Polarity disadvantage is an irrelevant concept at this SPR. Being capped to overpairs isn't a problem because an overpair is plenty enough to stack off when there's only two 2/3p bets left.

It's also really dangerous to get that deep into theoretical concepts when you have a vulnerable value hand in a 3-way pot against a whale; pretty much everything takes a backseat to getting the whale's money here ASAP.

There'd be more of a discussion if we were OOP and/or held KK+ and/or EP weren't such a spew artist, but as-is, checking is forgoing truckloads of EV.

Lol, i have to say Mike- you are a funny guy Lack of ego and believing in your abiliites isnt your biggest problem, lets put it that way!

+1, good post.

Betting the flop is fundamental poker imo. I'm dumbfounded at the number of "check the flop" opinions itt. So thought I'd ask if this is based upon anything beyond standard forum MUBS or FPS.

By guru, I meant anyone who has the live poker street cred.

This is getting kind of humorous

Sailboats is dumfounded by how many people wanted to check flop (which was 42%)

JohnnyBuz makes snarky comment to me insinuating that checking flop is pretty normal indicating that hes on the exact opposite side from Sailboats

I said I doubt more than 5% of the population would check the flop. Its kind of hard to reconcile all of those opinions of what I believe are 3 good players, which probably means checking or betting is fine based on all of the info given.

If someone doesnt have live poker street cred after 3500+ hrs at one of the top win rates in his room, then I dont know what does. I could post a graph but that would take about 10 mins and I dont care enough about my online street cred enough to go thru the trouble.

Once again, we agree.

I agree with you that very few people are checking back the flop, <=5% sounds about right.

I agree that your check on the flop is confusing and in this case worked out for you. It makes sense that a low percentage of responses would suggest checking, as maybe 1/3-1/2 of turn cards are feel-good for you (2, T, J, Q, and 5/6/7 maybe?) You also miss being able to get two streets of value from straight draws.

So what did we learn? Checking is risky, but if you're willing to take the risk, a reward awaits?

I would be careful being too resultsoriented ITT (as for most threads for that matter).

Everything went right for OP in order for the hand to end how it did.

Scarecards could have comed on the turn sucking out on us, we could have gotten a horrible runout were we got bluffed off our hand by either of the villains, villain 2 could have just shown us the flopped set and stacked us because we levelled ourself with the funky check-back line and whatever.

Sure, a check back line here sometime with a big overpair can throw our opponents off guard- but i would be careful to use this one cherrypicked hand as a big argument for doing so.

There still exist people who don't know you are beating 2/5NL? This is a real travesty. I'll change my Location to be sure to get the word out.

As funny as it'd be to leave it at that, and as little as you deserve a serious response, here goes:

Having "one of" the top win rates in your room at 2/5 does not qualify you as a guru whatsoever. I would barely listen to the third best 2/5 player in my room's opinions on a hand, much less take it is inerrant gospel that could not be refuted even with math and logic. I thought you'd at least be THE best 2/5 player in your room, or one of the best in the AREA. (And please for the love of god don't take this as an invitation to give more details on where exactly you rank, and how you even came to know all the pro in your cardroom's winrates.)

There are hundreds of card rooms in the US alone, so being "one of the top" in your room probably puts you in no better company than being one of a thousand people of your "expertise." And that's at 2/5, which aside from donkaments, the lower live stakes and 10nl- is the softest game and easiest to make a living at. You're not Ben ****ing Tollerene for Christ's sake. You're probably better than most posters in LLSNL; don't let that get to your head. I'd literally sooner take heed from someone beating 25nl on one of the main sites, and they'd almost certainly have more than 100k hands of experience to back it up.

Get over yourself. You play at least some hands bad. This hand is one of them.

Never mind that EVEN IF we regarded you as some sort of poker guru, even you have provided scant justification for the flop check. All I could find was:

"I think V2 is the most likely to have hit the flop and he is also probably the most likely to check raise with a pair and draw hand, 2 pairs and sets....so I checked the flop back."

That's the very definition of MUBS justification. You literally formed your decision around the worst-case scenarios without commenting on the frequency of those parts of their range and those actions (spoiler: they're the smallest portions of their range and most unlikely actions in the face of a bet.)

I just want to say this thread has led to some of the better more in depth posts in recent memory and it is a crime against the forum if it does not get linked to in the best of hand histories section.

To the people duking it out on check vs. bet flop, an easier way to understand it is that we shouldn't have arrived multi-way on this flop to begin with. We should have 3-bet higher to ~140-175 instead of 110, which should either get us 2 folds or a heads-up situation, both massively profitable situations

If we are heads-up, we c-bet this flop, no two ways about it. Multi-way, I lean check but part of that is my preference with risk-tolerance (with single pair hands at least)

Better pre-flop play leads to easier post-flop play

So after taking some time to do equity calcs and seeing that V2 has a small equity advantage against us I think checking flop is fine. I don’t think it’s the best long term strategy - imo that would be a mix of betting and checking with this hand falling in the bet category - but it’s certainly a better strategy than betting all overpairs and checking missed AK/AQ against the described opponents. Against more passive opponents who will play face up on the turn after we check - i.e. bet with a pair or good draw and check otherwise - then a flop strategy of betting overpairs and checking whiffs would be the most profitable.

A cbet is even more of a slam dunk MW than it is HU.

And not protecting your equity against two extremely live ranges with a super fat value bet is a very ineffective way of reducing variance.

I agree that preflop should be bigger, but I disagree that sound preflop strategies obviate all postflop sticky spots we get into.

Id love to see where I said I dont or wont accept feedback.

I said my 3 bet shouldve been bigger.
I said checking the flop isnt always the best option. Its just what I did this time. Some people wanted to fold the turn and I almost did. Folding could've been correct. The only thing I think was an easy slam dunk was calling the river based on all the other action.

Im totally open to feedback...but I rarely post hands any more because there are only about 3 people who post here that I agree with most times. The people I agree with most times can probably help me in some of the hands where I disagree with them. The people I disagree with almost always, are never going to sway me because their lines are really bad most of the time.

I played over a million hands online before Black Friday....and not 12 tabling. 1-4 tabling where I was actually paying attention...and with no stupid HUD. I learned how to play poker thru trial and error...and I made plenty of errors, but I didnt learn to play like a robot with a HUD. I learned how to read people and how to exploit them. I learned by trying a ton of different things and seeing which ones worked and which ones didnt. I know why they work or not because I was in the trenches trying these lines and moves. I didnt read them in a book and start using them without understanding the thought process behind them.

I play some hands badly of course. I dont thing this is one of them at all. There are other lines that might be better sometimes but thinking your line is absolutely better than mine is a big leak.

Ive been told I was fish on a heater here for over 3500 hours and 2 1/2 years now. Im used to it. Most of the people telling me that dont have 1000 live hours. Im still crushing my room after all this time. If I was in a different room, I may or may not have to adjust my play to crush that room but I have no doubt that I would do exactly that thru more trial and error.

There's only one reason that this thread turned sour at the end. That's because a few people think they know everything and their way is always right. Ive openly said a few times now that I couldve played it differently. I posted it to get other ideas. Not to be told my line is horrific and theirs is the only way. Ive heard that **** way too long now and I tend to ignore people who think like that.

This is why I said you don't deserve a serious response. It's not that you're an *******; I'm cool with that. It's that you are inert to reason. My argument was that you're not a poker guru just because you beat 2/5NL. Part of that mentioned something about 25nl and 100k hands, and you took that opportunity to write a bunch of bull**** that does nothing whatsoever to refute the fact that you're not a poker guru. I can assure you, no one cares about how many tables you played or whether or not you used a HUD except for you.

As for all of your philosophy on poker relativism and how certain plays can't be better than other plays, it's nonsense. But I don't care to convince you that it's nonsense. If you've been playing poker for over a decade and still don't even have a functioning knowledge of what expected value is, then nothing I say is gonna make you think any differently.

Anyway, I'm gonna stay far TF away from this thread, but I'll be sure to keep evangelizing the unmatched greatness of your name.

^ I like this guy.

Agree.

Agree.

Well I played 6 million. I guess I must be better at poker than you.




(Do you understand now why "I've play x many hands" is meaningless?)

And Im sure you played them while playing a **** ton of tables at once and playing 12/10 or something close to that. Congrats...youre a human bot. What did you learn from that?

Youre a clown and you're on IGNORE

I 20-tabled online and played like 19/15 9-handed.

Bragging about 1-tabling online is profoundly stupid since the whole point of multi-tabling is to make more money.

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

I wasnt bragging about playing 1 table. You guys have some serious comprehension problems.