1/2 NL Holdem

Well this is my first post, been lurking for years, I play down at Foxwood's semi-regularly when my schedule allows. I am a winning $1/2 player, late 20's, tall, people always think I am making a move on them.

So I have been at the table for a few hours, sat down with $300 (max) and am up to about ~$380, villain in the hand had about ~$200ish when I first came to the table and is now at $350-360. He has been playing pretty wide open and his range is ATC. He called a 3-bet of mine with 8 5 off and then called a continuation bet on a T53 all spades board. Turn was an 8 and it went check, check, river brick and he bet small, I called with AsTc and he showed.... I mucked. Ohh my sizing was standard for the 3-bet he made it $10 I made it $35.
He also showed a couple pure bluffs into multiple opponents, pretty tricky LAG.

Anyway I am probably being viewed by the table as solid, TAG, capable of moves, definitely like to apply pressure with big 3/4 and Pot Sized Bets and the occasional over bet, I have continuation bet almost every time I raised pre in position and have showed up with the winner at showdown almost every time.

So on to the hand, I am in the CO and villain is UTG+2. UTG, UTG+1 and UTG+2 limp, folds to me and I look down at 2 red Queens. I bet $15 which was a big bet for this table and my standard for a limped pot to me, though I am sure no one noticed. Folds to villain who 3-bets to $50.

What do you do?

I will continue with the hand after some analysis. I would like to see what the general consensus here is against this type of an opponent. Against most $1/2 players this is a pretty standard spot. If I missed anything let me know I am happy to elaborate.

call and play some poker. Probably folding the flop if the A hits. Other than that I would think seriously about letting him bluff his stack off to me.

Interesting spot. Against most OMCs this is AA 80% and KK 20%; against some players it's 50% AA/KK and 50% AKs/AQs; but against a good LAG this becomes a pretty wide range, esp against what he might view as a button steal.

Is this the first time he has limp/3bet in the session? It would be an interesting dynamic if he had done it before and showed down a light hand.

I also like to call and play poker here, esp considering that we have position. A big 4bet from us can only push out his light hands and get the money in as a big dog/coin flip (except in rare cases where he has AQ).

I think he did this twice before this hand happened. But he took it down pre and I never saw his hand.

call and see the flop

Third time he has limp raised in a couple of hours? Call.

Well calling seems to be the general consensus, buuuut I decided to 4 bet here to $145. My thought process was that he could be doing this with any pairs 88+ TJs+ and any AK. I preferred to have the lead and didn't want to see a bored with an A or K and not have a great idea where I was at and I know he will continue almost all flops. Also I figured if he has AA or KK and its a low board the money is going in anyway. Is this a flawed thought process? This is probably the second time playing live over about maybe ~400 hours I have put in a 4 bet without AA.

This is a tough spot. I seem to see a trend of a lot of players limp re raising with KK, and AA. Although villain has done this play twice already, so that seems less likely. The 4 bet really commits you though, and I'm not sure if I would want to without seeing a flop here. But, as played with the 4 bet you pretty much have to stack off on any flop without a King or an Ace. And hope you see a queen when he has you beat.

lol at the turrible advice itt. dude limped behind 2 other limpers

4bet to 125 and get it in

if you call it should only be so he spews. never fold even on A or K high flops

Really? You think villain is going to be bluffing often enough to stack off 360BB and not have an Ace or a King when it flops? Are you sure you read the stack sizes pre sir?

yes absolutely. of course, correct play is still 125/get it in against his 106

oh also we're not 360BB deep looks like you're the one who needs to read the stack sizes pre sir

For goodness sakes it's 180bbs.

I would agree with the 4 bet get it in against this villain. He is far to likely to show up with an average hand here for us to not be aggressive

Oh, don't raise. Make an aggressive call.



Let him keep betting.

grunch

call and play in position

OP described villain as playing wide, but I did NOT see any statements about villain wearing a rubber helmet or being escorted by a chaperone. Why are you assuming that he'll 5bet shove T 6 when we are clearly showing signs of strength as well as a willingness to put our own stack in?

If we want to give him a chance to bluff off with that sort of hand, call with QQ and go call/call/call on F/T/R after a 9 high flop. Bad LAGs will hang themselves, but you can't take the rope out of their hands early. In this case, calling would have created a $100 pot preflop, so if villain started with $350 the effective SPR is 3 going to the flop. That allows us to get stacks in by the river without too much trouble if villain wants to continue repping AA/KK while holding T6s.

As far as a 4bet to $145 to protect against his decent equity/decent implied odds hands, I can understand that logic. You are destroying his set-mining odds, so if he calls with 88-JJ he is making an error in the long run, so that is good. If the flop comes J high or less, you can make a pot sized bet on the flop and prevent him from profitably continuing with AK, and that's good, too. Only quibble I have is that the 4bet performs badly against the top and bottom of his range, i.e. AA/KK as well as very light hands that might shut down rather than continue bluffing after the flop. If your reads told you that decent equity hands made up a great majority of his range, then I don't mind this play.

I'd happily call this and play in position. I'm pretty much never folding at any point in the hand against this particular villain, unless the flop comes out something sick like 789 all clubs. So I'm calling to allow him to continue to put money in with his full wide range.

Raising will never fold out better, it might fold out worse. It will however "give you the lead" on the flop, which I would argue is actually detremental in this case.

When you call, he's going to bet the flop near 100% of the time, you can raise then if you like. However, I'd prefer to call the flop and probably raise the turn instead. He should be pot committed by turn if he double barrels and river may allow some draws to get home and discourage action.

There will be ~ $110 in the pot on the flop, he'll probably bet something like 60-80. This puts $250 in the pot for the turn, effective stacks there should be about 240, which should easily be stuck in the middle with a bet by him and raise by you.

Cliffs: I'm making the decision to get it in preflop, but delaying doing so to allow him to spew.

If this is the 3rd time he has done this and he is playing like a monkey you almost always have to pay him off when you get QQ vs his KK/AA.


It was also limp, limp, limp - you raised than it came back to the 3rd limper and he 3bets. I mean WTF is that? If that is AA than he just got lucky as **** someone woke up with a hand behind him as you said for yourself - this table seems to not raise much as a $15 raise was big for this table.

If you aren't comfortable getting the 180BB in the middle deep in this dream scenario you should get off the table and rebuy 30 mins later for 100BB.

as for raising pre or calling pre - its really up to you. You have position and he seems like a spaz who may fold to aggression so i'd tank and call. I'd call at least 1 flop bet no mater what comes out.

4betting is also fine and probably less variance but I think calling might be better

some one that has done this twice already and calling 3bets with 85o pre are very unlikely to have AA/KK here... I like the four bet especially sense he has shown he is more then likely calling..

what happen?

Results.... Villain tanked for about a minute and shoved, I sigh called after thinking for about 15 seconds. He flipped AA and I lol'ed at running into the top of his range. He wished me good luck as the flop was like 257 off turn 6 river Q. I think all the money was going in one way or the other because I just couldn't believe he limped behind 2 limpers and then 3 bet me with a monster, but he did. I know I got lucky but I just wanted to see what you guys thought and if this was a bad play on my part.

I agree about the idea that money was going in one way or the other. He's already used the limp/3bet twice that day, so we can't automatically weigh him strongly toward AA/KK.

Against a maniac, however, I still like a preflop call followed by a call/call/call line to allow some self-hanging if we think he's doing this with very weak hands very often. Either way your stack goes in, but this way we prevent the guy from shutting down his spazzing when he is trying to run us over with 75o. I know this never feels great since a big part of our brain fears some kind of sick suck-out, but in the long run this can be very profitable. Especially when we have position; we have to consider the fact that if he actually does have AA/KK, it is hard for him to go bet/bet/bet on a lot of boards out of a fear that we've hit something with our raise/call hand, so we can often go call/call/check back and avoid paying off that last big bet when we actually are behind his AA/KK (doesn't apply to all players, but if the board comes something like 5 6 T 4 T I think a lot of them start to dislike their odds of value betting into your hand and will take a check/call line to catch bluffs. A raise/call hand in position should indicate too wide a range for him to feel really comfortable on a lot of boards).

The reason I absolutely hate a huge 4-bet here is that we fold out so much of his range that we crush.

When I have QQ I WANT my villains to call me with crap to include KJ and AJ type hands.

If I 4-bet here, I 4-bet to $100 because I want to price in his BS.

But against an aggro I'm fine just flatting his 3-bet.

Why?

Two big reasons here.

Reason #1, when an aggro 3-bets us in this spot he is committing himself to blasting off on pretty much all boards with 100% of his range to include his airballs. He will put us on "AK" and proceed to "rep" his hand on all non Ace and non King boards

Reason #2, 4-bets at 1/2nl are almost always KK+. The only reason I'd ever 4-bet him is if I've WITNESSED him calling 4-bets with lesser hands.

One of the mistakes I see here all the time on 2+2 is we describe some villain that is aggro and spewy. Sure, he is raising and splashing around and making moves... However that does NOT automatically translate into being a stack off monkey calling 4-bets preflop with that same wide range.

We need to observe villain in 3-bet and 4-bet pots BEFORE we 4-bet him here. Or put another way, we should have been 3-betting this villain with KQ+/AJ+, TT+ during this session and that would have given us all the info we needed to determine our optimal action here.

and our goal here is simple, we want villain to continue with the majority of his range that we beat.

Now, if we somehow had info on villain that he would call our 4-bet with his spewtarded range then absolutely, we 4-bet. However, that is not really what I'm getting from the OP. What I'm getting is, "I haz Queens, queens Iz good hand. Me no like A or K on flop so me going to raise preflop big because I haz queens and queens are pretty..."

Sorry, I know that sounds dickish but that is more or less how I see it. That is no different than majority of 1/2nl players and we need to think beyond that.

If V called a 4-bet shove with TT earlier then hell ya I love your raise.
If V 5-bet shoved earlier with JJ, AQ, AK then hell ya I love your 4-bet.

But we did not witness the above and this seems to be V's first 3-bet and thus I hate your 4-bet sizing. It folds out everything we crush. And incidentally, once V 3-bets to $50 he's already more or less denied himself proper set mining odds.

So I flat, hope for a non A/K board so I can stack his 88 - JJ and or that he makes a move with his airballs and we snap him off post flop...