Early evening at the Orleans.

Tight table overall, the room and table seems filled with OMC and tighter regs/locals/ promotion grinders.Not many big pots at all, most players seems tight passive and often limps, then folding to any preflop aggression.

Hero: Playing around $400, have a winning "clean" image at the table. On his first bullet, been sitting at this table for 1,5 hours. (Even though villain in this hand doesent know any of this, as he pretty much just sat down).

Villain:Playing around $300. Middle aged asian guy with earbuds, probably in his late fourties or fifties,sat down at the table approximately 1 orbit before this hand occurs. Table changed to heros table, and gives off the grinder serious player vibes from the first impression.Havent played any pots of any size up until this point, just limped one hand and check-folded flop. Plus he have only been at the table for like 10-15 minutes, so pretty much zero reads to work with here in this hand.

Hero raises KK UTG to 10 (normally i go bigger in 1/3 games when it comes to standardsizing, but because of the general tightness of this table in particular i size all my opens smaller to induce some more action).

Only villain calls on the button. Flop comes 289. Hero C-bets 15, villain instantly counts out a raise- slides it out in 2 stacks and makes it 50.

Hero?

I like to call here. You are ahead of almost everything and honestly he is very rarely putting you on as big of a hand as you have. Sure he occasionally does have a monster but more often than not it is a lone pair, draw, or even just a bluff. He doesn't exactly expect you to hit a 9 high board so can easily be making moves with air or very little. Definitely dont raise on the flop. Since strong hands are so little of his range vs weak hands you are far more likely to get money from him betting than from him calling your bets. If he bets turn I think a check-raise AI is fine. If he is on a hand like A9 or 9-10 he can easily talk himself into a call since he would be basically priced in. If he checks turn you know you are good and can safely bet the river.

Against an unknown I like c/c-ing the flop to him and letting him value own himself on dry runouts.

The board did hit a couple of draws, but otherwise is pretty dry.

As played, call.

Call, aiming to call a turn bet and to check the river to him.

We might be able to find a fold if he keeps up the story and jams the river - particularly if a 7 or Q comes.

It's just not that easy for these guys to raise flop then barrel the next two streets with worse than hero's hand. A board-pairing deuce would be a good card to see as now we counterfeit 98.

Well, I'm not folding!
I think we have maybe 54% equity if he's raising with his sets & plays hands like 98s, JTs, 76s & raises those, along with TT. Maybe even T9s with a BDFD & BDSD.

You can decide he has a set & flat to try & catch a king - 4%. Or, you can assume he has 2 pair [2 combos of 98s] & flat, again looking for a king, or a deuce - 10%. Or, you can assume he has 29 of the 38 combos I gave him that you are ahead of & you have 70% equity, which usually doesn't change much ott.

If we decided what we were going to do if V raised b4 we bet, we can smoothly cut out 7 reds and slide them in.

If we flat & the turn is the 2, are we going to bet or check & let him see the river for free with his draws?

It's extremely hard for our hand to improve vs. a set & not much better [6%] vs. 2pair. We could actualize our equity vs. the bulk of his range I assigned, which we are ahead of, and raise, but if he's the type to 4! with JTs we are in trouble. Otherwise, we could fold to a 4!.

But first we have to believe V calls $10 pre, when nobody else has called & only the blinds left to act, with 76s, 98s, JTs, etc. He may have flatted pre with TT/JJ/QQ.

Like Nogyong says: It's rare to find a V that bets 3 streets with a worse hand in LLSNL games.

Never raise to 10 in Vegas. They take 10% of the pot. So you want the pot on the flop to be something like 27 or 36 or whatever, not 21 or 30 or something like that.

Small detail but I appreciate the tip. Every dollar counts

Yeah I quite like this plan. This is a better flop for someone who flats an UTG raise than it is for the UTG raiser. It hits stuff like 89s, T9s, JTs, 22, 88, 99 etc. By betting we're pretty much claiming to have an overpair and from the hand we can see that when he raises, life isn't easy even when we do actually have the overpair.

As played, I guess calling and probably folding the turn. It feels gross, but idk what else to do. Calling turn and folding river just exacerbates the problem imo, so the other alternative is to call him down.

Maybe going for a check-call line is quite a good option in this spot with absolutely zero reads, at least you made some good arguments for that line ChrisV.

As played though: i dont know how i feel about just going into stationmode and call him down after he raises the flop.His range is pretty much unknown too with our total lack of in game reads, so we have pretty much solely population tendencies to lean on here. Like, with the pot quickly growing due to villains 50 flopraise- already on the turn we will be pretty close to stackoff territory if villain continue to size his bets big.

Like, are we just gonna go to the felt with KK here in a single raised pot HU against an unknown around 120 BB deep? And if so, is that likely to be a +EV default line? Or is the plan to just call the flopraise, and then fold to further big aggression on the turn? That doesent seem very optimal at all either.

Would appreciate if somebody have some more in detail opinions/reflections on these questions.

This would require assigning V a range when he raises the flop & working out the math.
You could get your equity using Flopzilla. Having others do your homework is nice though. I know Tom Sawyer appreciated not having to paint the fence.

That is not what i was asking, so please dont put words in my mouth. I use a huge amount of time/work in many ways in terms to always trying to improve aspects of my own game, so show some respect for that- instead of making ridicilous statements about me trying to get others to do work for me.

I am not expecting amazing complexe math assignments ITT. I am looking for reflections/concrete thoughts on the spot (based on peoples playing experience for example) given the circumstances and the fact that we are readless here. One of the main points i am trying to discuss is how are we gonna be able to assign villain an accurate range and do the equity math when he is an unknown that just sat down at the table?

And next: if we try to range him roughly regardless of that (wich we have to do of course,and lean alot on general population reads and his appearance at the table), will that range have any hope of being accurate enough to defend a calldown/possible stackoff with an overpair in a single raised pot 120 BB deep?

Petrucci, if you have one or two key mantras wrt live poker, one of them should be this:

It is impossible to bet/fold too much in live poker

This is especially true when you choose smaller sizings.

Playing an unknown for stacks is going to be high variance.

There's no way around it, so I don't think it's productive to engage in a guessing game.

With the action, I wouldn't expect KK to be good more than 40% of the time by the river.

We don't. It's a rhetorical question. You can lower the variance by not getting married to your overpair. I believe Avaritia put it quite well in the post above.

We could just chuck it away.

His value range absolutely crushes us with the exception of A9 which most guys are just calling with. So its hands that absolutely crush us and J10, he has all the sets in his pre flatting range plus 89s maybe even 89o given our small pre sizing (A9 rarely raises here), he's heavily weighted towards huge hands, I just turbo muck like I had nothing and see how he plays future hands against this "unknown serious looking dude". If we call flop we really are forced to fold turn imo and I suspect he is firing again with his entire range with a high frequency.

This is true. Just folding flop definitely a reasonable option. Nobody will know you folded KK.

In my experience, ~80% of recreational LLNL raise only with 2pair+ on flop, so I think this is a fold. The frustrating part is that there are the ~20% who who will make this kind of play with TPTK (and even less will with draws), so I have found it crucial to find out which players fall into which category because this situation comes up so much and being able to play it perfectly adds so much to our winrate.

OK, why is V raising here if he can beat KK/AA? Is he scared H's having JT? It's basically such a dry board. Why does he want to scare you away with such a large raise? I think he might have a hand like JT. Or, he could just be a scared money player, but description doesn't sound like it.

I think I call the flop and evaluate. Sometimes you can get a read from these players; sometimes not. I'd keep my eyes on him when the turn comes out. I'm just not ready to fold vs. middle-aged Asian dude wearing earbuds playing his BTN.

In my experience, usually one of two reasons:

1. (assuming he's a really bad player) He has a great hand so your supposed to raise with those, right?

2. (assuming he's not horrible) He knows that the vast majority of LLNL players cannot surrender an overpair and wants to comfortably get in stacks by the river. He also knows that most LLNL players might c-bet but rarely will fire 2 bullets so if Hero is just c-betting with air he is unlikely to get more value from him later anyway.

If I was going for value and trying to keep my opponent in the hand, I would make it $35 or $40. Those LLNL players who can't fold an over pair see $50 as a huge bet in 1/3. However, maybe his plan is to stack AA/KK.

Petrucci, what does V see when he sees you?

How can we fold flop? We're at the top of our range he can be doing this with top pair or straight draws or really anything. He may believe you have overcards and just is making a play. I would call and evaluate. Wouldn't we be super exploitable with a fold here? What better hand can we have here? Pocket 9s? Just my two cents but I'm never folding. If he continues to barrel I might but not to this flop raise. I had a similar situation at golden nugget. Low flop and I had jacks. He check raised me to 100 after I made a 15 dollar c bet. I called turn too which he fired for 100 and it turned out he had pocket tens. He thought his overpaid was the nuts

This is another hand/spot that illustrates quite well the difficulty with playing overpair/top pair type hands OOP. I too would check this flop versus an unknown and probably call at least two streets unimproved. You cannot assign an accurate range to any player that just sat down so your best bet is to try your best to play a small pot. C-betting does not allow you to do this.

One other benefit of checking is that is gives your AK type hands cover as well (assuming you get to SD) so that V's can't assume you have air when you check flops.

Bottom line, when you have a classic WA/WB spot, especially vs an unknown, it is best to keep the pot small and "play poker".

The flip side to that is missing value... I can get behind checking this some % of the time to strengthen our checking range but more often than not I think betting is the way to go.

As played I think it's villain dependent and here I'd probably call and go into check call mode


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I think those who advocate going into check/call mode from the flop are being results oriented and do not realize how much value we are losing to 8x, PPs like 55,66,77,TT, and draws. Not to mention we are letting gutterball (and open ended) straight straws see a free card that could be us.

There really is no shame to bet/folding frequently in LLNL because rarely are we being exploited.

I really hate the check/call line here unless we have a more specific read.

Its a good point, but if V is a competent player and our plan in these spots is to simply b/f a majority of the time, then that is super exploitable. I agree that against your standard passive caller-type player, the check/call line is not best. But I actually challenge how much value we really get from top pair/overpair type hands OOP over our poker life. I don't think it is as high a % of our total win as some others would profess.

I guess it comes down to what you think the ratio of "competent unknowns" vs. "fishy unknowns"is and I think our population skews more fishy in LLNL