I'm not cold calling anything there, but apparently villain is.

Start ranging a competent player who just took a $35 raise to the face in the SB. I'm not seeing as much AQ/AJ as everyone else, and if that's what he shows up with, he ain't too competent (imo). TT+ is like a *huge* part of his range, and we're not exactly crushing a lot of it even if we have AA/KK. If he has AK he's drawing to 4 outs. If he has an underpair he's drawing to 2 outs. Even if we are ahead 90% of the time that doesn't really matter; all that matters is the amount of times we're ahead if some real money goes into the pot. With AA/KK on this board against a competent opponent, I mostly want money going in by underrepping my hand; if I continue to show strength and he continues to pay off, we're likely not doing all that well.

ETA: Chris, do you play in Australia? The only thing I know of those games is from some HHs I've read in Meale's PG&C thread, and those HHs are really really really different from ones I'm used to (people punting stacks with air, people paying off with lol hands, the gift giving is off the charts, etc.). I've actually stopped commenting to Meale's HHs because his table dynamics look unlike any I've seen personally and I'm guessing my strategy simply wouldn't apply. There's a real possibility some of the disagreements we have boil down to super different table dynamics.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I haven't actually played at all in months. However, not all Australian games are created equal. I'm from a state infamous for a struggling economy and a brain drain to the eastern states. The games here are passive, think about what a game would be like in, I dunno, Ann Arbor, MI or somewhere compared to like NYC or the Bay Area. Actually a friend visited (he was born here and now works for Google in SF) and his mind was blown by how passive the games were. Apparently the Bay Area tends to be pretty aggro. He showed me a photo of his stack in a 1/2 game and he had like 3 grand in front of him. Haven't seen the thread you're talking about but would assume those are Sydney or Melbourne games.

I think you're jumping to conclusions about his cold calling range. I think QQ+ a large majority of players are threebetting rather than letting the whole table in. TT and JJ are certainly possible. There's a Bayesian thing going on here though, where the mere fact of his cold call is suggestive of what type of player he is. If OP had been adamant that he's a decent player, I'd range him much more heavily to stuff like TT and JJ. But that "seems competent" I am pretty much ignoring, because "not competent; cold calling wide range" is just far, far more likely than "competent; calling TT/JJ only", just numerically. My best guess is that we are going to see stuff on the order of KJo and T9s in his range.

I think you're trying to have it both ways here. It's really hard to have better than an overpair on this board. If it's really true that you can't bet an overpair for three streets here, you must be able to three barrel bluff profitably. The idea that you can't do either requires super unrealistic ranges for him. I suspect the problem is that you are a nit and that people do lay hands down to you really easily, and that instead of reacting to this by opening up your range and getting more aggressive, you retreat further into passivity.

"It's really hard to have better than an overpair on this board", as compared to what board? This is like the single worst board (apart from QJT) to have an overpair on vs a competent villain's calling-a-huge-preflop-raise-OOP range.

Ggoingtohavetoagreetodisagreehere,imoG

As compared to a fully coordinated board, like QJ9 or a monotone flop. This board is close to completely uncoordinated. The difference between this board and Q8x rainbow is merely that we now lose to QJ.

Your proposal that villain is competent is based on just "seems competent" from OP, but OP also says he has no history with villain, so he wouldn't really know. I propose that villain is bad at poker, with two key pieces of evidence: 1) he is sitting at a LLSNL table 2) he just called a 7BB raise out of the SB with like 1000 players to act behind him. You see that as evidence he has a good hand, I see it as evidence that he is not positionally aware and doesn't know that you can't call a 7BB raise and then play fit or fold from OOP.

Edit: One of the most common archetypes at LLSNL are players who have their set of hands that they play, and they see a flop with them come hell or high water. KJo? Limp in in early position and then call a raise. Given the information that this guy has cold called a raise OOP, he's like 15 times more likely to be that type of player than to be the type of player who only has like TT-QQ here, because if he's the first type of player there are like 15 times as many combos of cold-calling hands he can have. An offhand "seems competent" from OP doesn't carry enough weight to override this Bayesian implication. The fact that the flop is QJx makes the proposition that this is the player archetype who has just TT-QQ here even less likely.

He's bad at poker because he's sitting at a LLSNL table?

Gnooffencetakenfromthoseinthisforum,ofcourseG

Maybe OP can chime in and explain what exactly "competent" means and why he thought that about villain, though. Like, if villain was using words like "range" at the table, then I'd be warier of the cold call.

QJ boards imo are more difficult to get cbets through on the first barrel as bluffs, but this is just a standard board that you have the best hand with AA/KK almost always. Only hand you're losing to are the lower card sets and JJ.

I wonder how you make $ playing poker when you fold vs any aggression and don't bet your strong hands. This is llsnl it isn't 25/50, v calling range pre here includes any 2 broadways, all pairs, and probably 109/98/87s. You may say I'm wrong, but I see this crap all the time.

Not sure if you're kidding here, but while there are plenty of good players playing LLSNL, the assumption until proven otherwise for any LLSNL player is that they suck and are too loose and too passive.

Villains actions are hallmarks of nitfish.

Me too, though unfortunately I might spew peel in game w AKo this deep and make things tough on AKT turns.