V is an older guy who plays PLO everyday. Plays a very autopilot TAG holdem game. Hates getting 3!, a lot of bet folding, nitty on the big streets especially, can be stabby, perhaps double barrels, not sure if sticky with AK (though I would tend to think not)

H has a winning TAG/NIT image.
.................................................. .........

H1 $500 eff.

V opens MP to $20, folds to hero OTB w. A2 who raises to $65

*Ideal victim, stack sizes, no? If he calls and I flop nada, what boards am I c betting besides a raggy KXX?
.................................................. .........

H2 500Eff.

Limpy fish calls EMP, Hero overlimps EMP A4, Button calls, SB calls, V checks his option in BB

($25) Flop: K84

V bets $20, fish calls, hero calls, rest fold.

($85) Turn: 8

V bets $40, hero raises to $120...
.................................................. ...........

H3 7handed 600eff

EP is playing a ton of hands, can be aggro with draws. Postflop he seems to be afraid of getting run over (likes to bet pot), can make disciplined/nitty folds, at the same time seems to overvalue draws (overestimates implied odds?)

CO is a typical young rec players, playing loose, a bit stabby postflop, sizing tells.

EP limps, fish overlimps MP, CO calls, hero raises AQ OTB to $25, BB and limpers all call. 5 way

*smallish sizing because standard open was $15, table was skittish about larger raises.

($125) Flop: 722

Checks around to CO who bets $40, Hero looks left and can't see definite folds coming, hero calls, EP calls. 3 way

*My initial instinct was to raise here because CO is likely TP & weak overpair heavy but with 3 other live players it felt spewy, calling lets me use my position OTT.

($260) Turn: K

Checks to CO who bets $60, Hero raises to $200...

aka outdrawn

H1 - C-bet virtually all flops...in that case make the bets seem like you want to keep him in...float many donk bets with the intention of raising the turn and jamming the river in that case...C-bet with all but flops, but on the smaller side, then check the turn, then bomb river

H2 - I dislike all plays you made in this hand. I'm only overlimping in mid pos if the entire table is loose-passive, and I am leagues above all of my opponents. Even then, I am folding on this flop. There is no money in the pot...even if I make a mistake because I am bored, and call the flop, the villain (who presumably is weak) has now led into me twice...are you playing for pride?? Lay it down. Risk is not worth the reward by any stretch.

H3 - def. open for larger! Try 40. Playing against the field with AQs, even in pos, completely sucks. Hell, you should be raising the limpede on the Bu to 35-40 with 34 os...only raise AQ to that size when you expect to be HU. AP, I like the guts you show with the raise on the turn, but the problem is that you are up against 3(?) Other cats...so while it seems obvious that the bettor will get rid of it, you for nobody to blame but yourself when the guy behind you has had enough of your crap and stacks off with a K...or slowplayed a monster on the flop. Really though, bet to ISO pre, don't make the mistake of thinking AQ (suited or not) is a true premium in a cash game.

one - not bad. randomly barrelling away at garbage flops are ok, but the problem is that if you do it on a flop where he has flopped a monster, you are burning 180ish dollars just to 'earn' that 20 you were stealing from him preflop. long term, it is probably a loser if you are doing it with just mediocore hands. but, if you are able to get him to call off light when you have monster preflop hands, it should be profitable.

two - love it. almost guaranteed to get a fold from a nit. it drives them crazy, but unless your cards are turned face up, they just can't muster a call.

three - ugh. that looks really spewy. when he double barrels into that many players, he either has a 2, or he has Kx. He is not folding.

yuck

Yeah, flop call was probably bad.

We have very different philosophies.

Thanks for the comments.

that is exactly the problem I have with having a plan for a hand on all streets. light preflop 3bet, and now you are basically advocating getting your stack in on almost any runout regardless of your equity which is often very very low with ace and deucey

Hand 1: Know why you are 3-betting light before you do it. If you are doing it to exploit him, then make sure you know how he reacts to flop c-bets on lots of textures. If you aren't doing it to exploit him then it's for balance (which = lol). If it's not for balance, then you are clicking buttons. Look up some math stuff on light 3-bets. I.e. he opens a%, he defends vs 3-bet with b%, your EV usually isn't going to be doing to well with fold equity alone. Considering people defend 3-bets so wide, you are better off 3-betting light with dead money or 3-betting a wider value range if they are opening too wide.

Hand 2: Limped pots are realllllly bad to float. That being said, if you are gonna get fancy, that's a sweet turn.

Hand 3: I'm not really a big fan of floating donk bets from fish on flush draw boards especially in multiway pots with players left to act. It's fine to just give up here. You raised pre to build a multiway pot in position with the best hand. You got your EV. Now on the flop you don't have the best hand, don't have all the information, and you want to make 2-3 handed moves in a 5 way pot. Not saying i've never bluffed in full-ring family pots, but unless you are doing it for the lols, it's probably not healthy.

These are all fine to me. 3 is borderline, but if the sizing tell is reliable and confirmed then I like it.

As far as Hand 1 cbet range, I'm prob c-betting a lot when checked to but prob checking behind when I flop an ace w/ no redraws and I'll also check back wet K & Q high flops.

OK, sure...I mean, I don't bomb A2s for that much on the Bu. However, this was an opponent- specific plan. We may as well follow through once we put 65$ in there, no? And allow me to rephrase, I'm c-betting virtually all flops that are dry and we have missed, and I'm going to be cautious. Also, we need a solid image. If we bomb this guy for over 3x his open, the true purpose is to get him off his hand post. That is all I was saying

Grunch- hand 1 I would c-bet most flops as V prob plays fit or fold in 3-bet pots, and I think it is fine to 3-bet described V pre...
Sorry I got hand 2-3 mixed up

Hand 3-you are pretty much repping an overpair if you raise so while it's real unbalanced I think it is fine for live 2-5, betting turns and shipping rivers as most 2-5 vs are releasing their pps to 3-barrels...

Hand 2
Don't know if that is the best line unless V really likes to attack limped pots, though could be fine if you know he will fold a K to extended pressure.

Hand 2: Don't like the flop float because it's bone-dry and there are virtually no scare cards to bluff OTT except specifically the 8. Prefer doing it on drawier boards where you have a lot of perceived outs in addition to your actual outs.

Hand 3: I'd fold or raise the flop to end the hand right there. He should rarely have a 2 here. With a plan to double barrel a lot of turns if called. AP, that's an excellent card to bluff OTT so don't mind it.

I think you need to be careful here. Having a plan for the hand is pretty darn important and a key component that crushing players have and losers don't. I think what you mean is having a plan with no contingencies. It is idiotic to plan a hand and follow through no matter what. You may have to change the plan when new info becomes available but you absolutely should have one. Maybe we could say have a flexible plan. Or maybe have a complete plan. An incomplete plan only accounts for one possible outcome. A complete plans has all likely eventualities included.

I think V´s continuing range given stacks (<12x raise size) is suuuper tight. I think TT,JJ, probably AK, maybe even lol QQ is going into the muck. I guess he raises with at least 90ish combos pf in this spot and is continuing with no more than 18, possibly 15 or only 9 combos (if KK+). We do have the blinds to get through though. Seems like pf alone should be fairly profitable.

Hand 1 is the best definitely. I'd probably use a default strategy of 3-betting this hand in this position.

Hand 2 - Preflop is fine. Flop calling or folding is fine. Turn is probably just a mediocre bluff raise spot if you'd also play 8-X this way. Issue is SB could easily have 8-X here as well as BB. If turn was a spade it'd be a better raise spot, assuming you'd also take this line with flopped very strong hands (mid/bottom set), which is reasonable since it's such a dry, safe flop for sets.

Hand 3 - Maybe the worst of the 3 bluff spots. Some of them can have 2-X more easily than you (would you really raise limpers with A2 here?). The flop flat isn't awful though if you saw others folding out of turn since you're getting about 4-1 and two overcards is only 6.8-1 against to hit on the turn, and he might not bet turn.

I would not be bluffing often overall in this situation since you can't really have 2-X and since there's so many players in. But the times I do bluff I'd try to use flush draws. AQ would be a much better turn bluff.

well, I prob are too stupid for that

For what it's worth, what he just said I said exactly to you in the other thread. Nobody's got it all figured out, and I still make tons of mistakes, but I am making plans with hands for sure

I still don´t. I used to do.
But I don´t want to come off like an arse, mostly semantics I guess

You're right, it could be purely semanitcs. Though, I'm curious to hear about a specific scenario where you played a hand and your method "paid off", whereas if you had " planned it out", as is being suggested, would have failed

Then you have your answer... By your range estimation, when he calls your 3-bet (and doesn't 4-bet), lets reduce his AA and KK to 1 combo each because he 4-bets usually, lets say a combined reduced 8 combos of AK and AQs since he may fold those and you block, 6 QQ (nobody is folding qq), 2-jjs and 2-tts.

8 non pairs.
12 pairs.

So, if he folds all his non-pairs on the flop, we should c-bet around half pot to show a profit on all J high boards and give up on the turn.

On A high boards we are going to have to check, bet, and poker (not necessarily in that order) one on each street. The order of this is up to you.

K and Q high boards we can go through the same process as J high boards to figure out whether we should c-bet double, or c-bet give up. Lots of people will peel one street with QQ and JJ, whether he's that guy is up to you to figure out.

Honestly though I still don't like the 3-bet if he's opening such a tight range like you said. 90 combos is like 88+ AJs+ KQs+. It looks +EV since he defends tight, but still going to be high risk for small reward. Sticking one caller in between the open and you is going to show a HUGE difference % wise in profit.

Not that i'm advocating it in this spot necessarily, but don't forget that tight ranges can be played very profitably post-flop without 3-betting when you are in position if he's going to be playing face up, i.e. never double barrels, always bets overpairs flop and turn, checks some flops when he bricks, folds overpairs on scary low-mid runouts. Floating one street and folding turn costs the same amount as a 3-bet, and floating one street, betting turn costs the same amount as a 3-bet c-bet but is more profitable because our fold equity against face up players with this is near 100%.

Edit: Without including our equity or the blinds (For ease of conversation let's say that they cancel out), we need this to work 75% to break even. Which it obviously will if he's opening 90 combos and defending 20 or less. But how much variance do you want to put in your game? Our direct EV on this street is only a couple bucks and we are putting in $60. As the hand plays out we will gain more EV by playing better than him but there are plenty of other spots to do this and better ways to do this that are lower variance. I'd suggest never 3-betting light unless you are against tough regs and you need a wider range or you are squeezing dead money.

If he's opening 90 combos and defending 20 combos, he's only calling/4-betting 22% of the time. If he defends less than 28% of the time, then we have a profitable 3-bet with any two cards.

But that's not factoring in the chance that the blinds might have a big hand or the fact that we are not drawing dead if he just calls our 3-bet. The first factor works against us but the 2nd factor works for us (especially since A4s does very decent against KK-JJ).

With your read and since you say he folds to a 3-bet 78% of the time, I'd 3-bet here 100% of the time with any two cards and expect it to be profitable every time. Only exception is if I know one of the blinds is looser and much more likely than average to defend/not respect our 3-bet.

Another way of explaining why we should 3-bet is this: Let's pretend that if he just calls our 3-bet, we will just auto-fold the flop even if we flop the nut flush or quads. Even if we were to do this, it's still profitable to 3-bet any two cards pre since he folds too often preflop.

can´t remember specific hands, grinded way too much
it is what it is, playing highly exploitable w/out knowing basic game theory/maths behind your actions may be enough to be a winning player in ultra soft live lineups, but you´ll get crushed if you try it at any decent stakes online.

risking of sounding extremely arrogant, I think I spent way too much time in this subforum, it does not improve my game one bit, and I get roasted if actually deciding to try to provide worthy strat.
take that for what it´s worth.

You remind me of a cash game reg that comes in my live game sometimes, dude is really good, made multiple millions online and still plays and makes a living.

The way he thinks is always math/balance based, it's interesting to me but kills a table live to discuss this kind of sheawt

=sauhund;49616438]can´t remember specific hands, grinded way too much
it is what it is, playing highly exploitable w/out knowing basic game theory/maths behind your actions may be enough to be a winning player in ultra soft live lineups, but you´ll get crushed if you try it at any decent stakes online.

risking of sounding extremely arrogant, I think I spent way too much time in this subforum, it does not improve my game one bit, and I get roasted if actually deciding to try to provide worthy strat.
take that for what it´s worth.[/QUOTE]

You are really making spending time posting here seem extremely unappealing.

This isn't an online poker forum. This is low stakes live cash game, which is something I've been doing for a long time, and I'm a winning player, with moments of transcendent play. I come equipped with strategies tailored to destroying loose-weak players live, and playing ABC+1 against TAGs and nits. This admittedly comes at the expense of some fundamentals...but only in the sense that in deeper and more advanced games, there are many plays that are profitable at the garbage level that must be completely discarded virtually entirely (such as limping or calling a small raise multiway with rags). For the record, I've also posted consistent wins in MTTs throughout my entire career...80% ROI lifetime is a conservative estimate. For what that is worth.

H1 and H2 are good.

H1: I wouldn't go too nuts messing with a TAG's MP opening range, but mixing in some low suited aces (and this is the best suited ace to do this with since A3-A5 are strong calls given likely blinds in most lollive games), high SCs and some low-end suited broadways is good.

If the flop is **** for your hand and **** for your range, then you'll do a lot of checking obviously. Good to remember that the hand doesn't end once you check the flop, especially if you're known to mix some flop checks with strong hands so that your delayed cbets get respect.

H2: Assuming the fish folded on the turn, this is a very good raise spot in a vacuum, and with the turn completing the rainbow, there aren't a whole lot of better hands to do this with. You can do this with gutterballs, too, obviously, but mixing in the 3 combos of bottom pair+whiffed BNFD is perfectly fine.

H3: I'd just fold AdQc. Once the King hits bringing in the backdoor flush draw, there aren't a whole lot of no-pair, no-draw hands left in your range. You don't have to win them all.

Hand 1 looks good. Check back a huge % of Ax flops. I'm c-betting so many boards. Low cards because we get to barrel a lot of turn cards against hands like 88-JJ. High cards because they're good for hero. We're heads up here and 3-betting pre, so I really do think we're easily gonna c-bet > 75% of the time. Obviously boards with back door flush and/or straight draws are also good for betting.

Hand 2, I like raising pre. You get folds from hands that destroy you (like A8o) and also have a chance to play in position, win outright, gets lots of equity to fold pre, c-bet good flops, etc. By calling you're gonna be oop. You don't make a lot of flushes, and when you do, you don't build the biggest pots oop. Calling isn't so bad, I just like raising a bit better.

Turn looks great as a bluff against this V w/an obvious Kx hand. 8 is a great card (blocks 88), and your A4 blocks 44. You likely have 5 outs if called, though I think you really have to fire river again when you miss since you will get the Kx folds vs this V imo.

Hand 3 looks OK but I might just call one more time with the plan to raise rivers (see what V does first on the river / win another bet from air / get away from a poorly played monster / get low pocket pairs and 7x to fold, etc).