Right this nonsense about levelling a villain who's already making gigantic blunders and forcing him to play better because we believe we can adjust better before the next PLO seat opens up....it's all legit poker strategy....

also, if we're going to go through the effort of cultivating reads on Vs, when would we use them if we only have hands?

OP exploited his weakness based on a read, you cant seem to grasp that for some reason

No I totally grasp it. I think it's extra bad, high variance, questionably slim EV.

What you don't grasp is that if we are exploitign weakness based on a read...the worst thing we can do....is screw up that read. Even worse than the worst, is if that change causes villain to play better (ie. not spew with T4o)

I don't want to make a play for the pot. I want him to keep bluffing. And I'm glad he didn't ask me to the prom -- I went to six proms and that was enough!

THEN DON'T SHOW HIM THAT YOU'LL CALL DOWN SUPER LIGHT

Raise the river, show the ace of spades, keep printing money.

I have no idea when my PLO seat was going to open. I was next in line, but that can take hours.

Great, plenty of time to cultivate a whole new read on villain. You're back to square 1. Well played.

Is this your new argument since you lost all the others?

Again, I can change gears, too. I'm sorry this concept is new to you, but you'll get it eventually.

a) we have to screw up the read sometime, or its worthless. if you dont get paid for the read, you might as well just forget it.

b) if a guy is playing T4o in a raised pot, how much do you really think he's going to tighten up?

if i were a betting man (which i am), i'd bet he's going to tighten up not a significant amount.

No I think dave started this tangent argument about trying to level the villain with some metagame ninjitsu.

it's still 175 to win 250 as an 11 to 9 dog no matter what arguments you want to have. Keep stacking those sklansky bucks

Okay, let's start with this one.

Villain isn't making gigantic blunders. Villain has recognized that he can crush most of the table by attacking weakness. Villain is actually playing quite well. He's putting everyone else to hard decisions. He's on his game, making good reads, and employing those reads to win a ton of pots.

I used to employ the old "let's wait for a big hand, then trap him into bluffing" strategy too. But here's the thing: that strategy works great for him. He gets all the pots where we DON'T have a monster, and he tries to stay on his guard and aware of the spots where we're trapping. Eventually he'll lose a medium-sized pot to us, but he doesn't care because he already stole three medium-sized pots where he had trash and we lacked intestinal fortitude.

When we call him down with ace-high, it does indeed force him to adjust. Whether it's after one light calldown or three light calldowns depends on what else we see from him. But eventually when he raises or calls light preflop, intending to outplay the field, he's also going to notice "oh ****, that villain is in the pot and s/he's onto my strategy." And that's good, because that leaves him making hard decisions.

My basic rule in poker is "put your opponents to tough decisions, while avoiding spots where you have to make tough decisions." This table bully is following that rule very well. Calling him in this spot wrecks his plan. That's a really good thing.

How are we an 11 to 9 dog again? Are those numbers derived from your range which was so off it's not relevant in this discussion?

No...this is crazy. If villain is making a mistake, then forcing him to adjust is a mistake. We should let him keep making the mistake.

Now get ready to learn something.

Oh, and wasn't the Hero on her way to being birthday drunk? Does that seem like a good time to start trying to cultivate new reads

http://www.pokerstrategy.com
Board: 9s5s3c9h2s
Equity Win Tie
MP2 54.63% 54.15% 0.48% { TT-22, AJs-A2s, KJs-K2s, Q2s+, J2s+, T2s+, 92s+, 82s+, 72s+, 62s+, 52s+, 42s+, 32s, AJo-A2o, K2o+, Q2o+, J2o+, T2o+, 92o+, 82o+, 72o+, 62o+, 52o+, 42o+, 32o }
BU 45.37% 44.89% 0.48% { AsJc }


Against the original range I posted (a sensible range), we're only slightly better. Your logic is flawed, because the WIDER the villain's range here....the WORSE our hand gets.

If you are concerned about being check-raised on the flop, you should give some consideration to limping pre. You shouldn't automatically raise or automatically limp, but both options have their merits.

I have two things for you to think about. Does he usually raise preflop with two Broadway cards? If so, that makes it much more likely that he hit the flop since more of his range is made up of two small cards. Does he ever donk into the preflop raiser or does he always seem to go for a check-raise? If he sometimes likes to lead into a preflop raiser on a low board when he catches a piece, this may mean his range should be weighted a bit more towards air.

I consider limp-calling with T4o to be a gigantic blunder so I am inclined to think villain probably found a table that fails to exploit an easily exploitable player rather than him being a good player who is widening his preflop range so he can run over the table.

@IDWH...

You can't just take what you have determined to be this guys pre-flop calling range and slap it onto the river, compare it to the pot odds we are looking at and then say "See look!! Bad call!!!". It doesn't work like that. You also can't take the total amount of money we put into the pot across multiple streets and compare it to the pot size (this is where I'm assuming you got this 175 to win 250 figure...?)

We have to call $125 OTR to win $300.

300/125 = 2.4

2.4:1, or 1 in 3.4 times... means we need to be correct

1/3.4 or approximately 29.5% of the time to break even on a call.

Note that even with the range you have assigned, we have well over the ~30% equity needed to call profitably.

But based on the reads the OP has provided for us and a bit of common poker knowledge I think that we can assume that based on Villains river sizing that he is somewhat polarized in this spot, meaning that he either has 9x or better, or he has air. Given Villains apparent tendencies to play a wide range, willingness to bluff, and inherent difficulty of making a strong hand in NLHE, make this a good spot to look him up with A high.

I will also note that if you at all agree with me that Villains range OTR is polarized, then raising the river so that we don't have to show our hand is absolutely ludicrous. He will just snap us off with basically 100% of his value range and fold his air.

I will admit that there is the possibility that Villain may be bluffing with the best hand some of the time and when we call we look stupid and a raise may get him to fold said "bluff", but this situation will occur such a small % of the time that it doesn't come close to outweighing the factors I have outlined above. This is especially true when our Villain have have so much "pure air" in his range as he did in this particular case.

^^^^^^ nice poast

congrats on learning to use the slider, now try and actually modify it for a range that makes sense based on the action



now lets look at a range that makes a little more sense...

as i said in post #2, he's playing an extremely wide range if anything on the Flop/Turn help him. thats 90+%

but he limped, OP said he's raising often, so lop off the top 15%, which is basically all broadways and 77+

turn we have no way to reduce the range further.

river, he confidently bets. is a duece or a 3 confidently betting there? not in my estimation unless it's 92, 93, 33 or 22. add into the fact that he immediately bets. if he hit a flush or had a monster hand, most people tend to think about what their opponent will call rather then instabet.

that puts us at almost 60/40, not 45/55.

Equity Win Tie
UTG 58.43% 58.43% 0.00% AsJc
UTG+1 41.57% 41.57% 0.00% 66-22, A6s, A4s, K8s-K4s, Q8s-Q4s, J9s-J4s, T4s+, 92s+, 84s+, 74s+, 64s+, 54s, A9o-A4o, K9o-K4o, QTo-Q4o, J4o+, T4o+, 92o+, 84o+, 74o+, 64o+, 54o

I tried explaining conditional probability to you yesterday. It didn't take. You're still computing an opening hand range, then running those same numbers at the river as though they're all equally likely. That's terrible math.

Read AsianNit's post. He's doing it right. The range begins as nearly ATC (minus premiums) and is adjusted based on additional information on the flop, turn, and river.

Or just think it through. Your model is telling you that adding a ton of air to his range makes this play LESS profitable. That doesn't sound right. Either it's a brilliant new insight or the model is funky. Assume option B until proven otherwise. #ThatsAlsoHowScienceWorksBTW

I didn't take "my determination" of a pre-flop calling range. I took the bottom 95% of hands. Everyone's talking about a range that is heavy with air. What range would YOU assign Professor? I tried assigning a sensible range and that got flamed because OBVIOUSLY T4off is iin his range. So if we're using results, then bottom 95% seems totally fine. A guy who plays this aggro COULD be slowplaying AA, that's still totally plausible. If everyone was folding to your raises with T4off, would you start bombing pots with AA? So taking 15% of the top as Johnny suggested seems too generous. Same thing goes for flopped sets and any other potential monster hand. A 95% range seems fine based on all the responses here that says "guy's got two napkins!!!...CAAAAWWWL"

And the math is not wrong, just realistic. When you call on the turn, it's because you intend to call down all the way. You MUST consider the river action in your turn decision. Anything else is bad poker. Where I admit that the math is wrong, is in calculating the 175, since on the turn we don't know what the villain will actually bet on the river. And with equity this close, if he bets a larger amount we are SKAH-ROOD

Professor - your last two paragraphs completely contradict each other. If his range is SOO wide, then he has a lot of made hands that he would be bluffing with. That's the reason for the raise. I dont' want to pay off pocket 6's. Either nut hands that snap us off are a big part of his range, or his range is mostly air. Make up your mind.

I'll accept that as a friendly amendment. I'm not imagining this is some 10/25 player waiting for the bigger game to open up. But lots of llsnl tables are exploitable in this way. It's a great strategy if the table doesn't adjust. It isn't a leak if everyone is scared to make it a leak.

Very nice post.

^Reported for trolling


Can you tell us what you like about it? Is it the short-sighted math or the contradictions about the reasons for betting/calling?