don´t you think his range changes once he bets 3 times the pot compared to less than 2/3 otf?

Well, this means you never have a set because it would be pretty awful to call OOP with 88 on K 10 9 board, wouldn't it?

I wish I would have grunched this at some point.

My gut feeling based on the overbet was that he now had a pair with a J for an OESD.

Pretty sure I would have called as I was leaning that way before reading your results.

We have one example of his overbet being a bluff at perceived weakness when he bet $1.9K with his missed flush draw.

We have shown little strength in this hand by calling pre and calling the flop.

He knows he doesn't have the best hand. He probably doesn't expect you to show up with AK here, more like KQ, KJ. If you call him with two pair, well he has outs and he's a lag, so he lives with it.

As for the 23 suited hand you posted ugh. Just fold. Don't get into a dick-swinging contest with this guy. Play solid poker and pick off his poor bets

Just seeing a draw doesn't mean you actually should have called. His range may still have been strong enough to make you -EV.

Obviously this hand was such a terrible one for V to donk flop with that I now rate him as bad and unbalanced to bluffs because if he donks flop with this hand then he's taking too loose and weak a range to the turn and his aggro style is obviously causing him to try to get rid of weak hands by bluffing and semibluffing them. He doesn't have enough strong hands to balance the large number of weak hands turned into bluffs so he is likely very unbalanced unless you see him x/f and/or x/c a lot in this sort of spot which is doubtful since he is seen as LAG.

Next time you could call but I don't think your read before this hand warranted a call. That's because your read was wrong in that V was deemed to be too good.

Yes it is possible I've not fully grasped what you meant by him being "good". If you meant that him trying to bluff everyone when he thinks their capped at 1pair and is thus entirely unbalanced then I'd have been more in favour of calling turn but I'd not say V was very good.

This is everything that I wanted to say. Don't cap your range against good lag is a good weapon.

Thanks guys. I discounted UTG+3 because I had no respect for his game & his shallow stack. Plus, I thought I would easily find out on the flop if him & the other guy hit their hand, because if LAG didn't hit his & checked & I did, I woulda' bet & they would not have called [I believe] a bet from me without a good draw or a strong holding.

They had both been riding the wave & only getting involved post-flop when they had something good. We must understand this 1/2 game is playing like a nice 2/5.

I agree with venice10 that thinking the raise OTF was the right play was wrong, because, as I said in another post, the other two would raise if they had hit the flop hard. They don't want 2 players drawing against them. They were short stacked, and not well rolled.

venice10 is also right about the 8 OTT not completing str8s but it does complete 2 pair draws.

Ragequit99, I believed LAG was capable of having most anything that works in one way or another with that board. The primary reason for the post: To find out if anyone has a secret formula for adding up the combos OTT at the table, without having to break out paper & pencil.

How do you handle this here, if you think LAG's range is what I put him on in the above post I made?

Nope, no secret formula

Have you ever heard of the Monte Carlo method?

IMO you're asking the wrong question. This spot is not a math problem to be solved to find whether you should call or fold. There is no "right answer" to be deduced using the power of math in this spot. Busting out a pen and paper is laughable.

While some spots are math based, i.e. where V is unknown etc, this is not one of those. In this spot there is undeniably a human-dynamic between yourself and the V. This is a human problem, not math.

Be self-aware. What does V think of you? The better you can understand this, the better you can make the decision in this spot.

Of course it's a math problem. Given his range, should you call? The fun in poker is figuring out his range. There are some people who are good at math but bad at ranging opponents. These people sometimes protest by saying "but...pot odds!" when defending a bad call against an opponent who is never bluffing. Some players are good at figuring out their opponents' ranges but make mistakes on whether they should call.

I want to thank everyone for their input. I am, believe it not, a successful player over the last 2k+ hours of play, despite these type of mistakes.

Yes, L_G, it's not all math, but in this case it is. If I've been studying this guy, looking for betting tells and the way he acts when he makes these kind of plays; if I'm studying all of the players & taking notes & working on my own game, at this moment on the turn, if I decided "this is his range" I've got to be willing to "trust" my instincts.......but I've gotta' be able to count!

The $265 that I coulda' lost, isn't but about 2.5% of my bankroll. That wasn't a factor. I think it boiled down to "shrinkage" & not wanting to be embarrassed if he turned over a hand I didn't have outs to, goin' into the river.

I need to grow a set & stand up to him if I want him to stop hammering me all the time!

So, I'm going to double down on study time with Flopzilla.

Thanks again!

I see 4 possibilities here:

1) V is a LAGtard who plays same vs everyone varying lines according to his hsnd strength. E.g. bets huge on bluffs and semibluffs, attempts to milk top pair+ with moderate bets and bets small with 2nd pair- and draws.

2) V adjusts for different player stereotypes (nit, tag, weak/tight etc...) using different ranges and bet sizes for each where each stereotype gets targeted with a different exploit.

3) V is particularly good at picking up on weakness and launching bluffs with whatever he has when he thinks he sees weakness but apart from that plays like 2 above, he just chucks the opportunistic bluffs in on tiop of his standard lines.

4) V is picking up on a lot of stuff and constantly adapting to all of it. He anticipates other players adapting to him and changes gears ahead of time to thwart them. He can level people. He also has some idea of how to deploy balanced ranges for defence if he finds he is unable to level someone.


How you construct ranges will depend on which one of 1-4 V is.

If he's 1 you asign ranges for each bet size our line and exploit his imbalance accordingly. You can quickly build a good read because he plays unchangingly.

If he is 2 then you need to get inside his head and see how he views each other player, spot how he plays them differently and build ranges accordingly. This takes considerably longer than 1 above before your can confidently ranger him.

If he is 3 you need to work out how he detects weakness, betting lines/hand reading, physical tells or both and use it against him.

If he is 4 then you can work out how he is exploiting bad players and build ranges off that (like 2 and 3 above) but when he notices you are adapting to him you're going to get into a leveling war and if you beat him at that he might be able to fall back on balance. I doubt this is ever going to be profitable after rake and it will cause some big swings. Basically you should avoid him and focus on easier targets.

If a truly good villain is targeting you or messing with your pots vs fish then you are going to have to put a move on him to show him you can play and then try to avoid him after that. Just put a move on him once and then try to stay out of his way and see if he'll oblige and let you have your fair share of pots with the weaker players. If he wants to escalate it or run over the whole table then you've got a decision to make; stay and fight or leave him to it and move tables.

Regarding counting combos quickly and easily manipulating ranges in your head - it depends on your aptitude for maths and memory. I'm hopeless at both so I practice away from the table by learning short cuts, forcing myself to memorize "standard ranges" for various different common spots or archetypal situations, and working through lots of posts, imaginary scenarios and my own hand histories in slow time. There's no magic bullet unless you're a natural. For the rest of us it's just a lot of hard work!

Re-affirms my point. Human problem. Not math. You say it is a math problem but then you go on to say that you are closely watching everything that V does, presumably for reads (human!!) and that you suffered shrinkage (human problem!!). We all make mistakes. Don't let the fear of making a mistake make you question your play. Sometimes you'll get it wrong - muck the hand and move on.

The point I guess is that in this hand, given V's overbet we know without doing any fancy math that we need to be correct the vast majority of the time to call him here. That's all that really matters. Go with your read. It might be wrong. If it is, learn from it. If it isn't, hopefully he bricks the river. Using math to justify a bad call is not productive.

Admittedly, I rely on more intuitive math than doing any paper/pen calcs at the table. The math side of my game is not as strong as it could be.

Correct and this is how I adjust to playing against some of the LAGgier players I see.

Sometimes he has the nuts. Sometimes he has air.

This is why LAGs get paid off when the make a hand. Because they are going to have a hand some of the time.

u need to stop worrying about this guy so much