I'm fine with the whole hand and I fold the river.

GcluelesspassiveNLnoobG

I don't understand not raising the turn. a min raise is enough. i supposed if you had reads he likes to bet small on an increasingly drawy board but it seems incongruous to me. it's hard to make a hand and we have that blocker

i call river because i saved money on the turn, it can't be a huge mistake to call. maybe he feels this is a good way to target your flush draws with AQ but idk, most ppl don't do that. when something doesn't make sense it's usually bull shyt

There is an essential piece of information missing which is if this is a normal raise for the player or game. You might 3 bet if it is an unusually small raise, indicative is SCs and so forth.

I agree that the turn is odd but whatever. Sometimes people bet small like this when they are very strong because they are afraid of not getting paid.

By the river, it sure looks like you have at least an Ace. Maybe the small bet got you to call with something worse. But if so, you are probably not calling again. So now V makes a big bet hoping to cash in against your stronger hands.

I've taken this route a few times myself, though I think it's not that great.

I think a case can be made to 3! pre or flat. Depends on game dynamics, Hero's image, previous hands, etc.

River is a clear fold for me. All you really beat is AT and I doubt a tight/passive UTG raiser is betting that for 3 streets.

I mean no way we can fold turn with TP + GSSD getting 4:1. We beat some weird stuff sometimes.

When he fires the third shell, I don't think we need to be paying off anything worse than like ATs if we have it. He's going to have 2 pair or better a ton. It's slightly exploitative since we have bricked flush draws against that turn size a fair amount, but still.

As far as his preflop sizing, I don't think we should be reading into it. 1/2 is a circus. Modifying RFI sizes based on stake on a coaching site sounds hideous. So this is probably just villain's raise. Obviously the "real" way to play 1/2 is wait for TT+/AK/AQs, make it 20 and get called in 5 spots.

If he's anything like passive players at my casino, he has 2P+ here 99% of the time.

I haven't learned my lesson yet, so in a live game I probably call this some percentage of the time, but realistically on my A-game, it should be a pretty easy fold.

3betting pre seems better

Jonathan Little disagrees with 3 betting the flop, and I'm pretty sure it has to do with AJ being suited, the position of the raiser, and how tight the raiser is. Little is a huge stickler for opening 3x pre. He's argued with his students over it. He disagrees with Matt Berkey's style of opening every raise to $15 no matter what position. I don't believe Sklansky is big on bigger openings either. He is a big believer in having more control over pot size manipulation post flop, which I tend to agree with after reading those chapters. I still open $8+1 bet per limper myself, but I'd rather be on the side of Sklansky and Little than other winning low stakes players.

Why? When is the last time you think Sklansky or Little has beaten 1/2 or 2/5 for a couple 1000 hours?

Would you rather talk football strategy Vince Lombardi, Sean McVay? I'll give you a hint....The things Lombardi was great at dont work anymore.

they can both be right but it probably depends on the number of tables they play...surely they aren't single tabling and talking about online which is kind of silly with it's 100bb buy ins, 15 is exploitable if someone can exploit it which isn't so easy on 100bbs or you can play lower variance 3x raises

i think i would just raise to 15 at 1/2 online and try and gamble for stacks because you can sort of bully a 100bb stack

i guess i was wrong about the raise sizing thread because if you play exploitably you are in a way just raising your variance vs people who want to lower it so, all in all, it doesn't matter

pre flop isn't that important. it may actually be the least important street and your sizing truly may be tailored to your play style and overall bankroll strategy

A lot of high stakes players overthink the lower stakes and give their villains wayyyyy too much credit to pull off moves. They totally level themselves.

KT Purlple is an example in this thread....."Minraise the turn" againsta tight passive leading into you? Yeah ok man....Don't you realize that they always have it at 1-2?

you have to see it as not mattering whether they have it or not, the way to play vs a tight passive player is to play tight passive yourself, or loose aggressive? which is more profitable?

it actually doesn't matter what he has by the river, this is going to be a profitable call vs any villain imo. if you are busted in this hand its fine because it's less of a mistake to call here and lose than fold the best hand in the long run

this is actually a nice spot to 3bet his opens and raise his small bets, i bet he checks the river every time when you raise the turn, he does not have offsuit KJ here, he never reraises the turn and gives you freebies on the river a ton, when he reraises the turn he usually has exactly a set of queens or KJ of clubs and we can safely fold while saving money

So are you raising the turn to get him off an Ace?

If not, then you are just being a fish that is over valueing hands and playing exactly into a weak passive's repertoire. They make money by being a nit and cashing in on players that don't fold. Don't be that guy that pays them off.

You are thinking at too high a level. This guy has AQ, AK, or AA here 100% of the time. It may be as narrow as Ak and AA. These guys only show up with the nuts when $ goes into the pot.

yeah coz they are multitabling robots

i get it bro, i quit online poker back in 2012, 100bb stacks vs 2 shortstackers and 3 rakeback pros made it unplayable

i thought this was a live poker forum, wtf

It is. Most live poker players have atrociously low EP raising ranges. its even worse from late position actually.


All of his KK, QQ, and JJ are done putting $ in the pot by the turn. Most of the time they will check/fold the flop. Period.

You are putting a weak passive on a triple barrel bluff. I can't tell you how bad that is. If you can't recognize these types of players then you may have low level autism or Aspergergers or something.


I'm not joking.

I like the idea of 3x 4x plus a bet for every limper if I have a premium hand. I think my post flop play is light years ahead of all these 1/2 scrubs and it works out. Kind of a small ball game until I get a favorable flop to value bet the **** out of. My hero calls have a high enough success rate and my reads at the table allow me to pick up pots cheaply because the pot isn't bloated to all hell once the flop comes. So far $37/hr the last 100 hours with barely any roller coaster swings.

Cool story bro.

Enjoy your next 100 hrs at breakeven when your $8 raises go 6 ways and you get stacked by a two pair that you gave massive implied odds PF.

Much better to raise, get it heads up and have your opponent fold his equity when you had 98ss on a K53 flop.

Unless your game is that nitty that $8 gets heads up. In that case, you wont be making anywhere near that much.

What you aren't understanding or factoring into play is that, and Jonathan makes a point of this...people tend to let you know when they have you beat at $1/2. And as Jonathan also points out, sometimes AK multiway is actually better in some cases. Sure we lose equity, but there's a better chance of someone flopping a pair with a weaker kicker that we can go to value town on. I don't rely on isolating at the 1/2 because callers make you more money. Sure we win less pots, sure we go to the flop with a bit less equity, but if you are an outstanding hand reader like I am then you have the ability to make more money this way. And its proven, Jonathan ran the numbers. And frankly there's so much more benefits to playing this way especially when your stack is 100bbs or less.

Literally 5 leaks here. Plug em or I’m gonna wreck you.

Hash out what you think they might be, if you’d like.

Quick fold

With such a large and undeniable sample like 100hrs, how could anyone ever question your strategy or opinions? I guess you have the game solved and we can all move on to another game to play and figure out.

Hint: You pointing to and bragging about an absurdly small sample size as proof of your poker genius is actually just obvious proof to the contrary.

Yeah, I like his mention of hero calls at 1-2.

This guys a troll.

He's just wrong. I don't think his low stakes live advice is very good in general.

I'm playing in an uncapped 1/2 game where people often call $20+ with suited connecters and worse. I should make it six with AA because there is a small chance someone is actually paying attention to and correctly judging my raise sizes, or to manipulate the flop post, even oop, rather than take a huge edge right off the bat.

Even if they are paying attention...Many people increase their raise sizes with vulnerable hands like tt. So the one time in ten someone pays attention, they might call anyway, hoping to outplay me post.

Obviously he has accomplished a lot in poker, but I just don't think getting the psychology and nuances of live low stakes is among those accomplishments.

I always want to give Little more credit than most because he at least did a decent sample of $1/$2 s few years back (at the Borgata I believe) and wrote a book about it.

I do not read much into a generic hypothetical tight passive player's preflop raise size. In my opinion, anyone who does assumes they know way more than they actually know. Of course, as you gain more experience with a player, their raise sizes become more indicative of hand strength. Also, you may take player pool tendencies into account, but at least in my experience, tight passive opponents mostly raise with premium hands from early positions.

AJs flops well and most tight passive players have extremely strong early position ranges. AJo would be a 3-bet or fold.

Flop call is normal. Raising allows the opponent to fold when he is crushed.

Turn call is also normal. Some have mentioned they like a turn raise either as a bluff or to find out where they stand, but that usually results in the pot being larger when we are crushed and when we are crushing the opponent, he can make an easy fold.

The river seems like a fold to me.



I posted this in another thread where people seem to think I advocate a blind 3bb raise when folded to every time (which is not the case). It is a strong play that gives players skilled at postflop more options, but it does give up a bit of preflop equity against horrible opponents:

Clearly, if your opponents are awful and will call 10BB raises with 94o, you want to play a strong linear range and value bet them to death. In my experience at $1/$2 (I have played about 200 hours over the last year for research purposes), most players do not call 10BB raises with 94o. They instead only call with "decent" hands.

If you instead make a pot-sized raise or perhaps a touch larger, they will call with all sorts of junk, giving you a large amount of preflop equity. You will lose the pot more often as more people see the flop, but that is fine because you have a substantial amount of equity and your opponents will often play poorly after the flop. Winning pots is not the goal. Winning equity is.

One play that worked especially well for me was making a pot sized raise with a strong linear range (resulting in lots of calls) while making a much larger raise to about 1.7x pot with my junk when facing ranges I thought to be weak and wide (resulting in lots of folds).

If your opponents are legitimately terrible, you should adjust significantly to take advantage of their mistakes. The main problem with this idea is that many small stakes players think they are learning a strong default strategy that they can apply as they move up in stakes. When moving up, it is important to figure out what the winners are doing to beat the games you want to move to as well as what to do to beat those winners. Many players figure out how to beat the weak players but forget that the winners are often the losers at the higher stakes.

I strive to teach my students how to succeed long-term, not how to beat specifically the awful players at the tiny stakes. This is done by teaching them to play fundamentally sound and then how to adjust to the situations they are likely to encounter.


daygrind, out of curiousity, what are you confused about?