Usually yes and yes. If the 9d were a heart or if I had KJhh on this board I would play it essentially the same but I'm more likely to check if instead of the 9d it's the 9c.

im going to play 1/2 NL in vegas, haven tplayed 1/2 live in years.

wanting to know any good threads or maybe a good book just to get my poker mind going again?

anyone have any thoughts? I feel reading this forum daily is another good option

Miller Small Stakes No Limit Hold 'Em is decent.

1/2 in Vegas is (or at least was the last time I played it) much less wild than 1/2 in other markets. Opens are around $8 on average, whereas they are mostly $12+ in the Midwest.

ABC still pretty much crushes it, though. I'd read any strat threads from mpethybridge, who was an online micros crusher who became a Vegas 1/2 pro after Black Friday ate his BR. These two are particularly valuable, though rather dated.

Mandatory 3bet pre with this hand vs a button open.

AP, river is pretty gross spot. I would 3 bet pre to not get in this spot but if I did I think I sigh call in game because we are very high up in our range. However, 2/5 pros know that this isn't a great board to triple barrel people don't fold top pair enough at 2/5 so we can maybe make an exploitable fold here.

I like calling without the Ac as you mentioned

thank you for the book recommendation but I think its only 6 max ??




thank you I bookmarked both threads, will take a look and read.

General principles on beating 1/2:

Bet when you have it. Don’t trap.

Always go for thin value.

Fold when you get raised.

3 bet ranges are nutted.

People dont drive to the casino just to fold top pair. Bluff with caution.

Ed miller’s the course is probably decent but I only skimmed it.

I'd generally go less OTF as you want wide calling ranges against this hand since it's so crushing against weak hands. That said, since you got two callers, maybe it's fine.

Turn looks fine. Not considering raise if v2 folds. Again, this hand loves wide opp ranges.

Honestly, "fold if you get raised" is probably more valuable than all other pieces of LLSNL advice put together.

thank you, seems standard


yeah thanks, I just have seen some vlogs and stuff around where vllains just have made huge bluffs and whatnot with air or mid pair on river, I felt kind of intimidated watching some of these and being like wtf is goin on I don twant to get pushed around lol

ty

^^^^

Really opponent dependent and try to get a feel for things. Bet/fold line is absolutely fine against clueless ABC face-up non-bluffy morons, especially with weakish vulnerable hands on drawy boards. But if you're up against someone you feel like you might not be as comfortable folding to, especially with a more robust hand, attempting to get to showdown by playing very passively is also an option.

GcluelessNLnoobG

This is a rather wet board, and the pot is multiway, so this is not a good spot for a c-bet in general.
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Pairs that block straight draws, like JJ, QQ, or JT and QT will be better value bets than hands like AA, because holding them villains are less likely to have straight draws. We want to bluff-catch with hands that don't block straight draws, like A9, AA, KK, or AT. We don't want to bet 99, TT, or T9 because they have the deck crippled and we want villains to catch up so we can stack them.

Our value range, then, is going to be small, and this is a multiway pot, so our bluffing range should be even smaller. I would say just suited QJ.

So, no, do not c-bet KdJd here. Check back and hope to spike a Q on the turn.

Concepts in Miller's book are applicable to low no limit games in general. Also, if you are more visually/aurally inclined (as many of us are), crush live poker's free month of unlimited content is great. Use promo code MVA401 and just cancel after the trial is over.

thanks

I was gonna ask everyone what book helped them out live the most but i assume this thread is prolly what most have said! thanks

2/5. V on BTN seems competent, probably opening standard ranges from each position. Hero has snug image. Folds to BTN who opens to $15. SB folds, hero with TT calls. Hero probably looks like a clueless idiot sitting with his female friend and talking/laughing a lot with her.

Flop: J-5-5. Check/call $15.

Turn ($60): 9x. Check/check.

River: Qx. Check, V bets $35.

What to do? Seriously underreped by flatting pre, V's hand looks like air or a Q (maybe KT backing into straight, but we block that). If he's the thinking player I pegged him as, he should be betting this Q 100% HU. Also, he bet 1/2 pot otr, seems valuey. Hate these spots. Really want to call for that price.

Thanks,
DT

It is at least worth considering a bluff-raise here, no?

What do we credibly rep? QJ, 5x? I do have a snug image so if anyone could get away with it it’s me.

Exactly. You rep a 5 that has been waiting for him to bet before you come alive.

But the real reason I'm asking is because sometimes in spots like this it helps me to ask "why shouldn't I do this?" If you think a raise would often result in him turbo-mucking a hand you beat, then you should call. If you think it would get called so often that it's total spew, then you should fold. And of course if you can't think of a good enough reason not to raise, then maybe you should.

You wouldn't be in this spot if you hadn't capped your range by flatting preflop and check/calling on the flop.

Flatting preflop isn't as bad as folding, but it is much worse than three-betting. A "standard range" for a button open ought to be wide, and with TT in the big blind we have a clear 3-bet for value. Raise to $50 or so, and lead out for something like $40 on this very dry flop.

As played, snap-call. Do not raise, do not fold. Sometimes you will win, and sometimes you will lose. On average you should profit.

Straddle I’m in it. 1/3. $550 effective. MP raises $15, two callers and I call with 54hh. MP strikes me as tighter side. Middle aged white man.

Flop: 2h-6h-Qc. Raiser bets $30 into $60. I raise to $130.

V snap ships $500. Hero? I’m at table and can’t do all the math but assuming a range of AA, KK, AQhh, QQ, how am I faring?

Edit: I think I have 41% against this range. But I think the reality is weighted towards sets of Queens, so this may overstate my equity by 10%. Let’s peg it at 35%. Would you call anyway?

That is math you should be able to do at the table. You are being asked to pay $370 out of a total pot of $1060. That's almost exactly 35%.

Somewhere in my thinking is surely "If I'm not calling here I shouldn't be playing 54hh."

I mean, sure, if you can’t fold when you’re clearly beat.

You seriously think I should be able to calculate (12*.45+3*.33+1*.15)/16 in my head? At best I can get a rough estimate which would be off by a few percent.

At least now I know for future reference I have around 40% against the above range with a gutshot sfd but to suggest someone should be able to come up with this from scratch under time constraints is a little unfair. We’re not all equally gifted in every way.

I meant you should be able to calculate your equity needed at the table. That's just price to call/total pot (including the call). That tells you what percentage of the pot your call represents, and therefore what equity you need.

As for figuring out what your actual equity is, I agree that will have to be an estimate for all us non-Rainmen. You can memorize some of the most common outs percentages, and use the rule of 2 and 4 for the rest. The thing is, unless they are to the nuts, your outs are an estimate as well, so you're unlikely to be perfect in that.

My at the table math would look kinda like this: "I need 35%. I have a FD and a GS, so I have 12 outs. That's about 48% by 2 and 4, but it's really a bit less than that, because 2 and 4 exaggerates a bit at high numbers of outs. Call it 45%.

If he has one pair, all my outs are good. If he has a set, he could re-draw to a boat. His sets have 6 outs OTT and 8 outs OTR, so they'd boat up about 28% of the time. The correct way to figure my discounted equity is to multiply .45*.28, but that would take too long to do at the table, so I'll just round it to .5*.25 (aka, .5/4) and say it would happen 12.5% of the time. Most of his outs to do that aren't shared with mine though, so the chance of us both hitting is really a bit less than the straight multiplication of equities would give us. Call it 10%. So I have about 35% against sets.

The real problem is AhQh/AhKh. I'm just crushed against that with 3 outs, or about 12% equity. How often does he have those?"

Now realistically, I stop here and try to work the weighting, because the rest is hard to do at the table and meaningless if we get the weighting wrong. Let's say I choose a weighting and it still seems close though. Then I go on to the next step (assuming no one has called time on me yet).

"Well, there's 6 combos of QQ, only two of the big heart draw, and a bunch of one pair hands, but he doesn't likely take this line with them very often. Let's guess he has six pair combos in his range. That averages out to (here I estimate, as I'm also not doing (6*.35)+(6*.45)+(2*.12)/14 in my head) 40% equity 5/6 of the time and 12% 1/6th. Subtract 1/6 of 12 (2) from 40, and I estimate I have 38% equity.*** I call."

It all comes down to the range weighting, though. If all combos of overpairs are in play, it's a snap call. If they are weighted down to 2 combos, it's a snap fold.

***note this estimate of averages technique is actually wrong, but I show it to illustrate how I think at the table. The actual answer here is 36%. And that's still just an estimate, because of the estimates of equity against each range.

Let's compare to the real numbers. Against overpairs we're at 45.56%. Good estimate. Against QQ we're at 33.4%. Not so good, but not bad. I overestimated the effect of our outs being different by a tidge. Against AhQh/AhKh we are at 24.85%. I screwed this up badly. I forgot to give us pair outs. It's nowhere near as dire as my table estimate would have been.

(6*.4556)+(6*.334)+(2*.2485)/14=37.39% equity. To a certain extent, my mistakes canceled each other out.

Again, though, it's all about the weighting. If he only has two combos of overpairs, our equity drops to 34.12% and it's a fold.