1-2 game

My stack is 110, villain in MP covers
I have AdJs on BTN

Not much history with Villain but have played maybe an hour with him a few days earlier. Seems a solid reg, he probably sees me as a solid reg on the tight side.

EP and MP limp, I make it 8, they both call.
I decided I was happy for couple of players to call and I could play in position against hands I might well be dominating, my hand can flop well, my stack is small enough that I don’t offer massive RIO.

They both check in the dark before flop is dealt.
Flop KJ6r one spade
I check back (I should probably have bet something).

Turn 8s is the second spade
Pot is ~25 after rake
EP checks, MP bets 15, I call.

River Ks so a flush draw got there.
Villain now looks intently to see how big my stack is, it’s ~80, he quickly bets 100.
He looks pretty confident and relaxed. He has a quick look at me a couple of seconds after he has bet (which I think is usually a sign of strength).
I think he puts me on very likely QQ, possibly TT or lower pairs.
The longer I think, the more likely it is that he puts me on QQ or the similar hand AJ.
He continues to look confident and relaxed.
I know that he knows that I know the river makes it less likely he has a King, so (from his PoV) I have ‘more of a reason’ to call with QQ, so he should be more weighted towards value hands ‘knowing’ I’ll call with the QQ.

I sigh fold after a minute or so of tanking while he continued to look comfortable.

He then asked with a chuckle ‘did you have Queens?’ I replied I thought that that was what he thought I had.

Comments?

Before even reading past the first sentence, I wouldn’t be bluff catching when short stacking (55bb). I’d be raising or folding, very rarely calling. Now off to read the post.

As played probably calling. Would have led flop and jammed turn, and would have raised more pre.

Yeah I think there are good reasons to prefer raising bigger pre and leading flop. Not so sure about turn jam but maybe so.

I would say top up, but TBH given your isolation size, it sounds like you're kind of learning (so less play behind isn't so bad). But this raise size is bad. You're giving hands too good of a price to continue, and you aren't maximizing value. My general rule is 5x over 1 limper, 6x over 2, etc. At 1/2 this could be higher as well, but on your stack, the above rubric is fine.

Flop check is fine. You have check back and bet as options for this hand. The one thing that sucks about checking is that you begin to polarize yourself a lot when you do bet the flop between top pair plus and nothing. Something to consider if you ever start moving up.

I think river fold is fine. I agree that your holding looks exactly what it is (QQ and AJ are basically the exact same thing here). It's not like we couldn't have checked the flop w/ a weak King or backed into a flush ourselves.

Definitely raising bigger pre-flop. 4X open after 2 limpers is tiny. And in my experience people tend to call lighter than normal vs shorter stacks because they know they can't lose too much money on the hand. AJo is waaaay ahead of the 2 limpers' calling range here so you can raise more liberally. Just be careful of the limp re-raise; a hand that does that might be crushing you.

I don't mind the check on the flop - there you have a decent but not a great value hand. You're never getting a K to fold and you're rarely getting value from worse. Yes you're ahead of Jx and straight draws, but I think you're better off check/calling to pot control, underrep your hand and to bluffcatch than to get the money in. Take the free turn card and evaluate again there; bricks are good for you; overcards to the J and cards that complete a draw are bad. A or J are good even though A does complete the QT straight draw. 8 is pretty good because it shouldn't improve anyone's hand too much. On this turn, if it gets checked to me again, I'm definitely betting 2nd pair. But with 1 bettor who could've checked a K to us on the flop, I agree with just calling.

Also, you do need to have some stronger hands in your checking range or else opponents will know you are weak every time you check and they can bluff you with ATC whenever you don't cbet. Medium-strength hands like this one that are hard to get value from by betting out are good candidates for putting in your checking range.

On the river, the BDFD does get there but the SDs missed. I think MP can have a lot of bluffs here, and based on the flop play he knows you pretty much can't have a K while he can so he can use that to his advantage, but I might fold this one due to the overbet size. If he bet something like 2/3s pot instead, I'm definitely calling.

Playing short stacked: I quite like doing it sometimes, can be good practice for tournaments and it is a different challenge involving different thinking which provides variety. Barry Greenstein was saying he used to play short stacked quite often at the start of a session (in one of the very good interviews he gave to Joey Ingram - they’re on YouTube) when he was already quite a seasoned player, perhaps for those reasons - I can’t remember exactly.

But I agree that good players will be able to make more with deep stacks!

Yes the usual PFR size in my games is 5x plus the standard extra BB for each limper.

I was reading Jonathan Little’s book today (Vol 1 - Theory) which was advocating a 3x raise which I recall was more typical 10-20 years ago. This was in my brain today and was probably part of the reason I raised small.

Meanwhile the typical PFR size in tournaments in my room seems to be to around 2.25-2.5 quite often (at least from the newer generation of hoodie wearing players).

I think the advice to raise more pre to ensure no one calls seems to me a bit like Gabe Kaplan’s comments during High Stakes Poker when he says the player with AA should have bet massively on the flop to make sure the drawing hand always folds.

I think in EP the bigger raise size is good, to thin the field and compensate for being OOP, but on the button here I quite like around 4x.

But we quite like it if they call light, right?

When you say ‘isolation’ are you using the word just to mean the ‘raise’? Some people in my room seem to just use the two words interchangeably.

Or are you saying that the reason we raise in this spot is to isolate?

Well let's step back. There's two primary reasons to raise: to get more $ in the pot when ahead and get people to fold. But what your raise is really trying to do is this: Our value is higher if more money is put into the pot now.

Let's make a simple example. Say you can choose two raise sizes here: 8 or 12. And for simplicity, let's say the blinds go out, and not include rake. And for simplicity, let's say both opponents have a hand range of 10%-40% (so they each raise the top 10%, clearly not true here but work with me). Against 8, they fold 1/6th of the time, and against 12 they fold 1/3rd.

So our 8 scenarios are this: win $7 1 in 36 times (1/6th of the time each fold, so 1/6 * 1/6 = 1/36). 25/36 have 46.5% equity in a $27 pot with $8 invested. 10/36 have 65.9% equity in a $21 pot with $8 invested.

EV = (1 * 7 + 25 * (.465*27 - 8) + 10 * (.659*21-8))/36 = $4.98

Our 12 scenarios are this: win $7 1 in 9 times (1/3 * 1/3 = 1/9), have $39 in the pot and 46.8% equity 4/9 (surprised the 10%-30% slider on the poker cruncher app doesn't change much), and 4/9 have 65.8% equity with $27 in the middle.

EV = (1 * 7 + 4 * (.468*39 - 8) + 4 * (.658*27 - 8))/9 = $9.67

So in this toy case (and it's not this clean, and to be fair this likely overstates your benefit), we benefit more in both ways. We generate more folds, which allows us to win the $7 immediately (3.5 big blinds is not a joke in a game where even pros aren't really banking on more than like 7 per hour), and we get more $ in the pot from ranges we're ahead of.

This is parabolic, though. Like you can't take this logic and just go all in here; you'll only get action from hands that may actually be ahead of you (like if they limp 77), so there's a trade off between maxing out your fold equity and getting value from their continuing range. Generally you don't want to make your value raises in such a way where people can only continue against you with the higher portion of their range.

But AJo is generally going to be a good hand to isolation raise in position against. You're likely up against weak ranges, so you can charge them more to try and outdraw you, but you also don't mind just seeing them fold now. So that's why I advocate my raise size rubric against limps in position: trying to balance getting value for my good hands with occasionally just being able to take the dead $ now. Calling mistakes are the bread and butter leak of live poker players, so it's a good exploit to make it as pricey as possible.

Jdr, thanks - nice answer, appreciate you putting in the work to show the numbers for that toy case, it’s useful.

I think actually you’ve made some mistakes in the arithmetic. I think the EV for the 8 scenario is actually +$8.71

For the 12 scenario, I think you need to use 29 instead of 27 for the one villain calling scenario. Also I’m not sure why you are using very slightly different figures for the equities versus the 8 scenario.

Using the same equity % figures for both scenarios I get +$8.71 and +$11.34

So that would still prefer the 12 scenario

However, your analysis assumes play ends with the Preflop action. I’d suggest that being in position for the remaining streets could change the true EVs. With the 8 scenario, we’re more likely to have two villains in the hand, which is two villains that we have position on throughout the streets. Maybe that would increase the true EV of the 8 scenario relative to the 12 scenario