I played a very frustrating session this past Friday, largely due to having one V at the table who was a bit of a calling station, but who was also constantly sucking out on the river to win with the most ridiculous hands.

For example:

H1 - hero opens EP with QQ. V calls in LP. Flop is KdQd6c. Hero c-bets 2/3 pot. V calls. Turn is an off-suit A. It checks through. River is an offsuit J, putting four to a straight on board. Hero bets 40% pot for thin value. V jams. Hero calls. V shows T9o, no diamond - he called a 2/3 flop c-bet from an EP PFR with 2 under-cards to the board, just an inside straight draw that got there on the river.

H2 - hero opens EP with AQhh. V calls in LP. BB calls. Flop is 9h7h9d. Hero c-bets 1/2 pot. V and BB call. Turn is a low offsuit brick. Action checks through. River is the Th, giving hero the nut flush. BB checks. Hero bets 2/3 pot. V jams. BB folds. Hero calls. V has J8hh - he hit a one-outer to an inside-straight-flush draw, after drawing to the 4th nut flush on a paired board, calling a flop c-bet from the EP PFR in a multi-way pot.

H3 - another player opens from MP. Hero calls with ATs. V over-calls. Flop is KT3r. MP checks, hero bets 1/3 pot. V calls. PFR in MP folds. Turn is a brick. Action checks through. River is an offsuit 2, completing no draws. Hero bets 40% pot. V min-clicks it 2x. Hero calls. V shows 22, a rivered set, after calling flop with just an under-pair on a TT board.

H4 - I wasn't in this one. V limps EP with 65o, then flat calls an LP raise. V check-raises on a flop of 653tt, then check-calls a 2/3 pot bet on an offsuit 7 on turn, and check-calls a HUGE pot-sized river bet on an 8, completing the flush draw and putting four to a straight on board. When his opponent in LP shows he rivered a set with 88, V throws his cards down so hard they bounce off the table and onto the floor, forcing the game to stop while we waited for the floor to come over and retrieve them.

H5 - V limps. Hero opens CO with KJo. BTN calls. V calls. V donk-leads 1/4 pot on a flop of QT5tt. Hero calls. BTN raises 2.5x. V calls. Hero jams 2.5x pot. BTN tanks for 20 seconds before folding. V tanks a full minute, before finally folding and saying he had a T - just a T, some weak T with no backdoor draw or anything, just a T. BTN said he had a Q.

Looking at the first three hands above, I notice that the turn checked through on all of them, but over the course of 4 hours, there were tons of other hands against me and other players, with V limping or flat calling in SRP's and cold-calling or double-flatting in 3B pots pre, and calling multiple streets post-flop, and getting there on the river with ridiculous hands.

Ordinarily, against a guy like this, I would just never bluff, and always value-bet. But he had a knack for sucking out to make stronger value when anyone tried to take him to value-town, and would only fold a draw or weak value to a huge over-bet or jam.

There were other weird things about him. He loved to min-click it pre and post-flop. He would aggressively check by reaching well over the betting line and forcefully tap the felt while scowling at his opponent. More than once, he mis-clicked a raise by throwing out multiple $25 or $100 chips, thinking he had $5 chips in his hand, and meant to just call.

Most tilting of all - I switched seats so I could be on his direct left. Soon after, he moved to the other side of the table, 3 seats to my left. I moved over into his empty seat on my right, to put one more seat between us, and get closer to another whale 2 seats to my right. Then he moves back and sits on my direct left. I wanted to murder him.

Anyone here have any experience and tips for playing against an opponent like this?

Don't seat hop in such an obnoxious and obvious way

It would be easier to give you good feedback if you included stack size details and bet sizing details on the hand histories.

With that said, it seems like you are making basic mistakes

Are you talking about me, or V?

I basically made one seat change when the seat on V's left opened up, without making it obvious that I wanted to be on HIS left.

When he moved to the other end of the table, I just slid over one spot to where he was sitting, putting the empty seat on my left, rather than my right. It's not like I kept asking to change seats so I could follow him around the table.

V on the other hand seemed to move so he could avoid having me on his direct left, then moved back so he could have me on his direct right.

I wasn't really looking for specific input about how any of these specific hands were played. I was mostly looking for general thoughts about specific exploits to use against this type of V.

And with this guy, stack sizes weren't really a key consideration.

For instance, after H1, when he drew to an inside straight, I asked him if he would have called if I bet big on the turn. He said he wouldn't have, and yet I saw plenty of hands wherein he did in fact continue to chase his draws by calling big turn bets, or just call with total air, or hands that were almost certainly beat.

If anyone bet small, he'd call or min-click with almost ATC. He'd call big bets with inside straight draws to the low end of a straight on two-tone boards. He'd call with the 4th nut flush draw on paired boards. He'd donk-lead and call raises with 2nd pair, no kicker and no draw. He'd limp-flat, cold-call, and double-flat 3B's pre.

That said, if you want to point out the basic mistakes made in these hands against this specific sort of V, that is the point of the thread, so feel free.

What can we do when V almost never folds pre or to a single bet on the flop, and keeps drilling miracle river cards to make hidden monsters when we have a strong hand ourselves?

In the first 3 hands, you missed clear value bets on turn 3/3 times. Whether you had a set, Ace Queen high NFD, or second pair with Ace kicker...you had mandatory turn value bets against a whale who seems extremely station.

But missed the obvious turn value bets in all 3 hands. And let it get checked through in 3/3 hands.

Just keep value betting thinly across all 3 streets when your are against a whale station.

KISS strategy (Keep it simple, stupid)

Fair critiques. Thank you. After each of those hands, I wished I'd have continued to bet the turn.

I think I used to barrel off too much, and it was costing me value. More recently I've been trying to dial it back and play more hands as two-street games, either checking flop to delay c-bet turn, or taking a bet-check-bet/check line.

H1 I checked turn thinking he'd bet any A or JT, and figured he could have a lot of JT and AX in his pre-flop calling range.

H2 I checked because I was concerned about the BB, and older gent I played with the week prior, who seemed solid enough to not be calling my flop c-bet multi-way with a worse flush draw. I thought he might be slow-playing trip 9's, with a plan to check-raise if I bet turn.

H3 was actually the last hand I played against him before changing tables. By that point I was shell-shocked from watching him suck out on everyone for four hours, and figured he must have a K when he called my flop bet. I didn't know what to make of his check-back on turn and min-click on river, but I wasn't going to fold getting insanely good pot odds on the ultimate brick card.

Just from these three hands, I can see how it looks like I let him get there by checking turn OOP. There were other hands that I or some other opponent bet turn, IP and OOP, and he'd flat call and suck out, or suck out and min-click, or raise/check-raise insanely huge.

Simply thin-value-betting this guy to death didn't seem like the best strategy at the time.

One pattern that did emerge eventually was that he was donk-leading small or min-clicking weak to medium-strength value, but betting/raising huge with his thick value. He'd fold weak value to a big bet or raise, but had a hard time folding medium strength value, even when it should have been obvious he was beat.

Had I stayed at the table, I could have probably exploited him, but there were literally no good seats at the table, with him on my direct left, and four or five hardcore 2/5 grinders joining the game.

i have never seen a river raise bluff in live NL in my entire life, so not sure why you're calling river raises with marginal holdings. the reason is that people are smart enough to know that if someone is betting 3 streets they either have a monster or air, so there is no point in bluff raising the river.

Which hand are you referring to, the one in which I flopped middle set with QQ, the one in which I had the nut flush, or the one in which my opponent min-clicked it over my small river bet?

I wouldn't call the first two marginal holdings. I was basically at the top of my range with the 2nd nuts in both hands. V could have easily been raising a worse hand for value in both of those pots.

The last one was a pure pot odds call, getting around 6 to 1 on a fairly small bet of $25. Having seen V min-click with weak value, he could also have a worse hand there.

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In hand 1 you have a value bet on the turn, and the river is dicey. I wouldn't call the raise there.
Hand 3 is similar in that you have a hand on the turn that can get value from draws but facing a raise on the river should probably fold
Hand 2 seems like a cooler - unless the river raise was very large I would have a hard time folding too.
Basically the way to beat calling stations is value bet the hell out of them and know when to fold to a raise
Hand 5 seems like a good example where you can semi bluff ram & jam your best draws, as you may have been an equity favorite against his likely holdings

I think I have a leak when it comes to guys like this. I have a hard time finding folds, especially when I have a strong hand and V could be betting or raising a lot of worse hands for value.

Like, in hand 1, when he checks back turn but raises river, I'm thinking he could have a lot of AJ or KJ that he's spaz-raising, but he'd never show up with TX that isn't JT, and he'd have bet JT on turn. Didn't think he'd flat call flop with KT or QT, but obviously he would, when he's getting there with T9o. It was literally the first hand I saw him play.

Hand 2 is definitely a cooler. I'm sure he would have raised flop or bet turn if he flopped a boat. He happened to catch the one card that would make me the nut flush, and him the stone nuts.

Hand 5 was insane. He donk-led super-small into the PFR in a multi-way pot, gets called, then gets 2.5x raised, and he insta-flat calls - with second pair, no kicker - then tanks for a full minute facing a 2.5x pot over-bet back-jam from the PFR, before finally folding a hand most players would fold like it was on fire.

People who play this way are not normal humans. Don't know what planet they're from, but it ain't Earth.

Just to add to the above, part of the problem I have finding folds is that guys like this seem to show up with hands that shouldn't be in their range, and the hands we'd expect to lose to don't get played the way V played his hand.

Like, in hand 3, I'd expect my flop bet to get called by Kx and some worse Tx. I'd expect Kx to bet for value when checked to on the turn, so the river seems like a clear thin-value bet when the turn checks through. What lunatic is getting to the river with 22, as played?

How is he calling off a huge river bet with 3rd & 4th pair when there's 3 to a flush and 4 to a straight on board? How is he donk-leading and calling a raise on a wet, super-connected board, with 2nd pair, no kicker, and no draw?

That's my leak - I'm not expecting V to chase an inside draw to the low end of a straight on a two-tone board, or chase the 4th nut flush draw on a paired board. These guys show up with these insane hands that no one in their right mind should have.

It's hard to put yourself in the shoes of another player. But that's how you become a good profiler.

I have this problem with value owning myself. Not so much with people lucking out but with a hand like JJ I'll open pre and get a limp caller OOP.

Runout will be like 9-7-4-4-2 and I'll go bet bet bet and they'll check-call down with AA and say something like "if you have a 4 you're good!"

I had a guy beat me w/ 23 sooted (I 3bet to $60 in a 1/2 game), he called a $75 pre-flop 3bet w/ 94o and hit trips. Same guy limp/called KK twice against me when I hit both flops (got off cheap). Bad players get lucky -- he lost it all by the end of the night. LOL.

He also turned me down to play 5/T heads up w/ a min $1,000 buy-in. Go figure.

Recently I'm experiencing one extreme or the other.

I can sometimes hand read well enough to put a good player on his exact two cards, but I'm forcing myself to give him a reasonable range before I decide what to do, even though all my instincts are screaming he doesn't have a range, it's just the one exact hand, and I lose value.

Against a bad player, who might literally be playing ATC, I get tripped up thinking he's not playing ATC, and instead he has a somewhat reasonable range, so I try to make good plays against a reasonable range, and end up losing value because I can't wrap my head around him having something insane.

Also had one of those in this same session. Raised pre from the HJ or CO with TT. Next to act calls. Flop is 6-rag-rag, two-tone. C-bet 1/2 pot, he calls. Turn is an offsuit 7. I barrel 2/3 pot. He calls. River is an 8, bringing in the flush and the straight draws. I decide to go super-thin for value, targeting 7x, 8x and 99 for value with a 40% pot bet.

He snap calls and shows KK, almost breaking my mind, because I know this guy, and while I've seen him flat call from the blinds with JJ and AKo, never in a million years would I think he'd flat call pre from LP with KK.

When I asked why he didn't 3B pre, he told me he only looked at one card before he flat called, then didn't know what to do post-flop, so he just went into defense / call-down mode, because he couldn't put me on a range that didn't include straights and flushes on the river, or sets and 2P on the flop.

I spent about a year playing in a local $40 buy-in monthly tournament. Usually it's 9 to 14 guys, but there's an annual "championship" event that gets around 30.

That annual event was actually only the second time I played with these guys, and I binked it - first place - earning myself a bit of a reputation as "that guy", the one serious player who showed up out of nowhere and destroyed everybody.

Then I proceeded to get knocked out early (often first) in all the smaller monthly games, convincing everyone my big win early on was just a fluke.

At various times I've remarked that I can't believe how oddly these guys play - lots of loose calling, almost no 3B'ing at all, no understanding of position, basically just "Bingo". The response is generally that they're all there just to drink and BS. Most of these guys have no idea what they're doing. I'm the only one who actually tries to play real poker.

Once or twice, someone I barely know has made some wise-crack about me getting knocked out early / first all the time. I gave up trying to explain the theoretically sound reasoning behind playing hyper-aggressively in the early stages when the blinds are doubling every 15 or 20 minutes. Instead I just started saying I'm down to play a normal cash game with fixed blinds, with anyone in the group, for any stakes they want to play, so long as it's no less than $1/3 with a min $300 buy-in, and a minimum of four hours. So far, no takers.

I stopped playing in their games back in September, when I went deep and cashed in the first big tournament I'd played in over ten years. I made over $10k playing poker in that one month, between tournament and cash game winnings. Doesn't seem worth my time to play in a $40 buy-in BS game with these idiots when the most I can win is $200-$300.

you take the game too personally and try to inject narrative into a situation where there isn't one imo. alot of ego too

also the seat changing thing is hilarious that you think the other guy is in the wrong

Most obvious thing: Sometimes you just lose. If a V keeps hitting the river you are probably going to lose unless you get him to fold before the river.

In general when these types of players are hitting and are up a lot you have to play super tight when deep and pot control a lot, only putting lots of money in when you have great hands (not nut one pair hands). But at 100-200bb you can just bomb it on earlier streets.

But you have to watch _how_ they play before they hit and after they hit their hands. They have to overbluff or overfold as well as overcall ... which are they doing and when are they doing it.

Eg. hand 1 looks like spew on the river, unless he's repeatedly bluff shoved air into strength.


Stack sizes matter, also raise big (you folding more) and/or limp raise a bunch if he's doing cute raises preflop.

With a normal-ish stack you can just bomb it on the flop here for pot, unblocking a K with multiple random draws and then just shrug and shove turn when only JT hits.

Thin value on this river, esp. for this size, is almost certainly bad and again calling it off needs reads that he's shoving air a _lot_ because he has a lot of random Tx hands and almost no worse sets going for thinner value.

cbet flop is bad, how does 997 interact with your EP range ... where he has everything. What was your plan if he didn't fold?
Would probably range check flop, assuming he's going to bet a bunch, and then if 100bb stacks just x/r big with almost everything including this hand.
If bet then bet bigger.

Turn check magnifies flop cbet problems ... this is a brick and he's probably called almost everything. Are you planning on x/c brick rivers?

River is unlucky _but_ he didn't "hit a one outer", any JT8 on the river gives him the best hand and at best if a 6 hits he can bluff river.

Preflop call is meh, could just be bad given open size esp. if V does another random 3bet ... wtf do you do, just 4bet rip it or play mid A high OOP?

After PFR checks you beat everything but top pair, bet more than 1/3 pot or check (probably planning on raising) if you think V will bet a lot.

Turn: Again when OOP you need to bet big when it's just you vs. V, or check if he's going to bet a bunch and/or you have a weak hand. Also with the river 2 there are only two possible bricks, 8 and 7. So I'm very suspicious of the word brick here.

River is the worst time to bet, and the wrong size, he can't call with random 2-5 out draws. Maybe he calls T9, but is just as likely to bet about the same if you check. He probably doesn't call 44 on the river but might decide to bet them ... just check.
When he raises wtf do you think he's doing this with? Is he raising random Q9? Note he has a lot of 2pair hands, and occasionally can slow play some Kx.

Again ... this is the strat. you came up with against people playing too many hands and can't find the fold button? Play wide and go nuts for the folds with mid draws?
I mean I'm glad it worked out for you, but imagine if he was 40/60 to call/fold ... would you rather have KJ or KQ?
Also do you ever have value here when you call the small donk and then backraise?

Putting the bad-beat stories in the OP aside, the best tip I can give you for adjustments when OOP against luck-box whales is simply:

Don't.

That sounds glib, but playing out of position is struggling against the current. Better to look for spots when you are in position. The fact that this player is a whale means that you can widen your range when you do play against them, especially if the other players at the table are typical loose-passive LOLive players who are not going to three- or four-bet you without the strongest combos.

• Widen your opening range when the whale is in the blinds.
• Widen your iso-raising range when you are in position. (Tighten it when you are in the blinds.)
  
• Widen your in-position squeezing range when the whale flat-calls an open.
  
• When another player iso-raises the whale, give serious thought to opening up a flat-calling range, so as to encourage the whale to stay in the pot. (Playing three ways in position with a whale is much more profitable than swapping coolers with a reg in a three-bet pot.)

If you find yourself out of position in a hand with the whale, seriously dial back on your c-betting range, especially multiway. If you never c-bet out of position in a multiway pot, you would be giving up surprisingly little EV. If it is heads-up with the whale and you do c-bet, dial back even further on your turn barrels. (Sometimes there will be spots where the bet 0.3x on flop/bet 1.5x on turn line will print, but sussing them out takes practice. Pro tip: invest in a copy of Flopzilla and run a bunch of situations.)

I appreciate the specific advice about each hand, as well as the general advice. I can see how my overall strat, not just against this V but in general, and some of my plays were ill-advised.

It can take me a few days after a bad session to fully process what actually happened.

As soon as we opened this table, I was getting dealt good starting hands, but mostly OOP. I either won a small pot or lost a big pot, and got stuck almost a full BI early on, which was semi-tilting, but then found a double-up and thought I was back on track to have a good session.

H1 and H2 happened right after, getting me stuck again, and sending me on specific tilt focused on this one V. I was mostly playing fine against everyone else, but repeatedly making big mistakes against this guy, especially calling his bets/raises too wide.

There were other weird hands in the session that were also tilting, like that one I related to StupidBanana - I opened TT, and the player on my left, a reg I've played with a few times, flat called after only looking at one card, a K, not realizing he had KK, and just called me down the whole way on a wet board.

H3 was actually the last hand I played against him, which took place right after H4. I changed tables right after that, but it was too late to shake the tilt and get anything going. I should have just gone home.

Thank you all for the insights and advice. I'll make an effort to incorporate the suggested changes into my game.