Live 8-16. Have not played with Villain before. He's a NLHE player and he's sitting on a ginormous stack. He's on my left. He's been aggressive. Raising PF frequently. Have not seen him get out of line.

PF: Hero opens with AJ in EP, Villain 3-bets, two cold callers and BB calls too. Despite the big overlay, I don't cap because I don't expect Villain to 3-bet wide in a limit game since he is a NLHE player. So I just call with good relative position.

FLOP [5 players, 15 sb less drop/tip, let's say 14 sb]: KTT Hero has a GSSD and BDFD. Hero checks, Villain bets, two calls, Hero calls.

TURN [4 players, 9 bb] Q. Hero checks, Villain bets, two calls, Hero raises, Villain 3-bets, fold, fold, Hero calls.

RIVER [2 players, 17 bb]: K FML. The board is now double-paired. Broadway just shrunk. Hero checks, Villain bets, Hero?

I hate to fold here but you probably should. He either has to have air or AA

Does a good/reasonable player even bother bet AA here? I'd check and pray I see a sticky AQ.

Villain bet river. We have to call before we can hope to see a sticky AQ.

I meant if we were the one w/ AA.

I mean I can't imagine you're good, like, ever, but I probably sling it in because I play bad and hope to see the QJ that he turned into a bluff, or maybe chop w/ another Broadway.

I can't imagine we're good here ever either. We beat nothing. All we beat are badly played/illogical hands, but that's enough for me to call getting 18-1.

Yup.
Fur coat dilemma / people do surprising things sometimes / you beat all crazy hands = call.

Hell, maybe he has J9s sometimes and decided to "mess around" pre, and is now value betting. If calling's a mistake, I can't imagine it's that bad of one.

+1

You are almost certainly beat, but almost isn't always. The pot is way too big to fold for one bet...just because you haven't seen him get out of line doesn't mean he isn't capable of it.

Maybe he's just bored because it's limit. Call the bet and quietly muck to his boat. But make sure you see it first.

I think it's interesting to note that around 2 months ago I advocated folding a hand getting 18-1 that on the surface looks a lot less hopeless than this hand, and predictably I took a lot of heat for that. There are some conclusions that can be drawn from comparing that hand to this one:

1) The parlay effect is a difficult hurdle to overcome, and human intuition-- even expert intuition--accounts for this effect very poorly. Another thread that illustrates how poorly good players account for this effect: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...-what-1404926/

2) The "big pot gotta call" heuristic, albeit a very useful mental tool against 1 opponent, breaks down when we have to beat a parlay.

I think I was one of the main critics to your line of thinking, so glad we agree now, because I definitely appreciate your content (even if I don't always agree).

But I have seen my WR improve dramatically now that I just toss in the chips here vs making hero folds in giant pots. Up for debate whether I'm just running better or if it's actually helped, though.

I would donk the turn. This is a spot were the villain could check back..JJ, AQ, JQ..maybe some of the hands he got a little bit crazy with pre flop. I'd prefer not to put myself in a situation where I'm spending 4 BBs to see a showdown.

I would discount AA in his range given your NL description and you have an Ace in your hand. Even absent the NL part this would be a big overplay of Aces.

As played, this is probably a fold, but this hand would haunt me the rest of the session if I didn't look him up. I agree you see some crazy stuff some times. I call

Probably bought in deep so he could "bully the table." That's a huge playing advantage, you know.[/QUOTE]

Perhaps discussed in the associated thread, but also relevant is that a third player somewhat protects the pot, so people will bluff less. In fact, the hand ITT swings a lot closer to a fold if there are three people in the pot and the action goes check - Villain bets - Hero ???.


See, my results at 8/16 have been awful so, although I know I've run very bad, I'm trying to find leaks. I think I "just toss in the chips" too much with one pair hands on a dry board and a 9-bet pot. So I think I'd benefit from finding a few more folds, but in the 9-bet pots, not the 18-bet pots.

The hard part is, there's no great way to empirically track this. Maybe it's worth trying some suboptimal ways. I'd like to track every "what the hell" call getting between 15 and 20:1 and see if I'm really good > 5% of the time. If I come up with, I dunno, 1 out of 50 (2%), maybe that quick heuristic should induce me to start shaving a bit off my calling range.

Folding getting 18:1 (which should be a call if you're good 5.3% of the time) isn't horrible if you're actually good 6% of the time. It's horrible if you're good say 9% or 10% of the time.

Hero, who probably calls the river too much, folded and bought a shrimp cocktail.

Villain showed QJ and bought the hot waitress a fur coat.

I really kicked myself after this hand because the pot was too friggin' big to discount the WTF/bluff fraction. It dawned on me later that Villain flopped OESFD. So he had a monster. But he still played the turn wretchedly, charging himself 3 bb to draw with that monster. Especially since I think he blew out his overlay with the 3-bet.

I just didn't think that any hand that put that much action in on the turn was behind me after the board double-paired. KK/QQ/TT/KTs were already there. AK got there. ATs/QTs/JTs got there.

But we gotta remember that villains are bad because they don't play as well as we do. They spazz raise. They drive out their overlay. They turn showdown value into bluffs. They do enough stupid stuff that we're obligated to call once the pot gets 10 bb+ because the WTF fraction is too big to discount.

Thanks for the feedback. Quite surprised to see the discussion was not more one you sided.

Unfortunately, this was the turning point in yet another losing session.

Yeah, you have to pry broadway out of my cold dead hands against an "aggressive NL player" getting 18:1 on the river, even on double-paired board. This is exactly why.

Sorry your fold didn't work out.

No need to be sorry. I folded for one bb, closing the action, in a 15+ bb pot.

Justice was served. Cold.

I'm no limit player but it's hard to imagine these wtf scenarios account for more than 5%? Can't be a bad fold against anyone with half a brain

People do weird things, and people like the player described in the OP do weird things more often. Probably not a ton more than 5% of the time, but 5% seems low to me.

This thread's pretty much wrapped up but I thought I'd point out that the bolded is the opposite conclusion I'd reach knowing villain was a NL player.

In my mind it's pretty typical for an NL guy to not understand the difference in implied odds between NLHE and LHE, and not adjust appropriately. And that he'd probably keep his "light 3-bet" range the same or similar to what he'd have in a NL game, i.e., small suited aces, small pocket pairs, small suited connectors.

For that matter, he'd probably be thinking his turn bet/raise semi-bluff was a good move not really thinking about the odds he's giving for people to call with (obviously in NL he could have made it a lot tougher to call with a big bet).

Anyway, I might or might not cap it up preflop here but, given the above, I would estimate that AJs is in pretty good shape vs. his range.

There's other possible takeaways