Friday early evening game. Soft 1/3 table, and pretty much the classic mix of couple of serious headphone grinders, couple of shortstack noobs, and our main villain, the young "George Clooney" that thinks very high of himself and his game.

Hero, $350: Been at the table for 1,5 hours, mostly observing the action and trying to get reads on the different villains as well as table dynamics due to being carddead. Tight image this far, only hand ive played voluntarily is when i limp reraised AA from UTG and picked up a decent sized pot preflop. So therefor any spesific dynamics with villain in this hand is pretty much non excisting.Is engaging in fun conversations about girls, new eletronic products+ alot more with main villain and another guy- trying to give off the non serious rec player vibe.


Awesome "George Clooney" villain, $600: American guy in his late twenties. Wears an expensive Ralph Lauren long sleeve shirt, perfect styled hair with about half a box of hairpaste in it, and seems to think very highly about both his looks as well as his pokergame. Is busy flirting with one of the girls at the table when he is not dropping poker buzzwords and delivering pokerlessons to the table after roughly 50 percent of hands dealt. Plays too many hands (both open raising and limp/calling raises), seems not positionally aware and basically seems like a buttonclicker in many ways. From what i seen from his tendencies this far though, he seems to prefer doing the betting/raising himself when he puts money into the pot.

With that breef introduction to the environments, onto the hand. Its folded around to hero on the button for once, hero takes this opportunity and opens a decent suited one gapper with the J9 to $12. George Clooney junior is in the BB (how convinient), and he calls so heads up to the flop of 349. Villain donks right into hero, he bets $20 into $25.

Hero?

I think its close between raise and call, but I think I just call here. We do have a lot of equity here, but he may be ahead, and against described villain, not sure we have any fold equity.

I call. A raise just overreps your hand as an overpair, and I don't think he folds a lot of better hands.

Raising would build a pot, but he seems to be doing that on his own with such a big bet. You want to keep in his bluffs and lower PPs. The cards that help you aren't really that big a part of your perceived range, so I think you can still win a big pot when you hit.

Given all of the factors in this hand, I think a call is the most effectively deceptive action because it looks a lot like you are getting stubborn with a wide range of hands (which you probably would do) and could possibly be scared by many turn cards, or willing to give up on the turn.

Obviously call

Against this guy...$65. I'd rather be aggressive against this type.

i'd raise being as your in position with likely more equity than him

If you call his $20 into the $25 pot, there will be $65 in the pot on the turn. If he bets (which is very likely) it will probably be about $50.

I would rather raise to $65 now. It gives you a decent amount of FE and if he calls you can easily check behind on the turn (assuming you didnt improve).

So it cost you $65 to get to the river instead of $75 plus you have a significant amount of FE on the flop.

If, when you raise the flop, youre going to pound the turn unimproved, then I would just call the flop bet instead.

I'm with Mike Starr on this one.

I favor calling here.

Raising could be reasonable if you think he is going to be too sticky with his draws and weak pairs, but I don't think we're folding out any better hands so raising depends on how often we're going to get calls from worse.

Against a LAGgy opponent like this I'd rather just call. We have position and good equity against his donk range, and I'd prefer to keep his range wide going to the turn. Hopefully he will continue to bet his draws and 55-88's if a blank rolls off, and if an A or K comes on the turn and he slows down we may be able to bluff the turn/river.

I think this is a raise. I'm going with the live by the sword die by the sword concept. You opened with this then flopped the world. I think it's time to get some money in the middle. Your a flip against a better J and 34. You got 30% equity in the worst case scenario that he has a set of 3s or 4s. With as little as 10% FE a raise is +ev. I'd make it 125/call it off if he shoves. Disclaimer: I don't hate just calling either. I just by default usually take an aggressive line in these spots.

Would you mind eleborate little bit on that statement? Like, what is your thought process for why you prefer being aggressive against this playertype?

Nothing else to do.

Next card please.

Hero is debating with himself whether flatting or raising right here on the flop is the best play. Finally i decided that flatting was the best option in this scenario spesifically, both due to the fact that were having no dynamics in game builded up with villain, my image is very tight at this point so raising/stacking off seems kind of an overplay of my hand maybe (as well as we push out all his potenial bluffs)- and also like others have pointed out i wanted to keep my own range as wide/non treatning as possible so Clooney junior can continue to feel awesome about himself, try to "outplay" hero- and keep firing with his whole range (wich i believe is decently wide, at least on the flop).

Hero calls, and the turn is the 8.

So the board is 3498

Villain is not finished with the betting, this time he settles on $45 into a pot of $65.

Please raise. Really nothing else you can do. Against described V, let him hang himself.

Sorry, posted before I saw what you did on flop. Just call. Please post better and put pot sizes on each street.

I'm calling flop, calling turn, and playing 9/J/heart rivers like the nuts.

I don't like raising the flop because while you do have a hand with equity no matter the circumstances, you realistically won't get an ego to fold better hands very often but he will bluff a lot. Unimproved on turn it makes sense to call for the same reason. If river blanks I'd probably sigh call smaller bets but fold to a big one.

Calling is better, keeps in his chit like 56/67/A2/A5 non hearts and you also under-rep your hand giving him more incentive to bluff. You're also protecting yourself against his strong value (JJ?/TT?/43/44/33) which never folds to your raise but all the previous hands do.

I'd probably just call on the turn.

You could do a minish raise here, though. That would give you a relatively cheap showdown much of the time. It also creates a bigger pot for you to bet into when you hit. So you kind of get the best of both worlds. You lose less when he has something like TT or a9 and you miss (in fact, he might even fold these now). You might win more when you hit. You could also still attempt to bluff the river and do so with the initiative.

However, it really sucks when you get jammed on. You're also folding out his crap, but I think that mostly gives up after this point.

I think a raise here is a smarter play than a raise on the flop. But I still lean to calling.

I want to make this guy uncomfortable. By calling flop, you allow him to see the turn card relatively cheap, and then make a stress free decision on what to do next, which he is used to, based on your description. By raising, you are punishing his donk bet, and creating an awkward situation for him, especially if he has a marginal hand. I just think this guy makes bigger mistakes when you (the pf raiser), takes control of the hand.

Against a better player, calling the donk bet might be the better play, but not against this guy, who is playing all kinds of hands. Sometimes, you have to disrupt the table captain, especially when you know he is probably not too good of a player.

Just my humble opinion.

Calling flop, turn and most rivers unimproved.

You think J9 is good if the guy bets all 3 streets? I seriously doubt it. What will he have? T9s? That's more than a bit optimistic

Busted flush draws, 56, 44/33 and some 98

If we have fold equity on the flop which hands is he folding? Is there just one hand he'll fold that has more than four outs?

Also, what Johnny said.

Agree with Johnny.

Do you think he'd ever play back at us preflop in what is an obvious Button raise situation? i.e. How gross would it be to face a 3bet preflop? If he's simply hurp/durp calling raises HU OOP and not playing back, I'm fine with the open raise (I might even go smaller since the field is narrowed already due to zero limpers). But if he's going to play back a lot, I wouldn't hate the ol' Button open limp.

I would just call the flop donk. I'd be more apt to raise if I thought I had FE against better hands, but I'm not sure we have much of that here (especially since we have TP so very unlikely better is folding). Plus pot is small relative to stacks. Right now we have a mediocre showdown value hand, plus a draw that isn't remotely close to the nuts, which means I'm pretty cool with keeping the pot small. If serious money starts going in at this point (i.e we get reraised) we should feel sick to our stomach, imo.

ETA: Also just calling turn. River UI is the decision point as to whether he is capable of 3barreling air / busted draws, which is soul reading / opponent dependent time.

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