Playing live 1/2 NLHE.

Hero has A10♦️ in HJ, 200 effective.

Ep raises to 7. This player has been opening a high frequency of hands throughout the session and has given decent action.

Folds to hero, re-raises to 21. I'm assessing I'm ahead of his smaller open range. Villian calls going heads up to flop.

Flop comes 58A♠️. Checks to hero I continue and bet 30. He reraises 120.

I am unsure of what the best play is here. I ultimately made the fold, but I would appreciate any sort of feedback and insight.

Cheers.B

Hi, welcome to the forum.

There's an old saying that goes, "if you give someone a fish, they eat for a day. If you teach someone to fish, they eat for a lifetime." Let's try to start to learn to fish.

I realize that you want the answer to your question, but the more important decision came pf when you had a choice of folding, calling or raising. Step 1 is to stop assuming. Download an equity calculator like Equilab (it is free) and determine whether you are actually ahead. In this case, you're ahead if he is raising in EP more than 15% of hands. Given a typical 1/2 game, that is an unusual villain. Don't mistake a call for a raise. Calling 2 in EP is common.

For the sake of argument, let's say you're correct in your assessment. You're ahead of his range. You have a position advantage. The other two factors are skill and initiative. As a newish player, you shouldn't assume you have a skill advantage. Most players wildly overestimate their skill advantage. If you have one and you are a 1/2 player, it isn't much. If you call, the villain retains the initiative. In this case, by 3 betting you get to be ahead in 3 of the 4 categories. Even if the villain is a better player, you're still ahead. Therefore, I like the 3 bet for you.

The call is bad for you pf by the villain. He should have folded many of his weaker hands and is now ahead of you with his range.

The rest of the hand is fairly trivial. On the flop, most hands that are worse are folding to any bet. If he has a FD, it is going to be with an ace most of the time and you are drawing mostly dead. I would check on the flop. As played, he has you beat much of the time and you can't get him to fold. It was a good fold.

Good fold. With an Ace on the flop, your 2/3 PSB is now 4Xed. There are 24 combos of better aces, 6 more of 88/55 for a total of 30. A couple more of A5s.

I also like a 3b pre, but as Venice said, a call narrows his range.

When you flop TP and bet relatively large, think about what worse hands you'll get value from. Might be a good spot to b/f small, say $18, or even a check since his naked FD range is pretty narrow.

There are also some pair/FD combos that have good equity, like A4cc. Plan to pot control, go for 2 streets max.

GL!

I would bet smaller on the flop for this exact reason. We make his range far too strong on this board when we stick a 2/3rds PSB in there.

As this is often our weakest ace, checking behind is even a pretty viable option.


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forget his range here. the situation is whether he will check raise with a weaker hand than you have. few players will. so it is a fold.

now your hand at the start. it isnt a very good hand. and an early opener even if loose has a better hand than normal for himself. so your raise wasnt good here. you want to make a good flop before you build a pot with ace ten, its just too weak.

Yeah, I admit that I used to overvalue hands like ATs in live poker as well. Like dude opens 25% from CO when folded to him (which isn’t a far fetched number), ATs is going to be roughly 55% and works good for a 3 bet. But even against a fairly loose EP open range that consist of any pocket pair, any two suited cards 9 or higher, etc, now we are kind of flipping vs that range and will be behind it if called.

Not that i disagree with 3 betting. We just have to understand that we don’t have the nuts on this texture and should be doing a fair amount of checking.


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You guys are forgetting that even if we’re up against AJ-AK, which is a ton of combos, despite our huge equity disadvantage we’ll be able to win this hand a lot- sometimes even just with a c-bet the 2/3 of the time he’ll miss. A lot of V’s don’t even 4! AK which is great for us.

While calling is probably best, we can’t just go off of if we’re ahead of V’s range when we’re constructing a 3! range here.

Venice’s 4 factors are good.

AP x/back flop

AP fold

I think I'd bet smaller on the flop if i was going to bet , probably 20

I'm fine with X'ing back the flop as well , you could be Way ahead/Way behind, so a delayed cbet could be in order

everything else looks good i like the 3b pre and the b/f on the flop even though i think im leaning towards a X otf

I agree with most of the things you said except for this, some player types are very loose and will continue with 100% of their opening range to a 3b as crazy as it sounds, especially if the 3b isn't too large and there's some money out there. This could be a bold assumption without seeing how the V plays bc a lot of 1/2 players will continue with hands that are easy folds for others and you don't want to make the mistake of thinking that opponents will play a spot the same way as you. They are generally loose passive and make too many calls with marginal hands

agreed. In most of the live 2/5 games I play, there are several OMCs and once they limp for $5, there is a 90+% chance they will call any raise short of $30.

When the room opens at 10AM, it will be almost all OMCs. Once they limp, they are near certain to call any raise to $12. Many will call to $15. At $20, you might get one caller and you can be fairly sure he holds a pocket pair or AK.

Thank you all for the feedback, I appreciate learning!

stick around and post more you had a good question and can add much to the forums.
you will find lots of high grade help here. and feel free to try and add advice or ideas to others.