$1-3, $500 effective.

I've been at this table for 2-3 orbits. V for this hand is SB, a MAWG who has UTG straddled for $6 twice. Have also seen him donk into PF raiser at least once. My read is action junky, LAP pre, LAG post.

PF - after 2 limps, I raise to $15 from CO with AKc. SB, BB, and one limper calls.

Flop [$60] AsJs4c - 3 checks to me, and I bet $20. SB raises $60, HJ calls $60 (relevant - my read on HJ is tricky-sticky, Older Asian Male - the type who knows when he's ahead, knows how to bluff tough boards, knows how to induce crying calls when he hits a draw). I r/r to $200. SB shoves, has me covered, HJ folds. Hero?

I'm actually looking for critique of entire hand.

OTF, I wanted to bet on the small side to induce calls. Thought the chances of me betting and getting 3 folds was high. Mistake? I'd normally half pot it - at least.

When I get c/r'ed which is called by HJ, my instincts are that SB is overplaying a weaker Ace, and HJ has a FD. I normally just call the c/r in spots similar to this, but some of the books I've been reading suggest that might be too passive for the hand I have. But I think $200 is maybe too small? Opinions on right amount?

After shove, I'm mostly worried about AJ, A4 and 44. AA/JJ likely 3-bet pre. V looks... agitated. Not confident. I somewhat discount AJ and 44 (though I can't completely discount them).

Unless you have the villain as brain dead or on tilt, shoving after your small bet - raise is very strong. You have the most guessed at hand in poker, so he probably isn't thinking TPMK is good. Bet more on the flop since all aces would be calling and FD. If he can't beat TP, he's folding.

As wet as the board is, with your read on V, the BDFD and being lauds like 3:1 now it’s a fairly easy but still shrug call for me. Too many V are bad at poker to lay it down. If V was really good he’ could trying to level 3 you into folding. I’m sticky. Call. To be fair AK w/ BD NFD is just about the bottom of my range here. AKo no flush draw really is the line.

The small bet on the flop was a mistake. Multiway you don't want to bet small to induce calls with a few exceptions for odd ball situations. The risk that some weak hand draws out on you becomes too high. Plus the risk of ending up in messy situations because somebody might read your bet as a probing bet and raise with a worse hand.

As played, I agree with shrug call. Can't fold to the action junky here because there are too many draws he can be on. You probably lose more then win but your odds are too good after the raise.

Top 2 on a wet flop vs a spazzy opponent for just shy of 200BB's is fine with me, ship it.

I'm not thrilled with the preflop result as it produces an awkward SPR of 8 where someone can easily commit us postflop and yet we don't want to get committed having only gotten in a lol 3% of stacks preflop (meanwhile giving aweseome 35+ IO to 3 opponents). Having said that, I'm not exactly sure what else I would do either given these stacks. They're too large to raise to a happily committing 10% and there's very little relative dead money to risk going after. If the SB raises widely preflop a lot and we expect some of the limpers to call, I wouldn't be opposed to a LP overlimp to reraise (and if it limps thru, whatever, no big deal, play a high SPR pot in position), but that's my style in these conditions.

Attempting to play for hugenormous 167bb stacks having gotten in lol 5bbs preflop with just TP going 4way to the flop and 2 extremely interested opponents is a horrendous plan, imo. So there is no way I'm planning on doing that on the flop. I would typically bet/fold the flop (probably with a larger 2/3rds PSB) thinking that overall a larger bet and against 3 opponents is less likely to get played back at. And if I don't think I can comfortably fold to a raise, then I don't bet at all and simply check back. This method risks giving 3 opponents a card to catch up if they're behind, but it also enables me a much better chance at simply getting to showdown where I can lay claim to a large pot that I don't want to fold to / starts encouraging bluffs or worse hands to bet at the pot / takes stacks out of play / etc.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Just to confirm, we don't have top 2, we just have TPTK.

More reads might be nice, but so far all we've seen this guy do is straddle a couple of times (yawn) and donk a small street into the preflop raiser at least once (yawn).

And yet now he's check/raising with 3 opponents and happily shipping against the preflop raiser and a dude that just took a check raise cold to the face. If this guy doesn't have at the very least a monster draw (and even those start thinking of slowing down given this flop action), he is like the most maniac player we'll ever play with. Is this our read?

Although admittedly I've not thought too much about what we should do at this point now that we've gotten here (cuz we should never be here, imo).

GcluelessNLnoobG

I know a lot of people will probably roll their eyes at this, but IMO learning to bet/fold as a default makes it so much more comfortable to play these spots and is really one of the most valuable adjustments I've made since I started playing.

Before (almost) any postflop bet I make, before the chips go out I've already decided that I'm folding to a raise. I don't have to look at the guy who raised me and wonder what percentage of the time he's bluffing. I don't have to tank and wonder if I'm making the wrong call or fold. I don't talk myself into calling a 4bet shove on the flop with TPTK. I can just snap fold and wait for the next spot. Of course I'd never do this against you guys, because here I am telling you my strategy. But in anonymous live low-stakes games, it works really well as a default, and stops me from talking myself into calls where I'm never good.

It's tough with near-nutty hands, because sometimes we do want to call their raise. But TPTK falls safely into my "easy bet/fold" category.

I'm not necessarily saying it was a bad call in this hand. But IMO it's much easier to play if, when we make our bet, we already know what we'll do if raised. Which, for me, is usually to fold.

This is such bad advice and I’m not sure why you keep trying.

1) stop being results oriented preflop. You’d never say, if someone bet QQ on Q66-5-2 and got xr all in and lost to quads, that you think the play was bad because of the result.

2) the SPR is deeper if we limp

3) the implied odds are worse if we limp.

4) whether we stack off or not depends on a lot of factors. They don’t win our stack every time we have top pair and it’s no good. Sometimes we win their stack. I know this is a shocking statement for you but AKs is a better hand than A4s or 98s.

Like seriously, what are you talking about?


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Avoiding middle SPRs with top pair hands is straight out of Professional No Limit Holdem, though. Yes, the SPR is deeper if we limp, that's the point. With these hands we'd like to either play a small SPR pot (as small as possible, but hopefully <4 or so) and be committed, or a high SPR pot (as high as possible, but ideally >20) and not be committed, for the reasons discussed in the book. There's a whole chapter on how "top pair hands have triskaidekaphobia", i.e., fear of the number 13. You can disagree, but GG isn't the first to come up with this idea.

Here, open raising often forces us to play a middle SPR pot -- which, as Ed Miller and others have discussed at length, isn't great for top pair type hands -- while the limp-reraise strategy ensures we'll either play a very large SPR pot or a very small SPR pot, depending on what our opponents do.

Again, you can disagree that middle SPRs are bad for this type of hand. But it's hard to dispute that the limp-reraise strategy allows us to avoid those middle-SPR situations.

The more expert you are, the more fine you are getting yourself into multiway middling SPR / where pot-commitment-is-trivial-while-giving-lottsa-opponents-awesome-IO spots.

Based on OPs postflop play, I'll let you/him decide where he fits in that.

Gyoucandoyou,butOPshouldprobablybedoingsomethingel se,imoG

And more direct to your actual points...

1) I certainly hope you're not comparing your example (where we're behind 1 combo) to this case? Most times when we start with one pair (or overcards) that's what we're going to end up with. If we play those spots horribly postflop (or constantly get into simply difficult to play situations) that probably ain't gonna turn out too good long term (even factoring in the few times we flop ~nuttish and everything is easy).

2) Yes, the SPR is deeper if we limp. Which means we shouldn't get ourselves into stupid spots where we think our 167bb stack is in play with one pair.

3) Our IO are actually better if we limp. Limping gives us IO of ~167:1; raising to 5x shortens those IO to ~33:1 (give or take). Course raising does make it that much more likely stacks will go in postflop (I'll let you decide whether that is a good thing or bad think given that we have AK and just shippity dipped our stack with one pair on the flop). And of course, it's also a two way street (our opponents also get the same IO).

4) I'm not so sure they don't always get OP's stack when he flops a behind TPTK given the way he played postflop here. But at the very least he will find himself in a lot difficult decisions where he'll often be facing uncomfortable commitment decisions; he'd better be very comfortable in his abilities to play these spots because that's the spot he's constantly going to get himself into. The fact that AKs is "better" than A4s/98s (in some sort of all-in preflop comparison) gets less relevant the deeper we are. And heck, here we even had position and pretty much made that useless as well (position isn't very important on the later streets if you're all-in on the flop).

GcluelessNLnoobG

1) it’s exactly what I’m doing. It’s called reductio ad absurdum. You’re arguing your point based on details you don’t have and saying “Well I no like the result so therefore the play is bad and I’ll use it to illustrate why I’m right”. Not how it works.

2) you lose less when you do that. You also win less. If you expect to lose money with the hand, fold it. Your limping strategy changes absolutely nothing about the situation except for giving people better opportunities to limp in behind and giving the bb a free look at the flop. What’s the difference between facing 70 into 100 on the river versus 210 into 300? It’s the exact same ratios.

3) you never talk about IO as the preflop aggressor. You don’t get to suddenly redefine the perspective because it suits your narrative. It also improves your opponent’s IO and gives them profitable opportunities to see a flop, when you could’ve caused them to make a mistake.

4) the fact that AKs is better than A4s gets even less relevant if we decide to artificially shrink the pot due to an unreasonable fear of downside variance. And then the spot doesn’t change at all. Only the absolute dollar amounts.


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Here's the problem. I think this misunderstanding is why you always seem to get so frustrated in these conversations. The difference is stack depth, which is arguably the #1 most important factor in no limit holdem. Some would argue (again, like Ed Miller discusses in PNLHE) it's important to the extent that it's worth planning your preflop action around it.

Professional No Limit Hold'em is a horrible book and presents a horrible way of thinking about poker.

"Top pair" is a huge generalization. Not all top pairs, or even TPTK are created equal. Sometimes you should feel fairly comfortable stacking off with a top pair hand with an SPR of 13 and sometimes you wouldn't want to stack off with an SPR of 2. SPR stackoff thresholds are worthless because they ignore the concept of ranges altogether.

It's not even that useful as a guideline. It only distracts you from the things you should be thinking about. GG has plateaued as a poker player because he's stuck thinking about SPR and implied odds instead of evolving to range based thinking.

There is really no problem with offering opponents high implied odds because you're only stacking off with highest parts of your range. If only 5% of your range stacks off does it really make sense to say the opponents are getting 35:1 implied odds preflop? And when the opponent does get to stack off you're going to have some really strong hands in that 5%. Playing passively fails to give the weaker parts of your range a chance to win the pot preflop and fails to get value for your stronger hands, especially in live poker where people will call raises with garbage like J6s. Good luck getting your implied odds to turn a profit with that.

As for the hand. This just seems like a punt. AK is too weak to be stacking off with when you have hands like AA, JJ, 44, AJ, A4s in your range and it's multiway action. Our hand is definitely too strong to fold to the raise but 3! stacking off is spewy.

Sure. Of course there are times where other factors are more important than stack depth. I don't think this is a really useful objection.

But anyway, as I said:

This is absolutely absurd logic. Raise to get value from worse Ax and to build a pot in position. Mandatory raise preflop.

You don't get to control the number of callers preflop or the SPR. There is no reason to avoid a pure value spot. You can easily pot control later given your position.

Post-flop, this is a fold without reads, even if they end up flipping over AQ and a flush draw. If they are getting in this light on the flop, there will be better spots for you later.

Revisiting since I screwed up and thought you had 2 pair. Personally I hate flop 3bets. To me it's just way too polarizing, and you dont have a polarizing kind of hand. You have a hand that desperately needs to get to showdown before committing. Could SB have draws? Honestly I dont really see live players x/r draws that much. I personally x/r the **** out of them, but I play a very different style than they do. SB 100% x/r's all sets here, thats a given. Live players probably have the stones to x/r OESFD's and I'd say thats about it whether they're aggro or tight or whatever. And maybe a few out there are doing this with pair+NFD. But we're not even talking a 3bet at this point, he's 4betting. There's just no way this is a bluff, even if he has a draw he has a very good one.

So, this is a spot I cant analyze because I would never 3bet TPTK this deep. For 100BB's no problem 3bet and call it off. But for $500 in a 1/3 game you gotta start expecting to see some multi-street action. Not to mention the Asian guy calling the x/r. If he has the draw then SB probably has the set, since I dont expect them both to be playing draws given reads. If it were me I would have flat the 3bet and see what develops on the turn as I imagine the new fight is gonna be between SB and the asian. If they go ballistic then I'm folding. If SB cbets bets anything less than pot then I'm calling. If he throws $250 out there or just jams im folding.

AS PLAYED i think it's pretty evident asian had a draw so card removal kinda confirms SB is not playing for a draw but rather 2pair/set. This is a punishing donation to 3bet fold and should never be part of your arsenal unless you had 1k stacks here. You're calling off like $240 to win $700+ you kinda just have to go with it and pray he's out of line which I think is at least 10% possible with the donkbetting and stuff. The straddling/donking is a very minor read this early in the game but you are correct to register it in your thought process as it does say *something* about a player. You're right on the cusp of this being a horrible stack off, so I say take your licks and start reaching for chips to rebuy and be pleasantly surprised if he turns up with JTss or AQ or something even more stupid.

MAWG straddles twice and donk bets doesnt mean he's LAG

You have the exact hand they always think you have.

He has to be absolutely horrible to be behind you here.

The 20 flop bet was bad and put you in a really tricky spot now. I would bet 40 on the flop against 3 other players. As played, I think you have to go with your read and GII. The majority of MAWG at 1/3 are not LAG, and I think you are putting too much stock into the first few orbits personally.

Pre should be bigger over 2 limpers; for 5x it's going multiway far too often.

The flop bet needs to be bigger. We can get plenty of value from Ax and draws. There's a time and a place for downbetting, and this isn't it.

After the c/r and call, a 3b is overplaying our hand, especially >150bb deep. Our small cbet means their ranges are probably a little wider than usual, so I'm certainly not folding to the c/r. However, when we 3b, our range is just so transparently TPGK+ as the PFR. We're unlikely to get value from weaker Ax, we're just praying they both have draws.

The last decision in the hand is the least important, imo. I'd guess he has enough Jxss & combo draws to make calling correct, but we shouldn't be here.

Definitely important points here. I’m learning I play a style that has often has too much variance. I’m not really a LAG, but I build big pots by betting more often and for more BBs when I hit a hand. Then I get stuck in bad spots, sometimes, like in this hand, before I even realize it.

Turns out this time worked out for us. BB had 2 spades (I think Q7) and the older Asian man said he also folded spades. Even though we win here I posted because I doubted it was correct. I think the small bet might have accidentally worked in our favor because BB thought it looked weak. The post 4! was nothing but a snap decision based on wishful thinking as some of you mentioned.

I’ll definitely play this spot differently next time.

A "pure value" spot preflop for meagre bbs ain't a huge coup when you've got 100x that behind.

And SPR 8 is an "easily pot control" spot even in position? You could argue we played the pot control game with our 1/3 PSB. And yet if we simply overcall the relatively small checkraise (a 3x raise to a small 1/3 PSB), we'll only have < 2x PSB left (where villain can make us play for stacks HU by the river with donks of just 0.55 PSB, I mean, we're not folding to those are we?). The Villain could have also made us trivially play for stacks by simply donking all 3 postflop streets for ~75% PSBs HU.

And yes, we can attempt to control the SPR preflop. If we overlimp, we can then create a very large SPR (if it limps thru) or a very small SPR (if aggrp SB raises and we get to limp/reraise). Raising after 2 limpers and going 4way to the flop to a middling SPR is a super standard / expected result (right?); to be honest, it's staggering we didn't go 5way to the flop (as somehow one of the limpers folded after there were at least 2 and perhaps 3 calls to them). So, simply play to the spot you want to play to. If you like the (expected) result, then keep doing that. If you don't, then consider doing something different.

GcluelessNLnoobG

How is this method working out for you long term overall?

If it's going well, then you'll be fine with this method (so long as you can stomach the variance, and my guess is most people overestimate whether they can).

If it's not going well, you could think of doing something different (especially preflop which is a huge factor in deciding overall pot size / getting into bad spots before you even realize it).

GcluelessNLnoobG

So I think we can kinda predict how villain would have played this hand if you had simply called his x/r. Lets imagine for a second you did;

Turn card is a blank. Pot size is now $240.

Remember what I said about our next move? Unless he jams or straight pots it we can call. Now at that point we're committed to any non spade river so we can call off regardless of what either of them do. If he jams the turn and asian calls we would once again make the same assessment that V has a value hand and asian has a draw. We can fold and take a note having only invested 25BB's, bot a bad result to get blown off multiway in a highly unusual situation. Plus he might just freeze thinking there's way too much interest and that his bluff wont work so we get a free river card.

Ultimately if we get to showdown we make an adjustment and go for the jugular *next time*. Whereas with the way you initially played it we're just flat out guessing based upon nothing more than very minor read that he might be an action junkie.

I'm with you. 3-bet OTF is a mistake.

I normally play this as you describe, honestly. But some of the books I've been reading lately say that TPTK might be a raising spot, at least heads up if not with 2 players. A lot of players (though not all) have learned to check to the raiser OTF flop, going for the c/r OTF or OTT. This bet seemed like a steal attempt with equity, rather than a value-heavy bet from this particular V. Some Vs who are fishier than this one (I mean in ways different than shoving a draw) will donk here with A10 which they never fold. Why not get value, pad a street with extra value so you can get the whole stack instead of most of it?

And this spot maybe has more merit because we've got another V with a draw we want to price out.

I went out of my comfort zone on this one. I felt the donk was weak, not strong. Instead of calling and letting V bet into me, (as I normally would) I decided I'd take the lead. Is this instinct with a hand like TPTK after a donk ever correct?