He's probably doing that with FD's and AJ and some other stuff. I think the price is right, so I'd call.

Villain is 22/19/2.2 over 100 hands
I've been fairly tight if he's noticed at 14/12

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

MP: $3.75
CO: $30.95
BTN: $44.30
SB: $34.20
BB: $24.85
Hero: $27.20

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is UTG with AK
Hero raises to $1, 3 folds, SB calls $0.90, 1 fold

Flop: ($2.25) 5 A 4 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $1.75, SB calls $1.75

Turn: ($5.75) Q (2 players)
SB bets $4.55, Hero calls $4.55

River: ($14.85) 3 (2 players)
SB bets $12, Hero...

This really makes no sense to me. The 3 doesn't really change much except for 67ss and he should expect you to keep valuebetting anything you've been valuebetting. But, you haven't shown any weakness and you have exactly what you are repping and he's not trying to bluff you off it. So, I'd fold. Just fold.

I'm going to switch from 9-man turbos to 6-max NL. I made a thread in the beginner forum asking for advice on how to make the switch. Would be great if some of you could give me some advice, as I guess most of you have either switched from STTs to cash or are playing both games

linky

thx!

We were actually discussing this a bit in the **** thread a couple of days ago. I would defo head over to the uNL forums. They have some good videos and strat articles.

HaHa, that's the Devin I know and love So we have to just assume such a narrow range here of AQ, or a set, or 67? You say it doesn't make sense, you mean it doesn't make sense because it's such a narrow range? Because to me it makes perfect sense that this is AQ.

EDIT:
Switch it around and say I'm SB with something like 99 or whatever and turn something like that into a bluff trying to get an Ace to fold repping AQ or better. We would need more hands on an opponent to assume he's thinking like this, correct?

I think I read the hand wrong. I'm pretty sure I thought he c/c flop, c/c turn and donked river.

I still think it's a fold though. More so now, cause it's less likely he's spazzing a spade draw. Usually when they donk the turn, their hand improved in some way. In this case, the hands that improved that you are ahead of are like KQss, or QJss, which has decent show down value and I think it's unlikely he's barreling those often enough.

Yeah, right around post #291 and forward there's a little talk about switching from STTs to cash. You'll have to sift through other topics like bananas and hot girls though

devin's reply should be the op in a new stt->cash thread, imo

QFT

Dear STTF,

Please help me hate poker less, what the hell do I do here?

Villain is running 92/26/27 and is ******edly loose post.

Everest No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Everest Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (BB) ($62)
UTG ($28.90)
MP ($88.20)
CO ($23.95)
Button ($83.20)
SB ($27.30)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Q, A
1 fold, MP calls $0.25, 2 folds, SB calls $0.10, Hero bets $1.25, MP calls $1, SB calls $1

Flop: ($3.75) A, 8, 4 (3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $3.75, MP calls $3.75, 1 fold

Turn: ($11.25) 10 (2 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $11.25, Hero calls $11.25

River: ($33.75) 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $33.75, Hero ???

I guess pre and flop are standard. On the turn I am lost, same for the river...

Things to think about;
-I am too deep for my own good
-I have a backdoor FD on the turn
-Villain is truly insane

This is a sick hand. I'm torn between "it's top purr versus maniac gogogo!" and "oh noez it's such an evil sick donk on the turn he has it"
you have to make your mind up on the turn tho. If he has air, you're calling turn to call almost any river. it's very expensive to pay the 11.25$ to tank fold a brick river.

I think I fold the turn and wait for a slightly better position to stack off

edit: altho in game I could take a 10th look at his stats and think **** it and station up

He didnt donk the turn, I checked it to him, which might very well be a big mistake. I checked it because

-I figured I should do some potcontrol because I didn't really want to get 250BB in with only toppest pair and
-I might be able to induce some extra spazz

And yeah that those two thought are somewhat contradicting...

Which is of course just what I did

He's playing 92/26. I'd probably call with an 8.

I'd just bet/call turn or C/R small. He's never folding an ace or any hand with a heart. If you C/C it's with 100% intention of calling any river no matter the size.

Pot bets are usually top pair or better but there's a breaking point of ******ness where ultra ******s will bet pot with complete **** like 72o.

you usually should have some pretty decent reads on a 92 vpip since he's playing every hand. So, what has he been potting with? Some guys only pot big hands...others just always mash the pot button.

With out knowing this, I would not be folding to this guy and I would not be worried about pot control. I'd just close to pot each street and probably fold if he raises at any point. As played, I call the river for sure.

Hi Mike,

How often have you seen one of the 22/19 25nl players make a $12 river bet into a $14 pot without being able to beat top pair? I've found that their river value bets at the top end of the value range are almost always strong, enough so that I just don't think we ever have the right odds to call with one pair. If he has an A that you beat, he's much more likely to bet small, or check call river.

So that leaves us with a question. What can we call on the river? If nothing, then our turn call is done in the hope of him checking the river and us getting to showdown with the best hand. This I don't like, so if I call turn, I'm definitely calling a river bet up to about $10, or bet/folding if he checks river. Given this is my plan for the river, and I'm prepared to put more money in to the pot with TPTK, I often raise the turn instead. It seems to me that this is the best way of using your position against the tight/regs at 25nl. I think he can fold a lot of draws and aces that you beat, but he can also call a lot of his draws with the wrong odds, so I'm not sure whether either of my lines is really good. Being confused in this way, I'm often going into check call mode with my TP hands and just hoping that the pot doesn't get too expensive by the river

Been fun to play you recently

Note his turn betsize $4.55 is almost exactly 80% of the pot, so if he's multitabling, he's probably also using TN or an AHK script for betsizing. 12 into 14 is just over 80%, so both bets are what you'ld get from betpot set to 80% - this seems pretty high to me, so methinks he's strong and eg clicking the mousewheel instead of the right button? Worth a note to check later.

Finally moved up Peru? TR?

Peru (and all)

So in that AK hand, I was actually the SB with 99 and I played the hand as is--turning my hand into the bluff. It was vs this tightish reg and while he tanked on the river, he finally called with AK. But I asked the question in the OP about turning a hand like that into a bluff vs multi-tabling thinking regs after he played the hand like he did. Pretty much the concensus is to fold AK, and obv KK, and JJ,TT. So we're calling with AA and 44-55 (and letting him know early on we have that) and AQ. Peeling KQss and folding on the river. 67ss would be the rarest of the hands in our range.

I just shouldn't give 25nl players this kind of credit obv.

Even though I originally read the hand wrong, I still stand by that. I would not assume you were trying to bluff me off a strong Ax hand there, because I wouldn't expect people to fold AK/AJ there often enough.

That doesn't mean it was a bad bluff, it was probably good. He tank called near top of his range. The funny thing is he probably folds A8 or KK, which basically have the same value here.

Can't you say something like this about every poker hand? If we assume that the aggressor (villain say) on the river is value betting and bluffing somewhat correctly, then every hand hero can have between those two (value/bluff) ranges has the same value.

It's hero's job to try to exploit villain by either calling/folding that whole middle range.

However what tends to happen and what should happen between very good opponents who know each other is that the top part of the "middle range" calls and the bottom part folds, effectively randomising hero's calling frequency, and pushing the game towards equilibrium.

I'd be very interested to hear what you and others think about this Devin, whether we should always be striving for maximum expoitation by frequently making hero calls and big folds or whether randomising your calls against regs by, for example, calling AK and folding A8 in the hand being discussed, is ok.

U are correct. But I doubt this villain was thinking, this is top 1/3rd of my bluff catching range here and I want to call here 1/3rd of the time.

Bluff catching range:
AK
AJ
AT
(and any other Ax that would have been in your UTG open range--we'll say some percentage of AXs)
KK

Would you include KQ in this bluff catching range if you think that if villain is bluffing, it's worse than Qx?

So given this range of hands you would have after opening UTG, you would call with the top 1/3 of these hands--essentially AK & AJ?

Or would you call with any of these hands 1/3rd of the time, randomizing this frequency by using your watch or whatever method you use?

edit: Oh, and where do you get the "1/3rd bluff catching" frequency?

Ok this may be flammable and show that I severely stunt my own growth as a poker player. I don't think you (Mike) should do this kind of thing at the micros. Firstly because we cannot give the other 25NLer's that much credit. Secondly we'll assume it was a good bluff that is +EV, which is not a stretch since I would prolly have pitched AK there had I been paying enough attention, these situations vs nitty multi-tabling thinking regs don't occur enough at these limits to reach the long run in any relevant sense. What you are doing here is increasing your variance and possibly making it tougher to play against this guy in the future since he knows you can be smart and tricky. I like to stay out of situations like this to reduce my variance for a likely insignificant reduction in my winrate.

FWIW I would have played my cards basically face up in this situation. Sometimes I'd 3b pre other times I'd flat, c/c flop, c/f turn and river. It's pretty exploitable but I doubt anyone at 25NL would exploit me and not for very much.

Mike,

My 1/3rd had no basis. It was just a way of illustrating I don't think villain is thinking about game theory.

I have no idea what frequency we should be calling the river here. You might try this play once a month, which means we should basically never be calling.

KB, I totally agree, but every now and then the situation seems to be ripe, and I get that bug up my ass. It's def not something I do often, as you said, it just simply doesn't come up very often.

this particular hand had me thinking about my calling tendencies on the river, which I think are pretty crappy at the moment, and is a theme for what I'm trying to improve upon. You'll notice a lot of my hands involve something with calling the river.

I have some other questions about river play I'd like to discuss after hands in this thread play their course.