Hero has been at the table for about 90 minutes and has steadily brought his stack up to about $500 from $300 by playing mostly ABC with a few flashes of LAG play where I would make a position raise, and steal the pot post flop with one or two barrels. I've shown down a few winners here and there, and believe I have a "this guy knows what he's doing" image. ($500)

Villain 1: Mid/early 20's latin man dressed like a 14 year old wanna-be thug. Sunglasses, oversized team logo apparel, and a matching flat-brim hat with the sticker still on it. Not very good, but seems to be catching cards. He plays extremely straight forward, betting and raising when he has it, and checking/folding when he doesn't. Will play some speculative hands and chase draws. ($Covers)

Villain 2: Mid 20's white kid wearing a really dirty T-shirt. I dont' mean profane, I mean it was stained all over with dirt, grease, and who knows what else. Also not a good player, but talks and acts like he's at least trying to think about the game. Probably would classify as TAG if you multiply the T by 2 and divide the AG by 5. ($100ish)

Villain 3: Mid 30's overweight woman. If she wasn't sitting right next to me, I wouldn't even know she was there. Has been virtually invisible the entire 40 minutes or so she's been at the table. ($80)

Action folds to V1 in the cutoff and he raises to $7

This is a smaller than normal raise size for this villain. He's made this raise before, but has also made raises to $12. Raise size definitely seems tied to his hand strength. Definitely doesn't seem smart enough to make a weak lead with a monster to induce a raise.

V2 button, and V3 SB both call

Hero is in the BB with A6 and raises to $32. The goal here was to get a fold or two, preferably from V1 who I felt did not have a good hand. If one or both of the short stacks came along, I felt I would have a very high % jam on the flop.

V1 Calls, V2 Calls, V3 goes all-in for $80

This doesn't necessarily mean a strong hand, just one that's good enough to go with. The way she bet she seemed impatient, and frustrated by the aggressive action at the table to that point.

V1 already passed on one chance to re-raise, which I believe caps his range at JJ or likely worse. V2 has passed on TWO chances to raise, so his range is capped even lower, and at this point is probably aching for an excuse to fold.

Hero raises to $135

Just about a min-raise, but big enough to cover V2's stack, and I'm a zillion percent sure he won't put it in. Also, it's now $100 back to V1 who hasn't really shown me he loves his hand. I felt that raising to $200 or more would look a little too bluff-y and would compel some stubbornness from hands I want to fold. (99-JJ, AQ, possibly AK)

Spewy or Sound?

Yuck. Flat the first time an nut-flush mine, imo. Light 3-bets are for HU or 2-way squeezes, imo. Not 3-way pots.

AP, Isolating is kinda spewy here, but not horribad. There's so much dead money in the pot, and your raise will look huge. You're likely at best 40% against V3 (mostly medium PPs, some 2-broadway hands), but the liekly dead money should make up for it. Just realize that if you have to show, your image will be very different from now on.

This comes of the spewy attempt to squeeze too many ways, though. Now you're in a very high variance situation that might be neutral EV now, but that's just because you contributed tot eh dead money in the pot by making a negative EV play before, imo.

Why even 3-bet pre? You have a good read on your villains' tendencies - call and play poker.

Spew. You have near zero IO won't win anything more with TP. Easy in the muck and move on to the next hand the first time it comes to you.

Two comments.

1. SB never just comes along. Tight player, short stack. She's in, brother. And yes, it does mean she has a strong hand. Frustration = KK instead of AA. She figures you're gonna suck out on her.
2. Bicycle, or Commerce?

1) Disagree. Tight female players playing a hyper-ABC style know NOT to go to the flop, out of position, 4-ways, with KK. She raises JJ+ for sure. At least that's my read.

2) About as far as you can get from those two places: Foxwoods

Asked

And answered

Not really sure what this is saying. Pre-flop poker is still poker.

And yeah, I have a good read. And my read on V1 is that he makes his mistakes pre-flop, and on the flop. He'll call a little too much pre-flop, but fold to unusual aggression. On the flop, he'll donk often when he connects, and check/folds when he doesn't.

In this hand, I 3-bet to isolate the V1. I felt he would call with plenty of not-great stuff, and let me have the pot when he misses post-flop. So if I'm stealing the pot, it might as well be big. Surely you see the benefit of playing a $75 pot HU as opposed to a $25 pot 4-ways.

Also, his initial raise was small, which was a significant tell by itself. But that set up my small-ish 3-bet allowing me to fold cheaply if I'm wrong and get 4-bet.

You know your opponents better than I do. That said my point was since our opponents are face-up post, we can decide when and how much $$ we want to put in post. And yes, I agree: if we're ISO'ing V1 we need to make it large enough to discourage callers behind.

Moreover, this deep and OOP I'd rather 3-bet something like suited broadways because they play better post.

Not to get too off topic, but you're going to struggle with the idea above in bold.

If your opponents are playing face-up post flop, and most flops miss most hands, then your opponents will be putting in $0 a huge majority of the time. So to make money, you have to pump up pots, preflop.

Maybe you play in different games than I do, but I will say the most common species of fish that I come across are guys who call too much pre-flop, and then fold too much post flop. They see a guy raising 3 or 4 times and orbit and they start calling with anything that looks pretty hoping to "trap" the aggressive player post flop. This is why good LAG's are considered the best players. They play a style that perfectly exploits this type of fish.


If you're a winning player at 1/2 then I would guess that at least 2/3 of your win-rate comes from making big raises pre-flop, getting called, and then scooping orphan pots when your opponents weak range misses.

I'm a winning $1/2 and $2/5 player. I play in a lot of stationy games where the majority of my profits come from fat value.

If the situation arises where my opponents are very fit-or-fold post, then I'm ISO'ing a ton in position.

Then you're probably missing a lot of good spots.

Position doesn't really matter if the guy is gonna fold every time he fails to make a strong connection with a flop. Whether you lead out, or bet after he checks to you, you're still putting in one bet post-flop

If I've missed and I'm not continuing if I face resistance, then it doesn't matter if I lead and get raised, or if I'm check-raised.

The goal is to win the pot, on the flop, uncontested. That's much more a matter of tendencies and bet sizing than it is a matter of position.

I agree, if I'm in a lineup that has a ton of fit-or-folders post, you can 3! ATC and show a profit.

That said, it's rare in my room that A) the $1/2 game is deep enough, and B) the players will give up that easily post.

FWIW, I look for these kind of spots a lot more than I had even 6 months ago. They just don't come up that often in my games.

This may well be true at Foxwoods, from what I hear. It is somewhat (but nowhere near 2/3 of winrate) true in Vegas. It is true no other large market in America, AFAICT. Most of our winrate in most parts of America comes from bet-sizing well for fat value against players who call too much.

spew, over thinking syndrome bruh. This is almost as bad as http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...eflop-1317981/

sounds spewy

I think the first light 3-bet is not great. Our position is bad, we have a lot of opponents, and it sounds like we don't really expect them to fold. Moreover, A6s is a worse hand than an ace with a suited wheel card. Another thing to consider is that this raise is relatively close to a straight bluff, as preflop raises go. Our hand really does not have a lot of value against strong but not amazing hands. Suited wheel aces are good bluff hands because they block AA and they do as well as or better against AA/KK as any other cards. But if you're playing OOP against someone who might have KQs, all of a sudden you have a problem. KQs is much more likely to flop a good hand than A6s. You don't block KQs. And you're not getting all in so you don't get to see 5 cards and show down for free. So it's not a great spot for this play.

That said, it's cool you're thinking outside the box and looking for spots to make money. Keep it up, but find better spots!

Spewy.

Why do you want to destroy your image? Seriously, if you can build your stack from $300 to $500 in 90 minutes with ABC play, THEN CONTINUE THE ABC PLAY! So simple: whatever works… do more of it.

Fold pre. A6s is a speculative hand. Playing speculative hands like this OOP is -EV all day.

As played, fold to V3's shove. No implied odds, you are dominated by any A she has, and only 1 live card against any PP. The best thing that can happen is you don't have to show your cards.

At least you 3bet for the right reason (as a bluff). I think if everyone was deeper we could call pre. Your hand is definitely fold or 3b bluff pre in this situation with a little more emphasis on fold. You need to give them a reason to fold. If you made it like $50 then he'd recognize the stacks behind him may shove and he'll have to call $100 or more. Obviously gii against the shorties if they shove over your $50 raise. I really don't mind gii against them. Just hate life when V1 calls us pre and the shyt storm follows. I think what you will find is that V1 has hands like 99-JJ, ATs+, AJ+ and those hands are hard to fold pre flop. Gotta make him want to fold.

as played it´s mandatory imo to 5bet due to dead money, and i also like your sizing, although would make it a lil bigger. i don´t think that would look bluffy, but discourage v1 from calling although he may be suspicious. we want FE with this hand, if i´m not mistaken...

but agree with above comments, 3betting pre with this hand is spewy. perfectly fine hand to defend your bb mw, not squeezing and most likely getting isolated vs a dominated hand which just can´t fold pre. it´s probably fine [B]in position heads up[B] vs your latino thug, but spewy multiway oop. your FE is also quite poorly mw, one of the shorties is getting it in here quite often.

See comments in red

FPS. Suit yourself. In other words you really aren't playing ABC at all, just hoping it appears that way.

Maybe I've just been too good for too long and I've forgotten what ABC play is.

You asked for feedback and got it.

IMO you are way, way, way, way, way, way over thinking / leveling yourself (can't level others if you are more than one level ahead of them) for a $1/2 game.

Super lol.

Yes you do. It's what you've done in almost all of the threads you've started. If you don't want feedback from this forum, stop posting in it.

If you continue to be combative every time your play is critiqued, I'll gladly help you.