Hero in BB 1750: just moved to this table from must move. Been at this table for a few orbits.

V1 Button 2500+: talkative middle aged white guy-- seems tagish and cocky. Raised a couple times in position , cbet and won w/o showdown.

V2 sb 600: middle aged white guy, has called a couple times and folded. Probably fit/fold

Folds to v1 on the button and he opens to 20, v2 calls in sb, Hero has Kd8d in the BB....

Fold. Results?

3bet to 85 or fold

Drawing hands like this from OOP just super spewy. Too expensive chasing, too easily dominated on any Kxx flops.

FAHWM.

calling is not the worse. we have implied odds, and v1 range is super super wide. i like a 3bet more tho.

WTF? Fold. lol

There are times to squeeze and steal. This isn't one of them.

You can let go of your big blind. It's going to be OK.

let`s pretend to have KQ or KJ.

Call.

I dont think we should start giving results on the second post ducy

when this type of guy attempts to steel the blinds, he is probably the widest he can possibly be, with some dead money in between. Maybe I'm missing something. Can you elaborate why this isn't a good light 3bet opportunity?

My standard is to flat, but with the 4bb open, it could possibly be better to squeeze.

There isn't a planet upon which I'm folding.

I'd like to have a little bit more history to go off of but I'm okay with either/or (3!/fold). There should be plenty of flops that we can c-bet profitably if we get this HU.

Pretty easy overcall closing the action.

Squeezing might be okay but you need reads first (eg that your squeeze will generate a lottt of immediate folds from both). It could go from okay to bad depending on how they play. Calling is never wrong.

Without reads obv fold is obv.

We have a king blocker and suitedness which is fine for a squeeze in some cases. However, we're so deep that the button is going to be able to call wide and make our lives hell if he's any good.

It wouldn't be a PAHWM without action after the flop so...call.

I'm not eager to play Kxs oop 350BB deep. I think you have little FE because the btn should call with almost anything he raised with. If I'm the btn, I'd happily call ~60 more with any suited one-gappers or better and ~1700 behind.

I'd concede my BB this time. If he keeps raising loose from LP and shows he can fold, I'd start 3! lite. You also have position on a big stack 7 out of 9 times an orbit. No need to get in a marginal spot here just yet.

Being "good" at poker is a lot more complicated than simply entering most pots with a raise, cbetting, and not getting in too much trouble with single pair hands. In order for villain to leverage his stack depth in this spot, he is going to have to be good enough to know how to 4b as a bluff, be able to size his 4!s so that he can flat a 5b (and form a good range to do so), raise flop raises with hands beyond just OP+/8+ out draws, turn hands into a bluff with river raises, overbet with a reputable range, etc.

Also, while this isn't relevant to the stack depth discussion, the fact that villain is extremely unlikely to run 3-street bluffs (bet/bet/bet when we check the flop, float flop -> barrel turn and river, double float and bet river, etc) makes it a lot easier for us to play our hand when we flop a marginal hand ... which will obviously be often with.

CLIFFS: It's much more likely that villain is "solid." And if villain is merely solid, than flatting his entire range preflop is going to be a big mistake regardless of stack depth.

Agree on all these points. Which is why getting involved with a marginal hand OOP without any reads is not ideal.

Frankly, most players at this level aren't capable of what you described. However, we don't know the button's post-flop tendencies, nor can we accurately asses the opponents' ranges accurately. It's one thing to be playing K8 in position, but another thing to try and play it super deep and OOP. By calling we're playing bingo poker, which makes us no better than our opponents. By raising, we are bloating a pot out of position with no idea on how to continue unless we smash the flop.

CLIFFS: fold pre.

I would say hu to the btn with limited reads you can muck.

But given pot odds, relative position, and the way equity changes multiway you should definitely be playing here.

Button should be playing considerably more honestly postflop given 3way. So playing things like tpwk or 2nd pair with a backdoor should go okay. You're also going to be in the best position to stab if flop checks around which it often will

If you agree with what I said, then we have loads of reads and we do have a good idea of button's post-flop tendencies, since that was what essentially my entire post was.

This quote, in particular, I totally disagree with:


When we cbet, I expect villain's calling range to be very predictable, and I expect his raising range to be PROFOUNDLY predictable.

When we check, while I expect his flop betting range to be difficult to nail down, it will narrow *considerably* with a second bullet, and we can be downright clairvoyant with his holdings once he fires a third barrel.

Again, you just agreed with my post that demonstrated how this isn't a super relevant factor. As far as I can tell, the biggest change our stack depth creates for this spot, is that it convinces villain that he can call preflop with a wide range of crap that, even though this is -EV given his likely postflop "plans."

Not sure why you would make that assumption. A lot of my reasoning for thinking we can call preflop is because our relative position, the exploitability of villain's likely tendencies and the playability of our hand allows us to not play bingo poker. (FWIW, I think calling is no better than close, though, given his opening size, and his sizing also makes 3!ing more profitable)

Also, the whole, "If you do this, you're no better than the fish," thing is totally blown out of proportion. There's a decent handful of specific things that fish do that nit-tag's would do well to learn from, even if fish's overall strategy is totally ****ing idiotic.

I have NO IDEA why you would make this assumption. Seems like you're just projecting. Seems like you could have at least asked first, "Do you have any idea how to continue on a large number of flops we don't smash," before just assuming "we" don't, especially seeing as how I just wrote a sizable post that at least alluded to a number of approaches we can take on marginal flops.

BTW, step 1 is cbet a ton of flops.

Call.

But folding is certainly not terrible.

I don't understand why we'd 3-bet. 350BB deep, BTN can and likely will call everything pre-flop. A 3-bet builds a pot while we're oop with an average hand (compared to ATC), and while it builds a pot, it doesn't really shorten stacks. SPR is > 10 if called.

This deep, it could make sense to 3-bet a merged range of strong hands and hands that can generate dominating post-flop equity. Or, oop, we could just mostly call. Either way, I don't think K8s belongs in our 3-bet range. It doesn't make nut hands or dominate pre-flop holdings. I think it's near the bottom of our calling range and a fair bit below the bottom of our 3-betting range.

I'll add, we definitely don't want to 3-bet a polarized range here. Like if we 3-bet 65s, we're playing oop with a larger pot getting called by a V in position and we have 6-high. That doesn't really make any sense. A 3-bet with a weak hand needs to get some pre-flop folds. V is calling far too wide. It doesn't make sense imo to 3-bet a polarized range here or to 3-bet a wide merged range, either.

While this guy *probably* isn't the 1% of red chip poker, I'm not assuming he is or isn't. Rather, I'm looking for more reasons to play garbage OOP against an unknown.

You talk a lot about "villain's likely tendencies" but you or I have NFC what those tendencies are. Does he call too much? Fold too much? Give up after floating light? Get stubborn with any piece?

Seems like a pretty fishy strategy to assume a villain's tendencies before, you know, actually observing what those tendencies are.

Funny, because every time there's a thread where some unknown raises our Top Pair on the turn on a board where it'd make a lot of sense for villain to have a lot of bluffs, everyone posts "Stop leveling yourself, no one in these games bluff raises, no one is playing back at you, use your population reads, exploit by folding."

So are these population reads only allowed to be used when they support a weaktight conclusion?

Just from a pure Bayesian perspective, what percentage of players in these games are capable of raising a cbet in a 3b pot with any sort of frequency that we should be super worried about? What percentage of these players don't make themselves apparent as quite aggressive in the first hour of playing with them?

I think this is a pretty tough decision. We're getting a decent price, which argues for a call. Our hand is pretty crappy and he opened 4x, which argues for a fold. A 3bet would be a squeeze and we have a decent hand for a light three-bet. (The big problem with a 3bet is that our hand is essentially unplayable this deep, so it's close to a pure bluff with a K blocker.) On the whole, I think I would just fold though. The stacks are so deep that we will have a difficult time playing OOP. I am not concerned about getting run over by an unknown TAGgish player opening 4x OTB. Let's just move on.

Who knows? I'm talking about this table and you're talking about the whole of $5 blind games.

Most of these games IME tend to play passively and sticky. So when I'm raised by an unknown, it's cause for concern even on a draw-heavy board. They could be overplaying something or getting aggro or whatever. Or they could have it.

For all I know, you play in the most aggro $2/5 games on the planet. In that case, you should play accordingly.

We've got all of 30 minutes against this guy and all we know is he has c-bet a couple of flops and dragged a couple of pots without showdown. Pot-odds notwithstanding, I'm not chomping at the bit to play garbage OOP.

This is the exact same population read I'm leveraging.

I'm not sure whether you're following my point beginning to end here:

Villain would have to be extremely aggressive for stack depth to play a huge role here. If villain is not extremely aggressive, then he is making a mistake by using stack depth as a justification for calling wide preflop.

This is why I brought up the folding top pair example, because we should feel exactly as comfortable in this spot assuming that he's not aggressive as we should in that other spot. One just happens to lead to the conclusion that we should fold while the other just happens to lead to the conclusion that we can profit off of continuing.

It could be that I'm not as comfortable OOP and readless as you are. I don't know how this particular player plays top pair, draws, air, etc. So my default (weak/tight as it may be) is to fold even though the vast majority of players in LLSNL are weak/passive.

IMO, 30 minutes doesn't give me enough time generally to go nuts (or even get involved) with K8 suited 350BB deep while OOP. YMMV.