Villain is 20 year old black male. Effective stacks are $100. I have seen him bet $3 on the river into an $80 pot after being raised on the flop and bet big against on the turn. Also saw him call a $5 river valuebet with 10 high and he tabled his hand. possibly high or drunk but no drink in front of him. Not positionally aware and take a few seconds for every decision.

Hero - Don't think the player notices anything but himself but at any rate hero has been playing LAG. I have $350 in front, villain didn't see me bust my first $100 buy in. Villain did see me shove pocket 8's and win against AJ preflop.

Hero is UTG +2 and has Pocket 5's.
Hero raises to 13
folds to villain on the button, villain calls.
folds around.

flop comes 5 A A rainbow.
hero checks
villain bets $4
hero calls

turn comes 7x
hero checks
villain bets $4
hero raises to $15
villain calls

River comes 9x
Hero goes all in
Villain folds.

tear me apart, thank you.

Ok, dude you have a LAG image bet flop. Then you c/c a 4$ bet and you have a boat,lol. Why would you check to let him bet when you know he bets 4$ bets?

Then you check again lol, and raise to 15$. On top of that instead of value betting you shove like an complete donk. Villain will never call you especially a black dude. He wants to be the aggressor not call all his chips off.

I'd probably lead the flop here.

Once you elected not to do that, you had no choice but to play it the way you did. When he bets $4 on the flop, the vast majority of the time he has some completely dumb weak hand, and raising here would do nothing but fold him out, so even though the $4 is stupid, you have to call.

Turn, brick comes off, he bets $4 again. Small check/raise here actually seems like the right move since I doubt you were getting any more, since the board is AA57, you have 55, and he's unlikely to have Ax.

River, you shove and pray he's ******ed and somehow hit a pair or something that will allow him to call. Seems fine. This time he didn't, but that happens.

Nothing to really tear you apart about here. I don't see any lost value; you can't dream up a line that causes your opponent to stack off with absolutely nothing when that's what they have. It's obvious he didn't have an Ace here, so there's nothing you could have done to get his stack in the middle except allow him to get to the turn/river with his QT or KJ etc and hope he pairs and then spews.

I doubt the LAG image matters, his opponent is intoxicated and almost certainly inexperienced at the game, I'm sure he's not taking our Hero's image into consideration.

I would have bet the flop, agreed, but once Hero doesn't do this, he can't really do anything but call the $4. The vast majority of the time, Villain has some total air hand here and is not going to call a pot sized flop check/raise or anything close to it.

As far as the river, shoving really is the best option. Villain has $68 left and either has absolute air and is folding, or paired the 9/7/5 and will call. $68 here is going to get called IMO almost as often as $20.

Lead flop for 1/2 pot.

On turn, I'd let him bet first since he did it already.

River shove is fine against a drunk. He calls that as often as he calls 35.

Really, you flopped the world heads up against a guy who was going to commit very little. You can't expect to make much here.

lead flop you are always bluffing this board if you miss

lead the flop. raise his ******ed $4 bets.

he didn't have anything, so there wasn't much value to be had anyway.

I'd rather limp small pocket pairs from EP and setmine against the world than try to outplay someone postflop OOP where I'm going to hate the majority of flops/turns/rivers.

Stacks are so small that we can risk a street of betting to check thru (cuz we'll still be able to get stacks in on later streets if wanted), so checking flop and letting villain perhaps bluff off some chips is fine.

Next time try to post pot size on each street so we don't have to do the math ourselves.

Pot is $34 with villain having $83 left. I kinda hate this possibly checking thru, so I think I'd just donk $20 which leaves for an easy river shove. As played, I'd still raise to about $20 just to make the river that much easier.

River is standard; we're shoving basically a PSB. Any other bet on the river would be horrible, IMO.

GcluelessNLnoobG

False. Villain folded -- no value. Any bet, even $2.00, that would have gotten a call from a worse hand would have been better than a shove that got no action.


It is abundantly clear that Villain has a very weak hand. Bet a little and get those little hands (which aren't busted draws) to call. Villain seemed to be OK with the $15.00 committed on the previous round, so try something in that range. 15-25 should get a call.

Remember why you bet. "I have the best hand" is *not* a reason to bet. You bet either to get your opponent to make an incorrect call, or to get your opponent to make an incorrect fold. If you have the best hand, bet, and get no action, you made a mistake if your opponent was capable of calling a smaller bet.

I think most on this board have a fear of "well what if I could of shoved/made a bigger bet and he called" and use that to justify shoves and say that they are "standard." Not picking on you GG, just see it a ton. I have seen it from some top posters also and it really surprises me. Grunch is correct here. The bet that gets the job done is the correct bet. There is nothing standard in poker, and each situation should be unique. I have been trying to do away with that word in my vocabulary. I throw it around loosely, but it shouldn't even be used TBH. Think outside the box a little bit.

This is what hand reading is for. You gotta know what you're opponent's range is, every step of the way.

While a smaller bet may have been better, the reason is not the reason Grunch and APD are giving. You're being results oriented - this is no different from shoving with AA and getting sucked out on by 36o. OK, maybe it's a little different, but the same principle applies. Over time, these plays may be more +EV. You can never measure with 100% certainty the chance that someone will call, but this is as close to a sure thing as ever - if he has an A or 68, he's calling. If he doesn't, he's probably folding to any bet.

Harrington shows in HOC vol 2(?) that in most cases, making a river shove is correct - while you will get called a smaller % of the time, the fact that you will win so much more on the times you do call more than makes up for it. I won't summarize all the math here, but his argument is quite compelling, and has more mathematical logic behind it than "he folded so it was the wrong play."

In this hand, only if you can definitively rule out an A (which is difficult considering a drunk incompetent player) should you try to extract a small amount of value from a lesser pair.

Hate to burst your bubble, but there's much more to poker than just math.

I can do the math for you easily. The EV of a river shove that has a zero percent chance of getting called is zero.

I guess I should expect no less based on your handle....of corset no one is claiming poker is all math, but you should try to understand the math so you know when it does apply. This is a very mathematical situation so by ignoring math you're just leaving money on the table.

You might want to check out my join date.

The word standard has been retired from 2+2. We don't say that anymore. If you don't know that get out and read more on 2+2.

Like I said the black guy is not calling a shove. He will call a value bet. But when you shove even a donk can put you on a narrow range.

If he has an Ax or 68 then the money is probably going in regardless. That's beyond LDO. In fact if he has those hands then this hand plays out differently. Since you narrowed a what if down to Ax and 68 I will use a what if V has 1010 or JJ? Do we still expect to get called when we shove? The hands you mentioned are cooler hands and play themselves out. Most of 1/2 is a friggin cooler. When its not a cooler though, do we expect to just shove every river and expect to get paid sometimes? How about instead we build a range, use V's tendencies and decide what to do. Sometimes its a shove and sometimes its a small vbet.

I see it all the time on the board - "My advantage at the table compared to the other players is my Value Betting... it's much better than theirs." Oh yeah??? (That one and "hero is TAG")

Grunch and APD, I get what you're saying, but I still think a shove here is >>> any other bet. And it does come down to math, IMO.

Guess at the percentage of time villain calls a smallish 1/3 to 1/2 PSB. Now figure out the percentage of time he'd have to call a PSB to make a shove just as profitable. Now ask yourself if it's reasonable that villain is going to call one but not the other that great of a percentage difference. It isn't reasonable, IMO.

ETA: I'll do it quickly myself. Let's guess that villain calls your $25 bet 50% of the time. He'd have to call a $64 shove just 19% of the time to be the same thing. He's calling half his chips over 2.5 times more than a shove? No way. Besides, $64 in red chips is barely a handful; it's not even one stack. It's easily grabbed and put in the middle at virtually no different rate than $25 would be here.

Plus we also have to factor in the times Villain actually has an Ace but only calls a river bet "just in case" (but of course he's never folding). Plus we have to factor in the fact that we're playing for < 50 BBs. This ain't no 300 BB decision. Villain's have a tendency to stack off very lightly here with these stack sizes (we've all seen this, right? stack off light, rebuy, try to play better, etc.), and we're making a huge mistake by not taking advantage of this here with nutty hands. After all, he's got two pear! And we could be bluffing! And, dammit, he didn't drive all the way out here just to fold the winning hand!

I actually find HOC a little wishy washy on stuff like this, in that on the one hand he recommends that (overall) shoving with the nuts is the optimum play, but then in the weak games section I don't believe he bets nearly enough on most streets in order to play for stacks.

GimoG

Pot is $64 - V has $68 when we shove- We already know he is a short stacker and is playing weird so the "standard" (man I hate that word) doesn't apply here. In fact he is probably happy to have $68 in front of him because "all it takes is a couple of hands and I'm back in it!" How do we get value out of anything that has some kind of showdown value against a villain who fires $3 into $80 pots OTR? We are folding out all air, we are getting stacks in with coolers, but what about the rest of his range? What if he has 66 here? Go for $0 or go for an extra $15? Think outside the box and treat the situation as unique because QFT it is.

@GG You have to know the player. Reading op, villain is a tighty probably playing with rent money. Who bets 4$,lol.

Harrington advocates shoving the nuts sometimes. Its a beginner book. Just to teach you the fundamentals. HOC shouldn't come into your mind when your in a hand or reviewing hands. Your way past that now.

Guys like limon and jman should come to mind.. Don't worry about label's treat each situation different and balance playing tag/lag.

Villain is betting like 25 cents into a $100 pot. He's a beginner; it doesn't matter what level I'm at. The fundamentals for beating a beginner are simple: shove when you have the ~nuts.

FWIW, and I'd have to review the hand histories to confirm, but I actually think I might disagree with how HOC handles a lot of the weak game examples. But I also get the feeling that it's "weak games" are different than my "weak games".

FYP.

He basically talks about expanding your tp range. Like adding hands like A9s+,KJ,KQ and AJ to our range. When you make tp and players like to draw or call with tp weak kicker or less(loose passive's).

HOC is basic fundamentals. It doesn't teach you advanced concepts. The book is for beginners. So I wouldn't doubt you would disagree with him. The book is not meant for you.

Reads alone in the op tells me that shoving is -EV vs this opponent/situation.

I agree - I think his "weak games" are used in the sense of weak-tight and weak loose, as in 'not aggressive.' Most 1/2 games I play in are way too aggressive. Still, the general advice he gives is correct: focus less on randomizing play and information hiding and just make +EV plays.

And 1/2 is a beginner game, so a beginner book is what is needed. Are we too advanced to fold weak hands out of position? That's beginner advice that applies to almost any game. Playing advanced in a beginner game is just leveling yourself. Read the 'Poker Mindset' for a more detailed explanation.

This is so wrong that it hurts to comment on it. Are you also saying using advanced techniques like logic and probability are not warranted?

Do we need to play like donks and play our 2 cards like everyone else at the table?

Do we even pay attention to showdown hands or implying reads on our villains?

Sound like the "lol regs", that I can't talk poker with. I try to speak and they say "you can't do that or use that technique these guys suck". I just say "ok dude".

Maybe your stuck in a world of your own and really don't know what advanced thinking is?

Given that the support for your arguments in this thread, as in every other thread I've seen you post in, consist of some variation of "lol only an idi0t would do that." I don't see the point if repeating the logical basis for.my decision that apparently was a little tldr for your comprehension.