1/3, 400 eff., villain has been at table only 1-2 orbits, but played with hero for about an hour a week ago, and should recognize him as a tight player without knowing much more. Villain (50ish white rec) plays very lose pre and fairly lose post, but is a regular and has pretty decent cardsense. However, he still calls too much post. I've seen him make large bluffs, and it's still difficult for me to really differentiate his bluffs from his strong value bets.

Hero is in sb with AQ. Villain limps UTG, a bunch of other people limp, and hero raises to 25. Only villain calls.

Flop (~60) : A78

Hero bets 35, villain calls.

Turn (130): 2

Hero bets 65, villain calls.

River (260): 6

Hero checks, villain immediately puts out 125.

Hero doesn't know what to do -- I basically have a bluff catcher at this point, and the missed draws make me inclined to call. However, there are definitely twp pair hands in villain's range (A7, A8, A6, A2, 78) and maybe some sets, though he'll be raising most of these hands on flop or turn at least some of the time.

I considered checking the turn for pot control and to make river decisions easier, but decided that I could definitely get value from worse aces and would then just have to see what happened on the river.

Hero sighs and calls, not really confident enough to fold, though actually thinking back over it now, I'm really not sure villain is bluffing here at least 25% of the time, and think it should have been a somewhat easy fold (and not being results oriented).

I like checking turn, you say you get value from hands like Ax but some of those Ax have two pairs now. I feel as though he would just raise A10+ so we only really have A9/A6/A5/A4/A3 to get value from some 8x hands.

Draws make up a large part of his range the 2h is a brick, I like checking turn to let him bluff and also if he checks back we can play river optimally either going for value with a bet or c/c a river bet should it be a bad card eg. 6h... Also the other point for checking turn is when facing a river bet if turn is checked through it would be somewhere in the vicinity of 50-80 as opposed to 125.

read ed miller's "the course"

Bet $50 pre and $200 of remaining stacks on the flop. It will be much easy for you to play it. Anyway, AK would be a lot better because AQ sucks a little

Being deeper like this, the trickier / more difficult the limpers are postflop (and looser they are to calling a big raise preflop), the more I might just see a flop; the more ABC / tighter they are, the more I'm raising preflop. In the end, our raise narrowed the field to HU (good, imo), although we are OOP to a difficult player we don't have a handle in an SPR pot of just over 6 (where he can easily make us play for stacks having gotten in just 6% of his stack preflop, not great imo).

As I say, with an SPR of just over 6, stacks can trivially go in by the river. I think we have to have a plan right away. Are we bet/folding a couple streets, knowing that any reasonable bets will leave us with < PSB for the river (noting that we left ourselves with a PSB left here even with very small 1/2 PSBs)? Are we happy with stacking off, and if so, what is the best way to do that? Is it by simply checking and letting him bluff off his chips? Is it best to bet the flop, and then check/raise the turn for stacks? Or perhaps bet/bet/bluffcatch? Against a tricky aggro player, I might lean towards betting flop and then check/shoving turn (especially if draws bust), but I'm not sure.

Pot control is really difficult to do in small SPR pots OOP, you basically have to make sure your Villain is on board with you (which really leads back to preflop, imo). River is a pretty gross card as T9 got there, but he could have been ahead the whole way, or made two pair, or busted his flush draw.

The most difficult part about this hand, imo, is building a bloated pot OOP to a difficult player where if we make a hand postflop it will most likely be just one pair. It's something to consider regarding preflop, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Preflop: Good.

Flop: Bet more. This is a very wet board with both flush and straight draws out there. If your opponent is going to call to hit one of them you should make sure he pays upfront to do so. Also, if he flopped an ace he's probably just as likely to call a full pot(ish) bet than he is to call a half pot(ish) bet. $55 should do the job.

Turn: As played, again bet more. Going full pot is a little overboard, but 2/3 pot is better than 1/2ish for the same reasons as on the flop.

River: You have two options. One is to make a small blocking bet roughly the same size as your turn bet. This has the twin benefits of getting value out of worse aces that won't value bet themselves if checked to, and not losing as much as you would have by check/calling against a better made hand.

If your read tells you that your opponent is aggressive enough to read a blocking bet as weakness and come over the top of it with a bluff, then check/call. Your opponent could easily be on busted s, 65, AT, etc. So you don't want to check/fold. Also, considering how wet the board was, if he flopped a set or two pair you probably would have heard from it by now.

Once your opponent bets, call and expect to be good 2/3 of the time.

Just my opinion...

Not saying whether this is good or bad, but just noting that this will leave us with just a 1/2 PSB left for the river.

GcommitmentplanG

It looks like an interesting book, but since it's not immediately available to me, maybe an excerpt would let me see where you think the mistake is.

I'm not as concerned with SPR's here as I am with what villain will and will not bet. E.g, I think I can get called two streets with worse aces, but if he doesn't improve by the river he'll probably just be checking it back almost always. So after calling flop and turn and then betting river when checked to, he's telling me he either has AK beat or is bluffing. So I just have to decide whether he's really bluffing often enough to make the call.

I kind of like your suggestion of checking the turn and possibly x/raising if he bets, but I don't think he's really calling with worse very often at all, so it's sort just making the hand easier to play without giving me any real advantage. But if I check and he bets I don't like just calling (at all), and I clearly can't fold.

I'm kind of liking a bet/fold three streets, or flop & turn and x/calling river. But this is what I actually did, and I still wasn't sure villain was bluffing the river often enough to call. But I would kind of expect a raise from two pair+ somewhere in there, so only A6 and 9T really improved.

Just to clarify, you're saying that sometimes (deeper stacked, trickier villains), you're just completing AQ in the sb? This hand ended up being a kind of terrible spot post due to stack sizes and being OOP, that's true, but there are other things I think we should consider when deciding how to act preflop.

1. There are 4-5 limpers, and most of them are kind of weak, one of them is solid, and only UTG (caller) is really a bit wild and aggressive (but not excessively so).

2. This hand ended up a bit badly, but even OOP with these stack sizes, most of the time villains are not actively exploiting this and putting me in difficult spots, and the hand plays out in one of the following ways...

a. I bet flop and V folds
b. I bet flop and V calls. I bet turn and V folds.
c. I bet flop and V calls. I bet turn and V calls. I check river, V checks back and I'm good.
d. I bet and V raises either flop or turn and I (most likely) fold.

e. The way the hand really went down, is actually a bit uncommon, it seems to me. And I still don't really think stack sizes are the biggest problem. It's simply hard to fold to this river bet, but also doesn't feel great to call and hope V is bluffing at least 25% of the time here.

I kind of liked the ideas of whoever suggested betting near pot on flop and 2/3 on turn, but this line DOES, actually, create serious commitment problems for me. Betting 1/2 pot flop and turn leaves me with room to fold to a PSB on the river (I don't think this is bad at all). But having only a 1/2 PSB left makes it very difficult. On the other hand, it will be difficult for V as well, so it could potentially be a way to get called by weaker aces, but doesn't leave me any room to figure out if I'm beat (before it's too late).

^^^^

For me it really boils down to how often you're going to get yourself into a difficult situation. If it's most likely a case that you're going to end up HU against a non tricky player, or end up against the tricky player where 2a..2d happen most of the time, then fine.

The problem is here that V1 limped UTG. He's very loose preflop, which indicates to me that he's calling preflop like most of the time (right?). On top of that, he's fairly loose postflop, which means we're going to the turn a lot, often with UI Ace high (fair?). And now we're facing a commitment decision, against a guy who we know if capable of big bluffs (he's in position in a big pot, isn't this the type of pot he'd like to steal?) and yet we don't really have a handle on him. Overall, I just think we get ourselves into a difficult spot a lot more than we think here. Position plays an important part in poker, especially against tricky players; we ignore it at our own peril.

GcluelesspositionnoobG

If he is limp calling wide pre and floating a lot on the flop then this is great for us. Won't he be the one in a tough spot here most of the time? If this were an effective strategy then we would be using it too, but the truth is that it's a huge leak, and that money has to go somewhere.

If he is really loose and calling too many post, you should bet river for thin value and expect a call from AJ, AT, A9, A5,A4,A3. I really like to thin value in those spots because V holding Ax will put you on missed flush draws.


AP, Call, even though I do not like it. Many V underbluff those spots because all draws bricks and his sizing looks like wanting a call. LOL, after I write this sentence, I feel you should fold.

We're going to have UI Ace high on the turn more often than not. And as we see here, even when we have TP we're not exactly in a comfortable situation.

Gplaythisguyinposition,imoG