2/3. Late night during a weekend. Our table had been playing shorthanded for a while (LOVE IT!!!) but just recently filled up. V is a new player who looks like he just sat down, while two others transferred from other tables.

Hero: ($1350) Mid 20s, raised V's first hand played. Action was fold, limp, limp (V), raise (h), folds to v who calls. Flop was not a great c-betting board, flop went check/check. V led out for 3/4 pot OTT, I called w/ a pair and the NFD. V made a convincing value bet OTR and I folded.

V: ($360) Middle-aged guy who looked familiar but isn't a regular by any means. Looks pretty comfortable and attentive. Loose-passive rec player profile based on the ~orbit he's been at the table. Took a pot down with 98o in early position after calling down a JT8xx board on the flop and turn.

Hand: EP limps, fold, V limps, Hero raises to $20 with JsTs, folds to V who calls.

Flop: QsTc4d. V checks, Hero bets $20, V raises to $45.

Now, I'm trying to add some things to my game, and one of them is studying players' physical actions- in particular looking at their eyes when they see the flop- whether I'm involved in the hand or not. I've picked up a few good spots to c-bet based on eyes and body language and have also seen that the better players are noticing that I'm looking at them instead of the flop.

Here, I'm not sure if V knew I was looking at him. I was to his direct left, so it would be hard not to. In the first hand we played, V showed a lot of interest OTF, quickly glancing at it then looking away. This time, he looked away from the flop as it came down (almost up, eyes in the distance, then peeked before checking). The raise was immediate, taking a large stack and counting out three small stacks of $15.

Any insight as to what this physical action might mean? My thoughts at the time are in sp:

hand history is confusing. i'm not sure what positions people are in. are you bb or btn, i'm not sure.

as far as the flop, i would check back almost always here.
i don't think this physical read is meaningful enough to draw any specific conclusion. physical reads and tells are obv nice to spot, but pretty overrated and you have to be some sort of body language wizard to get fairly subtle things right. sometimes ppl do more obvious things and its good to capitalize on them. i think one of the more reliable physical tells at llsnl is villains that play with chips to look like they are going to bet then check. they pretty much always want you to check as well.

and as far as your read, i hope given that read you called the c/r.

Physical action sounds like he really didn't care what the flop was, as long as it's not horrid. This tells me he's either pre-planned a bluff against the aggro kid, or has an overpair/QQ.

When an L/P middle age guy check raises me on a dryish board, I fold second pair easily. I think the tell is just about a wash, but the action is very not good for us.

I apologize if I was vague on the action. Preflop I was in MP; V was immediately to my right. Action was limp, fold, limp, raise, 7 folds and a call. V and I were heads up.

I like how much attention you're paying to your V's, but it takes lots of hands to determine what's standard for them in specific situations. Keep it up and I'm sure you'll have this guy pegged. Erstwhile, this guys just min C/Red us. I'd pay more attention to that for now.

There's really only three scary over-cards that could come (non-spade aces). That's lots of good cards (nines, tens, jacks, queens, kings, spades). I doubt he's folding anything better or calling to many worse hands. Seems like a pretty clear check on the flop.

As played I think it's unlikely he has slow-played overpairs.

Haven't read spoiler but IME when players are looking uninterested / away from the table the majority of the time they have it.

Plus min raises are more or less "begging" for a call versus a higher raise is more bluffy not valuey from a rec player.

You have a couple backdoor draws and a pair. He is either playing back at you or trapping. If he is trapping you have decent odds to chase. If its a bluff he may just bail. Im going to peel one off here and force him to make a decision on the turn.

Personally, I put zero stock in all this physical tells stuff. It's *possible* I might be missing out on something, but I sorta doubt it.

For me, the only thing that matters is what happens on the flop. We are playing someone we've pegged as passive. On the flop, we have 2nd pair and possibly a backdoor (a pretty weak hand). He's checked raised us. That's all we need to know, imo.

If we're not comfortable folding to a check/raise from our opponent (say an aggro player), then we should check behind with mediocre hands like this. Against a passive player where we are betting for value/protection, easy fold at this point, and anything else short of him exposing his cards is fairly irrelevant, imho.

Gdoesn'tevenbotherlookingatopponentsduringahandG

Everything v did indicates strength including sizing .... And physicals tells are huge but most people aren't trained as to what to look for...

Also prob cking back this flop anyways..

I would basically weigh more value toward the line villain took rather than physical tells on this one. You just have had a passive villain min check-raise you from OOP. Get out and get out quickly....he doesn't show up here with an open ended straight draw or anything you're ahead of.

General guidelines...villains who stare at the board are searching for their draw. Villains who seem disinterested in hand and looking away are generally disinterested or extremely strong...usually nothing in between.

Fold it....

i said before that i would check it back and i think you should.

but if you bet and get c/r this sizing, you should probably not be folding. you're getting like 4.2:1 and you're in position still with like 2psb left, which is deep enough. the villain would probably have to actually flip over QT or 44 for me to want to fold here.

As for the hand, I'm assuming V is firing big OTT pretty much always, which means I have one street to improve, and I have 5 (unsure if clean) outs.

Doing the math: if we give V a super narrow range of QQ+ and have the simple scenario of GII OTT when I hit and dump if I don't, I lose $11.8 every time. Even if we change the scenario to "we're drawing dead only 1/7 of the time," it's neutral EV.

For those that feel compelled to flat, I'm not sure we have the implied odds that we think we do.

Following up on the c-bet/check back decision, my default against somewhat unknown LP stations is to bet here for value, as I think they would peel one street sometimes with a PP and continue with worse Ts. I also have backdoor draws that I can check behind OTT. I can also see an argument for a delayed c-bet OTT that gets value from the same types of hands.

If we're not scared of a c/r from this opponent (even though we were here I don't expect it very often at all from this player profile), what are the factors that we need to think about when making the flop decision?

i seriously doubt any specific villain has both this crazy tight nutted c/r range and also c/c flops with "worse Tx/pocket pairs". like how is he trapping you pre with all these huge pairs but also limp calling T9o or whatever?

in reality, i think your assessment of his c/r range is fairly off. i'm fine with thinking his range is pretty tight, but he has to have some Qx and i think he likely has some KJ/J9 and even some gutshots or bluffs in his range. this can maybe only be 10-20% of the combos in his range, but its probably there.

i just think that you have to be really careful in getting overly specific in the ranges you put on people based on the relatively small sample sizes that you get information on them. its really hard to say with 95+% certainty his range is X here, especially when X is so narrow. make you're best estimation but realize that your certainty is limited and include the possibility that you can be wrong.

harrington said in one of the HoH's something like 5-10% of the time people just do things that you don't expect them to do, and you should include that in your thinking.

You could be right. I do see a lot of l/c "trapping" with QQ+ from the OMC types where I play, but this guy doesn't really fit that profile.

In my post on outs and implied odds, I wasn't assigning that range according to V's actions, just trying to illustrate to myself and others that, if we feel like we're behind, this is the most optimistic scenario for getting paid, and it's not a terribly good one.

i did the math of the villain has QQ+ scenario and we get it in when we improve thing, and i have that as calling the flop c/r as break-even. i also don't think this range very realistic for villain, and it also ignores the possibilities of you making straights or flushes, where you can make +ev decisions on later streets.

as far as your question regarding what factors you should consider when deciding on whether or not to cbet here. i mean, you have the right fundamentals of thinking if you can get him to call with a worse hand or fold a better hand. i think in this spot both things would be tough to achieve (altho sometimes he does c/c some straight draw or w/e)
if its a board where relatively few turn cards will change the current best hand, then checking becomes a little better. i think this board is one of them, since really an ace or king would be the real board changers.
and if villain is an actual tough player, where he's gonna c/r this board with a decent frequency and pretty balanced range and make you make tough decisions on later streets, i think checking back becomes also more reasonable

I think I found the mistake I made before, so I'll show what I was thinking through:

When we call and miss (89%), we lose $25.

When we call and hit, we GII OTT and win/lose $295. 6 combos each of AA/KK and 3 QQ. So we are 95% against AA/KK when we hit a T and 73% when we hit a J. Since there are 3 Js and 2 Ts, our adjusted equity is 73%*(3/5) + (95%*2/5) = 82%.

So we lose $295 against the 3 combos of QQ and make .82*$295 = $241 against AA/KK. 3/15 combos * -$295 + 12/15 combos * $241 = $134.

Overall, we make $134 when we hit and lose $25 when we don't.

$134*.11 + (-$25)*.89 = -$8.08

Let me know if that's off.

Just realized I made the post originally to get feedback on a possible physical tell and ended up doing math. Thanks, poker!

Also thank you to Prof and others for your input.

Edit: forgot to add what was already in the pot when we win. So add ~$65 to the pots that we win. Brings it closer to -$3.

I'd concentrate more on the betting patterns rather than the physical action especially against people you are unfamiliar with. Don't look for a tell to influence your decision just pay attention to the reactions and body language and every now and again you'll pick something up which gives you a light bulb moment