blonde poker forum

Hi Guys,

First post here so be gentle.

Looking for a bit of advice with this hand so help would be appreciated.

The reason i 4b preflop is i didn't really want to play OOP in a 3bet pot without the betting lead
I didn't cbet the flop as he doesn't call with worse and it gives villain chance to bluff with overcards AK/AQ etc.
Was unsure what to do on the river though.

Seat 1: KlarkKent89 ($11.57 in chips)
Seat 2: MARIOKALINOV ($14.63 in chips)
Seat 3: mon2005 ($16.07 in chips)
Seat 4: rortothecore ($14.97 in chips)
Seat 5: Roll_gett ($5.69 in chips)
Seat 6: SP1NIT ($19.52 in chips)
MARIOKALINOV: posts small blind $0.05
mon2005: posts big blind $0.10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to SP1NIT [Th Ts]
rortothecore: folds
Roll_gett: folds
SP1NIT: raises $0.20 to $0.30
KlarkKent89: raises $0.70 to $1
MARIOKALINOV: folds
mon2005: folds
SP1NIT: raises $1.45 to $2.45
KlarkKent89: calls $1.45
*** FLOP *** [2d 3s 7d]
SP1NIT: checks
KlarkKent89: checks
*** TURN *** [2d 3s 7d] [Jc]
SP1NIT: bets $2.40
KlarkKent89: calls $2.40
*** RIVER *** [2d 3s 7d Jc] [4h]
SP1NIT: checks
KlarkKent89: bets $6.10
SP1NIT: ????

Hi Sp1n1t,

Do we have any stats or reads on villain? 4B w/10s v random 10NL player doesn't appeal to me very much.

Do you plan on folding to 5B?

Ash.

Hi Ash,

I was planning on folding to 5bet yes, Villain 25/25 20% 3B only 13 hands though

Yeah, not sure about other ppl - but I prefer to just flat the 3B and play from their.

As played I would fold river, feels like he has showdown equity after checking back flop and calling turn, can't think of any hands he would do this with and then bet big on river with.

Do we think he is betting his flush draws on flop when checked to?

Ash

Hi, welcome to PHA.

I think there's a few things here to pick up on and I think what you say about your thought processes is more interesting than the actual hand, as that gives away a few logical flaws that are important to pick up on, rather than just picking apart this one hand.

You said you 4bet because you didn't want to play oop without the betting lead. That's a reasonable thing to say, having the betting lead is nice, as is being in position!

But I think it's a mistake to think that 4betting and then folding to a 5bet is a better play.

When you 4bet, one of three things is going to happen:

-He folds. OK this feels nice, because we've won the pot without showdown, and not allowed him to outplay us or outdraw us. This "nice feeling" is an illusion because it means we had the best hand anyway and we've stopped him from bluffing us or calling any of our value bets with worse. We don't want to stop these things. OK it's a good result when he folds QJo and some such light 3bets as that has very good equity vs us, but generally we want to keep his weaker hands in the pot.

-He 5bets and we fold (you said you were planning on folding to a 5bet). Hmm that's annoying isn't it. He probably had us beat with JJ-AA, but he could have had AK or even AQ and now he's stolen our 57% equity from us and we've lost our 4bet $$ and not got to realise any of our massive equity. Bastard! He could have even bluffed us with a worse hand! Unlikely at 10NL but not impossible btn vs cutoff. Remember there's 16 combinations of AK, compared to 6 of Aces, 6 of Kings etc, so AK makes up almost the same number of combos as QQ, KK and AA put together. 

-He calls our 4bet. Hmmm now what do we do if we don't flop a set? We don't really know what he's got, it comes 7 high like it did here and we are afraid to bet because you think he'll never call with worse, we check to let him bluff, he checks back hmm, but we aren't liking when a JACK comes and he bets, we don't have a clue where we are basically!

All three of these situations aren't great for us. The best one in fact is when he folds to our 4bet. And like I said, that "nice feeling" is an illusion, we had the best hand anyway, we've actually allowed our opponent to play perfectly against us (fold his inferior hand) and prevented him from making postflop mistakes (bluffing our strong hand or calling our bets incorrectly with weaker hands).

So let's consider our original decision when faced with a 3bet. What's so bad about calling out of position with TT? We are probably opening a decent % from the cutoff, 35%? TT is a top 5% hand, so we are very high up in our range. Yes we're guessing a little bit when an overcard comes, but we keep our opponents range wide, and let him bluff us, cbet his overcards on low boards, and we can still fold happily on ace high boards, KQx boards knowing we're probably beat and have only lost 8 bbs or whatever. Remember we can still flop a set or turn/river a set and have a very strong hand. 

Doesn't sound too bad to me!

I know I didn't comment on the river decision. That is because I don't think it's important - you're in a tough spot because of your preflop mistake, and correcting that will automatically avoid a spot like this.

Very very very good post ^

I agree.

I would however like to perhaps argue the other side to get more of a debate going as this is a very common spot and we could perhaps do something that is a little outside the box to emphasize our understanding of population tendancies to increase our winrate. I perhaps quite like the 4bet pre flop. From my experience of NL10 there seems to be the following population tendancies;


- super wide 3betting cut off vs button (choosing the wrong hands to 3bet, such as KQ etc)
- very very low amounts of people 5bet getting it in (either folding directly to a 4bet with JJ/AK or calling)
- extremely high rake

So because people are using very poor theoretically based 3betting ranges such as KQ/AQ/KJ/AJ and hands that they think because they are immediately ahead of you they can 3bet for "value" (they misinterpret what value actually means) and they will almost always fold to a 4bet with these hands. When reviewing players games I have seen the following.

- btn opens, sb 3bets, bb folds AK
- hero opens jj in co, btn 3bets, hero fold
- hero opens qq utg, mp 3bets, hero folds

Often we are going to be out of position and our opponents will often have a "one and done" approach meaning they will cbet once but probably not follow it up with a tonne of aggresion. That means we can call the 3bet and call alot, but a lot of the time there will be an overcard and it will get a little messy.

As Alex said, Initiative IS important, at higher stakes 4bet folding here would be a bigger crime than Pardew benching Hatem Ben Arfa last weekend but at these stakes I actually think its good because we can get better hands to fold, we can get hands that share equity with us to fold and if we do get called by a potentially ambitious range then we have a hand that plays pretty well and lastly because its pretty unlikely we will get shoved on and thus we wont have many times that we face a very hard decision.

For the record Alexs post is very good for a nl50 player and sums up all the basic theoretical stuff pretty well but at every stake we should be looking to push the boundaries a little and do stuff that the other guys arent doing. The better you are, or should i say the more comfortable you are playing oop without initiative the more i would suggest calling.

I also tell guys who play micro stakes that if there is a very close spot and you dont know what to do that avoiding post flop is going to be ok perhaps because the rake is genuinely huge.

Big Blind   rake/100   Rake in BB
$0.05   $0.59   11.9
$0.10   $1.25   12.5
$0.25   $2.58   10.3
$0.50   $4.68   9.4
$1.00   $7.55   7.6
$2.00   $11.27   5.6
$4.00   $14.81   3.7
$6.00   $16.98   2.8
$10.00   $18.47   1.8
$20.00   $21.31   1.1
$50.00   $23.24   0.5

This means that before you can establish the elusive 3bb winrate that makes you a "good reg" you have to win 11.9 first, compared to 400nl where i "just" need to win 3.7bb before I start posting graphs bragging about winning at 1bb/100


Just to reiterate, I think Alexs advice is better than the above but was trying to open a potential debate, i think that thinking outside of the box and thinking how to beat each stake seperately is one of the biggest reasons why the best regs are the best regs at each level, again its more important for you to be fundamentally sound than a "sick reg"

Tbh, I feel out of my depth in a debate about lots of the issues you mention such as difference in 10nl and 50nl and the rake levels - as you know I don't play online cash games at all so I can't really get into it.

My post was just trying to get those general theory points across in a way that wasn't too confusing and overwhelming.

Pleno is the maestro at all this though so take his word over mine for the specific things he mentioned.

Absolutely, either I wrote

"end thread", "/thread" or tried to just give it a potential debate. Maybe we can call John Black.

WOW, cheers cambridgealex and pleno1 for two awesome, detailed replies. I appreciate it.

Cambridgealex: your reasoning definitely makes sense about calling 3b because 10's are doing well against his range. It's just a bit annoying having to check fold A/K high flops. When for example he could be 3betting light with a random suited connector or something and people are usually always Cbetting them flops in position in a 3bet pot. Other than that i agree totally with what you are saying

Pleno1: So are you suggesting calling with stronger Ax hands rather than 3betting so we can keep worse Ax in the pot etc and 3b with more bluff kinda hands 108 J9 etc?
Also to be honest im kinda a novice (you can probably tell) so i had no idea about the rake affecting winrates so much

Thanks again guys :)

yeh good post Alex sick.

I think not betting the flop is a big mistake too, when you say he wont call worse that kinda emphasizes that yoou really were just bluffing pre-flop which is fine but TT is a very bad hand to "bluff" with as you have no high card blockers and you're wasting a hand that plays very well vs his 3betting range. In order to 4bet for value pre-flop your hand has to be able to value bet post-flpo as well, if that makes sense.

I would suggest betting around 1/3rd pot and check calling any/mot turn and rivers.

I think that size encourages less hero folds and more hero floats which will have bad intentions. I also think a huge leak of a 10nl guy will be that he won't consider value betting basically the top of his range on a lot of run outs.

Ok thanks guys will take all thoughts on board, will look forward to posting some more hands soon judging by quality of answers in here

New poster comes for advice, gets 2 detailed and differing schools of thought from quality players, perfect example of what you want from a PHA thread

Great posts ITT! Nice work.

I don't really think I can beat Alex and Pleno's posts, so i will just humbly agree to everything Alex said, and compliment Pleno on bringing up the rake idea because it is important.