It could be that OP was successful in this line this time and simply wanted to confirm whether he is being results oriented versus whether this is a good long term play.

GcluelessNLnoobG

And I'm really losing confidence in this forum. I present an unconventional idea because I want to discuss moving beyond ABC nit poker, and I get a lot of backlash. I'm not surprised. Then I back up my reasoning with math and get accused of showing off.

My friend who plays higher says 2+2 is useless and a waste of time. Starting to see why. Everyone on this forum either seems to advocate ABC nit poker or is holding back and doesn't want to give actual advice.

So piss off then. You aren't owed anything just cause you post a hand.

just because he plays higher stakes does not mean he is a long term winner
or his logic is sound

you get real advice that doesn't support your fish mentality and you accuse the posters of trolling.
I'm all for going with reads to exploit a player but
not just naked zero equity "lets run him over "

there are a lot of us who play non abc and lets look at your comments to those posts..
you say we're trolling

keep your job at 7-11 you'll need it.

I do agree about everyone this forum advocating ABC poker.

Any GTO or mathematical advice will tell you that most actions should be varied (not 100% of the time).

For instance, you should therefore flat / limp pre-flop with AA some of the time. This way if a hand plays out:

Deep, deep stacks (400 BB)

Villain raises 5X UTG with KQ
Hero (LAG) calls in MP2 with AA
Button calls with AJ
BB completes
Flop
AJJ

BB checks, Villain bets half-pot, Hero raises 3X, Button flats, BB folds, UTG calls.

Top
2
UTG checks, Hero goes all-in for 4X pot, Button??

Obviously button should call. But, if you posted this game on 2+2 from the Buttons perspective, the posters would immediate say MP2 can't have AA because MP2 flatted pre-flop.

And what did your friend say about this hand

Just FYI, you could probably get a lot of heads up action from a lot of people replying in this thread, if you really believe this. Could be a pretty profitable spot for you.

I most likely will. At least from the strat forums.

Well he played 5/10 in Las Vegas for five years and it's arguably the toughest 5/10 in the country. But you're right I should stop listening to him and start listening to you.

pretty much

He's trying to get out/not think about poker and get a real career. Haven't talked to him about poker strat for a while and because I respect him as a friend I'm not about to start.

I disagree that this is what happens on 2+2, and ive considered it.

The case actually is that one needs to 1) be open to 2) understand and 3) internalize a sound theoretical framework before one can proceed to the high level plays, and most of us simply havent fully gotten to 3) yet.

High level plays look aggro often to a lot of players because most players dont get the framework of theory they are coming from, so it feels crazy and random, but its actually calculated and logical, just on a deeper level.

Another issue is you shouldnt play on level 4 if villians are on level 2. This is disastrous as we end up owning ourselves. May sound obvious but thats the difference between 2) understanding and 3) internalizing

Its a big gap.

OP, while I sympathise to some extent about the forum advocating ABC nit poker, this is not true of many of the posters ITT. In particular Viral25 is typically one of the most aggressive players in the subforum.

This hand is miles off the reservation when it comes to a "GTO" perspective for want of a better word, the hand OTF is clearly way down the bottom of your range. What you want us to comment on instead is a hyper-exploitative line that relies entirely on your perception of your own image and of villain's tendencies. The problem with this is that those things are ultimately not knowable to me. When you kick off a hand with "Have super aggressive image but nobody adjusts ever, also can see into soul of villains" we have two choices. Either we can buy into this premise, in which case we just have to agree with everything you say, or we can reject it and basically accuse you of being an unreliable narrator, in which case you get mad and tell us we don't know what we're talking about.

The position people are taking here is that there is sufficient uncertainty in villain's range that we should tend towards a more defensive, GTO-oriented strategy. You disagree and think you can know how villain is going to behave. That's fine, maybe you can, but it's not really something that can be discussed on a forum because it's too subjective. And your friend is right, there are limits to the usefulness of 2+2. Live poker is something some people have a talent for. Nobody here is going to become Magnus Carlsen no matter how much they discuss chess strategy.

So what you want to discuss here is "what is villain's range?" and the forum answer is "we don't think it's possible to know with much accuracy".

+1 to all of this. I'm far from the "ABC nit" you accuse this forum of being full of, and I can't get behind your line either because it's based solely on what Chris described in this excellent post.

And even if you're onto something here, this is not the spot to employ the strategy.

I see nothing wrong with an exercise in how to maximize fold equity in low stakes. Why not allow OP to explore some ideas with a forum about whether or not he can print with his entire range against certain player archetypes on certain boards? I mean, why is it even spew? We have better hands here? So? How about maybe we can choose a pure strat with 100% of hands like:

OR since he bet...call, raise, pile any board.

Maybe it makes the most money.

As people work to improve their game, they pass through a number of stages. This particular forum attracts people in one of the stages, which is the HH stage. People post basically the same question: I'm in this hand and now not sure what to do. By far the biggest reason they don't know what to do is that they don't have a read on the villain or a minimal read.

Your read on this villain is 50's year old WG who is a little sticky pf. That's it. Without a better read, the default play is going to be the advice you get.

If you want to play more unusual lines successfully, you need to have better reads on your villains. Let's say you knew that this villain will donk only if he has a hand of medium value that is vunerable to giving a free card away. In addition, you know that he'll fold to pressure to a raise because he's never going to put himself in the position of stacking off with that medium hand. Now, it is possible to give advice to reflect the facts of the situation. The paradox is that if you have that good of a read, you don't need to make a HH to ask what to do.

If your friend who played 5/10 was a good player, I'm not surprised he would find 2+2 useless to him. He would have excellent reads on the entire player pool since recreational players don't just show up to the poker room and play 5/10, even in LV. He would know if an unknown player showed up at his table, he would observe his play for a while playing ABC until he developed a read on that player.

I've used this analogy multiple times. This forum is a way station on the poker railroad, not a final destination. Our goal in this forum is educate and entertain you while you're here and then move you on your way to the next stop. For many, this is as far as they go and they take the spur to the rest of their non-poker life. The rest are going to move on to other places to further their education. If this forum isn't helpful to you any longer, then I understand moving on.

However, the biggest thing holding you back now is your observational skills about your villains. That's where you need to focus your attention if you want to move up. In this HH, there are about 10 things you should have observed about the villain that you could have given as reads even if this was the first hand you played against him. Whenever I read a HH that says, "no reads" I take it as, "better just give you the conventional line because you aren't ready for anything other than that."

To elaborate a bit more on the problem here, you are very insistent that we discuss this hand in complete isolation, just in reference to what villain has and how he normally reacts. For the record, I do think that donk ranges here from this sort of player are generally too weak and that they are susceptible to being bluffed. But if you're doing this with 65ss here then you're doing it with all your weak hands, and the objection then is "but what happens if you just attack players every single hand?" to which your answer is "nothing; they never adjust".

If that's really true, then the only question here is what the best bluff line is, in which case I agree it's raising the turn. But this is the point where a) I start to become suspicious that your opinion of what happens is unreliable, because it doesn't square with my experience of poker and b) I'm unable to assess the dynamic myself, because I wasn't there. The minute we stop discussing this hand in isolation and start discussing it in the context of a broader, coherent strategy, then it's a lolobvious flop fold because it's way down the bottom of your range. I've noticed this in some of your other hands, that you always want the discussion to be about how to maximally exploit your opponents in that hand in isolation. LLSNL is definitely a super exploitative game, but you can't keep approaching poker in that way only and expect to move up, imo.

Yeah, maybe this is true. I think the problem is that it's a really bad candidate for a PAHWM, because argument over this hand is more about the metagame in which OP is playing than the hand itself. Like it's basically:

OP: Yo, do you guys think I can just run over people 24/7?
Forum: No, you have to give up some of your weaker stuff sometimes or people will adjust.
OP: Actually, wrong. You guys weren't there and I'm telling you they don't adjust.

And it's like, OK? What do we say to that?

Well put. Then there is no point in making the HH.

ChrisV is nailing it.

Because OP is like the 22 handicap golfer asking for advice on how to hit a flop shot. OP may well become a big winner in the 1/3 Bellagio game in 2018 asking questions like this, just like your 22 handicap buddy will be way better than you at hitting pitch shots over bunkers into a tight pin placement. But OP will still suck at poker and your buddy will still suck at golf. If OP keeps thinking about poker this way he's screwed when he wants to move up to 5/10, or when the 1/3 player pool changes, or when I get drunk and play 1/3 and exploit the truck-sized holes in his fundamental game.

Not true at all.

What's actually being offered up here (maybe unintentionally) is quite relevant to building winning strategies across all games. Having a dialogue like 'can I choose this pure strategy here and make the most money?' has merit because the answer to that question allows for the player to do his best to make the most profitable adjustments for the current game as well as re-ask the question for any other game.

Perhaps it isn't a great PAHWM, but the frustration you see from OP stems from the fact that he already knows he can just give-up here, he's not a moron, he wants to explore if he can play his usual give-ups another way and make more money against players unlikely to adjust well, enough, ever.

Thank you guys for the well thought out responses. Yes there are many things I need to work on before I have a shot at being +EV at 5/10 in Vegas. I am also probably a little cocky and I wouldn't be surprised if some of my posts in LLSNL come across as condescending, especially in the way I'm disagreeing with other people. And yes perhaps I do need to more open to admitting I'm wrong.

The goal of my PAHWM threads isn't to impress random poker players on the internet that I'll probably never meet IRL or show off like omg dude I totally bluffed him off his top pair I'm such a genius. It's to create an open discussion about how to play certain hands in ways that are potentially more +EV than the traditional way. Venice you said I need to work on my observational skills. You are right I probably do. That's one of the reasons I make these threads actually. I want people to comment on my assumptions about villains and their frequencies, not just to tell me to bluff less. Because my assumptions about their frequencies could often be wrong which obviously leads to -EV (or at least less +EV) plays.

But people here usually don't. No one even mentioned anything about that Flopzilla post or told me soomething like "hey you might want to add X or remove Y from villain's range" or "are you sure villain would play his top pairs like that 75% of the time? I think it's more like 50% of the time so he his turn range is actually stronger than you think."

THOSE are the kind of replies that I would love to see. A debate about math and frequencies. I think the best players in Vegas are probably all huge math nerds. But again, some of the replies ITT have been very helpful and eye opening about not just poker but how I should go about debating with people in general.

I think I forgot to post results. In case anyone cares or is curious, I made it $100 and it got through.

Nh

When you take a line that most posters here would consider unconventional and seemingly spewy, you need to present information about the Villain that for the reader is clear and reliable, so that we can assess for ourselves the reasoning for your actions.

If any of these reads are based just on "feels" or micro-tells or whatever, then you're asking for advice when you have different information than we have.

Fold or raise pre, maybe 50/50.
Fold the flop, we have air...



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Isn’t this a pretty good spot/hand to overlimp? Not saying overlimp is better than raising. But isn’t it better than folding ?

Well my understanding is that u don’t want to play baby suited connectors multi way because u can get over flushed deep. And also I read that suited connectors touch the board in a lot of ways: either a weak pair, a gut shot, some back door equity etc. that it’s better to thin the field and get initiative so u can barrel ur equity


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I just checked and was shocked to see the hand chart from the training site I subscribe to recommends folding 65s in the HJ behind limpers (but limping 76s). I still think vs soft low stakes tables limping is fine, and raising is ok too, but folding clearly isn't as crazy as I thought earlier.