Disagree with those saying that a straddle makes it 200bb deep. This may be true in 1/2 or 1/3 where people open to 8-10x already, or 5/10+ where people are much more technically sound, but I don't think this dynamic applies to 2/5 cap games. In my experience, vpip and stackoff thresholds are much higher when the straddle is on in 2/5. I have no problem getting in 200 bb light in 2/5 or in 5/10, but how often do you see $4000 heads up pots in 2/5 cap? Perhaps a reasonable compromise is to say we're ~300bb deep

Thanks for taking to time to lay out your thoughts. I still don't agree, but appreciate the thought process. My counters are below:

I mean, ok, yes we block TT but so what? You don't think an unknown V might not CR this board with JJ+? And again, we don't know this V so we can't be certain that he insta-folds an overpair to our making it $450 (#5 above). If he calls, then what is your plan for the turn? Shove any non-spades? That seems like a huge overplay against an unknown.

Also, I certainly don't view $450/folding as a "cheap" way to play the hand. And finally, we have position so we get to see what V does before we act.

I can go either way on folding right now and calling the CR and playing the turn, but other than "we block TT", I think a raise to $450 is quite spewy in this spot.

I can't disagree more, especially with the bolded. This is not 100 BB poker where GII with top/top is the best way to go a lot of the time. Deep stack is about protecting your stack for those rare opportunities where you have a huge value hand and you want a big pot. This spot does not qualify.

Sure, we would like to win this pot. But our hand is not nearly strong enough to put our entire stack at risk. Checking the flop allows us to gather more information and potentially fold before we make the pot so big that we feel compelled to call with what is a very marginal holding given the circumstances.

I'm not saying we should call flop and call down every time. When we bet $65 on the flop into $125 with $1900 behind, we're not committed to calling down with top/top for stacks. For betting this flop to be bad with this hand, the PFR must be checking a lot of overpair hands on the flop, which seems unlikely. Think how often villains have to fold to get a range strong enough that betting ATs here is bad - if we can't bet ATs here, we should either be betting every time we have air, or we should have folded preflop

This is a spot where we should be betting quite a bit - the pfr checked, we're in position with very deep stacks and all the nuts in our range, plus most of the nuts on most run outs. We have plenty of protection in our betting range. If we had a hand like 9Ts, I could get behind a check back on the flop, but with ATs we just get called by too many worse hands to not bet.

There is also nothing wrong with betting the flop, calling the raise, and folding to a turn bet. We can also make an exploitable fold to the flop check/raise if we want, but I hate folding so I'm certainly not folding for the price we're getting.

It's really hard to give good advice in this spot since so much is unknown. If I had to guess he has NFD or really pure air like gutshot. I expect overpair, fd, overcards, and worse T to bet. Then again who knows you just sat down.

I don't hate the bet as much as anyone else and agree with some posters it is pretty results oriented. I do think it is weird that the pfr didn't cb on T62ss. It is an odd play for his range, it leads me to believe he's playing unorthodox since most auto pilot grinders would just cbet. Because of that I also don't mind a check.

As played playing back at him on the turn would be sexy but also seems sort of suicidal so idk I guess fold now. I really hate just calling with the intention of keep calling.

Checking at some frequency is fine but as part of any balanced winning strategy we should usually be betting this flop. We can check back some of our weaker tens but AT should usually be a bet. Not only are there spades, but there are overcards to our ten that we have to worry about. It’s not the most vulnerable hand, but it’s worth protecting.

As played my default is to fold in these spots but deciding to call and evaluate turn is definitely the unexploitable line. If we are folding here we are definitely over folding.

Yeah I guess we are going to have to agree to disagree here. With 400 blinds vs an unknown, top/top unimproved is a small pot hand regardless of V's actions IMHO. The reason we called pre is not so we can bet top pair...it is if we flop huge, we can perhaps win a huge pot vs a V who gets sticky with a second best hand. I am absolutely fine with checking this flop and potentially folding OTT or OTR unimproved. We have position on an unknown V and a hand that now has decent SDV. The likelihood of V having a FD is small and we really only fear 3 overs on the turn. Betting and getting called or CR simply bloats the pot to a size where now it becomes more important for us to win it than it was when it was smaller. As you say, we can always fold on a subsequent street, I would say "we can always bet on a subsequent street too, AND with more information.".

Position in deepstack can be overwhelming if we use it to our advantage. Auto betting this flop gives V a chance to move us off a good hand prematurely and is not worth it IMO (especially since we have zero info on V here....if he were a reg and we knew he played fit or fold, then fine, barrel. But we dont know that).

We are only going to flop two pair or better one or two percent of the time and a lot of the times we do, we aren’t going to make any money off of it. If that’s what we are relying on we should just fold pre.

I’m not looking to play for stacks here but on a dynamic board my betting range is more than just the nuts. We can get called by worse made hands and draws. We have equity we can protect against overcards to the T. The main reason to check from time to time in my opinion is just to protect our checking range, not because we are afraid of the PFR check raising. How often do you even see that line anyway?

I would also bet OTF similar size with you. We don't need to bet huge in early street.
When gets a raise OTF, I would take a standard line that just call for his raise and see his action OTT as we have position on him. I'm not sure we should fold TPTK if he keeps betting out OTT with a brick. I think a line he take is likely strong draw like A6s AK~Qs or 78s, 89s. I don't think he does it with overpairs.
So, if he keeps betting OTT with brick I would prefer to call for a river.
And OTR with a brick, he keeps barrelling, I would say it's really tough to call. I think that's up to Hero's ability.

I recommend you that start playing a hand until get some player's information.


나의 SM-G935F 의 Tapatalk에서 보냄

If you play deepstack (400 bb +) with any regularity against competent players, you see it a lot because that deep there is ample room to manuever.

Results: I folded flop (felt pretty nitty about it at the time, less so now) because I probably would have folded to many turn barrels and almost all triple barrels.

Those who advocate calling flop, what are you doing on blank, spade, and J/Q/K turns?

How is this spot the one time LLSNL wants to make a fancy check back with a strong made hand?

(Putting aside whether "small pot hand" / "big pot hand" is a useful lens to look at hands and putting aside whether this even is a small pot hand,) you have the button and when you bet, you'll have initiative. If you don't want to bet three streets, then like, check one of the remaining streets? If you're worried about the pot blowing up, I have to think you're looking at this HH with hindsight in mind.

You should be stabbing a lot here, so filling our range out with these strong top pair hands should be the bread and butter of our value range. We're not betting 100% of our air and marginal hands, obviously, so we'll mix in some strong checks, but do it with a hand that's not just crossing its fingers to fade half the deck while only improving on 5 cards.

Aaaaanyway, as played, my standard is to peel. Turn depends a lot on the card and sizing, but we're obligated to at least consider peeling again if the card blanks the rest of our range (no cards 7-9, no diamond, no spade, no overcard). The large sizing makes me consider deviating from my standard, but it shouldn't affect this part of our range on the flop.

While I'm griping, I might as well respond to all the people acting like you can't play poker until you have reads. Do you also find yourself saying that theory's useless at these stakes? 'Cause being able to play sound poker in the absence of having a bunch of known exploitabilities is kind of theory's big selling point.

For me I'm calling here with position. I feel like his hands mostly fall into 2 buckets: hands like Nut FDs and hands like JJ-AA. Depending on the turn and how he plays it I think I can win in both scenarios playing this deep against most players.

This deep I feel comfortable seeing a turn in position and seeing how he reacts to different turn cards. If a spade comes we have just as many flushes as he does in this spot so it's not like he's going to own us here everytime.

All of this seems pretty obvious to me. This board is way too fold happy, way too mubsy a lot of the time.

We block AA and 1010 which are solid chunks of check-flop range (as far as made hands) for him if he's competent. Call flop & be ready to call turns that you see as "safe." Don't be scared money.

This makes it a snap fold. Grinders don't bluff whales, period. (I'm not saying that you are a whale, but V has gotta be thinking that you are.)

What probably happened was that V was thinking about his bet size, and then noticed that you were going to bet. So he checked, let you bet, and then put in a hefty C/R.

Late to the party but add me to the list of people calling the advice to check back flop as results oriented. So many unknowns could have 2 overs that they fold or pps under TT that they call with, both of which are good results for us.

To get c/r by the PFR has to be a less than 5% occurrence, so we can just scratch our head a bit and fold without too much heartburn this deep.