Hand Discussion #13: My Thoughts

Ed,

So if the MP had followed through with his flop raise with a nice size bet on the Turn after the blank fell, would you have committed your stack even though the extra value hand has already folded?

He was obviously not wanting to commit, but he could have made it difficult for you had he kept the heat on.

Ed,
That was basically my line exactly. I don’t understand how you cannot be pleased with the way you play it. Poker is dirty, so there is no exact symmetric beauty to strive for. Whether you won or lost you executed perfectly.
Iam curious to know though, what would your response have been had he bet the turn???
Personally I would have raised, for reasons I mentioned in first post, but also for an aggro player to follow through on the turn is standard procedure, so no reason to upgrade his range much because of that…

Ed,
Agreed, but generally speaking, you also have to consider the original raisor the most likely candidate to follow you for the better part of the hand and pick a base-line most suitable against that player, which in this case wasn’t SB. SB was your dream opponent, but not your most likely one (yeah, I know SB was loose, the other wasn’t etc, etc… But still…)

So the hand was well executed against the most likely opponent, give and take a bit on the bet-sizes, which can vary for many other reasons, not mentioned here, such as your recent history against each other, your last respective hands, your general mood etc, etc…

I want to second Mike;

what do you do Ed when he bets the turn? The bet size doesn’t really matter, somewhere between $50 and $100?

I think villain should have bet the turn, especially since he should put you on a draw as you said yourself. So I’m sure his best line is to b/f (or b/c) the the turn if he decided to raise the flop.

Then in your shoes you face some range of AJ+ (all better hands than AJ) and a few draws and pure bluffs.

SO I think you would have to fold the turn, which sucks badly cause you are never very strong there.

the level of thinking displayed is revealing and frightenning.

it scares me because i know i will never play the game at that depth
but do realize, Ed, that you are dropping into this game “from above”
to research this format at these low stakes (at least that is my
understanding).

at these stakes i can’t get into my opponent’s head with enough clarity
to consider subtle plays. i can understand subtle plays but i don’t
recognize when to use them. i have a feeling this is where very good
poker players leave the average “winning” player in the dust.

1 thing i would like to understand is why there didn’t seem to be much
concern about a flush draw. i get the “small flop donk bet” and you
gave up a little protection against that unlikely flush draw for the raise
you wanted and got.

but in the spirit of a student (in ignorance) asking his teacher (trusted
and respected) could you please explain your check on the turn ?
you stated “I could consider betting small here” and gave several good
reasons why but you didn’t say why you checked instead and gave a possible flush draw (or draw to his J) a free shot.

for value and protection a 2/3 pot turn bet does commit you if he calls
and then you’re all in on the river- easy to call that a good play after seeing his cards. part of your stratagy was to get an overly aggressive
player near stacked but that “depends on the preflop raiser being overaggressive with weak hands and will get you into trouble against some players”. was your check on the turn because you felt this
particular player would not call you unless he could beat 1 pair ?

thanks, tobori

>> (turn) I could consider betting small here, say $25 or $30, again with the intention of inducing action from weaker hands.

I absolutely love this line. Some really agro player when in position will just raise the hell out of you when they have any sort of hand. I’ve noticed they seem to do it more when you do some kind of stupid donk bet, like say 1/6 the pot. They usually respond to this with a pot sized bet and them being positive that they are ahead =)

Ed,

“If I can nearly stack AJ and AT, but get stacked by AK, then I’m net ahead…”

I think after the small folds and you’re calling the MP’s flop raise, I think you should also be considering A9, A6s, 66, 99 which are hands in MP’s range, but haven’t been mentioned. His smallish flop raise could be trying to build a pot here, prior to SB folding. These other hands are more likely to stack you than AK, assuming of course that villain is tight enough that he’s not committing his stack on the flop with TPTK given the SPR out of his comfort zone.

I really think MP blinked here when he didn’t bet the Turn, and didn’t use his position wisely to apply pressure.

All around, this is a very instructive hand. Thanks!

It would appear that the villain was exercising pot control. Ed called his flop raise, which puts a draw near the bottom of his range. The river hesitation shows the villain strongly felt he could be looking at a better ace, 2-pair or set. Most decent players will recognize that Ed is at minimum a decent player so his flat from the BB is a decent to strong hand. Villain’s play is consistent with that read.

I don’t like the villains flop raise all that much. The SB really complicates things for him, but raising Ed’s flop lead seems more reflexive than productive.

This hand re-emphasizes to me how dangerous it is to be OOP. When I look at Ed’s value bet at the end, my stomach turns.

When villain checks the Turn, I throw out hands like AA, 99, 66, A9, A6s from his range because I’m sure he would have bet these. Given the evidence at this point what might he have?

I’m adding junky hands because they are in villain’s preflop raising range, and I’m not sure if he was raising the small flop lead by BB as a bluff, and gave up on the Turn. What are chances he raises the flop when he misses, or doesn’t have much? I’m not sure. Maybe that’s where I’m missing the point.

Junk that missed– many ways
AT- 8 ways
AJ- 8 ways
AQ- 6 ways
AK- 8 ways
98s- 2 ways
T9s- 2 ways
J9s- 2 ways

On the river he’s always folding all the “junk that missed”. Since he “went in the tank” with AJ, I presume he was considering between folding and calling. Could he be considering pushing?? I’m not sure what the chances of folding versus calling are with AJ, but I would guess he is more likely to fold AT than AJ, and as his hand’s improves his calling chances improve until he gets to the Trip 9 hands which I presume he’s Raising. There are almost as many hands that beat us, than we beat, and his chances of calling with hands we beat are less than ones that beat us.

If this value bet is +EV, my thought is it’s very slim. As an amateur player, I’m leaving plays like this to the experts.

This is a really good value bet on the end. He’s going to fold to a raise, but AJ or AT is going to bluff shove here pretty much never and really needs to call. If Ed gets shoved on it’s a really easy fold.

Thanks for the clarification. I think what tripped me up was thinking you were committed and would calling a shove on the River. I get it now.