1/3 NYC card room. Tonight is pretty tame, not many straddling, bet sizing is pretty calm, where a $10-$15 raise pre is getting only a couple callers.

Hero ~$450. I think my image is competent/tight. I did make a couple moves earlier and got caught bluffing, I also tend to do a lot of advanced chip tricks (like finger rolls and flips and what not) and I'm never quite sure what that does to my image, so who knows. I'm in for $400 so I'm up $50 at this point

V1 ~$475 hipster looking dude (beard, nice headphones and a stylish print tee shirt) from London. He's been playing pretty LAG since he sat down an hour or so before this hand. He's been doing a lot of Mississippi straddle to $6-$10. About an hour earlier in a hand I was calling mostly in, I check/shoved a turn suspsecting he was bluffing, and he tanked for awhile and folded.

V2 ~$300 just sat down and is extremely passive. Lots of call/folds. Very quiet guy.

Hero is UTG and dealt JJ raise to $15
V1 calls in MP, V2 calls on button

Pot ~$45
Flop = 972

Hero bets $40
V1 calls, V2 calls
Pot ~$165

Turn = 972 5
Hero bets $125
V1 calls, V2 calls
Pot ~$540

River = 972 5 T
Hero checks
V1 goes all in for ~$300
V2 thinks and folds
Hero ??

Real quick... if you check/shoved because you thought he was bluffing, I hope you yourself had zero showdown value

OTTH

As played, I'd probably call it off since we block his Jx straight combos and seems like he bluffs. We need to be good 25% here. However, I'm thinking the turn might be a check. Yes, we do give free cards, but as this hand demonstrates, we gotta go for some pot control now to avoid a tough situation where we need to commit all our chips with only an over-pair... just my 2c. OOP sucks.

I'm not sure there's much Hero could do with pot control. If he had made just 1/2 PSB, the turn would have a $125 pot and the river would have $320 with $345 roughly left. I would have bet smaller simply because if I had a monster, I could get stacks in anyway.

As played, all we really beat is a bluff. We need to be good 27% of the time. With this villain, he's likely bluffing around that much of the time. Therefore, it isn't horrible decision either way. When I get in these situations, I look at the longer term. How am I going to react if I'm felted? If I'm in place where I'd just muck my cards, smile and reload, I'd call. If I'm going to steam about it, I'd fold. The reason is that I'm likely to play badly if I'm steaming. That tips the scales to making the call a -EV play if I'm going to be on tilt.

Surely if our goals are to improve and play higher stakes avoiding a possibly tiny +EV call to avoid tilting is long term -EV? Also the EV of being deep if we win is ignored here. From what I hear reading The Course by Ed Miller, getting stacked is something that will happen all the time in aggressive games cause people actually bluff and we need to call down. I think I call here. He's got like what T9s and TT for value? Maybe 86s or one of the two J8s combos? Probably doesn't have J8s cause if he called turn with that...seat change to his left immediately. Is he really flatting anything that beats JJ on that turn MW?

venice10 gives 27% based upon Hero putting in 26.3% of the money in the pot. A pot that hasn't been reduced by rake & toke. If they rake $10 & tip $2, Hero's $300 is 29.25% of the the money.

If V has a worse hand OTR 35% of the time, Hero profits:
$828 * .35 = $289.80
$300 * .65 = $195

Net +Ev $103.80.

V would have to be betting a broken flush or str8 draw OTR. I've had to call huge bets like this, but it was OTT, where there was a flush & str8 draw OTF & my lone V shoved OTT when the str8 came. Sometimes they were on the flush draw, sometimes they made their str8 & had a flush draw as a backup. Sometimes they just had top 2 pr vs my bottom set.

I find that the majority of when someone ships $300 OTR like this, without a hand, they're either a fish, on tilt, have deep pockets, or think I'm a pushover.

If I have already shown twice before that I can't be bluffed, I would strongly consider folding.

OP, if you have proven to be capable of folding to these kinda' rivers, where the board becomes really coordinated, I snap call vs. this LAG. However, only if, like venice10 says, I can take it in stride & press on. That's extremely important.

To quote Keynes, in the long term we're all dead. We have to play this hand where we are at the moment. I've seen lots of players drop a couple of BIs in the course of a down after losing a hand they felt they shouldn't have. Losing 20 to 30 hours of profits in 1/2 an hour is hard to make up.

I should also say that I believe controlling tilt is a making a life change. You have to control tilt in all of your life, not just the poker table. You can't just switch it on and off. Therefore, it takes time. You can't just figure out to stop in the time from one session to the next.

NH snap

I do love a good economist quote. Thanks for the advice here and in the rest of the thread. I've been reading thinking about this a lot today and I'm trying to determine if I tilted after this hand. Tilt has always been my worst problem at poker. It's never obvious to me that I'm tilting until after the session. But after this hand (I folded, he showed a flush draw that he'd turned into a bluff), I rebought for another $200 and couldn't find a hand and slowly lost it over the next couple of hours until I left down $600.

My last hand I lost ~$175 on a rivered set to a flush to V1 from the hand in the OP. So, I think that might have been a tilted hand there, although I guess I could give his range 2 pairs or over pairs, but probably not.

Anywho, I think I'm not going to play again for the rest of the summer. I have a certification for work that I need to study for, so I probably shouldn't play anyway.

Thanks guys.

Tilt is a function of outcomes, and thinking about outcomes will do little to improve your in-hand performance. Better to work on hand-reading and how to do it well in-hand, especially against what is more than likely a very straightforward (albeit active) player.

The questions you can ask yourself on level 1 are -
What hands better than JJ can this V have OTR that weren't already better than JJ OTT? (J8s and 9Ts and TT)
What hands better than JJ can this V have OTR that were already better than JJ OTT? (Not easy to come up with if you think about it... a laggy guy would have frequently raise straights and set and 2p facing a big fat barrel from you)
What hands worse than JJ can this V have OTR that were already worse than JJ OTT? (You can likely come up with about a million of them)

When you add up the answer to these questions, and then look at the pot, then archetype, then your hand (He has less J8s, He has more JcXc) then you have a really really nice ck-call.

NH Snap Call

A logical fallacy at its finest. If either: a) you made the hero call and scooped a nice pot or b) your opponent showed you the winning hand after you mucked, then you would likely feel great about your game and would continue to play.

You allowed the outcome of ONE specific hand, in a relatively EV neutral scenario, affect your long-term life outlook. I can promise you that if you booked a $500 profit, the last thing you would be saying to yourself is "I should take a break from poker". This is a pretty big mental game leak.

Nailed it. I would drop down to 1/2 and work on that mental game if I were OP. There's no shame in doing so.

The deeper we become and the more difficult players that have position on us (such as V1), the more I'm cool with just open limping here. Admittedly the Button looks non tricky, so I don't hate a raise. But I'm in love with result when V1 calls, especially since JJ will see a lot of gross flops.

I'd probably also lean towards betting this flop more than checking it (our hand is likely best but vulnerable, lots of worse hands / draws can start paying off). The one thing that does concern me though is the more ABC we play it the more face up our hand becomes. I wouldn't hate checking here to let V1 drive the action. If I am betting it, I'm probably betting smaller (my goal isn't to build a huge pot here, and a big bet starts doing that).

Only one draw got there on the turn. Again, I don't hate betting, but again we sure have bet a lot. Our hand is face up obvious at this point, and our opponents can make us lose a lotta chips by just flatting monsters in position and not allowing us to get away.

By the river, we've build a hugenormous pot with a very mediocre hand OOP 3ways, and have left ourselves with just a 1/2 PSB and 1/4 PSB left against our opponents. A main draw did bust. You could probably argue that we should feel committed here, and against an aggro Villain who could bluff a busted draw, it's probably a profitable call at this point. But I don't think the pot should have been this big.

Gwhyisthispotsobigandyetourhandsosmall?G

Jacks too? :O GG what are you raising in EP just QQ+ AK?

Like I said in the other thread: as much as you'll hear otherwise, it's fine to have a 0% raising range in EP (imo), especially as we become deeper (where position likely starts to trump holdings, especially if you're not great playing OOP against difficult players).

Ghadmymancardtakenawayalongtimeagoinpoker;perfectl yfinewiththatG

I love ur assessments gobbledygeek! You give the best advice! I know that I appreciate all the feedback you give me on my posts!!

Just one mans opinion (and many disagree with them).

The bottom line: play to your strengths, and protect against your weaknesses, and you'll probably do ok.

GcluelessNLnoobG

When we decide to bet the turn at the sizing we used we are conditionally pot committed. That means absent a flush or obvious OESD completing on the river we are committed to bluff catching (which I'm hoping/guessing is the reason you checked the river).

Villain is going to have some value hands that beat us and he's going to have some bricked draws and bricked pair + draws that knows the only way he can win is by jamming. Considering we put in nearly 40% of effective stacks and still have an overpair on a board that has no flushes and only some unlikely straights (like J8 or an 86 that decided not to raise the turn due to blockers) I'd say we are good here >26% of the time.

Call and nh wp. Sorry if he had 9T or TT.