Q&A #43: A Scare Card on the River

Are you basing your turn 3-bet the assumption that this guy is a loose-aggressive.

If you don’t have a read on him do you still 3-bet this turn?

Hi thanks for this Ed

I chose this hand because I knew it was debatable.

I will not defend my play too much here but I will a bit, I make a lot of money by looking at hands like this at the cut off and turn at 15/30c and have actually checked and rechecked my stats on this.

I do however get hammered with them when I move up levels and it is probably why i stick to playing the level I do, I can spot the 15%ers a mile away and beat them and the rest tend to pay everything.

I guess I ought to start tightening up some more so as I can move up but I currently make about 8bb/100.

I think I may be suffering from negative reinforcemet though, it has worked in the past and seems to work over a large range of hands so I keep doing it, playing at the micro level I do is akin to playing play tables in some ways, it makes some plays that would be leaks at higher levels profitable.

I will try to tighten up I am a 40% at the moment.

Thanks again for all your advice I still believe I am a profitable player because I read your book and my postflop play has improved dramatically.

Peter

I rethought my answer above and I think you are totally right, as I believe I have gone through the progression of a poker player.

Loose Passive : loser
Weak Tight: winner
Weak Semi loose: break even
semi loose Aggressive : winner
and I think I need to make that final jump to Tight aggressive

By the way this is great, I know noone that plays Poker and so having someone break down my hands and make me think can only improve my game

Thanks
Peter

You’re 8 BB/100 over how many hands? This number seems unsustainable in the long run. And heeding Ed’s advice while playing at 40% seems contradictory to me. Perhaps we’re dealing with an insufficient sample size here? And then again, perhaps I am mistaken.