At any point did you call him a donkey? I would’ve called him a donkey. A guy limp called me preflop with J4s I had KK. He sucked out at me. I called him a donkey and made obnoxious “hee haw” noises st him. Made me feel better.
Relevant to the hand, a check raise from a loose passive fish tends to be a big hand.

Also not sure whether I should be posting this in LLSNL or another forum but figured it belonged here since it's against a clear fish.

Folding to a min raise is possibly one of my least favorite things to do in poker. In hindsight, folding to the min raise was definitely the correct play but it's so ****ing hard to do that when you're getting 6.5 to 1. I appreciate the comments and insight from all of you.

Ya good analysis there buddy. Way to contribute meaningful insight to the forum.

[/QUOTE] But we should NEVER be worried about b/f at this level...V's just don't bluff raise with any near the correct frequency. [/QUOTE]

This is 5/10 so I would say V's ARE more capable of bluff raising the correct frequencies.

IMO, our hand is extracts more value under-repped then trying to get calls from specific pp's (unless V is limping entire range).

You also have the BTN which means you aren't missing out on value by checking back the flop, as you can still go for turn and river value.

Betting flop is FOS but checking flop, betting turn is strength?

I just think betting flop here narrows your range way too much (unless you are a MANIAC) b/c what bluffs are you betting here?

Betting allows V's to make exploitative folds.

Am I crazy here?

But if I reposted this hand and gave us KQo, there is absolutely no goddamn way any of the AA-checkers ITT would want to bomb turn and river into two opponents. Yet you're telling me that if we do that, they will fold anything which doesn't beat AA, which is really really hard to beat on this board.

Like here's the thing, it's a coherent position to take that our opponents are weak and will never pay us off for three streets. Maybe that's true. The problem is, if it is true, it indicates that you're playing way too passively in general. There's a phenomenon I see quite a bit on this forum where people find that they don't get paid with their value hands and their solution is to retreat even further into passivity. In spots like this where you have a range advantage and positional advantage, the solution to not getting paid is more aggression, not less.

If opponents are going to fold all their hands which don't beat AA, then I'm triple barrelling my whole range here, why wouldn't I?

ya we should be c-betting this flop a lot with overs. checking flop is not OK.

i would also add that betting small is a 100 times better solution to this than checking flops because we believe we have a "2 street" hand.

i also find that many times i think that i have a "2 street" hand and bet flop and turn, if i bet small on the river, i get called. if you know your villains and are deft with bet sizing, you can often turn a 2 street hand into a 2.5 or 3 street hand. or bet slightly smaller on all 3 streets. depends on board texture, obv.

i think a great way to move a basic winning game to a higher level of play is to include some pointed variety in your sizings. it's incredible how much value you can squeeze out of tiny bets over the long run.

Chris,

Excellent posts. If you can’t get three streets with AA on this kind of runout, you’re prob not betting enough.

Good work on teaching your opponents to play better. I'm surprised you didn't buy them subscriptions to some training sites too.

I will say, there are some players out there who will actually fold everything OTT that can't beat an overpair and are inelastic with that (ie will keep doing it no matter how much of a LAG you become). Against those players you might not want to bet, although even there, you probably just want to bet smaller. But there's no indication that the loose passive guy, at the very least, is that sort of player.

This is a spot where checking the flop is rationalization of pain-avoidance. Everyone hates it when some smarmy fish check-minraises them on the turn. Everyone hates betting multiple streets with an overpair and finding out they're throwing money straight into the maw of a boat. Everyone hates folding winners. But nobody goes home after a game and beats themselves up all night about how they missed value here with AA, because it's entirely hypothetical, but counterfactual missed value is still missed value. If you leave a session and nothing happened in it that made you hate life, that's probably a bad sign, because if you're in your comfort zone at all times it's because you aren't pushing hard enough.

bwahaha

even funnier is how V lost it all within 3 hours plus another BI

Thank you for these posts. I really despise the mentality of the nit trap.

Like let's think about it. What kind of range does a player like this limp call and check call flop with? We can group things as so:

Beating us: 22, 99, 88, A2s
We are beating: TT, 98s, A8s, T8s, 87s, 86s, 33-77, AQo maybe. This is just stuff we'd expect him to have. He can have worse.

Let's pretend everything worse than an 8 folds the turn. Well, we STILL have 67%+ against this range. Not only is AA a strong hand here, but it reduces an already small range of 9 value combos to 7. That's important.

And really, against people who are playing too wide of a range out of position, the way to make their lives hell and force mistakes is to bet more. Not less. Why not be a limping Machine if your opponents won't exploit you?

yup

Second paragraph is spot on. These games are about getting value and we need to show aggression to get value. That is why I try to bet as often as I can with value hands, rarely trap, and simply fold to someone who plays back at me (b/f line a TON). The % of the player pool (at least mine) in 5/10 and below that is willing to try and bluff raise me off AA/KK on this board is close to 0. So when I am raised, I can confidently fold knowing that I am crushed like close to 100% of the time.

I'd never heard the phrase "nit trap" before, but was immediately pretty sure what it meant. Googled it, and yeah. So thanks for that. Definitely a rabbithole a lot of people go down.

Edit: Guess I should not be a dick and describe it for people who are trying to follow. The Nit Trap is when, let's say you're an amateur playing straightforward poker and you only threebet AA and KK preflop. But after you've played with the same people for a while, or played with better players, you notice that nobody ever pays off your AA or KK. But instead of leaning the correct lesson - which is that you need to balance your ranges and threebet weaker hands in addition to AA and KK - you conclude that what you need to do is trap with AA and KK. Stop threebetting them, to deceive your opponents about what you have and get extra value. This might sound logical on first glance. But actually, you're caught in the Nit Trap, and it will lead you to your doom.

doooooooom.

I actually had an argument a few months ago on a JohnnieVibes hand where he three bet some scared money nit type player with QQ, nit called and donked some 7-rag-rag flop, bet turn and river 9's small. Johnny jammed and the dude folded JJ face up getting like 8:1. Johnnie said his line is still optimal as his hand crushes villain's range to play that way (to not 4 bet and donk lead a 7 hi board screams 88-JJ). The argument against was "well he didn't pay off one pip worse, so his play is clearly not optimal since he'll only get called by better".

But that's wrong. Our opponent made a host of mistakes in this hand, mostly regarding his telegraphing of his range. The nit-trap lesson from this hand is to just call because "he's not calling". The good lesson here is "wow, I can steal these pots on the river versus this guy a ton just by minraising". But you still raise your QQ, because you never know when your exploit will get counter-exploited. When it is, you wanna be showing the goods.

There's actually only one combo of A2s possible (A2), so his value range is really 8 combos. (3) 99, 3 (88), 1 (A2s), 1 (22). Realistically a fish will show up with K2s occasionally, but yah ... his value range is super narrow.

Oops, I thought the solid reg was the villain in this hand. Ignore all my previous advice. Generally stacking off 100bbs to a 5/T fish with Aces on this board is not bad at all. I suppose if he's super passive that changes things but regardless it isn't the end of the world.

I didn’t see the results of the hand, but I’m guessing your listing this because you lost. Even if you lost I believe it’s still correct to call turn and river. Against a competent player your hand seems almost face up, but against the fish there are more hands your ahead of than behind in his range. Barring some sort of tell, I think it’s correct to call down here. I think 10’s through Kings are also possible, and it sucks if you lost to a full house or a Duece.

Chris V take a bow. You are spot-on pointing out the paradox that the AA checkers would not bet KQo 2 streets as a bluff because they know they're going to get called by a naked 9 or pocket tens.

The weird thing with this hand is that if I posted the same exact hand just that villain instead of min raising turn, jammed turn for 800 effective, I think more people would advocate for a call rather than calling the min raise. This just literally sounds like the most exploitable thing ever. How can I reconcile this with my slightly more GTO oriented brain?