OK, this may not be the place to ask this Q, but it seems to fit. If someone wants to direct me to an existing thread on the subject, that will be appreciated.

If you always bet the turn when you have it, doesn't a check mean you don't have it? Don't you have to check some winner turns and rivers in order to make your opponents fear your trickiness? Against the very observant V2, if I don't mix up my game, he can read me like a Dr Suess book. I feel like I have to toss some bluffs when I miss and some checks when I hit. As we play together at least 8 hours a week an often 16, metagame really matters and IMO, taking a risk of not maximizing one hand has longer term value. If I was playing online or with strangers in a tourney, I would absolutely bet the turn in this hand.

The reason I was up that day was that on the feeder table I led from cutoff 4xBB with 87s, 3 callers. Flopped 678r, and was sufficiently worried about the straight draws that I had to bet the flop 75% of pot. Got min raised from BUT by a very uncreative ABC, tilting OMC. He bought in for the max $1000 and has topped up several times and has been whining about how unlucky he is.

I'm sure he's flopped the nuts but I feel like I'm priced to draw to the boat calling $60 into a pot of $260. Turn blanks, I check, he bets 1/3rd pot, $110, so I call again. River is perfection and I check the second boat. He bets $110 again, I bet $800, a significant over pot bet, he calls off his entire stack, flipping up his 9T nut straight.

Had I led on the river, with any sort of reasonable pot bet, I'm sure he would have called but I doubt he would have raised. After he led the flop, turn, and river, the money didn't matter any more and he was pot committed. My river check made me about ~$500 extra.

Of course, a better opponent would have denied me the odds to draw and/or folded to my raise, but I was playing the guy I was playing and no one else.

That's OK, be that guy. There is truth in what you say. I come here to learn, not have my ego inflated.

While I've made junk pay off fairly well at 1/2, the skill level of the average player in this 2/5 game is HUGELY better. In the 1/2 games I get paid off so often that it is worth it. I've removed a lot of junk from my 2/5 game, especially OOP junk. Had I not been wanting to tilt V1, I would have folded pre. V1 on tilt is an ATM.

This is a common misunderstanding. Balance doesn't mean carte blanche to populate your betting & checking ranges with random hands, it means constructing those ranges in a way that's harder to exploit. You don't need to pass up ripe value opportunities.

In this spot, for instance, it would make more sense to check something like TPGK that you'll happily bet or call a bet with on most rivers (can't be exploited easily with river bluffs or bluffcatches), and to include some semibluffs in your betting range (can't be exploited easily by folding everything).

It's nice that you folded the boat but you better change your mindset about your starting range or you are going to be in for worlds of hurt down the line. Especially flatting it. If I know my opponent will flat garbage and fold boats on the river then I know I'm in an amazing game.

Pretty much everyone started their posts with "you never should have been playing this hand in the first place, but since we are here..."

This is absolutely a problem of your own creation. This is why you don't play crappy hands pre. Short of a 555/222 run out (or I suppose a low straight flush) this is one of your best possible boards, and you still got walloped.

Don't play junk.

I mean in this specific instance, hero should be folding a boat and should feel pretty good about doing so (if EP villain folded to the 3 bet vs jammed, I’d say hero has to call the 3 bet, though).

Limon put it best, though


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If you are struggling to breakeven,you can do one thing right away to hugely improve your game. Clean up your prefloprange and hand selection. Fold reverse implied odds garbage, and play solid ranges from all positions. Like if you wanna improve your game and be a winning player, you need to start with the right things- wich clearly is to gain a solid fundamental game plattform.

Follow up mistakes postflop is a big reason of why you should do this. The main problem isnt the 20 or 25 you are putting in pre when flatting a raise with garbage- but it can potenially cost you _alot_ more when you get yourself into sticky marginal situations post you dont know how to handle.

Like, its smart to verbalize your thought process in your own head when you are playing. How are you supposed to be making money against your opponents when choosing to play a hand like 5-2? I would get into this habbit every session. Talk to yourself, and come up with solid arguments of when and why you choose to play a certain hand.

You're correct, in fact one guy started his post using the same words as you, "OK, OK, I know, don't play junk. I got myself into a tight spot of my own creation." Oh yeah, that was me!

You'll note the guy with the most difficult decision and biggest loss played good cards, TT. You can argue he played it wrong, but it took a 2 outer to beat him. You can't live in fear of those odds.

And none of that should be construed as a defense of my decision to play 52s. I said it was junk in the OP and my attempt at trickiness cost me about $450.

I'm not whining about the bad beat because it wasn't one and I'm not whining about the loss because "it was of my own creation". But it was a fascinating hand. Four players, and at the river, top boat, second boat, and 5th boat.

We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I might agree if this was a BBV thread.

Preflop and turn are obviously bad.

If the flop was rainbow there is basically no way you are ever good on the river if V2 is a good player unless you yourself are very agro or a mega station. River betting ranges multi-way are relatively strong, river raising ranges are pretty nutted, and this guy comes in and makes a cold reraise. It’s like always TT.

If the flop had two diamonds I suppose he could cold jam the nut flush but I would expect it to flat. This is basically never a bluff.

Regarding the turn check.
1. We aren’t trying to play balanced. We are trying to exploit. People don’t bluff enough and they call too much meaning we should bet our value.

2. GTO play often doesn’t include much checking back with the nuts or super nutted hands. We should check back with some strong bluff catchers for sure, but we don’t have to check back the top of our range very often if at all.

A solver might check back AT for instance, but it likely wouldn’t check a boat very often, protecting your range isn’t worth giving up that much value. We can protect our range with inferior hands.

Ffs stop doing this.

Thank you for your perceptive and deeply thoughtful poker strategy comment.

Playing 52ss is not "trickiness", it's playing "trashiness".

I think of starting hands in Hold'em as like what car you want to drive.

Do you want to drive a ****ing Bentley or a Ford Pinto?

Why would checking be such a bad move here? Checking here makes it looks like he just has some overcards and looked to take down the pot on the flop?

Because the name of the game isn't to be the trickiest, it's to win the most money. And almost all scenarios this deep, you can't get all of the money into the middle without betting. If the turn checks through, it's a disaster, and if someone does be and you check raise it is so scary that you often lose your customer.

The name of the game in LLSNL is to bet big for fat value as much as possible.

It really depends on what job I'm trying to accomplish at the time. I was trying to haul trash to the dump, so the Pinto seemed better than the Bentley. I failed in my mission to put V1 on tilt, due to him hitting a two outer on the river. It happens in poker, no worries, no tears.

I did get him on tilt the next weekend and it paid off well. With this player, all you have to do is beat him when he thinks he "deserves" to win. Then he spews chips. I play to win the day, not every hand.