Hero and villan have been battling all throughout the night. Prior to this session, never played with him before before but in a nutshell, he is TAG but has some creativity to his game. early 20's, African American. tim Duncan jersey.

I sucked out on him the first orbit I sat when i 3b his $20 open to $65 with AKdd. flop comes 10j 8. he checks, i lead 110, he jams for 350 more i call turns Q he flips QQ and river bricks out.

He rebuys full (500). an hr later my stacks around 1300. he opens 20, 3b to 65 with 89 he calls. flop 67A. he checks, i bet 110, he calls. turn10. he donks 150, i shove he calls with AQ. this apparently set him off. he starts to tell me im a guppy and have no skill to my game. i laugh at him and ask him to rebuy full again so i can take it for a 3rd time. he pulls out a wad of probably 8-10k waves it in my face and tells me he spends more on fastfood in one week than i make in a year. an hr later he ends up tripling up when he turns a flush against two tight players sets on the flop and it holds. his stack is now 1600 and mines like 1900.

THE HAND

two players limp villain opens for 30, hero flats with two black 8's. all others fold. heads up once again.

flop AK8 (77)

Villan leads 70, Hero raises to 200, villan looks me in the eye and says "we'll see what youre all about pal" and jams for his entire stack 1400ish more

Hero thinks for a minute. Villan says "youre not so big and bad after all are ya? are ya?!?"

Hero?

i hate to sound like such a nit contemplating stacking off with a set, but im about 400bb deep and it just seemed like a really gross spot. Given his needling during the hand and leading up to it, i just couldn't see him doing this with air. ive owned him all night, stacked him twice. he has no reason to act cocky towards me. seemed like such a strong tell that all of a sudden he is superly over confident. Hero FWIW took 5 minutes to make his decision.

thoughts?

snap

I think he'd jam with AK so his range is at least AK, AA, KK. You're a 51% favorite over that range and getting odds as well.

This should be a snap call. If you lose, it'll be an excellent opportunity to practice caring only about whether you made the right decision.

huh?

and how am i a 51% favorite over his range of AA, KK, and AK? lol 2/3 have me drawing to one out...

If you lose the hand it gives you an opportunity to reflect on how the important thing in poker is making the right decision regardless of the result.

More combination of AK possible than AA/KK

I call here for sure and the only thing I'm worried about is having to hear him talk **** if he happens to have the goods

btw I can see him spazzing some small percent of the time without AA/KK/AK/A8 which makes it ever slightly better for you. That table talk kind of negates this though because when they say **** like this they are strong 85%+ of the time.

Mind posting what he had in a spoiler? (Assuming you called)

I'd be flatting I think but probably call in isolation (probably fold in real life as I'd back myself to find a better spot later)

Agree that you're beating the majority of his range right now, and his range is narrow, as other folks noted.

Why so narrow? Because you've been in two hands with him and one was close/inevitable but feels bad and the other was pretty loose on your part given effective stacks. So you have offended his ego, he's tilting, and he thinks you are a luckbox. He's never putting you on a set and figures you are the kind of player who plays any ace and that you'll stack off when he has top two. He hopes you hit A8 and will stack when his hand is basically face up.

So purely on read you snap call and he flips over the table and runs out screaming with his AK most of the time.

6/15 have you drawing to one out. 9/15 have him drawing to four outs. (6 combos of AA and KK, 9 combos of AK)

In more detail:
Board: Ad Ks 8h
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 48.626% 48.63% 00.00% 21663 0.00 { KK+, AKs, AKo }
Hand 1: 51.374% 51.37% 00.00% 22887 0.00 { 88 }

This should be a call, but never a snap call. I think the bet is large enough that you should do your due diligence and take some time to review all the hands you have seem him play.

I think raising the flop is a mistake. I think you should have only called his flop continuation bet. There are few possible draws you can have (just the various gutters), and in the big pots you've played with this opponent when you've made a raise you've had a big hand. So once you raise this flop you're basically saying you have a strong ace at the absolute worst, it likely looks stronger, as you probably bluff-catch a lot of aces, no? So in essence you've prevented your opponent from continuing to value-bet worse hands on the turn - Ax/Kx - and you've likely stopped him from "bluffing" with - air/gutters - on the turn as well. Now granted your opponent certainly seems like he could continue to shovel money into the pot with AQ-AT, 2 pair, however, it seems more likely that as more money goes into the pot in the flop the likelihood your opponent has a real strong hand increases.You're in great shape vs. your opponents flop continuation betting range and there are few turn cards that are bad for you. This is a board where your opponent may make large mistakes if you give him the opportunity to keep his range wide. So I can't see the flop raise doing any good with a hand as strong as 88.

Obviously, we can think this opponent may make commit big money on the flop with some Ax, A8/K8/AK, KK/AA -- But he still likely puts money into the pot on the turn/river with MORE Ax, + random stuff (air/gutters,backdoor pick-ups), and large bets can still go in when he has A8/K8/AK, AA/KK -- There shouldn't be too many turn cards that change the board texture enough to "scare" him either or to freeze you up.

To be honest, I frequently call/call/call when deep against an aggressive but somewhat competent opponent in spots like this. I seem to find my opponents are more likely to value-bet themselves too thin or try to run big bluffs more frequently, than they stack off with worse when you're this deep and they're responding to a raise.

Plus one to calling. He's not drawing here very often. Let him keep betting.

He had the one hand he could have that go all in on the flop with you ahead.

this guy has life by the balls.

What is the point of this thread? Everyone has seen someone who has gotten very lucky and think he's a good poker player.

There's nothing new here at all.

the hand in question plays itself. you're getting AI by the river. could he have AA or KK? sure. but he has more combos of AK and we're not in the business of folding sets, al beit even 400bb deep. if you're that worried about him shoving over top of you that deep, the answer is simple... don't raise the flop.

how in the world does someone spend more money on fast food in a week than someone makes in a year? dude must have been the fattest of fat asses...

and his turn call on your T9 hand is beyond terrible. you have an uncapped range, regardless that he can have 77/66 to your AA, once you shove, calling with TP2K when you easily have top set and TPTK as a bulk of your range is just awful.... he's calling hoping for a chop or that you overplayed KK, QQ or AJ, which makes little sense

in my experience, the people who berate others tend to be pretty bad players themselves.

Snap call LDO. Villain is not good based on his turn stack-off with AQ in your second hand. You're ahead of a range of AK, AA and KK. Plus it seems like villain has a personal grudge against you, which means it's possible he spazzes out here and jams with worse or as a bluff.

+1

a very valid point

you probably shouldn't be raise folding bottom set here, i call and expect to see AK a lot of the time

Im just surprised I get comments like "Snap LDO" when villains 4 bet shove is for roughly 300bb more. I get the consensus is in the "calling camp", im just not sure hiw obvious it is. I think anyone who faces this type of raise should take a minute to think about calling with any hand that isn't the nuts. 3rd nuts in this situation and its a "duh obvious" call for 1400 more against an overly confident player?

Aside from the math that already showed you are a favorite against a range of {AA, KK, AK}, think a bit about what that massive overshove really means.

If Villain held AA, why would he bet that much? He would want you to call, not fold. The same applies to KK, although to a somewhat lesser extent.

Also, I can't believe anyone in this thread wants to flat the flop instead of raising. This has to be one of the easiest raises ever.

I've made that massive overshove before with top set when I believed it was set over set and was concerned about scare cards killing my action.

This villain is a habitual over player, as shown in both previous hands versus hero.

Not a snap call but we should be calling.

I like the raise against this type of villain because he will stack off here with AK or even less. Granted your deep but still this is exactly what you want most of the time. I'm not snapping maybe try to get a little info but this is a call all day.

"i laugh at him and ask him to rebuy full again so i can take it for a 3rd time. he pulls out a wad of probably 8-10k waves it in my face and tells me he spends more on fastfood in one week than i make in a year."

Had me rollin.

Anyway, sorry you got coolered. Wrong forum

With stacks this deep I would be just calling on the flop. I would not be eager to get it in with bottom set even with these dynamics.

As played I'm surprised everyone wants to call this, I wouldn't. I guess we do have a slight equity advantage if we have him on AA KK AK but with his table talk and how big of a jam it is I would expect him to have AA KK more often. The time he overplayed AQ was only for 100bbs, this jam is much different. We have him coming after us and I'd prefer to chip away at him then get involved here. There will be another opportunity to stack him when we have the nuts with how he over plays his hands.

OP, can we reverse engineer this hand (and your posting of it) a minute?

What exactly was your reasoning for raising with bottom set?

Were you raising for value? If so, why were you concerned about pushback?

Were you raising to mess with the guy? Because it seems like the trash-talk was going both ways. Again, why worry about pushback in this case? Aren't you purposefully exploiting and/or antagonizing a tilting player to make terrible decisions?

Were you raising for information? Don't do this. It's terrible.

Were you raising to take down the pot before a scare card came off? As played, what weak draw-type hands would he be playing this way? If he just flat called and a spade, A, K, or incomprehensibly something that completed broadway came off on the turn, were you ever folding?

To be honest, it just sort of feels like you raised because you hit the flop so hard and then got freaked out when he pushed because there was so much money in the pot. That's pretty level 1 thinking. Neither of you seem like you were thinking about depth of stacks from a strategic/game play sense. Deep stacks aren't dicks you wave around, although this is a common misconception. Basically all you guys did was get all your money in on a pretty marginal situation, so way to gambol.

I'm not writing this to be a jerk, but if the goal of these threads is to identify how to play better, then I think you need to consider my questions and be honest with your answers.

If you really want to learn something from this hand (which is the purpose of a thread in a strategy forum), start by asking yourself those questions. If you didn't have some sort of plan in mind for your hand, what was guiding you in your decision making? It seems like you were both on tilt, you were just on the winning end of it.

Which leads me to my next point: sometimes we want to share crazy hands. Sometimes we want to share bad beats. Sometimes we want to post brags. Sometimes we level ourselves into thinking that there's actual strategy to examine and we don't even realize that our actual motivation is something else.

If you look through my thread history, you'll see that I've done this too. Hell, I did it last night. Nobody has commented on the thread yet, because there's nothing to say.

So yeah, this hand basically plays itself. You should have flatted the flop if you weren't comfortable with a shove here. Having read your results, crazy hand, bro.