1-2 match the stack in TX
8 handed
Playing with 1 bad LAG OTB and 6 loose passive villains.

Pre-flop:

UTG ($300) straddle $5
UTG+1 ($700) limps
MP ($600) limps
Bad LAG button ($1.5k) raises to $20
Hero ($900) calls in BB with 9s9c
UTG calls
Both limpers call

Flop ($101): 9d 4s 2c

Checks to BTN who bets $30
Hero calls to allow the bloating to begin
UTG folds
UTG+1 min check raises to $60
MP calls
Btn calls
Hero min raises to $120 to continue the bloating b/c they just don't fold
UTG+1 calls
MP calls
Btn calls

Turn ($581): 9d 4s 2c Ah

Hero bets $150
UTG+1 calls
MP calls
Btn folds

River ($1,031): 9d 4s 2c Ah 4d

Hero bets $250

At this point UTG+1 has about $400 left and and MP has about $300 so neither is all in to call which I felt would would induce them to call more often.

On boards like these when my hand doesn't need a lot of protection, lately I've been focusing on just bloating pots with small bets (in relation to the pot) to keep it multi-way and capitalize on the player pool's stickiness instead of getting heads up with one players top pair or better. Sometimes they get there with really weird draws, but it has had a positive affect so far in the short term. Who else does this on these board textures?


Thoughts on the hand? Would you change anything on any street?

I would raise the turn larger since most of the table is stationy.

OTT - since both +1 and MP have less than a PSB left, gii. If someone has 53, you still have outs.

Raise flop bigger. Can also 3b pre.

$85 preflop. Knock out limpers. BTN will have a wide range as well.

Your sizings are awful. How are you not all in by the river? That’s amazing spew.

I can defend flop play as an exploit. But make it like 195. Think about it, if you do and they all call, pot is $300 more than it is on turn here. And you only have $685 left. You can micro-bet and stack people if you’d like. But when you make big hands vs stations, if you aren’t getting all in, you’re spewing


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Bet bigger at every opportunity, imo. Especially from the foo raise on.

What about his check/call/back raise line? It’s transparent but in this instance I like it.


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Overall while a little goofy I think this is ok. I think you could have gone for $300 on the turn making a river shove a lot less daunting for your opponents. But honestly with you crushing the board like this 1/3 pot isnt bad since it seems evident they're all drawing and quite thin. My guess is they both have something like 56 or A3 so you you squeeze a little more value out of the draws and a lot more value on the river vs any Ace. You also ensure you get it in vs unlucky trips because believe it or a not a lot of players will just call the river with 34 without it being an allin.

If this is the case, your sizing is terrible. We know that on the river if they have draws, you get no more $ unless they bluff. Not every river is going to be gin. We have to make money before the board gets any wetter. Bet more on the turn for sure. The min raise on the flop is tricky. FPS for sure. Just make a standard raise based on position.

Yeah and on the turn, I expect an A to help people in some various way. Like they have an Ace-wheel hand that got roped in from the small sizes on the flop and now made aces up or top pair w/ a wheel draw. If that got to the turn, it’s not folding for a real bet.

For the same reasoning, hands like weaker 9x or JJ or something are probably going to fold now no matter what.

In general, if you claim to be against calling stations, and you choose bet sizes with monsters that don’t result in you getting all in, you made a massive mistake.


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QFMFT!

I don't hate the line, but it must be bigger, for reason given above.

Turn is the really bad one though. Must be much larger.

If the fish is bad enough to pay it off (wich they usually are at these stakes in live poker), i like it alot. We have so absurdly big equity with topset here on rainbow board that the strategy who is bloating the pot the most is the best approach imo.

Its the same with the limp/reraise line with monsters. It shoudnt work, but still it does. Alot of the time.

I also agree with what you said in this thread that we need to be allin before the river here, i prefer the turn where the villains still have one card to go to suckout on us. If were not allin by the the turn in this spot, we screwed up our betsizings. Simple as that.

I dunno, I feel like I see this line mentioned a lot. Personally I feel getting 3 streets of value is better than hoping to always be getting it in with 2. Live fish have *very* weak ranges. We need to exploit that. Sure they're calling stations, but thats mostly because they have weak ranges. They arent really just donking it off by the turn with 2nd pair very often. I think setting up for river shoves is more equitable than turn shoves. A lot of the times they arent drawing. A lot of the times it's just garbo pairs, by seeing a river we give them more chances to get it in bad.

Just my opinion. Maybe I'm just bad at getting value on big turn bets but I do far better when I aim for 3 streets every time.

Here’s the issue: a lot of live fish have “evolved” into semi-loose passive types. Like they’ve had the situation arise where they play K3s, flop a king, call three streets and lose to AK+ happen a Bunch. So while they play a wide strategy, they really don’t like stacking off with a marginal made hand that doesn’t stand much chance of improving. OTOH, many of these same players will pay big to draw. It’s why you see a lot of these types of players get exploited by playing value hands for 2 streets.

Of course, the total n00b types can be exploited like you say; rope them and don’t make bets too scary.

Either way. Making a monster is rare and you need to go for the jugular someone when you have it against these guys


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Sure, nothing wrong with going for 3 streets if the situation calls for it- for example if we have deeper stacks that is hard/unnatural to stackoff within the turncard.

But as jdr pointed out above me, alot of stationy livefish loves to draw and it is exploiting their tendency to overcall/gamble too much with card(s) to come as playing our valuehands fast in many instances. Especially when we are multiway like this heading to the turn with a bloated pot, i dont see many reasons for not sizing our bets/raises so we get it allin with one card to come.

Fish often see that as a false safetynet to push them over the stackoff threshold in my experience. That if they know they have winnercards, only if its just a gutterball with only the river left to come- they are more likely to stackoff than if the whole board is completed.

Playing valuehands ultrahard over 2 streets is probably the single strategy approach that has netted me the most money/EV this year if i had to guess. The line is also quite easy to balance if you play with alot of regs on a weekly basis, just mix in some good draws a portion of the time-so the table can see for themself that you arent nutted 100 percent of the time when you are doing it.

Yup.

Like the main thing I think this forum can provide is figuring out ways to deviate from a strategy we might use against one another to make more money from the 80% of the player pool that will either never come across poker strategy, or will reject it as not helpful to their own game. Because while GTO does make money, trying to be some bot in a live setting isn’t going to be as amazing as figuring out why our opponents are exploitable, and then figuring out how to punish it as much as possible.


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I picked this hand to post because I've been paying more attention lately to (and experimenting with) my sizing related to board texture. Feel free to pick apart my thoughts as they're more than likely off. Here's what they were in hand:

On the flop: Lets just bloat the pot, we're blocking top pair and there is virtually no two pairs. Over pairs aren't likely. The only draws are gutters and overs with back doors. Our hand doesn't need protection. And what can the villains have that will actually call more than a min 3bet on the flop.

Turn: Ok there is no A9 suited combo left. 2 combos of A2 suited and A4 suited, 3 combos each of A3 and A5 suited. Villains obviously don't have sets. Could have any of the 4 combos of 56 suited. Could have the odd ball 9x like k9 or q9 etc.The only draws are weird gut shots. 1/4 pot will string all of these along.

River: Let's get a crying a call from any 4x, non-believing 9x or Ax or even those weird two pairs like A4 or A2.

Here's the thing, I have always value bet people to death, but I have also found that absolute bet size is more important to the fish (in my player pool) than bet size relative to the pot. They don't care how big the pot is or about their direct/implied odds. All that matters to them is $80 isn't too much but anything over $200 is a lot. (talking about fish not regs)

I feel like the deeper we are, we can't just stick with "we should always be betting to get all in by the river because they are stations and we have a monster" I mean look at the board. What does the villain have that will call a 100bb+ bet? Also, at certain stack depths this approach would involve over-betting multiple streets in single raised pots regardless of board texture.

Different board texture? Yes lets get after it. This board texture? I don't want them folding out their trash. I felt like betting bigger would just be doing what fish do with big hands, blasting it without really knowing what we're targeting with our sizing.

Also, thanks for all the input, like I said this is something I've only recently been experimenting with.

This is what I'm talking about.

You aren’t wrong. But this is more applicable to the “marginal made hand” category of calls that these guys make.

In this case, the turn card makes flopped marginal hands hate life. But it might also make hands like A3/A5 pay a big bet. After all, they have a gutter.

We should recognize that their calls will be coming from mostly good hands ranging from top pair + wheel draw to cooler hands, and we’d really like to make them pay now.

In scenarios where ranges are wider and stacks are shallower, 3 street milking can be a viable strategy.


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^ This. We're targeting 2p+ and TP+draw here, not 79s or TT. Those aren't paying us anymore after the A came anyway, unless the player is epicly bad.

The flop got triple minraised (technically not). They're bad.

I somehow ended up on Joey's Postle investigation today and it was just cute watching the live 1/2 players get into these 5 way pots with bottom pair, or a backdoor runner runner gutshot draw, etc. It's one of the reasons it was so obvious he was cheating because he's value betting the **** out of these absurd hands that have no business even being in the pot. He knows it so he's betting like $300 into 1.2k just hoping for the best.

Targeting a strong range is great and all, problem is when people are playing half the deck you are targeting a part of their range they almost never have.