ve gone from in for £400 to about £900, even seeing my first “biscuit” in Gala, a £500 plaque. Unfortunately I failed to hang onto this for long, playing a really interesting hand, which I think is fine in the long run, with the information I had, but a mistake overall due to the variance it has. I open 79cc to £8 and get 4/5/6 callers before the sb picks up calling chips, picks up 3bing chips, before making it £30 to go. This was quite strange, and he was a recreational player, so I failed to resist the urge to 4bet, with the amount of dead money in the pot, and I make it £87. He was around £540 deep, and I’m never getting 5b here, due to his confusion pre, I can distinctly weight against AA/KK and give him a range of AK/AKs/QQ/JJ/TT/99, discounting 99/AK/AKs because he hadn’t 3b much before, and had peeled these hands and shown down quite a few times. He calls relatively quickly, and we see a flop of Tc8d4h. He leads for £100 relatively quickly, with a singular green chip. At this point, I weight against sets, giving him QQ/JJ/99(10%) as well as a few combos of retarded hands and the like. I end up raising just the biscuit, and he thinks for a minute or two, before electing to “gamble” and the board bricks out, with him showing QQ and collecting the pot. Somewhat frustrating, especially as discussing the hand after, Luke thought the play was fine, especially on this flop, but I have a feeling a peel might be better, as he rarely folds when we get there, and we can represent AK to him on such turns. As the turn was a King, he might c/f despite £360 being in the pot, and him having about £330 behind.

Post piece from my blog, as this describes hand. Better format below for general HH info, no reads in it tho.

I opento £8  7c 9c from ep. 5 flats, SB makes it £30 after having calling chips in his hand. I make it £87. He calls after a small tank.

Flop: (£220 in the pot)  Tc 8d 4h; He leads for £100 (single green chip) With some speed. Eff stacks on the flop are about £430.

Thoughts on the flop? Peel ever an option to use A/K turns to bluff? Not seen him make many big laydowns, quite loose/passive. I've been pretty tight/aggressive, not much of a preflop dynamic.

How close is 4b pre? Or is it silly being a hero here and attacking the 3b despite the money in the pot? I presume fold > peel, due to stack sizes behind, I guess someone was short enough to lol jam, although can't remember exactly. Decent amount of money on the table so maybe not though. 

Always jamming the flop, not close at all. Haven't looked at pre, but seems unlikely that I'd 4bet here.

4betting pre is really bad. No blockers and your opponent 3bets light out of the small blind about never.

Flop yeah jam/raise call. Peel is meh when we've got considerable amounts of fe and can feasibly rep a big hand.

There is no place in a winning gameplan for making this sort of preflop play vs random recreational players.

Posflop probably ok, but only based on the supposition that recreational players donking in 3bet pots are often betting for info and so you have some fold equity.

I'd assume villain never bfolds here so why not call and jam On a/k turns when he can fold jj/qq

i'd 100% just peel pre-flop we've got a pretty hand and it's like £23 more with deep enough effective stacks? I know it's not the nicest play theoretically but it seems like a lovely option to me :D

I'd just jam the flop because I really do believe he will fold sometimes and I take a bit of a "in for a penny, in for a pound" attitude to spots where I've been needlessly spewy at some point in a hand and now have a chance to get out of it.


 

also, not sure why you think his 3bet range is capped.

The OP says villain was originally intending to call then 'changed his mind' and decided to 3bet.

However depending on villain's attitude to, and aptitude for, the performance arts, this may cap his range at AA.

100% legit tank, guy is very inexperienced. Literally about to call, goes to 3bet, goes to call, then 3bets :)

Would bet a lot of gold (i actually did in this hand :() that he doesn't have AA/KK ever here

Thing is then... you are sure this inexperienced player has a pretty good hand that he likes enough to reraise, yet you decide to try to make him fold it by 4betting just because you 'know' he doesn't have Aces! I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this is perhaps not a clever strategy.

If you are guaranteed to have no fold equity preflop then this 4bet is terrible, regardless of any belief you may have that you can somehow outplay him posflop (which, by the way, is likely going to be difficult/impossible given the small SPR and the fact that he has a strong hand).

Even though it might sound this way, I am genuinely not meaning to be unnecessarily critical... I'm merely trying to give you some helpful advice because your preflop play is really, really bad.

I'm a big boy and don't really mind people saying, this is terrible, as long as its explained. I agree, didn't think enough, just saw the dead money and the weak live tell, however, in this case the weak live tell is giving him the 3rd and 4th best hand, so probably not worth attacking. Consensus on peel or fold pre? Presume 1/2 stacks capable of jamming behind, but no one that likely to do it

Cool. I just always worry when I'm posting that I might upset someone.

This is a close spot because of the pot odds you are getting (and implied odds ofc, but see below for this). However, you should make a 'tight' fold here. Two reasons:

1. There is always a greater than zero chance that one of the guys behind you will decide to lump the lot in. Even just a small chance of this happening screws the maths of a call up for you completely.

2. You hand does not play as well as you might think in a multiway pot vs opponents who probably don't fold much if they catch a piece of the board (meaning you have little fold equity when you flop a draw and go for the semi-bluff). This is especially the case here because a) if you call, everyone else will likely call and the SPR will end up being really small leaving you little ability to outplay anyone, and b) your relative position is going to suck on the flop.

Lots of players think "OMG, I'm never folding here... Look at the implied oddzz yo!" They are making the common mistake of over-estimating their implied odds. To understand why this is the case you need to visualise your likely equity distribution on the flop. Put simply, you are very unlikely to outflop a big pair, but you are quite likely to flop a draw that could beat a big pair by the turn or river. This means that your hand needs to be able to get to the turn with plenty of money still left to bet if it is to benefit from implied odds effectively. Given the likely SPR, this is probably not going to be the case here. Fair enough, if you are able to steal on the flop by semi-bluff jamming then you can make a virtue of the low SPR. But this will rarely be true since your opponent has an assumed strong preflop range and is thus very likely to have a hand he wants to go with on most flops, especially given the bloated pot preflop.

To sum up, your implied odds are nowhere near as good as they first appear, and you are likely to have little fold equity posflop. Plus your relative position is horrible. So fold.

Edited to say: It should also be noted that, despite looking like a 'sexy hand', 97s is not a very good hand at all. It is substantially worse than 98s or T9s in its ability to flop good equity.

Didnt read OP, but generally this.




Ok so I did.... I don't like the 4-bet pre. Seems like although you have capped his range at <KK, it is still a very strong range, one whereby he will unlikely fold to a 4-bet. Therefore by 4-betting, we are simply reducing our SPR and thus making it harder to outplay/get there vs his range. Peel/fold pre. I guess jam now, but seems unlikely you are getting it through vs a range of almost exactly JJ/QQ

Exactly what I wanted to post, just worded soooo much better than I could have.

More WotR please!

Bring back the diary WotR!

Can you quantify this for me please? I would have imagined the three hands play very similar vs tight ranges...

Flopzilla pls? I imagine it flops 2-3% worse?

I'm away on holiday at the moment with no computer, and all posts have been from my iPhone for the last week (thinly veiled brag about my ninja typing skills on the iPhone despite being an old git). Someone could run a sim to quantify exactly what I say below. It's nice and easy but I can't do it with no computer. Unfortunately this means I am making a few guesses and talking in generalities in what I am about to say. But I don't think this changes its relevancy.

Hot and cold equity-wise there is of course not a huge difference between 98s and 97s vs a strong range. Maybe a couple of percent. But this equity difference should be judged as a fraction of your overall equity rather than as a fraction of 100%. In other words, increasing a hand's equity from 20% to 22% is a 10% increase in equity.

But hot and cold equity does not tell the whole story at all. More important is the realisable equity. There is a significant difference in the postflop playability of these hands. And specifically in the ability to realise their equity, and to prevent an opponent realising his.

You only have a slightly better chance of flopping a straight with 98s compared to 97s. But more importantly, you have a much better chance of flopping a straight draw - which you then have the option of playing aggressively and sometimes forcing opponent to fold his equity share. For example there are 50% more OESD flop combos with the suited connectors compared to the gappers. I can't put figures to this at the moment as I said above, but if I had to guess I'd say that you probably flop a good semi-bluffing hand (that you can also call with of course if you choose not to semi-bluff) 10-15% more often with the suited connector compared to the suited gapper. And it is this that makes 98s substantially better than 97s... because this additional flop equity gives us opportunities to play aggressively on more flops.

BTW, the reason why there is a big discrepancy here between equity and the ability to realise that equity is because a substantial portion of the times 97s and 98s win against a strong range is by making two pair on the turn or the river (or making one pair and having it win against AK/AQ). And this is the part of their equity that will be very difficult to realise. e.g. If you flop second pair with 98s you are often folding on the flop and so fail to realise your equity share. On the other hand, when these hands flop a straight or flush draw it is much more likely that this equity can be realised since you can get to the river more often. And sometimes you even gain additional equity through semi-bluffing and making your opponent fold. This can have the effect of turning a 2-3% hot and cold equity difference into a 10-15% realisable equity difference.

I think id fold the flop muttering about AK, squeeze pre looks perfect really.
I think I could smell QQ KK AA
Needed to really have a better flop to go gamble on, nice play tho :)

Call. Bluff all in on any turn if he checks. Don't post results in the initial question if you want good answers.

i dont understand the 4bet pre at all. Inflating the pot vs a tight range to give us less post flop manoeuvrability. I also think that your sizing is way off here, i mean he's never folding pre, so why not click it to £60ish, accomplishes exactly the same in narrowing the field and gives you more room post. As played i mean just fold. His range with this donk bet is JJ,QQ a large % so 2 outs are dead a large amount of the time, and 'recreational  players' with overpairs aren't folding anytime soon after donking a hundred pound chip.

Hes rec player not experienced, like the thoughts on size but still prefer folding :(

Ty for thoughts guys, pretty much same consensus as what i discussed after with mates.

dont 4bet. id peel if you dont peel live poker is boring no point playing lol

As usual, Peel.

Also, agree 4bet size is pointeless when you know he is never folding.

sorry, meant recreational

my thoughts exactly :P