Well....if you !3 & he doesn't !4 [because he doesn't have KK+ AKs/o] then you have almost 56% equity vs. the 9.5% range I gave him, if he doesn't fold any of the bottom end combos, which I don't think he would for $30.

The range I gave him is comprised of 124 combos & 28 [22.6%] of them are KK+ AKs/o, that you'll be folding to his !4 preflop.

It would be nice to know if UTG is loose/passive calling station & UTG+2 has been able to iso a lot with that size raise & outplay his V post-flop. Then you can assume his range is wider. Maybe I have him with too wide a range to begin with.

However, let me qualify this & all my prior posts: Two aversions I have to playing LLSNL Hold 'Em: 1. I really don't like being OOP 2: I don't like getting aggro against unknowns. 3. I am not winning 10BBs+ the 1400 hrs I played over the previous 12 months, so I am not a Crusher.

Talked to a player who crushes the 1/2NL game & she would raise, despite the fact that she has no info on V. She would rely on her visual reading skills to make up for lack of info on V. She doesn't like giving up the initiative when OTB.

Talk to someone else.

Nothing wrong with calling pre you can make piles post.

Check flop - good
Call turn - good, now turbo muck.

She sounds about as good as the "professional poker player" I met playing 1/2 with a $100 stack a month ago. Probably works at Subway now.

Actually, she does very well; she easily earns 10BBs. The player is not a 'professional' in the sense that she supports herself with winning, as she is very well off financially.

I know another Crusher who says he would flat.

I would never raise in this situation because I do not know my Vs, so I think the risk of being !4 pre & folding my equity outweighs any advantage I'd have having the initiative IP, still not knowing my Vs.

Initiative is a silly 2007 concept that is so overrated. Position is way more important IMO.

* Taking the initiative puts you in the drivers seat in the hand. Other players will often wait for you to make the first move by checking to you.

* By betting and raising, your hand has unlimited strength in the eyes of your opponents.

* By taking the initiative, you are making it far more difficult for your opponent to assign you to a specific range of hands.

* Being aggressive forces other players to make tough decisions, which means that they have less control over the hand and are more susceptible to making -EV plays.

* Winning LAGs are successful by using a measured amount of aggression in concert with their superior hand reading skills.

* Initiative is achieved through aggression. If initiative is a silly concept, then I would think that using the concept of measured aggression to maximize your potential of winning the pot, is just as silly of a concept.

I don't wanna derail from the OP too much more but maybe I put it the wrong way. I didn't say initiative was not important. I meant that people are over estimating how important it is and forgetting that sometimes it's better to flat a hand like AQs vs an EP raise and playing a pot in position vs their entire range as opposed to playing vs their much stronger continue vs 3 bet range. Not to mention getting blown off the your equity when they 4 bet.

Let's say they open 88+ AQ+. You're already not doing well vs that range with AQs. If you flat you don't have initiative. But at least you aren't crushed by their range. Let's say you 3 bet and they continue with TT+ and AK. Alright they check to you. Now what?

Initiative is an illusion in poker. The only consideration to who the aggressor was is for construction of ranges. Those actual ranges are the only things that matter.

If you raise with a 100% range, and I call with a top 20% range, you have the initiative. Does that confer you any advantage whatsoever?

This I agree with. You can play vs V's whole range by flatting pre, or a stronger range of V's by raising pre. I see no point in !3 a V pre with whom you have no idea of how they plays.

There are player types I would flat pre vs even though I know how they play. LAGs who like to shoot 2 barrels on most 4 card boards are fun to play against when they are not as good at putting their V on a range as they think they are.

Well, that is just bad poker and any initiative the bad player thought he was gaining by making the last bet is an illusion.

Even if I know your range pre in a certain spot is 20% & I !3 with 30% [including the bottom part of 30%] & I know your skill-set is at least equal to mine & you know me as well as I know you and any weak links in your game are off-set by those in mine, my attempting to gain the initiative by !3 with a wider range vs you, is an illusion because you are going to play against it well enough, that if there is any +Ev to be gained by my !3, it's < that gained by flatting & attempting to play perfect post-flop.

Apologies for the hiatus, I did not expect that many comments on the preflop decision. I generally 3bet AQ and that's what i did by default here. Whether or not this is the right decision I think it is important I give more weight to the position of an opener in my decision without reads.

UTG limps (covers) - abc reg
UTG+2 (covers) makes it $15 - no reads

Hero OTB ($270) looks down at AQ

I decided to 3bet to $45

Here SB(loose, not too passive)/($160) flats $45, utg limper flats and EP raiser (MAWG) also flats. I was very surprised by this action in real time, as the table was not super active and was having a hard time figuring out how AQs was playing 4way here.

Flop T95 ($180)
SB, UTG, UTG+2 check to Hero
I checked back
Turn A ($180)
SB checks, UTG checks, UTG+2 leads $40

SB, UTG checks, UTG+2 leads $40
Hero calls $40, SB crai $120, UTG+2 snap calls $80.
Pot is $460 with Hero to act. Hero?

Here i deliberated to fold or call,
Since there was that was much money in the pot, and SB checked flop and turn, and utg originally donked only $40 I thought there was a good enough chance I was good and I convinced myself to call

River 5o ($540 main)

UTG+2 instashoves all in
It's $100 effective for me to call off for the side and main ($640)
Hero?

i guess call now you're pot committed

i suspect you're either in 3rd place or in 2nd place vs. SB whiffed flush draw, but getting 6.5 i dunno what else you're supposed to do

fold turn btw

Pot commitment on the river doesn’t apply the same way it does on earlier streets since you don’t have any more chance to improve.

You’re not pot committed. I doubt you have the best hand often enough to call. He’s not pulling some wizard bluff with AJ into a dry side pot and you don’t beat any value hands.

This snap-shove reminds me of the V who, after snap-shoving ~$200, counted down the chips for me 'cause the dealer doesn't have to unless I ask for a count. Then the V stared at me. Of course I scooped. So, it's player dependent.

Everyone and their mother knows about the staring tell. It's so 2007 definitely not reliable whatsoever today.

Pre is a pretty easy 3b, hardly ever flatting unless OR iso-raise range is stupid tight like 1010+, AJs+

So the recreational players don't know squat about playing smart poker, but they know all the tells. Ok, thanks for the heads up.

Results a bit overdue but I ended up calling off the $100 to scoop the side against AJ. Lost the main to SB's set of nines

Haha Love it when fish never cease to prove our good reasoning wrong

That's a bit extreme, but even if a good reg is raising 100% and you call with 20% from the BB (ignoring 3-bets), you're still going to have an awfully tough time playing postflop on so many runouts/flops.

Having initiative IP is a godsend in poker, especially in 3b pots. It lets you overrealize equity/bluff a ton/value bet easier/induce a ton of mistakes.

Let's say MP raises and you coldcall OTB. He cbets 60-70% otf and dbl barrels 40-60% ott. You're going to lose a lot of pots simply because he had the initiative preflop and he can put pressure on your range. Put him in IP instead say CO and you defending your BB and it's even worse for you.

But if you poke into that, you'll find this thing called "initiative" is a mirage. That's just plain old range advantage and positional advantage.

What's going on here is that when someone is the last to bet or raise on a street, it's usually because they have an advantage. So on the next street, if a player bet or raised on the previous street, they are likely to be stronger than if they didn't. In other words, initiative is a symptom of advantage, not a cause of it.

As a thought experiment, think about two spots on the river where the hands are identical except that in one, our opponent bet the turn. Suppose that we somehow know for an ironclad fact that his range of hands OTR is identical in both cases. Try to explain how it could constitute a disadvantage for us that he bet the turn as opposed to not betting it. This clarifies that when we talk about initiative, we're really talking about presumed range advantage.