pretty sure it was not me

Straddle raises always look FOS, so Im not surprised he took a stand, although 55 that is not the ideal spot. With his stack in that spot I could see jamming preflop over your $65 being an ok move. Usually I wait until I see evidence of maniac straddle play before I get out of line preflop against it though.

heh, not that JOTS. The BTN is a popular rec player so it was not in my interests to raise a fuss.

In our JOTS' hand, if he's a short stack player, he is small pp mentality may be a Y shaped road; pairs are for limp-setmining or shove flipping, and JOTS took away the former.

1. A lot of people automatically feel committed after putting in 1/3 of their stack pre-flop. In fact I'd probably snap-call your jam, too, although I would never have gotten to that point the way he did.

2. This objection makes no sense. He probably figures he's only likely to suck out on you once, or maybe he just always runs it once. It could be any of many reasons and it's no disadvantage to him at all. It's certainly not odd or perplexing or bad for any reason.

Tight player at 1/3 raises from UTG to 15, folds to me in the CO. Is QJ a fold here?

Yes.

Yes.

Whether QJs is a fold in the CO depends on stack sizes and whether we think button and the blinds are going to come along, no? If you're 400+ effective I would call especially if we think button is folding.

I think you meant this for the low-stress strat thread, not the typical donkalicious thread.

My bad, had a brain fart and couldn't find the low-stress thread when I first posted this.

Are you planning on just turning this hand into a suited-connector type hand, where we hope to flop some sort of draw? I feel like you'd get into a serious RIO situation when you flop top pair against UTG opening range.

Yes we're basically playing it like 98 and need pretty deep stacks to justify a call. We do have serious RIO but with deep stacks have good IO playing for a flush or straight especially because if we make a straight with QJ villain typically has a lot of 2p and sets. If we hit TP we have to be very careful as villain has many overpairs and dominating TP. In fact it wouldn't be that bad to just fold to a C-bet with TP with QJ assuming we have no additional equity like BDFDs / SDs, but we do beat some hands in villain's range with just bare TP and can probably call at least a C-bet if villain is unlikely to continue bluffing with worse hands, which is probably the case if he's tight.

I'm wondering why the others said fold it without mentioning stack sizes because it's very dependent on stack sizes.

830 am game, half overnight half morning peeps. 7 handed or something. 3 5 500 max bet.

I raise 22 ep to 15. Very loose overnighter middle eastern guy (750) calls and an overnighter Asian woman calls. Blinds fold.

Flop (50) 23Qr

I bet 40, middle eastern guy calls.

Turn (130) A

I bet 100, he calls.

River (330) 3

I bet 500, he raises his last 100 or so after 30 seconds.

He shows Q3 and scoops with a bigger boat.

These are the kinds of hands variance is made of.

These are the kinds of hands that people chalk up to "variance" but is really just terrible play.

Raising 22 from EP with a loose player behind is pretty terrible. Every flop that doesn't contain a 2 is awful. I assume this player will probably call many flops too, so you basically check/fold a ridiculous amount postflop.

I have been playing pretty bad this last week or so, but when flops are going multi-way and people are putting in money lightly and not playing too aggressive pre, don't I want to be seeing flops with pairs? Should I be limping?

Yes, you do, but you're inflating the pot out of position with a hand that rarely improves vs a V that probably doesn't have much of a fold button on the flop and possibly on the turn. If the table allows limping, I would limp. If the table is aggressive, just fold small pairs from EP

If you're interested in talking more about this specifically, make a thread and I'll comment or pm me. This thread really isn't the place to get too deep into discussion

I would muck 22 from EP. it’s the nutlow set and doesnt make many straights vs say 55/66, and when you get set over set you’re always the one losing your stack. I dont think Low pp esp deep and ep is profitable

Just witnessed the nittiest river check-back that I've ever seen. Didn't really think this was worth it's own thread as there's not much strategy to be discussed, but I was so in awe of how the hand played out that I wanted to post it. This is pure 100% truth, no trolling.

Saturday night 1/2 game. Hero and V both start with about $400. I've never seen V before, MAWG that appears to be playing fairly tight and straight forward. Definitely not a regular in the room.

Hero opens to $12 in EP with AK . V calls next to act, rest of the table folds.

Flop: K93

Hero bets $16, V clicks it back to $32. Given the image that I assign to this player, alarm bells are already going off. For just a min-click though, I make the call.

Turn: 9

I check, V bets $50. I should just be making an exploitable fold here against this specific V, but I expect him to almost never have 9x, so to me he's repping 33 specifically. I don't love the spot at all, but I call.

River: 3

I check again. I've felt like I'm beat the entire hand, but the number of hands that I can be behind keeps going down. V checks behind, which now makes me feel like I have the nuts or am chopping at the very least, so I fast roll my AK. V tables......KK. I give a completely honest response and exclaim "wow", and V proceeds to say he was worried that I had 99/33 and had quads....Nice hand sir, nice hand!

Shucks I think Spirit was at my table. I'm inclined to agree with you on the grounds that a large fraction of that table would not remember if you lmpcld instead of opened.

Pretty standard. I've seen much worse check backs than this, including guys checking back the nuts. OMCs do this surprisingly often. I don't ask them why because I don't want to tap the glass but I've heard other players ask and they usually say something like "Well he wasn't calling so it doesn't matter". And the second or third nuts is basically always a check back.

Gotta love nits. BTW don't rule out KK in spots like this, many nits flat KK. I know it's just 1 combo so yeah I would think maybe I'm good too but OTOH what is he raising flop with that you beat? Is he minraising KQ or KJ? That seems highly doubtful. Does he minraise spades? Not likely if this guy is TP like he sounds. I would fold against some opponents and call/reevaluate against others but definitely folding the turn. You beat nothing on the turn unless he's barreling spades but that's a line I pretty much never see from nits.

You're absolutely right. I normally fold turn against known nits, but I had never seen this guy before in my life. I admit that I gave him a turn bet that I shouldn't have, but I was feeling a bit sickly given that this was a Saturday night against a complete unknown. I also concur on not automatically ruling out KK, as there are plenty in my room that will never 3! KK. I discounted KK some because I had seen him 3! once when I first sat down (flawed logic, I know), so with what very little history I had with him I assumed that even though he was tight he was 3! his big PF hands. I've seen people check the absolute nuts either because they mis-read their hand or played it off as "i knew he wouldn't call a bet", but had never seen someone so terrified of quads in a HU pot that they wouldn't bet river with tops full.

It's semi-logical to suppose he 3-bets KK if you see him 3-bet over a relatively small sample. The other alternative is he got AA. Or he's one of those players who limps KK+ and only 3-bets JJ - QQ and AK because they're too hard to play post-flop. It's always hard to make good predictions based on such limited information, but we can use Bayesian inference in spots like this.

I don't know how many hands you saw, but let's suppose you had been playing about 90 minutes and saw 50 hands, and suppose about every other hand there's a raise, so the guy had maybe 20 chances to 3-bet. You get AA once every 221 hands. We've seen him 3-bet once when he had 20 chances. From Bayes Theorem (note the | means "given"):

P(AA | 3-bet) = P(3-bet | AA) * P(AA) / P(3-bet)

We'll assume P(3-bet | AA) = .95. I do see people flat surprisingly often but I'd guess it's 3-bet at least 9/10 times, we'll say 95%. We know P(AA) = 1/221. For how likely he is to 3-bet, we just have to guess based on stereotypes and our observations. If we have literally no info we can guess based on the typical super strong raising range of 3%, or we can use our empirical sample size and guess 1/20. Let's use the empirical guess, though I think if you have a read it's probably not the best way to go. Anyway, this gives

P(AA | 3-bet) = .95*(1/221)/(1/20) = .086 or 8.6%

If we suspect he just 3-bets JJ+ AK that's P(3-bet) = .0302 and P(AA | 3-bet) = .142 or 14.2%

If we suspect he's a nit we might just give him KK+, half the QQ combos, and 1/8 the AK combos for P(3-bet) = .0128, and now P(AA | 3-bet) = .336 or 33.6%

And he might be even tighter than that. But we can see the problems with empirical estimates over small samples. If we had only seen 5 raised hands where the guy could 3-bet, now our initial estimate would be 2%!

We don't really get a decent estimate until we've had several hundred hands with the guy and even then he could be getting cards or be card dead.

Point of all this is it's not illogical to assume if he 3-bets once over a shortish sample size he probably 3-bets KK, but...we just have to remember it's far from certain, and it's also non-binary. He may 3-bet KK when he feels like it and flat call when he feels like it.

Pretty funny he thought you had quads so much he can't bet the river, given the way the hand went down. Like you don't 3-bet flop or raise turn with boat/quads and then check river? Nah I think your line looks like what it is. KQ AK or maybe AA.

I've seen a lot of weird check backs but this is not standard. I can't imagine even the nittiest people in my games ever checking this river because they are scared of quads.

Yeah it was an exaggeration. I'm just not surprised. I should have said "standard lol"

This thread is hilarious! I spent an awesome evening at the bar reading this and enjoying some nice local brews!

Anyway, this hand happened at $1/$2 a few weekends ago, don't remember the exact details but all relevant info is there.

Villain: a well-dressed middle-aged man wearing expensive jewellery, pounding back quite a few drinks throughout the evening, and definitely there to gamble. Played a lot of hands and played them very aggressively with large bet sizes. I think he had cbet 100% of flops where he was the PFR. I've also seen him bet/fold the turn, so I know he was double barreling with air.

OTTH: Effective stacks approx. $300. Villain opens to 6 or 7X BB in EP, 1 caller in MP, I call in LP with 56 of spades.

Flop comes A x x rainbow with 1 spade and no straight possibilities. Villain checks for the first time ever in the night after being the pre-flop aggressor, and I immediately know he has a monster, likely a set. Anything else he would be cbetting for value or as a bluff. MP checks. I have nothing but a BDFD, so obviously I also check.

Turns comes another spade. Villain bets $40, MP folds, I call knowing that I have very high implied odds here if I hit a flush. I felt his weird flop check meant a minimum of bottom set; I did not think a higher flush draw that paired the ace would be in his range.

River comes another spade, villain bets $100, I raise all-in, villain snap calls and flips over AA. I flip over my baby flush and he flies off the handle, smacks the table hard, swearing loudly, and leaves for a good 20 minutes.

Now was his slowplay with top set on an A x x board that terrible as an isolated hand? I would cbet there first to act to build the pot with a standard play that doesn't immediately represent a monster, but checking isn't terrible either as there are no draws on the flop. I guess it depends on who else is in the hand, but it's definitely safe to give a free card here and hope someone else catches up.

However, in this particular hand after villain's hyper-aggression all night long, he may as well have flipped over his aces on the flop with his check. No other way I could've called a near pot-sized turn bet with a baby flush draw except he let me know I had sufficient implied odds.

I definitely got very lucky with the turn and river, but it was still hilarious that the table maniac announces an obvious monster with an obvious slowplay, and gives a free card to get outdrawn on!

Checking top set on Axx rainbow is pretty standard unless you have an aggro image.