ya its very clear the opener is a strong, thinking player who 4-7x to mix it up. his preflop strategy is clearly tailored to exploit many players at the table

why do you guys always put up these walls of text to answer a simple math problem?

This. Just jam, didnt u say hes opened a lot of weak hands and shown them down? The fact his opens are so big makes me much more inclined to jam, every time you get through u pick up so many chips in proportion to ur stack

What must not be missed from this thread is that the EV of the shove derives its strength from the fact the raise to 4bb is ridiculous big done with semi bs hands. If you take it down to 2.75bb which still has decent fold equity and take the range towards 25% its still pretty wide but no longer as a good idea to push if the table is soft.


So you better be very sure the guy is loose and all over the place stealing pots wide and bullying people and you have observed his hands as well to a degree (not just the frequency) . We need actually a true list of the exposed hands and positions to have the right picture. You see if some guy opens 20% of hands in reality (from some earlier position say, later ones will be naturally higher) and i see him open 4 out of 10 i may decide this guy is a very loose bully of 40% . But the fact is if you have 20% chance per trial the probability to score 4/10 or better is a decent 12% still. So with a bit of bad luck in terms of observation bias you can get the wrong idea about someone. Your statistics are not reliable. And furthermore if the guy is doing the raise from btn or sb its much wider than with 4 or 5 left to act. Are you sure you have observed the loose behavior properly from all positions or just a few that it made sense to be wide anyway?

Bottom line better be sure the guy is a bad player that is on a heater. Because if you are not careful you may end up painting the guy as loose as he wants you to think he is and then at the right moment exploit this image by keeping his raises big with great hands as well. Are you sure it was done with stupid hands at 4bb or was it 3bb earlier and from later positions. Did you notice when its 5bb or 4bb it tends to be a bit better hands than at 3bb-3.5bb??? If you did that then the guy is not as idiot as you think and he may be trying sizes that make smaller stacks uncomfortable (forcing them to decisions for their tournament life, which will make it easy for him to fold if they push and super tough for them to get involved with hands that are still better than the hands he is pulling these stunts with.)

Basically i wont be surprised if you told me here you pushed with AJo and he had some AQ,AK or JJ here etc.

An intelligent player creates an image when the cost is small to him and exploits it when it matters nicely later. This is what a big stack can do for you, you can create an image that is not tight by getting involved in many pots (especially with some reads if people look at their cards earlier) when others are finding it a bit uneasy to take a stand without super good hands. He can be using the fear or other smaller stacks that are thinking of having someone else go out before they take a risky stand without super top hands.

This is why you must really know if the sizing is idiotic or on purpose so big. If its on purpose then the guy is not at all an idiot. Still the EV of raising wide for 4bb will not be great (for the semi bs hands) but he has managed now to get very nicely paid with TT-AA,AK when they give him push action a lot wider. He loses an occasional 3-4bb (and gains a more frequent 2bb) and gains someone's stack a bit later when he has it. That style of play of course depends on running good too. But to win tournaments you need to run good anyway and if you have a style that creates nice results when you are running good , a lot better than another tighter more careful approach, then you may eventually end up doing better over time with the image created because when you run good people notice it and get heavily irritated and remember it for a long time.

You cannot engineer a rush of good luck in poker but you bet you can create a style of play that wins big and tilts maximally if you are on a heater and loses significantly but not nearly as much when luck is mediocre. Effectively the net result of good luck + bad luck is very plus when its all averaged out! The smart player knows how to use luck to their benefit maximally.

For the record I shove (shoved) this spot on a regular basis and have never questioned it. Just to clarify what end of the spectrum I was on, 2 yrs ago I was 3b shoving 20bb stacks over any open that I even slightly suspected was light with atc just to pick up chips and get back to a 3 betting stack with much more maneuverability. This spot was a hand that in the past I really thought seemed very obvious but vs this particular opponent, since hes not calling with worse (spoke to him tonight and he said hes folding JJ and calling QQ+ AKs but I wouldnt expect anyone to believe me since I could never verify that and it just looks like im saying that to further prove my point) that if im not shoving 60% of hands vs his opens, then I shouldnt start shoving now just b/c my hand looks more appealing when in reality its not. Maybe the case here is that I should have shoved over his last open as well with 64o but I missed that spot. Instead I waited for an aesthetically pleasing hand which is just as effective as 64o. All I have is an ace blocker. This man is folding JJ I promise. Thats why this spot is so peculiar. Im just trying to look at things from all angles and question everything. Please spare me the 'results oriented' comments b/c i can assure you that is not the case. I wouldnt make a thread in hsmtt b/c I ran into the top of someones range and think it might be wrong now lol. Thats very insulting to any thinking player imo.

this player is a regular $40 - $65 daily tourney player. He sattied in thru a $15 step one. My local casino isnt big, I know everyone and everyone knows me. I know that he sattied in for a fact and not some pro leveling me. He is in the biggest buy in of his life. He is not tweaking his opens to manipulate stacks or anything close to that, ever!! I can assure you this!! I totally agree with you how some ppl will wrongfully perceive someone as wreckless or aggro when they arent even going to showdown. When in reality, what they have witnessed was A) nowhere near a large enough sample size and/or B) the person is prolly just having it and/or C) someone playing position very well and purposely portraying a wreckless image.

Get out of your own head man. He's 4xing it with a wide range and folding JJ to your 20bb shove. Just because shoving 32o would be profitable doesn't mean that it's a peculiar spot with AJ.

So now you're saying he will open basically ATC for 4x+ and only call a shove with 4 hands? A bit different from what I got from :
Clear shove in this spot unless one of the blinds looked at their cards and is salivating or something. Clear for both Pros and rec players . ;p

I think we're all spinning our wheels a bit now...

Regardless, meaning I can extract is 4xbb preflop raises are bad, especially late game and with big blinds/antes. When villain does so, it changes math enough to make moves normally ill-advised suddenly profitable.

Dr. Scott: the deliberate stupidity in which you traffic, where you argue nothing, ignore those who argue something, and then equate the two, is the sort of lazy non-thinking that reminds me of religion. Obviously zealots cannot be engaged with, and nor can you - but at least I realize the fallacy of this post. Your flaunting of your medical practice further convinces me that this is how most doctors - and by this, I mean frauds and quacks - "think": evidence-based medicine is merely a euphemism for whatever makes the most money, which you will never do at poker.

A guy 4x's really wide but only calls with premiums and u dont see why this is a super easy jam? Thats about an ideal of a read as u can have in this spot. Edit: sucks that u got coolered tho

Pretty funny and there is some truth in this. I wouldn't be so mean to the doctor. I was tempted to ask him if he would argue law with Vanessa.

I was really amazed that this thread seemed to bring out all the clueless posters who would make long arguments for folding here. Showed how many people posting here couldn't beat the 4/180s on Stars. Also, how insistant some amateur players are on playing weak/tight late, which I guess is good.

Always enjoy reading posts from people claiming to have a "huge edge" on the field who then proceeds to show amazing leaks that any $10 sng reg doesn't have.

masque de z and weeways are recruiting for new membership to the Textbrick Gang, charter rules if anyone is interested:

1. First and foremost, if a thought pops into your head, WRITE IT DOWN, might be important later.

2. Remember that the Textbrick gang is always right, if someone who's won alot more than you starts making strong, convincing points, they probably messed up the math or something. Keep writing alot of words until they give up, this proves you were right the whole time!

3. If theres a fact that is irrelevant to the point you're trying to make, say it anyway! This is tied in with rule number 1 and is key to getting your text in a tight bricklike formation, it will be hard to make bricks if you dont talk about your life experiences or add words where they dont need to be.

4. Cliches! No orator worth his salt leaves home without 15+ cliches ready to fire off for a given argument, and in fact you can not win an argument without them! These will be a key part of our offense as we wear down the so called 'thinkers', who dont hate AQ and think there's a right way to play jacks.


5. If you've made a point you think is very strong, mention it again. And again. A point can not lose strength EVER and the more you repeat yourself the more true it becomes in the adversary's mind.

6. Refuse to think inside the box, EVER. It's like golf, sure if you have an 18 inch gimme putt you could just tap it straight in, but if everyone can do that then wheres your edge located? You have to differentiate yourself from the pack, use a 3 iron and put lots of backspin on it, so to speak.

7. Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it.

8. If you hear a voice within you say, 'I cannot checkraise', then by all means, checkraise, and that voice will be silenced.

9. Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.

10. They see lines; and they say, ‘Why?' But We dream of lines that never were; and We say, ‘Why not’?


PM masque to join up

Nice one kleath lolz ur percs