Ready to call then.....

[LuckyLloyd]

Eh, wow at some of the posts here.

Since Harrington, you can assume that unknown preflop raisers continuation bet a variety of board textures waaaaaayyy too much. What they don't do as often is double or triple barrell particularly light; or overbet the river as a bluff. The fact that they fail to balance their range on the later streets; or check call medium hand strength often is what provides good thinking players with value in tournaments.

As such, I like a check - call on the flop as played very much against most random opponents. Looking to end a hand quickly is often not the decision that maximises EV. Our objective should not be to make decisions that make our subsequent decisions easiest - but make decisions that allow us the greatest scope to win the most chips.

If you donk at this flop with the intention of folding or check raise the flop you are allowing him to fold hands you beat or play for all the pretzel monies with you drawing to two outs / runner runner / or drawing dead off the flop.

Talk of hand protection from the poster pocket lady is something I strongly disagree with. If he has Axdd then all the money goes in anyway. If he has 2 - 6 outs then fine. He's unlikely to outdraw us and may be prone to bluffing the turn or river  / going for thin river value with a hand we beat / calling a thin river value bet from us.

All of the above might change depending on the opponent of course. But the original poster hasn't added any information of value on his play. So we can just assume random ipoker tournament donk until proven otherwise.

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

So, postflop I like check - calling that flop. I would probably check fold a lot of turns and would have called bets sometimes on the river but I like just folding to that shove. There's nothing to be ashamed of in the way the hand played out. It's a tough spot oop and we are not getting a good price to call against that rivershove. We beat basically nothing that he shoves for value there and, as I said, it seems reasonable to assume that the overbet river shove these days is more often for value than with air – largely for the reasons flushy states above.

Thing is though, I still don’t understand why we don’t just re – raise preflop and go to war with a hand that:

-   should be ahead of any non – ridiculously tight opening range;
-   will be very difficult to play out of position with these stack sizes;

Pop him to 7 – 8k (the larger the 3 bet the weaker your holding will be perceived) and get it in. Variance heavy, but definitely plus EV.

May I note that I feel like I am re – writing the same basic post over and over on this board. There are many regular posters here who still want to overplay marginal hand strength and are overly concerned by hand protection and “weak” play. Calling is really cool in a variety of situations. As is having your opponents drawing to 2 – 6 outs with a lot of their range after the flop.

[UpTheMariners]

ok so whats your play with 10's and 9's? is jj really that far ahead of a utg+1's range?

[LuckyLloyd]

ok so whats your play with 10's and 9's? is jj really that far ahead of a utg+1's range?

Think of it like this:

If he finds QQ - AA; AQs+ then he is definitely going to open the pot for a raise right?

Now, surely you can add in 99 - JJ and AJs aswell? And often, KQs+ and smaller pairs / aces some of the time. Whether he should raise those hands or not is moot. The fact is people do raise into the pot with them.

[UpTheMariners]

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

 160,956,576  games     0.015 secs    10,730,438,400  games/sec

Board:
Dead: 

   equity    win    tie          pots won    pots tied   
Hand 0:    54.861%     54.09%    00.77%          87062567      1240408.00   { JcJs }
Hand 1:    45.139%     44.37%    00.77%          71413193      1240408.00   { 88+, AJs+, AcTc, KQs, AJo+, KQo }


ok against his estimated range i should be reraising. but lets say i reraise and now he shoves on me his range is alot smaller. another thing is in a sng pushing aa in the first hand is +ev but would you not agree theres better ways of playing the hand, like in this situation (seeing the flop texture)?

[LuckyLloyd]

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

 160,956,576  games     0.015 secs    10,730,438,400  games/sec

Board:
Dead: 

   equity    win    tie          pots won    pots tied   
Hand 0:    54.861%     54.09%    00.77%          87062567      1240408.00   { JcJs }
Hand 1:    45.139%     44.37%    00.77%          71413193      1240408.00   { 88+, AJs+, AcTc, KQs, AJo+, KQo }


ok against his estimated range i should be reraising. but lets say i reraise and now he shoves on me his range is alot smaller. another thing is in a sng pushing aa in the first hand is +ev but would you not agree theres better ways of playing the hand, like in this situation (seeing the flop texture)?

Obv when we re - raise his range narrows but we need less subsequent pot equity for putting the rest of the chips in to be plus EV.

[MANTIS01]

Guys, imagine that you are 60 years-old and learnt how to play poker yesterday. It is your very first live game and your very first hand. You nervously look down in the bb after a raise and find a pair of Jacks.

The strategy you would use is check-calling.

I'm not trying to be funny or clever.....this is exactly what you would do and I see it all the time at the casino from weak or new players. Now if you have been playing the game for a number of years and you find yourself playing this hand in the same manner as someone playing their first ever hand of poker you need to wondering what's up.

People are always trying to re-invent the wheel.

In reality it really doesn't matter how fancy you think your thought process is....you are playing the hand like a novice. Some contributions on this thread have suggested that checking to call is really innovative thinking and the bet sizes your unknown oppo throws out will give you all the info you need. That's just tosh. I agree with Lloyd in so much that checking to call is good for a variety of situations....but a vulnerable tournament hand, oop, against an unknown opponent who probably gets it in early with worse anyway, just isn't one of those situations.

As a tournament player I get a lot of encouragement when I see a cash game mentality fogging the mind of tournament players.

When you run bad people suggest that you analyse your game. When you do this you often find that you are over-complicating your game and you should just get back to basics and stop trying to be too clever.

[Sunday8pm]

Guys, imagine that you are 60 years-old and learnt how to play poker yesterday. It is your very first live game and your very first hand. You nervously look down in the bb after a raise and find a pair of Jacks.

The strategy you would use is check-calling.

I'm not trying to be funny or clever.....this is exactly what you would do and I see it all the time at the casino from weak or new players. Now if you have been playing the game for a number of years and you find yourself playing this hand in the same manner as someone playing their first ever hand of poker you need to wondering what's up.

People are always trying to re-invent the wheel.

In reality it really doesn't matter how fancy you think your thought process is....you are playing the hand like a novice. Some contributions on this thread have suggested that checking to call is really innovative thinking and the bet sizes your unknown oppo throws out will give you all the info you need. That's just tosh. I agree with Lloyd in so much that checking to call is good for a variety of situations....but a vulnerable tournament hand, oop, against an unknown opponent who probably gets it in early with worse anyway, just isn't one of those situations.

As a tournament player I get a lot of encouragement when I see a cash game mentality fogging the mind of tournament players.

When you run bad people suggest that you analyse your game. When you do this you often find that you are over-complicating your game and you should just get back to basics and stop trying to be too clever.

As much as i find your posts quite irritating, i couldn't agree with this line more...

When you run bad people suggest that you analyse your game. When you do this you often find that you are over-complicating your game and you should just get back to basics and stop trying to be too clever.

So true

[LuckyLloyd]

Guys, imagine that you are 60 years-old and learnt how to play poker yesterday. It is your very first live game and your very first hand. You nervously look down in the bb after a raise and find a pair of Jacks.

The strategy you would use is check-calling.

I'm not trying to be funny or clever.....this is exactly what you would do and I see it all the time at the casino from weak or new players. Now if you have been playing the game for a number of years and you find yourself playing this hand in the same manner as someone playing their first ever hand of poker you need to wondering what's up.

People are always trying to re-invent the wheel.

In reality it really doesn't matter how fancy you think your thought process is....you are playing the hand like a novice. Some contributions on this thread have suggested that checking to call is really innovative thinking and the bet sizes your unknown oppo throws out will give you all the info you need. That's just tosh. I agree with Lloyd in so much that checking to call is good for a variety of situations....but a vulnerable tournament hand, oop, against an unknown opponent who probably gets it in early with worse anyway, just isn't one of those situations.

As a tournament player I get a lot of encouragement when I see a cash game mentality fogging the mind of tournament players.

When you run bad people suggest that you analyse your game. When you do this you often find that you are over-complicating your game and you should just get back to basics and stop trying to be too clever.

Mantis, if there was a way to stick posts in the PHA board on ignore yours would be the first on my list.

[AlexMartin]

Problem with flat calling flop is if vilain has any hand reading skills ur totaly fked on the later streets.

[MANTIS01]

Posted by: LuckyLloyd

Mantis, if there was a way to stick posts in the PHA board on ignore yours would be the first on my list.

...your poker strat plateaus when you stop listening to people Lloyd. Remember, the game takes a lifetime to master.

[NoflopsHomer]

Problem with flat calling flop is if vilain has any hand reading skills ur totaly fked on the later streets.

We need Kristian Kjondal here!!!

[LuckyLloyd]

Problem with flat calling flop is if vilain has any hand reading skills ur totaly fked on the later streets.

Equally, unless he's a total muppet playing the flop aggressively will allow him to play you perfectly. Pick your poison.

[AlexMartin]

This hand is a pandora's box tbh. Unless we know what level of thinking villain operates on we cannot find a truly optimal way to play this hand.

Check calling flop and turn gives good villain so much information that when you check the river (blocker bet will look just like that/you cant bet profitably so can only c/c) he can overbetshove a huge chunk of the time with 100% of his range and little/no fear of being called. Get these situations a lot in cash and impossible to outplay a good player oop on this sort of board and that kind of betting preflop.

I like how mariners played it tbh, but dont mind a check raise on the flop either, to protect our hand and finish an ugly situation.

[MANTIS01]

Posted by: AlexMartin

This hand is a pandora's box tbh. Unless we know what level of thinking villain operates on we cannot find a truly optimal way to play this hand.

I think you bullseye with this comment Alex. Against an unknown, defaulting to a standard line has got to make sense. If you do something different then you've got to ask yourself why are you doing something different? In this example there isn't any particular reason you can point at to try and get clever.

If you oppo is an aggressive player who c-bets big but who has shown a tendancy to fold to pre-flop re-raises then the op line is a good one.

[LuckyLloyd]

This hand is a pandora's box tbh. Unless we know what level of thinking villain operates on we cannot find a truly optimal way to play this hand.

Check calling flop and turn gives good villain so much information that when you check the river (blocker bet will look just like that/you cant bet profitably so can only c/c) he can overbetshove a huge chunk of the time with 100% of his range and little/no fear of being called. Get these situations a lot in cash and impossible to outplay a good player oop on this sort of board and that kind of betting preflop.

I like how mariners played it tbh, but dont mind a check raise on the flop either, to protect our hand and finish an ugly situation.

If you checkraise what are you checkraising to? Do you just give up thereafter?

By the way, the "standard" line is to check, call this flop.