Study
So I was going to go out with this girl tonight but both of us came to the conclusion that we couldn't be assed. I had the option of going and playing for a few hours at the casino or heading to a homegame after gymming at about 11pm but decided I'd just rest up since I need to be up at 8am to see a friend tomorrow. I didn't just want to sit around and do nothing though because it just seems like too much of a sin to waste the best night of the week poker-wise not doing something that isn't poker. So I'm going to take a closer look at some of the hands I posted from Thursday night's session and see if I can't break them down somewhat.
It's interesting the comparison between studying for live games and for online games. If I were to study these hands as an online player, I'd be using tools like PIO, FlopZilla, and a couple other random tools like Equilab and some hot/cold calcs. But the online days are behind me and so instead I'm going to focus more around player profiling, exploitative adjustments, and game dynamics - all of which have far more weighting in the live environment. I'll also look to respond in more depth to the feedback I got from some of you guys on these hands here.
Hand 1
$500 Effective, $2/$3 NLH, game tends to get fairly deep and pre-flop sizings are generally on the larger sizing at this place (for a 2/3 anyway). We have two pretty horrific players in this game at this stage, not really involved in this hand. 8-9 handed at this point.
UTG: Pretty typical bad reg, plays a lot of PLO, doesn't really get out of line, will occasionally take some spooky lines and occasionally bluff, I honestly don't know a whole lot about him.
UTG (500) $15, call, call, Hero (500) 3bets to $80 in CO w/ AJ, only UTG calls.
I see a lot of people comment here as though we should be giving more respect to the UTG RFI. In an online game, you see a huuuuuuge difference between RFI % from UTG vs BTN. In live, it's not really the same at all. GOOD players will still open tight from UTG in a LLSNL game. But I think it's a fair assumption to make that most recs are just going to say "these are the hands I want to play" and will play them from anywhere. Yeah, sure, you probably won't get guys opening K8s from UTG that would open in CO/BTN, but I still think in general people are opening far too wide from early position in live games.
Next thing I want to bring up is the RFI size. $15 is probably pretty standard for this game, if on the smaller side. I'm usually opening to $20 and then $25 on some lineups from UTG at this game. But $15 is definitely the median open size by a long shot. So yeah his open is "5x" but realistically, it's not an indication of strength by any means.
Two cold callers between me and villain. One is a whale and the other just normal/bad. Their ranges are both very wide. Could be something like all offsuit broadways, all suited connectors, 1 gappers, two gappers, offsuit connectors, who fkn knows really. I have no idea how recs construct cold call ranges, I just know it's "wide".
Because of this, and because of Hero's tight image, I think squeezing is a fine play. AJ doesn't really play particularly well multiway, so I don't really see any merit to overcalling pre. I'd much rather overcall A6s than AJo here. Folding seems way too nitty because of how wide the RFI's range is and the cold callers are. I expect to have very good fold equity with this 3bet. If UTG folds, the cold callers 95% of the time will as well. And I think we have decent enough fold equity vs UTG. Sizing-wise, I think $80 is fine/the sweet spot.
Flop $195: 66T
Once villain calls, I expect his range to be faaairly tight. Something along the following lines:
QQ-88, AJs+, KQs, AQo+
It's entirely possible that he also has like all suited broadways and maybe some suited connectors as well and maybe more pairs. I simply don't know. When I think of the OOP range here, I visualise it containing a high density of pocket pairs. And then the next thing that comes to my mind is that my cbet isn't going to have a lot of fold equity here since he's just got so damn many pairs that will never fold to the flop bet.
Cbetting: If we cbet this spot, we want to choose a sizing that garners fold equity vs the air in his range - hands like KQs that still have equity or could bluff us off ours later in the hand. We know he's not folding a pair, but by cbetting we drastically improve our visibility. If we assume his range is what I posted above in the bold, let's quickly take a look at combinatorics. This is a 4.8% range and is 52 combos. 21 of those 52 combos are pocket pairs, 88-QQ. So almost half his range on the flop are pairs. 26/52 combos continue on this flop - pairs, quads, flush draws. The rest of his range will just fold to a cbet because I don't expect this player to float too much - I even think we get AK to fold. To make sure we get the fold equity we want and to get AQ/AK to fold, I like maybe a half pot sizing. It seems unnecessarily big prima facie, but it's really important that we get AK to fold the flop. So I think something in the vicinity of $80-$100 is a good cbet size.
Before looking at the combinatorics, all that's going through my head here is "HIS RANGE IS PAIRS. HE NO FOLD PAIR." But if we assume he's folding half the time to our cbet, then a bet is auto-profiting. And we still have equity/implied odds as well. I'm just going to quickly try a wider 3bet defense range to see whether that changes things much on this board. If I give him this: QQ-66, ATs+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, T9s, 98s, 87s, 76s, AQo+, that's 86 combos and 47 of the 86 continue. His range is now 30% pairs, roughly 13% trips+, and the rest air. If we assume he folds all his air that missed, he'll be folding here 46% of the time so even vs a wider defence range, a cbet is still auto-profiting.
Basically these numbers make our check back look pretty terrible. It's also really good to get back in FlopZilla and start visualising ranges a little better. Now I know that vs most 3bet defence ranges low/mid paired boards should probably be bets because 50% of the time we get fold equity.
Checking: After that, I can't see much merit to checking back. Now vs someone who will float AK here 100%, which IMO is a fairly small % of the population, they'll continue on the flop 67% of the time. If we cbet $90 here and lose the every single time they continue, we still have a profitable cbet because we only need to win 32% of the time with this bet. Of course we can still make the best hand a decent amount of the time so even vs floatier players, cbetting is probably best.
So instead of freaking out on this flop thinking his entire range is pocket pairs and that we have 0% fold equity, I can now visualise it much more clearly and will look to cbet here instead of checking behind.
Tyman said:
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pf 3b is pretty meh unless you know something about utg opening way too wide. don't think there's much point in betting river.
I'm fairly happy with the squeeze pre. I think I'd be more in love with it if I knew UTG was opening ever so slightly wider than he might have been? But I still think in general people are opening too wide UTG and therefore folding a lot to 3bets. Could definitely be wrong though.
Dizzy said:
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h1: prob just fold pre. if we are 3b this guy; i am barreling off on this board (esp if we have a club). river just rarely gets enough folds b/c he only has to call 1 medium sized bet to bluff-catch with a pair and we only rep AQ - instead when we bet flop/turn we are leveraging our stack for the same price
Interesting that we now have two people saying not to squeeze. I agree it's a weird spot here with AJ. Like we can't overcall because it's just not the right hand for it, but just mucking AJ in a fairly loose/high VPIP game just seems soooooo nitty. I think I'm not overbluffing here either. I probably only squeeze value and AJo here, and maybe 67s-89s.
Dizzy brings up another interesting point. And that is that if we do cbet, how are we playing turns and rivers? Once he calls flop, his range is 25% super nutted hands, 17% flush draws, 38% 77-99, and 19% JJ-QQ. If we barrel off on say, low bricky non-spades, we can probably get him to fold 55% of the time, as in he'll only call with his nutted hands and JJ-QQ. Might even get JJ to fold. If we cbet $90 on the flop, and I don't think we can go much smaller as much as we'd like to simply because we need to retain fold equity vs AK. If we go $90, that puts $375 in the middle, leaving us with $330 behind. At this point we would have to jam or give up. At $500 effective stack, we probably have to jam it. Problem is when he starts calling all nut flush draws on the turn then we might be in trouble. I mean even if he calls ALL of his flush draws, we still have a profitable jam. We only need to win 31% of the time to break even on our jam. If he has 38% 77-99 that'll snapfold, jamming makes sense.
Now at $750 effective stack, I think this becomes a much more interesting spot. We'd have $375 in the middle but with $580 behind. At which point I think we'd still have to bet. Jamming doesn't make any sense whatsoever. We just want fold equity vs his middle pairs and hopefully some of those flush draws. I think $180 would do the trick nicely. And if they call again, well we just give up on rivers and check back when we hit a J or A and hopefully win some of the time.
Honestly, the idea of squeezing AJ pre, cbetting and double barreling with complete air seems really counter-intuitive to me. This whole past year I've been trying to avoid "getting myself into spots like this" by just making hands and value betting vs fish. Like even if this is clearly a profitable line to take with AJ, it seems like I'd just be getting out of line. If I got called on the turn after squeezing and double barreling, I'd feel like it was basically a spew - not spewy in the sense that it's just baaaad but moreso because it's just unnecessary and because you don't have to ever bluff in LLSNL to make money. In a way playing this hand this way goes against my entire strategy which is to keep variance low and make big hands vs spastics and value bet.
So I guess that's why we can probably just fold pre here instead.
Telly said:
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H1: don't love the 3b, but understand why. Would bet flop small if 3bet. AP, fine.
Another on the no 3bet train! Interesting. I now like a flop cbet as well but we have to be super careful IMO that we size juuuuust big enough to make sure we aren't floated by AK. That would be a ***** disaster if we get to showdown and lose to AK here.
Tehkid said:
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H1 AJo. 3b is good, gotta bluff sometimes. Pretty clear 1/3 cbet 100% spot IMO. as played River bet is good. should fold out AQ/AK and maybe low PP. its hard for villain to defend at the correct freq the way this has played out
Glad someone likes the 3bet! Again, I'd be worried that if we cbet less than $90 here we risk getting floated by AK. Maybe people would snapfold AK 100% to a 1/3 psb bet OOP here, maybe I just have nightmares about getting floated by AK. I agree that the river bet is probably +EV after we play the hand this way. Think we definitely get 77-99 and AK to fold and if that's the case then we have reached auto-profit.
The benefit to taking this particular line, xxb instead of bbx (as Dizzy recommended) is that it's cheaper. I only risk $100 on my bluff instead of $90 + $180 by going flop and turn. That is a whole variance reduction factor thing as well and I like to take the safest route and conserve chips where possible. In this particular hand villain tank/called w/ JJ which is a hand I don't think villain ever folds on a two-toned board if we go flop and turn. After tanking for a while he says "Oops, show me AQ" before tossing in the call. He is at the absolute nut top of his range so don't blame the call at all, but it just goes to show that if he defends 88-QQ (and he could well fold 88-TT pre vs me here, idk) that we have a good river bet. I'm not trying to get JJ to fold here (never really expecting that hand to be in his range).
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Anyway, it's way too ****ing late atm, need to get some sleep. This was good and I'll definitely do another one of these shortly. Probably tomorrow evening while chilling at home with the fam.