So this is 1-2, game has been pretty crazy for a 1-2 game, and hero and a few others are trying to get either the mandatory 4 straddle or to turn the game into a 2-4/ open a 2/4 table, but at the moment there are a few players not interested......
Hero has about 550 infront of him and is covered by villan who is running like God....

Before anyone flames me for the hh, read the rest of the post first.....

Straddle to 8 is on, hero raises from mp 31 with 99, villan calls from the Co, two further callers....

Flop comes 2c 9h 10c.....
Check, check, hero makes it 77..... Villan shoves, fold fold, hero makes the easy call.....villan shows tt...obv...

So the hand is a train wreck and all the money gai against most villans but.... I have seething guy make this move 3 times in the last four hours and EVERYTIME he had top set or the nut straight..... Hero on a 4, 8, 9 rainbow board folded kk to the exact same action from villan and was correct..... Villan had 99....

It seems crazy to suggest folding, but I know this villan doesnt do this with 2pair here, overpairs or any draws.... It seems to me to be just a question of weather he does this with bottom set......

Am i just levelling myself here, or is this a spot anyone can make a v-exploitable fold.....

1) Yes, you are levelling yourself. Folding here have nothing to do with "expoitative" play or an "exploitative" fold: its monsters under bed syndrome at its finest.

2) Serious talking about folding this unless board is bone dry and we are a million BBs deep against the biggest nit is just a trainwreck in itself.

3) If you want to work on your game in LLSNL environment, its so so many other areas you can focus on that are more important than trying to get away from huge coolers like KK into AA, or set over set. Its wasting your energy on the totally wrong things in my opinion. Those coolers happens, its totally standard- and it happens to everyone from time to time.

No, you can never fold this. It's just a cooler, but he could easily have an over pair, a flush draw, or 22.

And yet again, another bad beat thread.

Well, obviously the villain who is running like God, ..., he's a donkey and a sucker if he shoves top Set on the flop.
On the other side of the coin my friend, you cannot fold middle Set. If you even thinking about folding middle Set you cannot play any other hand because there's nothing left worth playing .. wtf? ..., fuggetaboutit !.., man

Hey OP, you can check this out; it's for situations similar to yours:
Analysis of when you should fold middle/bottom set on wet boards with shallow stacks

You would need a lot of history with villain to pin his range tightly enough to fold.

It's really a question of style. If they are a loose gambling fish post flop that can be shoving straight draws and a lot of flush draws it's an easy call. If they are the sort that has a tight range, over bets there big hands for protection, and passively calls with draws then you might be able to find a fold.

There is 1 1/2 player I used to play against that I would always fold, and a couple of 1/2 & 2/5 that I could sometimes fold depending on my read. If they only shove sets/combo draws and you can discount draws/22 enough you may be behind enough in equity to fold to the over shove.

Yes I have alot of history with this villan, as stated previously played a hand earlier in the night with villan exactly same action with a similar board, and I folded kk..... Villan never does this with an overpair or a draw or indeed as any form of bluff.....
Villan is a reg player who is pretty tight with his cash....he buys in for the minimum and plays a very tight post flop game....I just can't see he does this without a set, and I'm not sure he lumps it in with bottom set..... I think it's an interesting question to ask if we are folding bottom set here opposed to middle set?

How was the straddle $8?

And what was his timing in the shove and "how" did he do it? (Verbalize, push stack in, etc)

What suits were your nines?

These are things you should pay attention to.

I would fold 22 here fwiw

You need to have a stone cold read on villain to fold here and even then it's a tough fold.

I had the 9c 9s,
Villan insta shoves over my bet out, well he doesn't actually shove he just picks up a stack of 25s and lumps in about 500, which is enough to put me all in and I think everyone else in the hand pretty comfortably....
I Do have a really solid read on this villan.....I keep repeating that, he 100% only does this with sets, I'm not even sure he lumps it in with 9-10.... He deffinatley doesn't do it with a draw......
I'm not sure I can ever actually fold this, and that's what I'm asking here, with a really solid read vs villan can we make this fold....

Cant believe i am using even more time on this standard cooler, but sometimes i cant help myself.

1) How big of a samplesize do you have with this particular villain to know that he "100 percent" only do this with sets? 1 long session? 5 long sessions? 500 hours? How accurate can that read in reality be, when we includes random 10 percent spazz/weird overvalue slowplay from KK/AA hands also from time to time?

2) Even if you only seen him do this kind of shove with the nutz over lets say a 200 hour sample, you can have witnessed him being on the very top of his range in these spots in this particular samplesize you logged with him. It doesent mean that his range cant be wider in these spots in the future, and its not nearly enough to warrant the kind of folds youre thinking about making in this hand.

3) This is 1/2 NL, not 10/20 or 25/50 table full of professional postflop nits. Its literally impossible to range a guy for _only_ topset here, its freaking madness to even go down this road of thought in my opinion.

Yes, it sucks to get in over 200 BBs drawing close to dead. Yes, coolers sucks. But its a part of poker that happens to everyone, and the solution is not to try being an alien that can avoid these spots with some stone cold white magic read on a 1/2 villain.

And that's the whole thread in a nutshell. You have supposedly "a lot of history" with him. Have you ever seen him do this with bottom set? If yes, you call. If not, you fold.

EZ game.

This sample size is probably too small but you didn't give much info. You essentially just gave us the numerator and not the denominator. After this hand you know he played 100% (like 3 of 3, or 2 of 2?) top sets like this but did you observe him on a hand with middle or bottom set?

Same with with straights. How often did you observe his play with a non-nut straight?

In general, how did he play TPTK & draws? Also, was it a wet board like here every time he shoved. Seems like a bad move here, but definitely makes more sense than on a dry board.

Pot sizes on each street would be great.

Cliffs
If we're 65%+ confident this is exactly TT, it's a fold.

If we're 100% confident he has a set, we need to be 74%+ confident it's both TT & 22 in order to call. If we think there's more than a 26% chance it's exactly TT, it's a fold.

If we add 10% semi-bluffs, it gets more complicated, but even a moderate chance that he has exactly TT means it's a fold.


Explanation
There's about ~$125 in the pot OTF. We bet $77 and he jammed for $520, so we have to call around $445 to win $720, needing about 38% equity to be indifferent between calling and folding.

If he has TT, we have 4.3% equity.
If he has either TT or 22, we have 50% equity.

First, note that if we're 65%+ confident he has exactly TT, it's a fold.
(65% * 4.3%) + (100% * 35%) = 3% + 35% = 38%.

We don't have 100% equity against his semi-bluffs, so the actual confidence level requirement is lower. For example, if we have 75% equity against the rest of his range, even 53% confidence it's exactly TT makes it a fold.
(53% * 4.3%) + (48% * 75%) = 2% + 36% = 38%.

If we can narrow him down to either TT or 22, we need him a 74%+ chance of having 22 in his range (26% or less it's only TT) in order to be indifferent to calling.

(26% * 4.3%) + (74% * 50%) = 1% + 37% = 38%

If we add a small chance he's semi-bluffing, a call gets better. Let's say we have 75% equity against his semi-bluffs and arbitrarily pick...
25% likely TT (4.3% equity)
65% likely TT & 22 (50% equity)
10% likely semi-bluff (75% equity)

(25% * 4.3%) + (65% * 50%) + (10% * 75%) = 1% + 32.5% + 7.5% = 41%

If we think V has only 10% bluffs, overpairs, etc. (say we're using Harrington's 10% rule), then we need to think there's no more than 1 chance in 3 he's doing it with TT and TT only.

(33% * 4.3%) + (57% * 50%) + (10% * 75%) = 1% + 29% + 8% = 38%.

Even with 10% semi-bluffs, if we think there's more than 33% likelihood it's exactly TT, it's a fold.


As an aside, the argument that we have to call otherwise we're folding our entire range is illogical. If V's jam provides enough reliable information that we're drawing nearly dead, it's not a problem to fold our entire range. Indeed, it would be a problem NOT to fold our entire range here. Folding here doesn't carry any implications about how we play different situations -- or it shouldn't. To be better poker players, we should be playing according to the exact situation in front of us, not according to some set rule.

But is the history just the 4 hours tonight or more like 40 hours over the last 3 or 4 months? Huge difference, obviously.

It's interesting that he usually buys in for the minimum, which means he could profitably employ a sklansky/miller style short stack strategy like tight pre-flop and agressive post-flop with a decent amount of shoving on flop & turn.

But that style (in the "non-exploitable" version) would also involve shoving draws so I'm curious if you have the sample size to really be sure he doesn't shove a straight or flush draw here.

Or even if he doesn't shove a straight or flush draw here there's still a chance he shoves a combo draw here. I mean, there's only 2 of those here (87cc & QJcc) but it's still something. And in a sense, that's the sample size problem in a nutshell: you might not have ever seen him with a combo straight/flush draw so the sample size on the particular type of hand is zero.

Nice post! Thanks for doing the math most of us are too lazy to do.

But what are you saying here? I thought you were saying 74% chance of 22 and 26% chance of TT, but equity against 22 is 96% not 50%, right?

And in this case you don't even really need to do the math as it's approximately symmetric (TT vs 99 and 99 vs 22) so you just need him to have TT < 38% (pot odds).

I'm saying 26% chance range is [TT] and 74% chance range is [TT, 22]. Apologies for the lack of clarity.

It's not symmetric, because we have 4% equity against our tightest range estimate, [TT] , but only 50% against the slightly looser range estimate [TT, 22].

This whole question hinges on the confidence we can assign to our range estimates, as well as what those range estimates are.

The range estimate + confidence can be collapsed into a single range estimate with weighted ranges. For example, let's say we think it's 50% likely he has a range of exactly TT and 50% likely he has a range of [TT, 22].

The collapsed range estimate would be 75% [TT] and 25% [22]
50% likely [TT] + 50% likely [TT, 22]
= 50% [TT] + 50% * (50% [TT] + 50% [22]
= 50% [TT] + 25% [TT], 25% [22]
= 75% [TT], 25% [22]

And we should fold.

This can't be a real question

Gotcha, thanks! By symmetric I just meant equity of TT vs 99 ~= 99 vs 22.

folding the second nuts 70bb deep lol

I think what ultimately makes this unfoldable is that almost any villain has to be committed with worse than top set here (regardless of whether villain would actually use a term like "committed" or "SPR"). SPR about 4.3, so what are the possible ways villain plays it?

He's not folding 22, right? It's a wet board, so is he flatting 22 but raising TT all in? I mean, of course he could, but it seems like a weird way to play. Somewhat similar, there's only 4 combos of T9, but how many 1/2 players are folding top two at an SPR of 4.3? And again, if not folding it, how many players play it that much differently than how they would play a set?

Of course, if you really have the sample size to say this guy has TT 75% of the time or whatever, then that's the read and you fold. But this is into the territory of weird, exploitable playing styles and you really need the sample size to support it. Conversely, reading a villain to only play made hands but not drawing hands like this is pretty easy to believe so limiting villains range to made hands is pretty easy to justify.

No trolling strat forums OP.

If you really have such a lock read on the guy don't bother us with a question we can't help you with.

It doesn't seem possible to make an inference about the probability he can have 22 or worse when we can't see the information we really need (v hero folding bottom set or doing something else with it besides overshoving). I don't feel comfortable updating the probability v can have 22 from 100% from the info OP provides. It's good that the math is there, but I want to illustrate that it's not easy to achieve >25% doubt that v can have other hands besides top set when you only ever see the hands that you are 100% sure are in his range anyway.

V is super snug with the way he is running and is definitely not bluffing though.

I get what you're saying but note that putting him on 100% to have 22 in his range is in fact making an inference about the probability. No matter what course of action we take, we are necessarily making an inference about his range.

I used to have similar conversations with the Marketing folks when I was running product development teams.

Mktng: We need to add this feature.

Me: OK. That's going to cost $X per unit and $Y to the development cost. How many additional units (better price, whatever) do you believe this will give us?

Mktng: I can't tell you that, but I know it's a good decision.

Me: <Does some math.> OK, you are implicitly saying this is going to result in $Z more per year on this product. That's the point at which this becomes profitable.

Mktng: No I'm not saying that. I just know we need to add the feature.

Me: <Head explodes>

And I get insufficient sample size and effects of run-bad and run-good on V's behavior and the general fog of war. I don't have any problem with someone that says they're always calling here.

I also get that we necessarily make inferences with insufficient information and that LLSNL V's tend to have exaggerated mistake profiles. I was surprised by how certain we had to be that he was doing this wider than TT (or, conversely, how uncertain we had to be that he was jamming only with the stonies) in order to call.