blonde poker forum

So the game is 5/5 in Blackpool. The night started with this game as 2/2 but with approximately 20k being on the table it was deemed wise to increase the stakes. The villain in the hand is Andreas. My info on him was he was a 5/10, 10/20 PLO player at this moment in time. When I first joined a cash game that night he was sat playing Chinese with Mitch, and had bought in deep, so he was presumed decent. I bought in for 500, so not an obvious i want to play big amount.

Andreas probably sees me as a standard younger guy, not too many hands of note although he could well have seen me make a very thin river bet with AA on J96K2, when the flopped flush draw completed. I was losing earlier on in the night and have topped up since, but fairly sneakily so he may not know I'm in ~1500.

We look down at red aces utg +3, the straddle is on and a recreational player has limped (I'm not 100% sure he is here for shits and giggles but it seems likely) . I make it £50. Andreas flats fairly quickly, and the limper calls.

The flop comes  Td 6d 4h and it checks to us. We bet 85 and Andreas makes it 215.

Turn  4s Andreas bets 345 *(maybe 315 again actually) We call.

River  Jc Andreas checks after 10 seconds maybe.

We have ~865 back. Checks or bets?

He hadn't really been in a 3betty mood, I'd 3bet him once and check folded kq7 with the fishhooks. I'd been fairly quiet at the table as it was playing fairly large.

Think its a very well played hand and would be very happy going all in on this river.

Wager all betting tokens?

jam for sure

leave yourself 10 behind put all the rest in and say i dont want to go all in in case i lose and i need this for my taxi home

My new favourite is moving in for all but one chip, which we then declare is so that we can lock our seat while we visit the atm.

yeh def jam.

id expect him to jam everything better than aces otr with this spr and if he views you as tight/the game being big for you he might expect you to check back overpairs on the river.

basically no reason to check vs your perceived range imo.

75 sometimes just flicks it in for the lols and sometimes induce, usually will have missed fd that will be folding or air rather than a sdv hand, perhaos jxdd we lose value from.

All in or £200

All in on the turn for me. Very happy jamming the river once checked to.

why would we jam turn? hes either got a fd or us beat or will most likely fold a hand that thought ti was betting for value like AT

What does he play like/ his image at table?

Cos he has 850 behind the guy bets 350 or near enough, so u get value from all hands you can beat if he calls, and there is way more that you beat than you don't. What do u think he has ? are you folding to a shove on this same river card? If not then why not jam turn?. The board texture gives the villain loads of combo draws, so the 4 is a great card for us imo. Pay to see the river no?

And if you think you are beat (i.e u think he's flopped a set then you would not be calling 350£ to hit 2 outs).

Don't think its so clear cut tbh. I mean we have the best hand very often, seems like he should bet if he's beating AA as a decent chunk of your range will be relative mid-strength and prolly chk-back.

However we don't really rep any air except 78/79/89 of diamonds IDK if we call naked NFD OTT seems unlikely so really IDK what we are expecting to get called by that isn't JT or maybe AJdd. couple this with the possibliity he's checking to induce a Vbet from us thinking we will prolly shove QQ-AA here (having seen the earlier hand) but might very well fold to a jam (this is reasonably unlikely but not without consideration)

So I think we should consider checking back... as for betting, I feel if we did have 78/79/89 diamonds then we'd prolly be all-in, I think this will prolly get him off a hand like Ad Tx but i think in this vacuum if we're gonnna bet £225 is the way to go, try get some frustrated hero's from something. FYL if he goes all-in though.

The more I think about this the more I think we should check back, obviously if this was a regular game with an aggressive dynamic where you'd wanna bluff here ever then we need to be shipping ACES here (I dont think you would be bluffing here ever, or he thinks you're bluffing here ever), but it's a 5/5 9handed game and I don't think trying to level the other good players in marginal spots is the way to make money, speshly when you're gonna be playing about 200 hands in total against him.

chk back>£225>>>>>>>>>Jam for me

Also was 50 std pre or just went big here?

Agree jam is good but can you reason why 225 is better than75? I think he bluff jams basically 0% vs 225 but definitely a non zero % vs 75. He may just literally flick it in joke wide with 75 too.

I think Dreenie we've decided (quite rightly so imo) that in this instance our Ace's are bluff catchers to his flop action, basically we're 240big blinds deep and been c/r on T64dd, now obviously he has a gd deal of semi-bluffs  7d 8d /  7d 9d /  8d 9d /  7d 5d /  6h 7h /  Ad 4d and so on but the actual range of value hands he is representing here is ahead of AA T6s/64s/TT/66/44 (thin i know but he's repping them all perfectly well) so we're bluff-catching with our AA OTF.

The turn is a gd card for us in the sense that a) we now beat T6, b) there is only 1 combo of 64suited left for him to have, and 3) it isn't a card that completes any of the g/shots or the FD he might have been semi-bluffing with.

However it's not a card that strengthens out range - it doesn't particularly weaken it, it's basically just a brick, his semi-bluffs have now lost some equity, T6 is losing, but 4d Xd which is a very plausible semi=bluffing hand from him OTF has now gotten there, so given that we had what we decided was a bluff-catcher OTF there really is no good reason to start value-shoving our bluff catcher on a brick turn - admittedly we would fold out all the g/s+f/d hands and protect our equity that way, but when the money goes in we're going to have 1-2 outs the vast majority of the time I'm afraid.

I think it's easy to forget that if we are going to raise hands for value in deep-stacked pots we need 1 of ttwo things to be true;
1) we either have right the top of our value range, to the extent that people will think we could be raising worse hands for value and commit chips with hands that are ahead of some of the hands we'd be value-betting with (basically kinda coolering them lol) or
2) We can very legitimately represent "air" and have bluffs in our range, and tempting people into hero calls with weaker hands.

I think this is OTT, one of those "everything worse folds, everything better calls" kinda spots.

Obviously as soon as some sort of dynamic and history starts to emerge one way or another then more creative value lines start to become more appealing, but in hands where nothign like that exists just playing it straight and not getting way out of line of levely is often the best way to go.

I think he bluff jams 0% vs £75 and £225, I think we can potentially induce a frustrated call from something (IDK what exactly ) given i don't think he'll bluff jam I think betting to call at all is a mistake, but then I think checking back is best actually really going off betting the river at all.

So if u are, very early on in the hand, using your aces as a bluff catcher then u literally don't have a question as it would be clear check back on river ?

And I asked before to pleno, are u folding the same river card if he shoves and why?

Thanks for replying Dave.

And why do u never reply when I ask you a question? Why does it seem
That every time I ask questions or get opinions I get shot down and never
Given an opinion as to why u think I'm wrong in a more detailed version. Not just you Patrick lots of posters on here. I have posted many times and just get ignored, I'm not a stranger or is it that I'm just shit in my thinking approach in your s and most others opinions ?

Think it's really rude.

If he shoves the river it's entirely different, because he CAN be bluffing (lots of flopped semi-bluffs have missed) and we have a very gd bluff-catcher (we lose to none of his bluffs) so that decision is completely different to any decision we have on the turn or on the river when he checks.

Also, once he checks the river he is no longer repping the same range of value hands as he was OTF (he can still have them, but a lot less likely) so we can now decide that we can use this hand (AA) which is defo the top of our bluff-catching range to value-bet with. (merging our ranges, for the cool kids :P )

Jsut because on the previous streets we were bluff-catching with it doesn't mean we have to stick to it and cant value-net with it later when the action changes.

Hey

Sorry I typed a reply out then because of the abuse I get over borderline replies I decided not to post. It was nothing rude or offensive but was out with friends and 1- phone would make zillion spelling mistakes and 2- obv didnt have the time to write more than a few lines and the policemen out there like to jump on some small posts.


Just because you have a bluff catcher at one point in the hand doesnt mean things dont change throughout the streets. Poker is all about making logical decisions and through each decision your opponent makes decifing the information and then understanding their range better.

Ie, 120bbs deep, we raise button, big blind defends - flop is t42fd, we bet, he raises 3x, t7s and AA are both basically the same hand in the way we will play them but not in the way that they are (aa is way stronger than t7, if villain improves ott aa can still be winning)

Anyway, villain then bets 1-5th pot on 3 turn, now its v v likely he raised a weak showdown hand like kt, so now even though we were bluff catching 1 street ago, we could no viably make a value raise because of the information we gained.

The logic I think you have there is flawed and is similar to when you (not you personally, people in general) lets say overcall a 3bet with 22 and the flop is 872 and it goes 4bet on the flop and people say "well what were you hoping for" sometimes you have to take the information you have and try and make the best decision.

This exact thing happened in main event, I overcalled a early position 3bet with 77, we went 4 ways and the original raiser form utg check raised me on qj7 and i folded and george2loose and a few others iirc were saying along the lines of "why play the hand if you fold when you flop a set" i used the information to narrow his range down to jj,qq very often (assumed hed fold qj pre and probably not raise flop as it hits my percevied range joke hard)


im not sure about the exact maths and dont have equilab open so cant comment exactly ott but we dont know that he will bet call his draws on a paired board where a- his hand could be dead b- a lot of his draws could be drawing extremely thin.

Anyway, if we do decide to just shove the turn with all hands that beat a range and call very weak hands that beat part of his range then villain will e able to explotiably 3 barrel us at any opportunity because our turn calling range will be ridicuously weak.



I personally really really like you and think you have the heart of gold, but you seem way too emotional for me to try and tell you what Id really like to say a lot of the time, I think youd take it the wrong way and thats the last thing Id ever want because as I said I really do think you dont have a bad bone in your body.

For example with dave I disagree completely with him regarding river tendancies vs 75 and vs 200 bets otr and would be happy to debate really a lot about it, but I wouldnt want to get into a really deep discussion with you incase I hit a nerve that would be seen differently to how I meant it to come across (like this post maybe haha)

If youd like me to write to you in a PM and go into more detail then I will be happy to let it all out, but I personally wouldnt be happy to do it on a public forum with you.

Like I said I really think youre one of the good guys and when I wake up on a Monday morning and check the Sunday Million lobby theres not many other  people Id rather see with a 6 figure result.



definitely disagree here, I think people will bluff raise more than 0% vs 75, maybe they wont jam but jsut do something uncontrollably silly like raising to 250 or something, I take this line a lot both online and live in very similar spots to this (at the top of my range but vs a narrow calling range) and it works v well, I also see the most ridiculous calls. Maybe 50 would be better IDK. Also think they will call way wider vs 75 than 250. Can start putting us on the 89s or whatever the straight draws are and flicking in the j highs!

I've played loads with Andreas he is decent but on the tighter side in these spots. I would check the river and be pretty happy about it.

And can I just say, I think Pleno gets a lot of shit for whatever reason and that post is empathetic, honest and bang on the money.

I'm just going to spam link that post whenever anyone starts moaning about you Pleno haha.

Think you mis-quoted me here as I basically said the same as you before!

I think what you meant to quote was...

I'm sure it works online plenty, weaker, spazzier players in a pressure cooker waiting to explode, bluff bluff give-up GRRRRR TINY BET HOW TILTING ;grr; I can win this pot yet!

This is, imo, entirely the wrong player to be doing this against, it's a pretty old-school live-pro move the tiny bet on the end and someone like Andreas who's very experienced at live poker will not be falling for it. Pretty obvious we can beat QT and we're prolly calling.

Agree everyone seems rapid to jump on the "Pleno's posts are rude bandwagon" yes there are plenty of "trivial folds" out there but as I've said a million times he puts lots of time into helping everyone on blonde and gets an insane amount of stick for it, people forget very quickly.

One thing u must learn about dreenie Patrick is I do not follow a
Crowd and certaintly have my own mind.

I would much prefer for u to come out and say "dreenie wtf r you on, blah da blah, but give me
Reasons like u have there so I can digest it in than be worried about what I might feel. At the end of the day  I'm my own worst enemy, I know it and I really do try every day VERY hard to not go loop da loop. I respect
Ur game and like u as a person otherwise I would never ask u these sort of questions and
I want to learn otherwise I wouldn't join in the discussions but I am the 1st one to admit that I have been very lazy in trying to get better at poker this last year. Also I find it hard to explain & understand this terminology that is thrown around these days, and a lot of times I have struggled with the maths side. Paul fettercheek will tell u that one from
First hand experience. I used to sit on Skype till 5am while he tried to explain the maths side of a hand to me, sounds bad I know but I did use learn something.
Neil Ryder is a nit, he has explained and explained I do want to listen and want to learn more and become better, jaylee another one who has broken it down better for me to understand, Tim Chung too, maybe I
Should know all this, but I do struggle and defo missing something these last 12
Months and my afraid to say it. I want the criticism otherwise I would never know where I'm going wrong.

Thanks for your detailed reply sorry for calling u out

Dreenie x

hmmmm, betting also doesnt let him find out about how we played our hand, can tilt him a little bit and he can potentially flick it in really wide. if he raises then wte call him, it looks like our range is bluffcatchers so he iwll bet his houses most of the time, but we can get called really wide.

its one of those things where one camp will prefer 1 sizing and another a different sizing, i dont think he will raise the flop bet with tx after we isod a 5 limper to 50 pre flop, even if it is standard sizing, if i thought he was that type of player then i prefer a slightly bigger bet.

but either way we will never get a sample size to justify my or your arguments, im sure youve used 250 successfully (and maybe unsuccessfully) and likewise ive used 75 both successfully and unsuccessfully.

And fwiw I do not jump on the 'its really rude' pleno posts, that was my natural feeling of how it panned out. If u go through all the posts/hands I've ever posted on here I get very few replys and know se hands are really interesting to discuss. Maybe it is what pleno says - ppl are afraid to say how they really feel cos I might go off on one, like I keep saying I do feel that I am very much Mis understood, u can have the same argument for me really -
Ppl like to put me in a section of a nutter just cos I've lost my temper in the past, it's like no one can change for the better ever.

And I did not say just him, most others too. I am grateful for his response and really rate his game. I ALWAYS listened to his YouTube Vegas videos cos I felt he was very interesting to listen to.

My first question in my email was going to be how many videos have you watched in the last 12 months? Id assumed none, after your post maybe this isnt the case as you seem to be reaching out to people and itt.

What I would say though is these guys have all done the hard work to understand tendancies and then move on to the advanced stuff, theyve paid their education to nl100 live or nl25 online.

To really get to grips to the game you need to give up on this MTT high stakes crusade or pipedream. I have absolutely the same feelings and addiction to them as you do and Im sure most people on the forum do too! Whether that be a guy who loves the sunday storm every sunday, dave playing 5k plo wsop, Alex playing winamax or Tikay and his "next door this isnt advetisement ldo" crew.

It is fun to play mtts, you know it, you can win big at mtts, youve shown it but its not going to make you a better player. Winning a lot of money or 20,000 in an MTT may be a bad thing for you as sad as it sounds. What I think would be better is to start learning poker at nl25 zoom or a small stakes fast fold site. You can play lots of hands and whenever you are unsure there is a box called "review hand" when your session is finished you save all of these hands and when you realise that some are jsut std aa v kk etc you will be left with 3-4 hands that you can post here. Its exactly what John Black does and look how much support he has had?

Ive told you this before though, so has Scotty but you dont do it. Its totally 100% up to you, I am defintiely not saying go and play this or I think youre a bad person, Im just speaking from experience that it would be the best for your long term poker development.

Furthermore I think you just love getting into huge insane pre flop wars and maybe post flop wars with my dick is bigger than your dick mentality. You did  a play and made a guy fold by 7betting 7 months ago Im sure. What was his name? What hand did you have? You may remember 1 or 2 in your lifetime but in the end of the day it means sweet fuck all.

If for the next 3 months you dedicated yourself to cash games and started learning theory (just like tim, neil etc did) by learning from questioning yourself and your opponents then you go from a cash game loser to a cash game crusher with a sexy graph Im sure you will look back in 2 years and remember this time and be PROUD, way prouder than double floating and c-shoving a river versus somebody when literally blowing up infront of your computer.

We have a skype group with blondes that are all beginners in cash games, I post there 3-5 times a day just helping with basic hand histories or v basic theory and advice, Im sure youd be welcome and you can feel free to bug me any time on skype if you have a hand history.

Remember a hand history is just a topic tree to further discussion I posted about it in my blog, but if I flag a hand about a turn decision and study it it may be the result telling me that I shouldnt do X on the turn because my river range will be Y this means that Ive studied basic river theory just from thinking about a hand and Im sure thats how Tim, Neil et al all climbed up the stakes rather than having somebody on skype telling them "Ok this is poker, river frequency must be 33% of turn 50% range vs a 72% btn steal 127bbs deep" its too detailed, complex and not what you need. To learn you need to play and playing live cash games or HSMTTs isnt the way to do it.

my post was supposed to be that videos are supposed to be the best way to learn because you can stop and start them, ask yourself a question, watch and then go back 2 hours later when you think did he say x? hmm lets see again, its harder to do that with random skype chat, remember a coaching video is a structured seminar of learning, or it should be.

If you take up the above regarding small stakes cash games and stick to it then next year when the biggest poker bootcamp of the year is on Ill make sure you get a place for free (hopefully youre at 50 or 100nl) and be at a stage where you can really learn from some of the best coaches in the world.

Of course its absolutely up to you though.

Thanks Patrick that's really decent of you to be so honest with me. I do enjoy mtts yes your right and I agree it's probably what's ruined me in the long run cos I have won such large amounts so quick and don't know how to deal
With it just like I don't know how to deal with having losing sessions, but I am getting help with these things. A lot of my problems are in my head, most ppl would have lost the plot by now, I feel like I did in certain parts of the year
But I can see light at the end of this tunnel, and there are some very very nice people out there who have given me a lot of help & Support both mentally and financially.

Once I get my head sorted completely then I will try this properly whenever I have time. Getting a job for me is most important as it gives me sanity and will get me out if nothing else. I have one really really good friend who has stood by me throughout everything and I know when I'm ready to take this on he will help, he is currently trying to help me manage money better and respect things a lot more of which so far, I see a change for the better.

Ty once again and sorry for the derail, I appreciate u replying and like I said I'm always happy to learn/improve, specially when I'm not playing as much ATM.

That is why I went so big. Also the guy in the straddle would defend top 50%+ here.

I think this is possibly the only reason for a bet. If Andreas has enough respect to decide that flatting premiums such as KK/QQ here, and decides to raise the flop, then we have an easy bet, however I don't know if he respects my game enough at this moment in time to choose to flat these types of hands. I would imagine he'd flat JJ/TT a very large percentage of the time here. Basically on the river, I feel he has very few hands that actually pay me but he also rarely has me beat. Surely this makes it a check back (I certainly think for me in that specific spot in a good game vs this player, knowing I'm quitting if I lose it makes sense to check.)

I also think Andreas would be in the top 5 players least likely to be induced, especially at this moment in time where he has not lost more than 30bb in a pot in the last 6 hours.

If he check raises this runout then he's just made a dodgy river check with a set. He never seems to out a foot out of line against me but maybe that's cos I'm a station :)

It's cos he's smart and has no ego, no need to tangle with other gd players too much in live cash games

Ionly played with him about 3 times but I've seen him destroy a NLHE table llike nothing I've ever seen before, get the impression he's one of those guys who turns into a steam train when he gets momentum.

Quite a bit of tl;dr in this thread but Pleno please don't talk about balancing in this spot, its not relevant.

Yeah I left it at one paragraph where if it was online it would have been at least 4!

Is this Andreas Olympios? If so, he is an extremely strong NLHE player.

Agree with Pleno and Lil'Dave here. You have a top of the range bluff catcher on the flop and turn. Jamming turn only works as a protection bet vs FDs, it serves very little other purpose. We would be risking a lot of money to protect our equity in the pot. Obviously things would be different against a bad player who might play something like TPTK (or worse) like this, and call a jam. But Andreas is a very good player and is going to be pretty polarised here.

On the river, obviously things change because he has now checked. So a hand that was previously a bluff catcher can now serve as a value hand. However, it is tough to get called since Andreas likely has nothing. Thus a pretty small value bet seems best - he's probably going to fold anyway, but a small bet 'forces him' to call with a chunk of his hands that somehow have got SD value.

You are almost always ahead once he checks the river, but this is not the issue. The issue is that you are almost never going to be called by worse unless you bet small. If you jam he will likely fold almost everything except for the very rare times he has decided to do something tricky with a full house.

Also, tough to imagine Andreas having a strong value hand here. With a set he would be fairly unlikely to raise IMO since he is forcing the (presumed) weaker player out of the pot. He'd most likely check/call a set, or lead the flop since this would be making a virtue out of his lack of relative position (leading through the weaker player into the preflop raiser).

Here we go again MR Patrick , another controversy " arguement " . One every day ;p

edit. cba, i wasnt offensive though dw frankie!

It is possible that Frankie just MIGHT be joking Patrick...

I was actually , ... Lol

Yeah it is him.

Betting small seems pretty weak, what hands does he fold to a shove, but call a small value bet? Bearing in mind I expect him to have just a ten almost never, and to have a jack he has to have raised KdJd, which seems a touch unlikely too. Virtually any small bet will put a decent amount of my stack in, and this will never look like a bluff, meaning we get called by the same hands that a shove would have (perhaps that elusive KJ in blue)

Also if he shoved over are you calling or folding or what?

Well you can have some bluffs, like missed FDs or some weak SD stuff turned into a bluff. But asking 'what hands does he fold to a shove, but call a small value bet?" is a bit of a weird question. Of course he should call more often vs a smaller bet than vs a bigger bet! Take it to an imagined extreme if you like... if you bet one big blind he will call with any pair or even Ace high, right? You should call more often vs small bets than vs big ones.

I don't yet know what Andreas had, but apparently he has been made aware of this thread. And he says he played his hand badly. Which makes sense since I was struggling to think of (m)any hands that he would want to play this way.

I meant his calling range seems somewhat inelastic, for example if he happened to have one of the top 3 starting hands, he is calling any bet and he has very few hands even as strong as King high in his checking range. Basically I think his river range consists of a few combos of houses, a few combos of queens and even less combos of kings and a whole bunch of 9 high (or similar) hands.

Check behind given that

I mean I guess he could have AT and, I would think though, that if he did have AT he would prolly consider bluffing with it OTR as actually I'm not so sure you're calling with an OP and he actually wins the hand anyway vs a reasonable section of your range... I've only played a few times with him but I'm not really sure this is his style though, seems a little needless, I think if he has a T it's prolly gonna be 9h Th or something like that but prolly not.

Think betting really small is kinda mugging him off a bit and just showing him some respect I think will bode well for the rest of the game, he's not folding a T for £200 but I don't think he has a T to fold often enough to worry about that, maybe he has QQ or KK in which case he'll defo call a bet (speshly KK will prolly call almost any bet) I think as well there is more chance of him slowplaying KK/QQ pre-flop than there is of him checking a FH to you OTR but not by much.

With all the evidence i this thread I'm going to predict that i) Adam Checked back, and ii) he either had 6's full or QQ. :P

Can someone give me a reason why a good live player would check a boat on the river to a player with OP's profile?

Only boat people check is sometimes Jacks full when they lose their heads momentarily. This is very rare surely. I think it's absurd to consider checking.

Well if he think I shove all overpairs on the river when checked too then it doesnt matter whether he checks houses or not on the river, and if by checking he gives me the chance to bluff shove missed draws then he is better off checking. He also might expect me to have gotten my stack in with overpairs before now.

Result?

gotta check the river 2k stack ftw

i think the crux of the hand is that im sure he bets river with everything that beats us, and i dont think andreas is the type of guy who we can induce with a tiny bet, think shoving is somewhat of a freeroll, and keeps us from showing our hand, w/e he might call a bottle but id like to put it on him here and make him think, develops a good image for us and he might just have rivered top Pair which im not sure if he does bet given the action

I think your completely right, apart from I'm not sure what hands he can have that are worse than ours and call, but I think there is a small chance he has checked a better hand. He can definitely do this if he expects me to get in overpairs before now in which case he is hoping I've found a bluffcatcher somehow, or have a draw I'll bluff the river with.

I ended up checking and he snap showed QQ, I then show my hand only for the table to look at me like I had two heads. Fwiw Andreas said he'd check.

Impressed