If the bold is true, then every call made in this hand is a spew.

Dial up your odds calculator and play with villain's range. If i tighten or loosen villain's range, even to extremes, the percentages don't move more than a few points.

We're somewhere between an 11 to 9 favorite or an 11 to 9 dog, no matter what range you give the villain. Except when the 8h rolls off on the river....then we're crushed.

Also, the more you widen villain's range, the WORSE our hand strength is.

Against the range I listed, we're 50/50. Against ATC, we're an underdog. Against ATC minus premiums (bottm 90%), we are BEHIND 45/55

except we're not calling a river bet against ATC. you said yourself, he checks back hands w/ SDV, so that skews his hands to legit hands and pure air. do you really think V is betting here with 65? or weaker 2 pair? 77? TT? maybe he does, but i can guarantee there is some portion of his range he checks.

I think the spade puts more good hands in his check/calling range.

But now you're changing the story. If we called on the turn to either 1) Catch a pair 2) Bluff spades, then say that. But we're four pages deep and all we've talked about is how villain has nothing.

EDIT: And if we know that villain has showdown value hands when he checks....do we bet? If not, then the turn call was meh, break even at best. If we are going to bet, then the math is the same. It's still 175 to win 250, except now we're against way less air.

EDIT2: no wait, it's even worse if we bet the river. BEcause we want folds, not calls, it's 175 to win 125. Villain would need like 70% air on the turn.

exactly, so when he bets he has less medium strength hands, more strong hands and more air.

re equilab: it didnt take me long to remove random combos to get it to 60/40 and that was with minimal thought process and no looking at suits. i'm at work so i'm not going to putz around with it any longer but it really is less ridiculous than you think.

I still think that he has more than monsters and air when he bets. Like if the 4 of spades rolled off on the river, does he check/call for value? Probably not, we probably call with the worst hand in that case.

No matter how you slice it, we're calling 175 to win 250, and we're absolutely blind as to how well the river card hits villain.

Weirdly, the 8h costs us like 12%, who knows what else could happen. We have ace high.

I think all the support for calling down relies way too much on the OP's vague read. I promise you if this hand was posted from the perspective of a 24 year old suburban white kid, or a 65 year old retiree in golf attire, or my handsome self.....the consensus would be way different.

As played, you got lucky that the guy called pre-flop with trash, and then decided to do the craziest thing in LLSNL and bluff a calling station. But I would need a much more solid read on the guy before I pegged him as a maniac. OP hadn't even been at the table long enough to be buzzed, and villain didn't show any hands.

Of course he's got more than monsters and air in his range. Given the flop texture and the action, he rates to have enough air in his range where AJ-high is good. Plus you have the added benefit of him not running us over in future hands now that he knows we are capable of calling him down super-light. In other words, a potentially -EV play now may reap rewards in more +EV down the line.

This is my new favorite Idontworkhere comment. There are a lot of competitors, but only one champion. Faced with actual data on the results of the hand (10-4o was in villain's range), you fabricate a range estimate that fits your prior instincts, but doesn't come anywhere close to his actual hand.

I'm sorry that the results of the hand don't fit your headcannon, IDWH. That's maybe an opportunity to adjust your thinking and learn some things.

And well-played, OP. It's a high-variance line, since I think he's going to play a lot of his weak value hands the same way, but it's also the best counter to his style. Take this line twice and he's either going to tilt or start playing ABC against you.

when you get a little perspective you'll understand that the most aggressive lines (which tend to be the ones you lobby for) are not always the best.

there are times we all should be a station, a nit, a maniac, a bully, etc

And what would you do with that information?

We just put up a sign that said "CALLING STATION". Yes, he will bluff less, but he's going to get better hands than T4o sometimes. Aggressive players get cards too. And when he does, you've already stamped his ticket to valuetown

It's so funny that you keep labeling me a calling station when that is your read of a 47-yr-old "soccer mom." You have no idea how V sees me -- he hasn't seen me play a hand. I had been at two tables with him -- long enough to get a good read, especially the way he was playing. It takes a LOT of champagne to get me buzzed. Also, I didn't peg him as a maniac. I pegged him as a table bully aggressively betting into any weakness. Very different.

If you can't learn to adjust, definitely keep playing every hand as aggressively as possible and don't mix it up at all. Very good advice for you.

have you ever heard the phrase "changing gears"?

I assure you i'm not referring to cars.

Dude. Connect the dots. The guy likes to bluff wide and bluff hard. We just stamped our forehead with "calling station." So now he won't bluff as wide or hard against us. He's going to shut down the bluffs and wait for value hands. That's called taking him off his game plan.

That's, y'know, a good thing.

The best way to counter a habitual check-raiser is to make weak leads with your big hands, not this.

It's a good thing when villains make the right adjustment? WHAT????

Didn't you just advocate taking this line twice?? But you also say the second time...he won't be bluffing??? Make up your mind dude!

LOL, You must have missed the thread where I advocated folding AK pre-flop.

No one ever said "as aggressively as possible" I said something like "make a play for the pot".

Also, if we're meta-gaming, the better play would have been to raise the river, let him fold his trash, show the ace of spades, and let him think we're a station who chased a flush.

He'll keep bluffing and barrelling on boards where the draws brick and we can happily station up with MADE HANDS.

So if he adjusts and value bets more/bluffs less, we adjust by bluffing more and calling down less. We don't know if he'll adjust, but we know what our adjustment should be. Once we station down and see he's value betting more, we adjust again. But until the villain proves to me he's not bluff happy, I agree we should revert to stationing made hands.

Yeah, but whose gears are you changing?

Villain's biggest mistake is betting weak hands too much. If we stop that, he plays better. I don't see what's good about that.

If he stops bluffing us and starts value betting more, we bluff him more. Its hard to make a hand in NLHE so we benefit from him having a narrowing range while allowing ourselves to profit from a wider range.

FPS dude. "if he adjusts...." "our adjustment will be...."

Before we showed our hand, we knew how villain was playing, and how to exploit it. Now the game has changed. We don't know how he will react, or if he will. So we're essentially blind going forward where we used to have a solid read.

And this is all moot. You and Java and Dave and everybody else here is just trying to bring this metagame **** up to start a fight with me. OP already said she's on the PLO list and is leaving the table anyway.

Back to the hand. We have ****. Villain has almost anything. If you want to race for 40BB's go play a donkament, you'll find all the gamble you want.

If you think villain is weak, make a play for the pot. Don't just call off half a stack cause he reminds you of a guy who didn't ask you to the prom.

because, in general, Vs at these levels don't make proper adjustments. they either overcompensate, under compensate, or just don't bother to compensate at all. we can take advantage of that once we know what he's doing.

this is how actual poker is played. you go a level higher than V. do you think that players at 5/10, 10/20, 25/50 will just allow you to do what you want and give you their money without ever adjusting to what they see you do? no, you need to play them then adjust and counter adjust to their adjustments and round and round.


just because you're on a list for another game doesnt mean you have to go, nor does it mean you will get called in a relatively quick order. being on the list is a nonfactor in this hand.

i have a kettle i'd like you to meet...

nonsense.

He's at level 1 attacking perceived weakness. We can exploit him by playing on level 2. Easy game.

If we do something that takes him off of level 1, we have to adjust. If he goes to level 2, we need to go to level 3. If he goes to level 0, we have to go to level 1. Why? For what purpose?? Everything was fine when he thought he could bluff us. If we're planning to take this line more than once, then we want him to keep bluffing!!

Nothing about showing our hand here is good. All it does is cloud our read on villain. Which...if we're calling down here, then it's BECAUSE WE HAVE A GREAT READ. Why **** it up?????

And as I said, we're leaving when the next PLO seat opens up. So making up metagame crap to tilt me was a fun game, but better luck next time.

Yes, they're all picking fights with you. It's not the other way around at all.

Do we know this is the last time we'll play versus this villain?

Dude, you need to chilllllllllllllllllll.