Villain probably rolls over 3x3x and you mucked after calling

With no reads, I just play it straightforward.

Preflop, I would make it more since I'm out of position with a premium hand. $20 to $22 sounds good.

Flop, I missed so I'm checking and folding to a bet. Players at this level play pretty straightforward in raised pots. You are never getting a better hand to fold for one bet and he's weighted heavily to pocket pairs. Unpaired hands will mostly check back. It'll take a double barrel at least to get him off one pair and there aren't many good turn cards to do it with, namely just hearts and a Q. Even then, they'll put you on exactly what you have in AK and you'll still get a lot of calls especially if they pick up a gutshot straight draw with their pair. Just wait to barrel when you actually have an over pair.

If later on, you see he's betting the flop a lot in a similar situation, then you can check raise the flop with your over pairs and check call AA if he's really aggressive to balance your flop checks.

As played, easy call on the river. The most likely hand you are up against is a flush draw. Checking gives him a chance to bluff. Very few hands you are getting value from betting all three streets as the preflop raiser. He will also most likely value own himself with KQ/KJ/KT spades.

I really think you are being optimistic with your ranging on the river. 64/96 suited?

Also if he's good enough to know the K is a good card for you to double barrel, why would he then bluff the river with marginal showdown value hands when there's a reasonable chance it's good when you check the river??? What is he trying to represent on that board credibly that a bluff would work? Basically it's flopped sets or nothing.

^^^ You could easily get a player who was set mining to fold on the flop

On 853 flop for a half pot bet? Maybe if you bet 3/4 pot to full pot to maybe slightly over pot where you are now threatening their whole stack by the river.

I would shove out of spite!

If you aren't value jamming here (making the assumption that villain is folding the vast majority of his 1pair combos) then you need to be tripling this spot super hard with your bluffs. If he isn't making enough one pair herocalls here to make AK a profitable value jam, you need to be amping up your riv frequencies with AQ/AJ stuff.

So ya, I'd value jam river and be happy about it. Its not like you need to be good 90% of the time every time you are making a value jam. You need to be good when called 50.00001% or however many decimal places you wanna put on it

This looks like a bet, bet, bet all-in to me. I would go slightly bigger on the flop.

Very close to what I was thinking on the river.



This. At this table, I had gauged the threshold of pain (the size where you most often get 0-2 callers) after 1-2 limpers to be $12-$14. After 4 limpers, with me oop and holding a value hand I should have gone exploitative and made it $18-$20.

I think it was a close call on the c-bet. I don't love check-folding here with a hand that has some TPTK equity, a backdoor flush draw, and even some small showdown value. There are also draws that I want to charge and draws that will bet this flop if I check.

That was my thought and my plan at the time, but I think that I went wrong somewhere along the line in terms of reads. More on that later.

They're on the edges of my $1/$2 loose/passive villain limp/call range. That's 37% so it's not ridiculous.



One: If he's bluffing, what is my range? I could easily have a busted flush draw with the A not accounted for (assuming he doesn't have it). Am I calling with A high? The bluff only has to work 28% of the time.

Two: Thin value. He has a fair number of Kxo and Kxs hands in his range that he might think are good after I check the river, and I might cry call a <1/2 pot with worse: 66, 99-QQ, A8s.

Only if I can say, "I put you all-in." when I do it.

I think that this is too much GTO balance for $1/$2, unless he's a very good player. The core of the problem in this hand is that I tried to create some sort of quantum line that worked vs a good player, a meh reg, and a passive station, and I mucked it up. Because it's not possible. I should have settled on a read based on the $1/$2 population and stayed with it.

This is what I should have done, except for the all-in part. The majority of Bally's $1/$2 players fall into the meh reg category, and I should have assigned this to him by default, especially after his limp/call.

Meh regs try to limp in cheap and flop the world. Once they do that, they ram and jam the turn, sometimes the flop if it's wet and their hand is at all vulnerable. Only occasionally will they slowplay to the river, and in that case they will jam over you and you can bet/fold getting even excellent odds.

So, I bet the flop like I would vs a meh reg who is often fit or fold on the flop, I value bet the turn knowing that a meh reg would likely spring his trap at this point, then I failed to bet/fold the river because I chickened out and turned him into a good player.

Exactly how did I chicken out? It comes down to me looking at the prospect of betting $90 on the river, then having him jam for his remaining $75 and having to seriously contemplate folding. That's $75 to call to win a $500+ pot, meaning that I would have to be good less than 15% of the time with top top.

So what happened on the river?

So now let's go to the numbers. Here's what we look like just before he deals the river--looking great, though I probably should have gotten rid of 43s and 32s lol.



Here's what he likely calls or raises my river bet with. It's really close. If I add in A8o, then I'm 60%/40%



If I take away A8o and A8s, however.



And finally, here's what he shoves with. I threw in four busted flush draws, which is pretty damn aggressive given that he doesn't have many more chips to price me out. Yet I still don't have 15% on the end.



So I probably should have bet/folded small on the river, say $65-$70, to target his A8 and to make it less agonizing to fold to a shove.

But would a smaller bet induce a lighter shove? It might, if he was a good player, in which case I would go ahead with the check/call on the river as played. See how it pays not to get mixed up with reads?

This.

Suitedjustice, you really think a baseline Las Vegas $1/$2 player is limping 45% and calling a raise 37%??? That's borderline whale in my book and a player that would get destroyed and destroyed quickly in the average Vegas games around town. Players would be flocking to those rooms and printing money.

Like I said, you are being optimistic assigning a 37% range as a baseline limp call range. The normal rec players don't limp call K8 off, J8 off, 53 suited, 43 suited, 32 suited.

I've got over 4500 hours in these Vegas games. I have a solid understanding of starting ranges here. The random player is not limp calling 37% and definitely not at the promo rooms you play at. Maybe at Excalibur but not Bally's/Flamingo/Harrahs.

Players at these levels severely under bluff the river and virtually never bluff raise the river. They are showdown monkeys which strengthens their river betting ranges even more.

Draws that you want to charge? You have ace high! Any draws that you want to charge have at least 50% equity.

While this board favors your range, it's not the kind of board you can triple barrel people off of their whole range. It's just never really going to develop into a scary board.

When the player pool is on level 1 or 2 thinking, it's extremely counterproductive to be on level 4+. Stop giving these players so much credit.

37% may be high, but by limp/calling in the first place they are making it more likely that they fall into that category of looser than average players.

But you're right. For the future, I will build a range closer to the high 20s.

Bally's: 4 hours:
(-$203)

Ya, I can get behind something like 25% limp and 20% limp call for the baseline Vegas player.

And yes, by limp calling I would perceive that player the same way. But when you give him a more reasonable 20% limp call range, it's still not completely horrible. Which in turn will give him a decently strong range by the river. Which in turn makes check calling a more viable option vs bet folding IMO. That's not saying betting the river is not a good option as well. But I prefer more information as to the hands he gets to the river with before I start going for thin value. The wider the range, the more thin value is to be had and vice versa.

So the optimal line would have been:

^ interesting line; sheep is onto something...

I'm going to throw out the idea of a smaller blocker bet on river say $40 if we get raised snap fold. I think we can get a call from 88-QQ, even worse one pair hands. It's very hard playing against recs, who won't raise draws or value hands until the river.

Nice breakdown on the hand URMeowed. I appreciate that!

"I always chop." <shakes head, shows AKs>
"Except for sometimes when I'm going for the high hand. Then I'll wink at ya, like this."

I can get behind this. We don't quite have 3 streets of value, so we go for 2.5.

Yesterday was a first at Bally's: I briefly sat at a table where all 9 of us were promo players. I was the first to ask for a transfer, and 3 other players had their names on the transfer list soon after.

One of the promo regs told me that today will be the last Bally's freeroll. I assume that they're shelving it due to expecting high volume for the WSOP season. To be honest, it feels like school's about to get out for the summer. I'm not sure where I'll go, but I'll probably start by looking at some of the other Caesar's properties, as I'm still in pursuit of that elusive diamond status. Caesar's itself pays $2/hour instead of $1, and they give out double tier points, so that may be a possibility.

Bally's: 6 hours:
+$117

On my way to the WSOP to look at and hopefully play some satties. It would be nice to find a full Amazon room packed with thousands of players shuffling their chips to make the collective sound of a heavy sleet falling on a mansard rooftop.

Every poker player should hear that sound at least once in their life.

Lack of updates lately unsettling

Sorry. I have been suffering lately...from extreme laziness. It's going to cause the end of this venture if I don't snap out of it.

I did pick up all the satty sheets and information that I'll need to try to get into the Big 50. Now all that I need to do is to play some of them. Today I'll try to make it to the 4PM $140 Mega, and maybe some single table runs if I don't bink. Failing that, there's a $70 Mega tomorrow at noon. If I don't hit that, I'll just pony up the $500 on Saturday.

The single table gigs look like complete shove fests at the lower buyin levels. I'm good at shove/fold, but so are a lot of other players. It's not exactly rocket surgery. On my way out yesterday I unintentionally(?) crop dusted the entire long single table satty line with a malevolent food ghost made from seafood, kimchi and udon noodles. Hopefully I broke their spirits just a little bit.

Holy crapoli. The registration line is enormous. Bigger than I've ever seen by an order of magnitude.

I think I'm going to be very wrong with my overlay prediction.

New plan: I'll be back here very late tonight to reg, and I'm just going to buy straight in for the $500. The tourney has no rake, but the satties do, so the higher EV play in this case might be to skip them