Confirmation for viffer alleged-alt-account?

for the record, i think JT is the best hand we beat

i would not disagree that our hand strength here is medium, not strong, given villain's range. you make a very good point here (the stuff from HOC).

anyone have thoughts on a min-raise? it doesn't actually price out, say, a flush draw, but it has other benefits. specifically, we get value from villain's range that we beat, and can easily fold to a 3bet.

I hate this hand so much.

To me i can only really see us beat by KQ (good possibility) and also an outside chance that Villain has limped with AJ, other than that villain can show with J10, 89, Q9 or any spade combos.

The line i feel like taking is to make it $130 and fold to an ai bet. $130 is going to flush out most of the field who may have called the min-raise with a draw, without committing ourselves to call any ai bet.

If flatted, the turn card and villains actions are going to be crucial when deciding if i'm happy to get it in. Should a random card say 5 peel the turn and villain once again donk/shoves, i'm going to be taking away the draws from his range and lean towards thinking villain has a made hand and i'm probably folding. If villain checks to me on a card like this, i'm happy to be shoving.

I don't know about the locals you guys play with but i do about the ones in Reno i play with. and a min sized raise may not price them out of a flush draw, but most aren't looking at it that way here. what they see is "i've committed $15 so far and there is a bet and a raise ahead. so now i will have to put in another 100-130 dollars to see another card. I'M NOT THAT VESTED IN MY NON-NUT FLUSH DRAW!"
I played a hand last night very similar to this one. I had AQs on big blind and the flop was A Q 10 i bet was called by button, raised by sm. blind/ I reraised folded out the button who showed pocket 8's called by sm. blind. turn was an 8. it went check/check. river was a J small blind bet a tiny bet i called and he tabled K9. He had 4 outs to beat me but was willing to stick in there with nonetheless. if a J hadn't been on the river and i didn't reraise flop i would have been up against a turned set as well as a busted straight draw.

Cliff notes: average villains look at pot odds a lot less than many of us think. I would go so far as to say that even some that do watch pot-odds can't help but give in to the fear of a scary board coupled with a bet and a raise ahead of them regardless the size. Min-raise will accomplish same result as large raise in this spot a large portion of the time.

^ The min raise will allow us to focus on the 1 opponent we should be watching who is going to be on a draw about 90 percent of the time. just my thoughts on the matter from the post after my previous post i doubt you guys are even reading this anyway, regardless i just had to get it out there

But surely it doesn't matter if they decide to call when they don't have the odds, that's good for us right??

Even if a flush draw calls we are gonna be able to get away from it on the turn, i'm happy to have a flush draw call. If we start making raises of over $130 we start to commit our stack.

he means a flush draw won't call. which is what we want. because if we min-raise, a flush draw will have express odds to call.

next action soon...

ok so i ended up doing what quesuerte and some others suggested and raised to $160. my primary motivations were the wetness of the board and to get value from villain if he is a bad player (remember we don't really have any reads). my intention was to call a shove.

hero image: just transferred 6 or 7 hands ago from another table. hero is caucasian, early 20s, looks a little nerdy

table: lots of deep stacks. not really sure yet on pre- and post-flop tendencies. loose-passive in both is a good guess though in this room.

Villain: virtually no reads. early 40s guy wearing a leather jacket, looks half Spanish or something, but speaks English fluently so he's from around here. just requested a seat change and moved to my right. appears friendly with the table and is seen discussing some recent hand (that i didn't witness) with a couple of the other players. i couldn't gleen from their conversation what was being said poker-wise.

The Hand

$1/$2 - $500

Villain (MP) $480
Hero (HJ) $505

Pre Flop: ($3) Hero is HJ with A T
UTG+1 limps, Villain (MP) limps, MP2 limps, Hero raises $15, SB calls $15, BB calls $15, UTG+1 calls $15, Villain calls $15, MP2 folds

Flop: ($75) A J T(5 players)
checks to Villain, Villain donks $45, Hero raises $160, folds to Villain, Villain tank calls $115 (he took a good 30-45 sec and looked like he was thinking pretty hard, occasionally glancing around the dealer at hero)

Turn: ($395) 7 (2 players)
Villain checks after 5-10 sec, Hero ? (we have $305 EFF behind)

check

I missed a whole street...I agreed with everyone saying to flat flop.

Now I agree with papagavin--check turn. For betting to be correct, we have to be able to get called by worse.

+1. Time to hit the brakes and take a free card. Villain's flop call should minimize any weaker aces in his range, and to some extent nonspade KQ

I can see KQ KJ with one or both , JQ , and all sorts of suited connectors/gappers, like 89, 9J in his range....maybe even a wierdly played AJ

You're really only ahead of 10J and the one variants of the above ranges.

I think a lot of what beats us on the flop would have raised. I would expect to see Villain calling the flop bet with a lot of broadway hands that have a pair+gutshot. Since the K, Q, and J of spades are all still unaccounted for on the turn, Villain could easily have turned a flush draw. In short, maybe he is trapping but likely he has a hand with some value and some outs against us. Maybe Villain shouldn't call a shove with those hands, but he has called twice OOP, which leads me to question his decision-making.

or fold out a better hand.



not saying that we would, or that we should try. just nit-picking i guess.

it looks like this hand is playing out very much like the one i mentioned i was in, with the exception that your turn card is much scarier than mine was.

I vote that we see the free card. Then reevaluate river, but then again that didn't work so well for me, although with the right argument i could be talked into a shove.

At least we're not up against multiple draws by multiple opponents now.

rough turn.

++++ a big 1 to Endodocdc's above post

If the flop raise had been smaller ~100 total pot would be ~275 now with 365 eff behind then we could throw out a "value" sized bet of ~80-90 to see if he is scared of the flush or not. I know you guys are against betting for info, but i think in this situation it would be appropriate, as well as a value bet would possibly buy us a check by villain on river. With this line we might've been able to see river for only ~30 dollars more than we are currently committed for. As played... Very tough spot anxious to see other feedback.

I think a bet of any size right now, only folds out his 4-6 outer "draw plus 1pr" hands or worse. he's not going anywhere right now with a made hand. and i don't think a blocker bet would stop him from pushing on river if his plan is to get it in. so damage control is pretty much out of the picture. So basically we're slightly ahead/ way behind. Definately time to look away from the table (to project strength, through faking disinterest, once in a blue moon it works trust me) and pray for a A, 10 on the river. The more i go over it the more I'm leaning to a check/fold line for the remainder of this hand.

Again, I take passive line and just try to check this thing down from here. We've still got over 150 BB behind that we can't just be pissing away here. There's a decent chance we even get much better hands (KQ/AJ) to check things down here now that the flush has arrived. I might call a very smallish lol-gotta-love-bet-sizing bet on the river.

I also put about zero stock in live tells (highly overrated, IMO). But in this instance, with villain occasionally glancing at you and taking his time, it really kinda looks like AJ rather than anything else. KQ would probably be happy to get it in right away fearing the flush draw. A flush draw wouldn't be trying to get a "read" on you thinking that you might be bluffing with a worse hand; he knows he has the worst hand and you have a better one, there's no point in trying to "read" you. AJ is scared of AA/JJ/TT/KQ and trying to figure out if that's what you could have; but of course he's calling. And he's calling any bet on the turn cuz pot is so big and he's probably already guessed you aren't on a flush draw. But again, I probably take this read stuff with a grain of salt.

FWIW, I think overall we've put in way too much action on this hand; especially preflop, which got us in this sticky commitment situation to begin with, which I think makes preflop call >>>> any other option (especially considering big stacks, I think we should be taking a cheap flyer here with a wide range of hands), although it looks like I'm easily outvoted on that one. I also question whether typical villains make big leads with draws into a bloated multi-way pot; small pots, sure, all the time, but big pots, really? But I'm also guilty of projecting the way I think onto other players, so whatever.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I agree that we have put too much action on the hand, namely on the flop. But now that the pot is gotten this big, I don't see how we just decide that we're beat and give up/pray for a free showdown. Is Villain's line that strong?

15-20 sec, then check turn

I don't want to look relieved to be checking this turn, but there's 0% chance I'm putting any money in when this card peels off. Ideally, it will go check-check on the river if he has an ultra strong hand and thinks you've got a made hand and are itching to put money in.

Incidentally, I'm in the fold pre, minraise flop camp. I feel like we are going to have a really interesting river decision, though.

I hate speculating ahead but this is a PAHWM and i just can't help myselp, due to the similarities of my recent session. I have a feeling either villain is going to catch up on river (like my hand) or will show up with a 2pr hand that beats us namely AJ. If either one happens then I, as well as OP, have learned a valueable lesson about commitment threshold and how we blew past it at the stopsign doing 90mph.

I would be saying push allin to rep flush, but it will be tough for villain to read you as four flush on a flop that includes the As.

Villain is going to put hero on an ace a lot based on action so far. This would make it impossible for flush to have hit hero.

The 7s makes a lot of hands obv. So at this point I'm also hoping to check down. Most likely folding to any bet over $100 on river.

Cliffs: fold pre, save yourself the headache of this hand.

i'm not a fan of the fold pre... ...Mainly because not many of us actually honestly would do it as well as it would make a sh**y PAHWM!

Not to harp on preflop, but why no love for limping here? Stacks are huge, lottsa limpers, decent position. It's not worth a $2 flyer?

I think if were are playing, raising is better than calling. We want a smaller field with this hand, since mostly we are going to be going for value with a pair or two pair, not with a monster. We don't want to have to make big bets on the flop and turn to charge 5-6 chasers; it would be better if the pot were HU by the turn so that we could exercise some pot control without allowing a free card to a large field. Also, if we narrow the field enough pf we may be able to take down the pot with a c-bet even if we miss, which isn't going to be a possibility if we just call pf.

I don't know if your experience at the tables differs from mine (and this is probably table dependent), but our preflop end result (i.e. 5 players to the flop for $15 each) is exactly the result I would expect with our raise here in this situation (I mean, no one is surprised at this result, right?). Give me fewer limpers, and fewer people to act behind, and a tighter limp/foldy table, and smaller stacks, then I'm on board with a raise.