Hi all,

Just wondering how I could have maximized this?

H: table just broke so at a new table very early Sunday morning. Younger guy. Few people recognize me. Playing pretty tight. I have ~$300

V: older guy. Played with him before. Used to him being actually very tight, however, he is straddling a lot now. Playing a lot more aggressive than last time I played with him. Seems like he mixed up his game a bit. He has me covered

OTTH: V limps UTG, his buddy is UTG+1 and goes what?? Why are u limping? He responds " I'm trying to trap I know someone will raise. 4 other people call and I raise to 26 in the SB with AA

V says I knew someone would raise and he flats and everyone else folds.

Flop: ($~60) 10 8 6 rainbow.

I bet ~$15. I know I'm gonna get hammered for this. But I just am trying new stuff and experimenting on bet sizes and stuff.

He raises to 40 total and I call

Turn: (~140) 4 completing the rainbow. I check and he checks it back

River 5. I bet 20 and he tanks forever and calls.

I don't wanna face a huge bet here. But looking back at it it seems like over pairs make up a very large part of his range huh?

Thoughts? I know very weird hand

Wayyy bigger on flop (yes you deserve to get hammered for this, in LLS you dont need to get tricky or mix it up, especially with AA) calling the raise is fine, turn is fine, river is kind of iffy. I actually dont mind a small bet but I would go like 40. Checking might be okay but not sure.

Reference bold above ... Bet enough on each street to setup river AI. There are more combos of over pairs than flopped sets.

I think a stupid-ish small reraise on the flop would play great here. You went $15, he went $40, come back at $65-70 or something. Will look (and is) stupid and might induce. If it doesn't it adds $50 to the pot and gives you cause to lead out on turn, 1/2 PSB or so and then trivial GII on the river. If he flopped it, he flopped it. I'm OK milking 3 streets here.

Just because of the talk preflop i probably make it 40-50. 26 seems somewhat small with 5 limpers and oop, even without the tabletalk.

As far as the flop sizing goes, i dont mind experimenting at all, but i mostly do it away from the table by using flopzilla or other software. Figure out how much EV/value different sizes have against V's range on different boards and go from there. Clicking buttons can be fun and useful, but i prefer not doing it when there is real money on the table .

AP, you cannot fold flop. V can have a bunch of 10x and some overpairs, as well as some semibluffs.

Turn is standard, river is kinda villain dependent between c/c and b/f imo. I kinda lean towards c/c since we're pretty much capped at 1 pair and river brings a good bluff card that is bad for our range/better for his.

A) This villain is probably not good and probably not "mixing up their play" they are probably tilting or tired or trying to get even, or bored. Don't confuse these things.

C) Pre flop is waaay too small given the comments. $35 - $50 depending on how active the table has been so far.

I think the criticism of preflop sizing is a tad nit picky. Certainly shouldn't be less than $26 but I think that falls within the range of acceptability for preflop sizing. $50 would be too much, $25-35 is probably the right range and anything in there is fine.

Flop bet is too small for sure. There's really no reason to experiment with small sizing on this flop. Use static flops like 225, A93r, etc. if you want to play around with these concepts. Despite not having a flush draw this flop is pretty dynamic because most of the hands that have a pair also have a gutter and are almost never folding to a single bet. Maximize value, $50-55, and plan on a bet-bet-bet line. If raised, generally lean towards folding pending any live reads.

I'd probably go $30 at my table after this many limpers (or BI shorter where a bigger raise is easier), but whatever (ETA: I don't hate $26 but any means, and it's fine enough).

SPR is 4.5, so we're probably committed. Thing is it's going to take 2 huge bets or 3 ok bets to get in stacks, and Villain would probably have to be a moron to payoff with worse, unless he's got KK-JJ (which is possible). Board is a little drawy in that there are some action killing cards. Honestly, if we're attempting to gets some bets out of a non-******, I don't mind the small bet (or a check). I'm also calling the raise.

I don't mind the turn check, but I also might donk smallish again for value, although the gig is likely up at this point.

As played, I'm betting more on the river, probably 1/2 PSB. Our hand is face up and he probably knows that but he'll have a hard time folding AT / KK-JJ to a reasonable bet of this size.

I think we probably could have eked out a bit more profit from this guy, but at least we got some. Playing out of position makes it so much more difficult to get value.

ETA: If we think this guy can pay off worse, we could play for stacks with "smallish" bets just slightly more than 1/2 PSB on each street. The question is whether we think he'll do that, and if we don't, then going for 2 bets of value isn't horrendous.

GcluelessNLnoobG

You have to go for max value pre and post against a player that won't make things hard on you without a better hand. There is nothing more to it than that.