1/3 game, hero is on the button with $600.

Unknown villain with around $500 limps in MP.

Fish with $200ish in next seat over wearing a ridiculous PokerStars hoodie and having made some pretty ridiculous plays throughout the night raises to $20.

I 3-bet to $60 thinking I want to GII vs the fish without scaring her out, and there's no way anyone is limp calling a 3-bet.

Except I get called in both places. And limper asks me my stack size before calling - legit question because I was sitting there a "tiny big stack" of mostly all $25 chips. I put him on a SC or small PP.

Flop comes 6s 8s 10c and checks around to me. I am not liking this flop but we need to bet, so I fire $100 into $180. (Too small on this coordinated of a board into 2 opponents, I know, should've gone at least $125.)

Limper raises to $225; a definite pot committing bet, so I know he had hit this flop hard. Fish folds.

Hands that crush us: 4 combos of 97s, 3 combos of 66. I'm not putting 88 and TT in villain's range given the limp-call pre-flop.

Hands that might make this move and are behind us: 3 combos each of 67s, 78s, 89s, 9Ts, and a few spade flush combos, definitely JT and QT, maybe 34, 45, 57, and maybe small suited spade aces with wheel potential like A2 - A5.

I think it's plausible that the raise was not meant as a please-call-me pot committing raise but rather an attempt to get a fold out of AK/AQ, particularly since my cbet was on the smaller side, so that's why I'm putting hands as weak as a pure flush draw in villain's range. But we can treat the raise as an all-in size because there is no scenario where the rest of the money doesn't go in. We're only folding or jamming, and if we jam villain is either snap calling or sigh calling but he's calling.

Number of combos definitely favour us putting it in, however hands that we are behind have us crushed to 2 outs or drawing to runner-runner, while hands we beat are only marginally behind us.

Do I put in my stack here or fold?

Flop sizing is fine. When the pot is this large compared to stacks there's less worry about having to face big bets from opponents later if you bet small now.

Can't fold fast enough. When limper asks stack size then calls, that's likely to be a pocket pair. The flop raise is a set virtually every time.

Nah dude, it is always a please-call-me raise. Look at the hand from villain's point of view. This is virtually a protected pot, the fish has 140 left with 180 in the pot and is a pretty decent chance not to fold on this board. And you have another opponent. But you're betting anyway, you don't care. You are very, very likely to have an overpair in this spot. You never have AK or AQ here (other than clubs), this is a horror board to cbet it on, but even if you did, there's no advantage to villain in making this small raise, since as you point out, the raise is committing in any case.

LLSNL players frequently tell you what they want you to do with their sizing. These please-call-me raises can't really be faked for the most part because they work too well. People call. This is the same thing I was talking about in this thread, that we should reraise small to imitate what V is doing in this hand. Regs who have played a lot of LLSNL are very suspicious of this sort of raise. Obviously you have to have a good read on the player to try this.

Yea, I fell for another please-call-me raise earlier tonight too.

I 3-bet to $60 on the button with TT, villain in SB min-raises me to $120 and has $120 behind...

I ended up calling because including the dead money I was getting almost 4 to 1 odds, and my hand is never more than 4 to 1 behind.

But I knew there is no scenario where this guy isn't jamming the flop; to make this bet, he very likely has AA/KK, and we're 7.5 to 1 to hit a set on the flop.

Dumbass call. But at least I knew to fold to his flop jam even though I had an overpair to the flop.

I don't know why the idea of making these kinds of raises bothers me! I'm seeing now that it's a good move to have at live low stakes, but it just feels so silly and I don't want to do it!

Will certainly look for players and situations to practice this though, as well as develop the skill to know when to make a please-call-me bet because you're confident it will be called, and when to make a please-call-me bet because you're confident it will arouse suspicion and cause overfolding.

Yeah in spots like that you have to be like "ok, 60 more is what the chips on the felt here say, but the real amount I have to call is more than that".

It can come up in deeper spots versus bad players too, where you both have value but you don't know whose value is better. For instance, let's say I'm up against an old super-passive ABC guy who never bluffs. I raise to 15 with QTs, he calls in the blind. Flop TTJr. He checks, I bet 20 and he checkraises to 60. Say I'm certain he has { JT-AT, T8s-T9s, 99 }. I have nearly 30% equity there, in theory plenty enough to call, but in reality I have to muck my hand. The pot will be 150 on the turn, he will bet like 90 with his whole range, I'll call, river he'll shove for let's say 200. Then if I call again, I've put 330 in to chase a pot of 730, so I've put in 45% of the pot with 30% equity. I can see all this coming on the flop and just have to fold straightaway.

To see these spots coming, when facing a bet, think "are there any circumstances under which this guy betting later streets would make me re-evaluate his range?". If the answer is "no", then you have to include any expected bets in your evaluation of what you'll need to call.

Totally understand!

I even sort of knew this before such as with the TT hand above, I knew that the price wasn't actually $60 because he was shoving on 100% of flops, and yet in game I still did the silly mistake of calling $60 because "I'm getting 4 to 1 here."

Definite leak in my game that I will pay more attention to. Thanks!

Against an unknown person who limp calls like this I’m usually folding but getting it in isn’t crazy. If I had a hand like JJ that was more vulnerable to overcards+flushdraw I’m snap folding to this V.

Try to post what suits your aces are in the preflop action.

No you don't

I don't think we should stack off 200bb deep here when the limper can easily have a bunch of nutted hands, and the fact that the shortie is still behind him it's not like he's yolo raising K9o very often.

Hm, I think I get what you're saying. In fact I think I've given the same advice before: We don't have a 3-street value hand with this board and will need to give a free card at some point, and the best point is usually on the flop for pot control.

I guess I didn't like the fact that there are 2 opponents here, and checking will be giving a free card to random flush draws and gutshots and 2nd/3rd pair, or just kill action if the turn comes 7 or 9 even if that doesn't make someone else a better hand. There are a lot of turns that would turn our hand into a pure bluffcatcher - an outcome I wanted to avoid by cbetting - but perhaps checking and hoping for a good turn that weakens draws would've been better.

Any way to put actual numbers to this decision? I'm not even sure how I would calculate the best option OTF even if I wanted to number-crunch.

Whoops, yes I should've done that! I had 2 red aces here, which was why I could give a few A of spade combos to villain, although limp cold-calling a 3-bet with a small suited ace isn't that likely, but you never know against an unknown at these stakes.

I think a safe estimate might be to add 3 or 4 combos on average, knowing that in any given hand the actual combos villain can have is between 0 and all suited aces. I've seen people limp with AK/AQs plenty of times because they don't want to commit anything to those hands before knowing it hits!

I would not always bet this flop. Depends on villains.
I think it is an easy fold otf. You are mostly in bad shape here.

all your posts have one common theme
I think this and feel that
BUT

I ignored all that info and did this
start to trust your reads
don't lose sleep wondering
you pay off just to appease your self and say see
I was right but at the cost of your stack

keep posting here
just you writing it down and then rereading your own words over and over should help it to sink in

you noted you want to improve your game
then you state money means nothing you like the thrill of action

winning poker is mostly boring.

you want action, buy a keno ticket

GOOD LUCK

I don't know how you got that conclusion. I'm not in there just to gamble; not gonna lie, I do enjoy the action and I love aggressive games, but I am trying to figure out spots where my gamble is +EV. Maybe this situation was not one of them, but I'm not sitting there thinking "wooo big pot, let's bluff at this!" I'm asking "given my hand and the situation, can this be a winning bluff?"

The wins/losses at these stakes mean nothing to my overall lifestyle; I'm not trying to grind out a profit of X BB/hour when I earn much more than that at my job; my goal for poker is to improve at the game enough to make higher level strategic decisions against strong opponents.

So I'm actually in the position of wanting to play in tougher games for the sake of the game because sitting there and waiting for big value hands to bet against fish is boring and pointless to me.

But at the same time not entirely comfortable at above 2/5 because I still think in terms of "how many hours do I need to work to earn the equivalent of this loss?" Of course the big losses aren't nearly that big in terms of EV when balanced with wins, but for any particular session they still sting.

I wish there were strong thinking opponents at 1/2 or lower to game with, but there are none. I'll have to play higher money if I want to practice and use higher level strategy.

I've recently joined Alec Torelli's Conscious Poker site and I'm enjoying learning the content a lot, but theoretical ideas like "why you should tend to 3-bet or fold in the SB and rarely/never call?" and "why never open-limp?" really don't apply that much to a typically passive live 1/2 game. So I gotta find a game where I can duke it out strategically at poker without putting big financial stakes on the line, but not sure where that may be.

That’s a good way to think about it. I didnt mean to always check here, but the mentality that you “have to bet” because I have x hand or an overpair is a little too rigid.

This is a board where im ok with checking most of my range, pretty awful board for us

I'm fine with our sizing targetting the raiser.

Obviously didn't expect the limper to call a 3bet cold. But if he put in 1/8th of his stack to ~setmine, then he's getting my stack every time he outflops me.

SPR is 2.5 on the flop against the deeper stack and < 1 against the shorter guy. Board is drawy. We're committed. I just ship the flop.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't put TT/88 in limp/calling range, although I don't think it matters much.

It's uncomfortable, but I'd still ship to the committing check/raise. He has enough draws, KK-JJ and some lol hands, and he's unknown, imo. We have outs against some wonky two pears. Again, if anyone is calling off 1/8th of their stack preflop 3ways with speculative hands then they're getting my stack the rare time they outflop me.

ETA: I know people hate SPR around here, but SPR is lol 2.5 and < 1. Anything other than betting to commit is very meh, imho.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Checking this flop 100% of the time 3 ways 200bb deep. Not a flop i'm comfortable stacking off on with 1 pair. Draws are usually flipping with us and we could be drawing almost dead against made hands. Even if opponent showed up with a combo draw 80% of the time and just 20% of the time has two pair/set/straight then we are still losing money in the long run.

Heads up I'm probably still checking this flop for pot control 200bb deep (100bb's can get it in here.)

We can't have anything nutted here and villains know this..

We have very little room to improve our hand, we have 200bb's and we've only got 60$ in the pot.

A connected flop I'd be more comfortable cbeting would be Js10sQh when we have the As but not this one.


I'd wait and and see what the turn action brings. Especially in position.


Pros find reasons to fold

Fish find reasons to call

DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER