8/16 online

Villain is playing 45/20 over 50 hands and seems to be a fish by his tendencies to limp and cold-call raises. Other than that, no reads. No relevant history.

I've been playing 30/20 while playing with him, if he's paying attention.

Hero is SB w/ A J

Villain raises UTG, folds to Hero, Hero 3-bets, BB (22/15) calls, Villain caps, call/call.

Flop A K Q

Hero bets, BB folds, Villain calls.

Turn 3

Hero bets, Villain raises, Hero calls.

River 2

Hero checks, Villain bets, Hero folds.

Full table?

Don't hate it. Id ck the flop tho

Sorry no, 6-max but only 5 players were dealt into this hand.

A lot of your threads seem to begin with a glance at your HUD and "no reads."

50 hands is an hour and a half playing live with someone. You seriously know nothing about how they've been playing for 10 orbits?

Well in this case I did have the read that he limps and cold-calls raises PF - but in general, no, I guess not. Live I'd most likely have more of a read by then but online maybe I'm relying too much on stats and not paying enough attention to hands I'm not involved in.

Thanks for pointing that out, I probably need to work on it.

I'd also check the flop. What are you hoping he has? TT or JJ?

I know online has changed but good note taking used to be the real key to Pokerstars. Over 50 hands, preflop stats can be heavily skewed by rungood - note that the difference between 45/20 and 35/20 is just 5 hands.

What you want to know in this case is whether he's going to barrel off any worse hand besides AT or call down any hand worse than AT. As a default, I'm inclined to c/c-c/c-c/c to see showdown but could c/f or c/r at some point depending on what I think of them.

AKQ is an information-rich board (how he plays different parts of his range varies a lot), so if you can define him a lot faster than he can define you, you can make exploitative folds and raises.

flop donk is pretty bad...maybe explaining your reasoning behind it would be useful?

TPTK + beating a lot of hands in his range (or at least, what I thought his range might be).

and i thought he'd check back a lot of hands due to how scary of a board that was, but perhaps call with those same hands.

i also wanted to find out where i was at. i was hoping if i was beat by one or both of them, they would make that known on the flop.

what hands do you put in his capping range? i don't see how you're ahead of much at all. also, what will the things that you are beating do when you donk out? how about if you check?

"finding out where you're at" is an old school and really bad strategy

Flop bet is bad.

Turn, you're drawing to 4 outs. He has a set like 150%. Especially if this is Carbon.

In the same session I saw somebody with similar stats cap K9o. I thought his range could be wide.

Some will fold, many will probably call at least once. Any A/K/Q/J/T or underpair probably peels the flop.

The more important question to me though was what do those hands do if I check. And the answer to that is check back, in many cases. I was trying to avoid that and extract max value from the hands I beat.

it hasn't been my experience that the preflop capper checks back very often, especially on these board textures, but perhaps your experience is different

also, you'd likely find it more useful to start thinking in terms of ranges instead of in terms of specific hands (ie "he has K9o so I bet"). a program like pokerstove, equilab, etc should prove fruitful

...

right on. when you mentioned you saw someone with k9o and then extrapolated from that i assumed you were putting too much weight on specific hands. it seems like pokerstove isn't supported/downloadable any more but it looks like equilab still is.

Yeah this whole hand smells of bet til I know where I'm at then hero fold. Internet texas not the place for this tactics they is tricksey

Damn. I never thought of it in those terms but that's basically how I play post flop in general whenever I have the betting lead and anything between A hi and top pair.

It's fine in SSHE games where people call a lot and don't raise without the nuts.

Yeah I mean if this was 8/16 at commerce I'd likely say NH or at least not barf

Not only do I think the flop donk is imbalanced, but this isn't even a good hand to have in a flop donking range in this spot. It plays so much better as a x/c, x/c, x/decide.

To nit a bit, I would say online this is pretty much always x/c, x/c, x/c. There is no decision to make on the river. You check/call and expect to lose, but get surprised often enough to make calling profitable. One will rarely have a strong enough read to deviate from that plan. Live though, I would say this is definitely a x/c, x/c, x/decide spot.

Are many players going to bet the turn with something we beat here after we check-call the flop? If they are, seems like they may barrel river also. Our gutshot isn't worth all that much, I think I would be more likely to fold on the turn than the river.