Straddled pot to $6 OTB. I am in HJ.

V (straddle) is very active, playing >50% of hands, and is the betting type, either donking or betting in position on flop/turn/river.

folds to Hero (HJ-300) - AKhh raise 20
V (covers) in BB calls, heads up

Flop (~40) Th8c6h
V checks, Hero bets 25
V calls

Turn (~90) 5d
V donks 90
Hero?

I'm all in


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Do you say that because you think our A & K are outs also? Or are we just going for fold equity anything but flush outs be damned? Why would V donk pot after chk/calling on flop? Made hand only? Pure bluff? Knows where I'm at and bluffing?

Fold - turn psb donk isn't a bluff often enough (or ever)

Fold!

Check flop behind. Take a free card for NFD+2 overs. Play made hands not potential hands. NL cash game where the blinds are small in relation to effective stacks got to be played on made hands.

If villain would have asked me about this situation, I would have told him:
"If villain (in this case You) is the type of player who is not gonna lay down a drawing hand then let’s at least get all the money in with only one card to come on the turn as opposed to giving him two cards by pushing on the flop. This is a very important concept of managing risk by great consistent winning Vegas pro players against loose tourists. Even when I’m holding a big hand, I will consider giving up a small pot on the turn before money goes in."

Agree with flop check but for none of the reasons you listed

Ap prob calling turn

This is an annoying hand because villain probably has some spaz holding like 76 but might well not be folding it if you jam. I think turn is close between folding and calling.

Probably you're thinking to check behind OTF in order to instigate villain to bet turn so that you may raise. I don't know the intricacy of your thinking but I would always advocate playing cash game based on made hands rather potential.

Young players are much more likely to bet with or without a hand. They lack patience or just haven’t been beaten badly enough, often enough, to know real pain, yet! We were all more reckless in our youth. Maybe it’s lack of wisdom but whatever the reason, young guys like to raise, especially check-raise.

I would say that these young players that learned in 3 months how to play their hands, most of them have never gone bad before. So what you're looking at when you see these young players who don't know what it's like to lose for months. It's never happened to them. You're looking at thousands of players who started out and there's a handful of them that the cards ran over. Now, very few may have some talent, but they don't have any experience on the downside. You don't really get to improve your game and become an expert until you go bad. It changes you. You keep playing and just keep on winning. What can you do? You don't know how to change it. You don't start thinking about it until you start losing and feel pain.

You're listening to somebody that did it. Me. By the time I got to be a winning player, a expert cash player, I got to be totally broke and wiped out. I remember losing many bankrolls. Not just buy-ins, but poker bankrolls. I start many times from scratch over and over. There's no other way for a human to become an expert card player. That's a fact of human nature. We need pain to change out thinking. Else we cannot change for the better. There simply is no way to become an expert by watching poker videos, reading books and taking poker stories and hands. People need to feel the hard pain and desperation before they become real expert masters of the game.

I played with a very similar V tonight in my game where he had random donks, would always bet when checked to and would put people in akward spots with his bet sizing.

I'm checking the flop as someone suggested earlier, against this V (not because I'm looking to raise his turn bet or because i haven't busted enough bankrolls yet to be good at poker)

It hits his range much more than ours.
To avoid a spot exactly like we have found ourselves in. If we check the flop and he donks pot on turn it is a trivial call.
For deception, V's are much less likely to put us on the nut flush(or any flush) since we checked back the flop.

Against a normal weak passive opponent I bet this flop and almost all turns as well. Or maybe check and raise a weak player's turn stab, but against this type of player I like checking the flop as i don't really want to get 90bb in on this flop or a blank turn. Plus we can call his turn stabs, lastly he'll fire at some heart turns and rivers, which is yummy.

AP it's close, I'm a nit sometimes so i lean towards folding, I don't like any of our options. River becomes tough too if the As comes off for example and he jams for 190.

Edit: First paragraph here is addressed to outdonked.

Yeah dude... might want to moderate the didactic tone a bit, this forum is chock full of winning players, many of whom have probably played 10 times as many hands as you have. The idea that "cash games should be played with made hands" is flat out wrong/nonsensical although it is a pretty good starting point for beating LLSNL.

I'd also like Minatorr to explain why he wants to check, though. I'd bet, but checking behind seems not awful. Betting has a couple of advantages: we juice the pot up a bit at neutral equity so we can get big money in if we make the nuts, and it gives the option of taking a free card on the turn, something which was ruined a bit by villain donking pot.

That's all fair. I'd note that calling a pot bet OTT is substantially worse than getting the same money in OTF, so it depends on how often villain follows these haphazard betting patterns. Call turn, donk flop is the worst line for a flop bet to face, so it's easy to say "check flop" after you see it happen, but given OP's confusion about what villain could have, I doubt this was expected out of him, even given the description of him.

Outdonked puttin' on a clinic.

Too small pre

This could be fair enough. I usually raise to 30-35 if there is one limper, so I could easily have gone 25-30.

Ha - This very thought went through my mind before I bet flop because I've read this so much here. The problem is, I've started to think most flops hit their range more than mine whenever I have high cards and don't pair. I probably need to do some studying on this.

So, I did fold as the pot turn donk made me feel A's & K's were not good outs and it seems horrible to call pot on the turn with just a flush draw. However, I thought I'd get some second opinions as I know I'm the only 1/3 player that folds flush draws, especially A high flush draws.

If it was a bet size or bluff to get me off high cards, it was a good one I thought.

Where are to good players? - Please help me find them besides a couple I know of local Vegas pros.

Hey! duds! Where are you hiding?


I've been in the league for over 30 years, and I can really tell that the quality of players has crashed since. The playing field is so diluted, and I just don't find fun anymore to have a conversation about the game with some player in the club. My goodness, some of the guys are so fragile and obtuse and they don't have any reasoning behind their arguing, it's just mindless playground nonsense.

Um....I do this professionally....so I know I'm a good player? Never came close to busting a role either, unlike you, which you have apparently done serval times...."hey there ole feller, ever hear of bankroll management?"

I don't mean to be a d*ck, and agree with you that a lot of forum advise is heavily skewed toward players going through a heater.

But, honestly, you come off like an old, bitter nit. Your strategy to "only play made your hands aggressively", especially when you play in VEGAS, is just god-awful advice, completely lacking in situational awareness and game-flow observation.

I've gone through horrific downswings too. Never once during that time did I question my winning strategy or reduce semi-bluffing in +EV situations, against the right opponent types, just because I was running bad.
.

In regards to the OP, the decision is completely read dependent. This what being a poker player is all about.

Would your opponent ever fold to a shove after donking $90 on the turn? If no, don't do it.

Would he ever make a $90 bet with a hand that is not two-pair or better? If no, then you know your A and K outs are no-good, reducing your equity in the pot, reducing your pot odds, making a $90 call too expensive and -EV.

I'd raise to $30 preflop which will setup an easier stackoff situation postflop with TP plus I'd typically expect it go get action in a straddled pot at my typical table.

I'm cool with pretty much any bet on the flop. ETA: Against an aggro opponent who might check/raise here, I'm pretty cool with cbetting the flop to jam over a check/raise (we should have decent FE and otherwise typically have very good hand equity). The only time I might consider checking back a hand this strong (that I'm willing to go with on the flop) is if I think there is a good chance exactly what ended up happening might happen on the turn.

What has this guy been showing up with when he donks, especially big on big streets? Overall, a check/call flop and donk turn for PSB line is typically fairly strong. We're only getting 2:1, and don't have enough stacks behind to call just for the flush draw (if we're assuming our A/K outs are no good, which they typically aren't). In the end, this all comes down to our opponent, but in general against most of the field we have to fold here.

GimoG