I get way out of line here, so feel free to laugh at my spew. Plus villain does something funky OTT and it threw me off.

Hero($226) BB: Bad rec player getting back into the game. Thus far have been super quiet, folding away my time because I'm card dead and trying to remain disciplined pre-flop.

V(covers) LJ: Won a huge pot after overcalling a raise and a reraise and subsequently stacking off w/ JJ vs 2 players on a 10: 6: 4 board while saying "I may not be ahead now but I can catch up" but was miraculously good.

Yes, I'm bad enough to lose $$$ at this table

Preflop:
V opens to $10 from lojack, button calls, hero defends BB w/ k: 10:

Flop($31): K 9: 4:
Hero checks to PFR who cbets 15, button folds, hero makes the call

Turn($61): 7:
V def has a negative reaction to the club, noted post-flop as well by another player. Hero thinks for a second, V goes to bet $25 out-of-turn but before the chips leave his hand the dealer tells him it's on me. V does a total balk and pulls his hand back saying "oops" to the dealer.

Hero checks, V bets $45.

Even though alarm bells are going off in my head I make the call. I had this little voice in the back of my head saying he was trying to pressure me. I really lost focus in this hand and completely regressed back into non-thinking poker once V did the above move.

I totally leveled myself rather than thinking through the hand.

River($151): A:
I continue with my delusions and decide he is 100% scared of either the club or the A, so obviously I lead out lololololol

Hero leads $65, V raises $165, Hero mucks

V ended up showing and I will post results later.

I butchered at least half the streets here and think it's an easy fold OTT. So I'm posting the HH to the community for feedback/lulz/flaming as penance.

LOL @ folding flop. I'm not sure why we'd want to donk OTT or river. As played turn is meh, might lean fold. River lead's just weird. I'd probably c/f.

Fold pre. Kind of want to fold flop with that low grade angle. Check turn.

Interestingly enough i went into this session specifically looking for spots where when I played in the past(back from 2yr hiatus) I would be scared money and fold. This flop was one of them and was happy with the call at the time. Turn felt bad doe.

Full disclosure I tried to simplify preflop for myself and went with a static BB strat of defending with ~150% of the openers likely range. In this case I figured K10s was in there.

Hand is fine until the river.

You don't need to bluff with hands as strong as this, and you rep nothing anyway.

Agree with SABR, though you could rep a flush that was talked out of betting OTT and perhaps the naked Ac, Mostly the Ac would c/c river though.

We can't rep anything besides a weird block bet, which is kinda what this is.

The problem with "bluffing" this is that villain will pretty much call all better hands than what we have (which will be most of the time).

Yep, I agree there. With the right V, we might get some better Ks to fold, but I sure would't count on that at 1/2, and we have SDV.

This might sound incredibly nitty, but preflop is actually a fold. We can defend against a $6 raise, but anything higher than that and we should be folding. We're up against an MP open, who should be raising a range like {55+, AJo+, KQo+, suited broadways, T9s+, J9s}. Our hand performs so poorly against that range, especially OOP.

I want you to really ask yourself why you called preflop. Did you do it because you thought that you'll be exploited if you fold hands this strong preflop - that you're worried about giving up your BB too easily against steals - or did you do it because you genuinely felt that it would be hugely +EV to play this hand, since you could outplay villain postflop, even OOP, even with a hand that's weaker than most of his range, due to your massive skill advantage over him?

As for postflop: flop is a pretty clear x/c as played. Turn has to be a x/f, or else we'll end up getting value towned everytime villain has KJ+. Villain shouldn't even have any gutshots that aren't suited, since he shouldn't be playing QJo/QTo/JTo in the first place, which leans his range heavily to KJ+. He's going to have some semibluffs like AJcc, QTcc and maybe weak ones like JThh too, but he'll mostly have us beat here and it's too difficult for us to navigate rivers OOP with a hand this weak that has very little opportunity to improve, so we're better off folding now.

I called because my BB strategy was to defend with ~150% of V's likely opening range, and go from there. I did this for a few reasons, with the main one being simplicity. The first image below is what I was thinking V's lojack opening range was and the second is what i was looking to defend with. I'll note that some of that range would be 3!s.

The "defend with 150% of their opening range" strategy is all well and good when you're facing a 2-3x open, but not when you're facing a 5x open.

Also, your ranges are quite unrealistic. Villain simply never has 54s when he makes a 5x raise from LJ, nor does he have K9s, Q9s or A6s. He shouldn't even have ATo or KJo too often here. This looks more like a CO opening range than a LJ opening range.

And how do you justify defending with K5s and Q7s whilst folding 22, 33 and 44? As nitty as I am, I'm probably calling with 22 here, but I'd snap fold a junk hand like K5s or Q7s.

I respectfully disagree that 19% and change is too wide an opening range for the LJ. That still seems fairly tight, imo. But hey, maybe you're right.

As for the inclusion of some hands vs the other, i literally just slid %age meter to ~150%, trusting it to adjust in a sane manner and be somewhere in the ballpark, then snapped a pic. I'm not sure if I'm necessarily including those smaller pairs over the Kxs and Qxs hands; however, it's worth considering.

This is probably a better continuing range now that you mention it. Though prob drop A7o-A9o and sub some unsuited Ace wheels:

How did you arrive at the 150% figure? I think that k10s is a perfectly fine call preflop (especially with the caller on the button), but I don't really get the calling 150% thing.

seems to be the very opposite of Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it seems like instead of ranging villain you're just making a soul read on the river and going with it.


On the flop he's got:

value hands (any king, aces, sets)

semi bluffs (two clubs, gutshots but probably not all of them)

total bluffs (given he's betting into two players there should not be as many total bluffs as heads up)




On the turn the majority of his semi bluffs have now become value hands. so he's now got:

value hands (any king, aces, set, flushes)
semi bluffs (gutshots, ace of clubs)
total bluffs (again discounting a lot of these since the flop was 3 way)

So when you check call again you are hoping that he's got either a gutshot, a total bluff which turned a flush draw and is now a semi bluff or double barreling a total bluff. And you're hoping he's got enough of those to justify when you lose to his value range.


On the river due to the ace, once again a good % of his semi bluffs move to value because he's hit the ace.

So on the river you now lose to all of his value range, or he's got a total bluff. When you bet out here almost all of his value range is calling with the exception of KJ and KQ and for his bluff range he's folding or rebluffing. Even if he does hate the ace then betting when it hits accomplishes very little. If you're going to make some type of a hero play on the river it would be a check call.

Standard would be to check fold.



What I don't get into is which part of his value hands he's checking the flop or the turn with because that would really make things complicated and long. For this hand, as is usually the case in llsnl, on the river if he bets again he's usually got a very big hand or a total bluff.

My range in this spot would be:
Squeeze range: {TT+, AQ+} for value, {A2s-A5s, 86s-J9s, 76s-87s} for bluffs.
Calling range: {22-99, 98s-KQs, ATs, KJs, AJs}
Folding range: Everything else, including hands like KTs, QTs, 65s, A6s-A9s, AJo, KQo, etc.

Edit: realistically though, I'm going to narrow my bluff range quite a bit if I'm playing 1/2 or 1/3, but the rest is pretty accurate.

Every now and then I pop into this forum and it seems every time I'm more amazed by the degrading quality of responses and analysis of hands... good for live poker, though, I guess!

The preflop call is totally fine. Flop is standard. On the turn, the "negative" reaction is likely a huge tell that would make folding okay... Especially the negative reaction followed by a bet.

With no live read we should call turn, and play poker on most rivers. The offsuit A is likely a x/f because his AcXx and random AX bluffs got there.

Betting the river is the key mistake here - we have showdown value so why bluff? We aren't likely to be ahead of his calling range, so why value bet? Also, we may trigger a spaz bluff that we aren't prepared to call.

@bgp, you're totally correct. I shutdown mentally pretty much ott bc i was thrown off by the low grade angle. It was a total regression.

Pre is fine, flop is fine, x/f river.

You may consider 3! pre vs a LJ open but spread-limit games are funky and IDK if squeezing at this stack depth is optimal.

Just cuz it's Turtle, but also noting that I have zero spread limit experience and really don't know what (if any) adjustments should be made...

I probably fold preflop. It's nitty. Overall, the question I ask myself is if I'm really that much better than my opponents OOP in a raked game with a dominated hand. If the answer is "yes, these guys are the stoopidest guys I've ever pokred with", then a call is likely fine; otherwise, is it really profitable (the only thing that matters)?

I probably just donk the flop. It's a somewhat LP open for somewhat small (actually, I'm not sure how $10 is taken in a 1/2 NL game) and it's gone 3ways, so less chance we see a cbet here on this drawy board. So I probably $20 and evaluate. As played, I also call the smallish 1/2 PSB; I'm just looking to keep the pot small OOP and maybe catch a cbet bluff or two and get myself to the river.

I just fold the turn. Guy hates the turn and bets it anyways? Are we just going to go into check/call mode the whole way and hope he's barrelling a flush draw? I'm not sure enough players do that...

Not sure what the point of the river donk is especially since a lot of two barrelling hands just got there? I probably just check/fold again.

ETA: I believe most everyone thinks we made a decent mistake on the river (the most expensive street). If that is the case, then preflop becomes an even more trivial of a fold. You're already going uphill being OOP with a dominated hand (the fact that you're doing ok equity wise is almost irrelevant as I'm assuming we're folding most flops that are cbet and we've completely whiffed). Obviously if you're a crusher at poker (which some of the respondents might be) then don't fold preflop; but otherwise, it is perfectly ok to fold preflop. Crushing respondents aside, we likely don't have nearly as big a skill advantage over these guys as we might think we do to make up for OOP / dominated, especially against this villain if we think he's capable of not playing straightforward (which would be the only reason to call the turn).

Git'soktocometothecasinotofold,imoG

Pre is deffo fine. U just need to be able to get away from top pair only when you need to get away. That was the problem on this hand.

Would you ever consider 3! pre with KTdd here?

You'd prefer to keep the pot small yet you want to donk flop. I don't get it. We open ourselves to get bluff-raised. We sometimes get called by worse, but a lot of times we are dominated (as you've pointed out). We fold out hands that would otherwise bluff.

Donking flop is no bueno.

I guess it just comes down to our assumptions about Villain. The more I think this is just a straightforward Villain who raises 100% of his range he's not folding in LP when folded to him and the less chance he'll cbet when it ends up 3ways, the more I'm ok with simply donking to take down the pot now / not give free cards. The more he's less ABC on either street, the more we probably shouldn't be in the hand to begin with (or more reason to 3bet preflop and take the initiative).

I mean, in the end it looks like we called the turn because Villain must be a fairly tricky non ABC player (cuz ABC players give up on this turn with everything we're beating and even some hands that we're not). So if that's who we're up against, then I question how profitable preflop is going to be (unless other guy in the mix is a whale or something and we're simply looking to get into a pot with him).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Hard to say what their opening range from the LJ is. You may be right - most players at $1/2 aren't widening their range. They play a static opening range and don't account for the fact they can (and should) open wider when it's folded to them in the LJ.

I don't think I necessarily said that; I think quite a lot of opponents widen their opening range when it's folded to them in LP (even fairly ABC ones). It's just that ABC ones then don't get tricky as much postflop the more multiway it goes and typically shut down after their cbet bluff is called; if villain is more tricky than that then I'm not convinced playing him OOP here is going to be too profitable (especially if we're the ones making river mistakes like this).

ETA: In the end, OP describes himself (no doubt party tongue-in-cheek) as a bad rec looking to get into the game after a couple of years. At this point in his comeback, how bad would blindly folding his BB to every preflop raise be? Likely not too bad, no?

GcluelessNLnoobG