Gross River Decision w/ Bottom Set
04-20-2018
, 05:40 AM
Quote:
I actually think the way the hand went down QQ and KK (in that order) seem like the most likely of villain's holdings. It's interesting he doesn't raise the turn though. Any A, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, or heart besides the K
are either action killing cards or often give someone else a better hand. There's 26 cards that complete the FD or SD and 8 cards even make a 1-liner to a straight. That's 56% of the deck making bad rivers, and the hand started 3-ways with two limpers. It's fairly likely any of those cards will give hero a better hand (from villain's perspective), especially with the donk bet (donk bets are very often FDs / SDs). Any halfway competent TAG should always raise here. The way he played this hand alone leads me to believe he's probably not actually a TAG and more of a TP / nit type.
This hand is interesting mostly because of how important an accurate read of villain is here. If villain doesn't bluff much and would just flat 2p hands OTR (typical TP / nit play) then it's a pretty easy fold. If he's actually a halfway competent TAG who adjusts to his opponents, his range should include some thinnish value bets against a perceived semi maniac and he should have fewer sets (except maybe QQ) because a halfway competent TAG would have raised the other sets by the turn. So if villain's a nit we are losing quite possibly 100% of the time costing us $305. If he's a TAG capable of adjusting to hero's image, calling is +EV by a few hundred dollars.
I suspect OP read his opponent incorrectly. I sometimes think people are TAGs because they look a certain way, I see them raising, entering a decent number of pots, etc., but often they're just nits getting good cards. There are in fact some warning signs in this hand that villain is probably not a competent TAG, even not knowing his hand. First, villain's gigantic preflop sizing is suspicious. Good players usually don't raise all their hands to 8.5BB (particularly OTB) and they don't fork their ranges by raising huge with super premium hands and less with others. Second, he flats a donk bet as PFR on a wet dynamic flop. I almost always raise donk bets when I'm IP, regardless of my hand strength. It's just a weak hand being played poorly by a weak player like 90% of the time. So the large raise followed by flatting a donk bet twice IP then raising all-in does not look how a TAG would play anything here and makes me lean strongly toward reevaluating the guy as a nit and folding.
Also, at this level, very few players are competent TAGs. 9/10 players who at first seem like competent TAGs are actually bad players. You may assume they play something like 18/16 (typical TAG) when really they're 9/4 (nit) or 20/5 (TP) or 30/15 (this last one raises about the same hands a TAG would but limps in way too often). I'm of the opinion without strong evidence to the contrary, one should always assume villain is a bad player, regardless of what's been witnessed over the past few hours, because over a small sample size almost anything can happen.
As an aside, I really like hero's donk bet here precisely because competent TAGs will see it as weak and be tempted to raise it. In this hand this does two things--you encourage a raise which builds the pot with the likely best hand, and you get crucial information about villain by his response to the donk bet.
are either action killing cards or often give someone else a better hand. There's 26 cards that complete the FD or SD and 8 cards even make a 1-liner to a straight. That's 56% of the deck making bad rivers, and the hand started 3-ways with two limpers. It's fairly likely any of those cards will give hero a better hand (from villain's perspective), especially with the donk bet (donk bets are very often FDs / SDs). Any halfway competent TAG should always raise here. The way he played this hand alone leads me to believe he's probably not actually a TAG and more of a TP / nit type.This hand is interesting mostly because of how important an accurate read of villain is here. If villain doesn't bluff much and would just flat 2p hands OTR (typical TP / nit play) then it's a pretty easy fold. If he's actually a halfway competent TAG who adjusts to his opponents, his range should include some thinnish value bets against a perceived semi maniac and he should have fewer sets (except maybe QQ) because a halfway competent TAG would have raised the other sets by the turn. So if villain's a nit we are losing quite possibly 100% of the time costing us $305. If he's a TAG capable of adjusting to hero's image, calling is +EV by a few hundred dollars.
I suspect OP read his opponent incorrectly. I sometimes think people are TAGs because they look a certain way, I see them raising, entering a decent number of pots, etc., but often they're just nits getting good cards. There are in fact some warning signs in this hand that villain is probably not a competent TAG, even not knowing his hand. First, villain's gigantic preflop sizing is suspicious. Good players usually don't raise all their hands to 8.5BB (particularly OTB) and they don't fork their ranges by raising huge with super premium hands and less with others. Second, he flats a donk bet as PFR on a wet dynamic flop. I almost always raise donk bets when I'm IP, regardless of my hand strength. It's just a weak hand being played poorly by a weak player like 90% of the time. So the large raise followed by flatting a donk bet twice IP then raising all-in does not look how a TAG would play anything here and makes me lean strongly toward reevaluating the guy as a nit and folding.
Also, at this level, very few players are competent TAGs. 9/10 players who at first seem like competent TAGs are actually bad players. You may assume they play something like 18/16 (typical TAG) when really they're 9/4 (nit) or 20/5 (TP) or 30/15 (this last one raises about the same hands a TAG would but limps in way too often). I'm of the opinion without strong evidence to the contrary, one should always assume villain is a bad player, regardless of what's been witnessed over the past few hours, because over a small sample size almost anything can happen.
As an aside, I really like hero's donk bet here precisely because competent TAGs will see it as weak and be tempted to raise it. In this hand this does two things--you encourage a raise which builds the pot with the likely best hand, and you get crucial information about villain by his response to the donk bet.
04-20-2018
, 09:00 AM
