Villain was quite loose, I should have maybe checked the river. Was villain getting the right odds to call on the turn??
Advice appreciated ty

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.05 BB (6 handed)

Button ($5)
SB ($5.09)
Hero (BB) ($5.29)
UTG ($5.14)
MP ($5)
CO ($5.87)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 4, A
3 folds, Button raises to $0.10, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.05

Flop: ($0.22) 10, 5, 3 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.15, Button calls $0.15

Turn: ($0.52) 2 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.35, Button calls $0.35

River: ($1.22) 10 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.70, Button calls $0.70

Total pot: $2.62 | Rake: $0.13

uhm, I'm no expert, but why would hero bet into pre-flop aggressor in any situation? Wouldn't check/raise work better?

If I were you, I'd 3bet his min raise pre-flop to 30c, A4 is decent enough vs button and continue c-betting from there if he calls.

You should either fold or raise preflop. Calling out of position with a hand like A4 is not a recipe for making a lot of money. If he is the kind who will try to steal all the time, then 3-betting isn't bad. Otherwise you can just fold.

I probably wouldn't do anything on this flop - would probably check/fold or check/call, depending on the size of the bet and what I knew about the villain. It worked out pretty well when you hit gin on the turn, and your turn bet is good, but I'd probably make it a little higher. Bear in mind, that on the flop you think you have 7 outs - 3 aces and 4 2s. But you could be crushed if an ace comes and he has a higher one, you could be crushed if an ace comes and it is a diamond, and you could be crushed if the 2 comes and it is a diamond. You don't know what he might have or how he will act, and this is one of the big problems with playing weak hands out of position.

The turn is a terrible card for you, pairing the board and bringing the flush. You are probably still ahead, but you could easily be way behind. It isn't a bad spot to check/call, hoping to get him to bluff or even bet with a 10. If you do value bet, you probably should fold if he shoves.

As to whether he has the odds - it is really close. Let's forget your hand, because he doesn't know what it is. There are 9 diamonds out with 46 cards unseen - 37-9 against, which is just over 4-1. To call .35 to win .87 he isn't getting the correct direct odds, but if he gets another .70 on the river it is .35 to win 1.57, just about 4-1 (implied odds). If the diamond doesn't pair the board (like it did) he could possibly get more out of you, making it worthwhile. He also knows there is a slim chance that a 9 or 8 will give him a win.

@VBAces
Thanks for the reply, how much should I 3bet preflop??

Yeah I felt like my turn bet should have been a little bit higher too.

On that turn card I would have folded to any shove/reraise, I value bet here because I did not want to show weakness, I feel like checking on the turn would be telling him I don't have the flush, and I would have probably folded to any 3/4 bet. Not so sure what to do in situations like this.

Pre is completely standard, never do anything but call A4o BB vs a BTN minraise. As played x/c flop but after that we're fine.

First, only 3-bet A4 offsuit preflop if you are going against people with high fold to 3-bet stats, and are raising in late position. If you are going to raise, raise the same amount as you would do with any hand you want to 3-bet. I don't know how much that is for you. My point is that you shouldn't size it differently because of your hand strength.

Remember - this is a time where you really want them to fold, because if they 4-bet you need to fold, and if they call you are stuck playing a large pot with a marginal hand out of position. I would much rather play 72 in position (and I don't want to do that) than A4 out of position.

Am I misreading the board, or is everyone else?

"The turn is a terrible card for you, pairing the board and bringing the flush."
I think you mean the river.
"On that turn card I would have folded to any shove/reraise".
I don't think it's a great idea to fold the 2nd nuts on the turn.
"I feel like checking on the turn would be telling him I don't have the flush"
You could bet a billion dollars on the turn, and I'll be 100% certain you don't have a flush. DUCY?

As for my analysis,
Pre-flop is standardish, but folding wouldn't be terrible, as this hand plays like dog**** OOP without the initiative. The flop donkbet is meh. I prefer checking. (I need a hotkey for those 3 words lol).
Since you did bink the gutterball, firing the turn is standatory, but I'd go a little bigger to get more value from Tx, overpairs, and FDs.
River is a pretty clear check-call. A bunch of hands sucked out, but you definitely have a hand that wants to see a showdown. Villain might also be stupid enough to "value-bet" a worse hand, or make a ******ed bluff. Betting is dangerous, because villain can raise and put you in a really pukey spot. If he checks back, you're not missing any value, because he checks back with hands that would never call a triple barrel.
You can check a lot of your range on this river. I would check-raise quads and boats for example, and check-call flushes and high trips too. Bet-folding is so 2013.

[DRUNK MODE]

These should be the best and most honest posts you should ever get so get ready

So you have 3 options which honestly all sound pretty good. You can fold an off suit ragged ace, you can 3bet a very wide button range or you can call with a decent equity hand getting 3.5:1. Honestly I don't think you'll ever be getting that much of a profit out of this hand in this spot so anything above -0.5BB is considered a win. Folding seems a bit extreme unless the button is a total nit. 3betting is going to get called a lot with a trash hand out of position which is often dominated when called. Calling means putting an extra 0.5bb in with a chance of sometimes getting something back. Actually when I put it this way either option sounds really crappy.

I'd call. I think calling yields a little gain compared to a fold although not that much, 3betting I think is going to burn a lot of money. The hand is pretty much unplayable and BTN isn't going to fold enough to make it an instant profit. Call and check-call some dry flops, checkraise some flops that hit your range and checkfold some Q96 flops.

In this instance, flop is a clear checkcall. Anything that happens after what you did is going to alter the hand so no comment. You could actually checkcall flop and lead the turn, it looks super fishy and is probably going to get called/floated a lot. Checkraising turn is also fine because very few hands hit that turn and your percieved range is often Tx.

[/DRUNK MODE]

Fold pre. There are reasons why calling is ok, but in a vacuum a beginner should not be calling here.

Check/fold flop. Pretty standard.

Bet more on turn for value.

Check river If villain bets i don't expect to be good here very often. If he bets large then turbo muck.


As for villain's play:

Preflop : Good
Flop: Good
Turn: Good
River: Ok/standard but raise/folding is probably optimal.


BTW, whether live or online player reads are very important and the correct play can vary substantially based on the type of opponent you are playing.

I can understand why folding pre is sometimes fine, checkfolding flop is atrocious though. It's such a dry flop against such a wide range, if we're folding A high with a gutshot we're folding 75%+ of flops.

Readless (ie without prior history that hasn't been mentioned), a beginner should always fold pre in this spot.

We'll be folding 75% of flops when we call OOP with A4off? Yeah, maybe so. More reason to fold pre. If you want to print money at this game play with position, initiative, and cards that can connect well on boards. One isn't going to print money, particularly as a beginning player, by chasing gutshots (in this case with only 3 clean outs) and calling down with Ace high (no kicker).

I think the best way to print money in poker is to take any +EV spot no matter how marginal. Against a minraise, we're calling 1bb to see a flop pot of 4.5bb, we need a total of about 23% realisable equity to call. Against a wide BTN range you're just going to have that with a really wide range. BB defense range vs a minraise should be wider than the BTN's open range.

These answers show why minraising is so powerful. If you play 5nl and not 2nl it means that you are not a complete beginner. You should start defending correctly in these spots and this means calling with A4o. Some regs actually defend A4o from the SB vs a button minraise in similar spots.

On the flop, you have showdown value with A high, no reason to donk bet nor to x/r unless you know for sure this villain likes to fold everything.
Turn and river are fine. I'd bet/fold river.

Why is that arty? If we get called by worse more than 50% of the time but only get raised by better then why don't you like b/f? We're getting called by any Tx in this spot.

I agree in a vacuum I'm most likely bet folding. Against a spazz tard I'm bet/calling.
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This brings up a good question though. I never min raise. I always do basically 3x the amount in an unopened pot for cash games. Should I be min raising my whole range on the button? For example min raise AA & 78o against a solid reg? I'd hate to min raise and price the BB in and don't know wtf their range is because they'll probably call with any two cards at such a cheap price.

Why wouldn't you want to have BB with a wide range out of position? Also if people are debating on folding A4 to your minraise then you must still be getting a decent amount of folds. I don't know the exact amount of hands standard regs will call with from BB but it isn't like 90%, most of the unplayable stuff should still be folded and although A4o isn't very playable the equity it has against a button range kind of makes up for it.

For the record I don't think A4o here is a superduper snapcall but I think one you need to make to avoid dropping that whole 1BB every single time. Pretty sure you can get at least -0.7BB or something out of it by just checkfolding the lot and defending a proper amount of dry/A-high flops. Sadly it isn't 2007 any more and it's tough to find the really insane edges and a spot that comes up that frequent is just too big of a leak in my opinion.

Of course if you don't know how to reduce your loss in this spot with A4 and on average lose more than 1BB you should fold it for now but realize that at some point you need to get there.

@ArtyMcFly
Yeah I meant river obv, I got influenced by his typo.

If I check call the river, at what amount should I fold, I don't like calling big bets with the possibility of my opponent hitting his flush draw.

@Kelvis
Thanks for the honest answer man, yeah 3betting is gonna burn a lot of money unless I'm really sure he is going to fold.

I don't like to check call the flop for the exact reason you stated where betting the turn would seem fishy because of the flop and would get called most of the time, so I prefer to lead hoping that he folds or I hit.

I really wish I had bet a little more on the turn in retrospect.

What is your opinion on the river in this situation and how much should I fold by??

My line here would probably be checkcall flop and expecting him to give up fairly often. It's pretty dry and not a lot of hands connect so for a lot of villains this is a fire and forget situation where they bet 1 time. On the turn then I'd either donk or checkraise based on his tendencies. If he loves to barrel I'll let him and if he is smart enough to check 88 or AQ behind I won't.

As played, you must bet turn. River is 100% a bet, the flush completes but you're not getting bluffraised here anywhere near enough to be afraid to bet. He's not folding any of his Tx and probably not a decent amount of pairs. Sizing is fine too, he just happened to have a better hand this time but your valuebets only need to be called by worse 50%+ of the time. Of course this is without him having the option to raise as a bluff, if he can do that it complicates things but in this spot he's probably almost never doing that.

This wasn't a min-raise. I also disagree with your assertion that you button raising range should be tighter than your big blind calling range. If you are going to use math to justify this call, what mathematical values are you assigning to initiative and position when calculating your decision?

What do you call a raise to 10c in a 2c/5c game?

Initiative isn't nearly as important as people think it is, and when it is important, it has nothing to do with the betting lead. The relevant factor is range advantage, which generally, but not always correlates with the betting lead. With that said, we will generally have a weaker range on the flop, and we are OOP.

We need a realisable equity of 22% to call here. Our realisable equity is R*equity. Equity we get from pokerstove. R is our 'realisation factor' - the % of our equity which we will expect to realise. It can't be proven, but relevant factors include position, relative range strength, range width, hand playability, and relative skill. From personal experience, database analysis, and discussion with others, I believe the RE of A4o is significantly above 22% here, and the wider the BTN's range is, the more equity any given two cards have against BTN's range, so given R won't change drastically, if we start from a position of being able to play wider than the BTN against a standard 50% btn open range, that shouldn't change. I believe that we can defend more than 50% against a BTN minraise due to the same factors as discussed above for A4o in relation to hands below the 50th percentile.

My mistake, I misread the OP and did not realize this was a min-raise.

My advice in this thread is pretty terrible in the context of this hand. I apologize for that. Some of my points are very valid in general, but not in this particular context when considering the min-raise.

Betsizing is a very important concept in poker. TheDefiniteArticle did a good job of illustrating the mathematics behind calling the min-raise. Furthermore, bet sizing can clue one in on the hand strength of an opponent (both pre and post flop). If villain is not opening a standard size from the button then a min-raise indicates a very wide range of hands more heavily weighted towards drawing hands rather than value hands. Obviously, Ax is quite strong vs these hands.

Bet sizing is even more important postflop where bet sizing tells can so greatly reveal an opponent's holdings that at times you may even be able to fold the top of your range when beat. Other posters are correct that we can call in this spot on the flop vs a standard cbet. If villain were to make an unusually large cbet on this flop, indicating either a value hand or potentially value hands and flush draws, then I think this would be a pretty trivial fold on the flop.

Ugh. I misread it too. I didn't see it was a minraise pre either. Folding is not a great option. I also thought the villain was in the CO, so had him on a tighter range. He should have a few more Tx combos than I initially thought.
That said, without firing up Equilab, I think check-call river is still my preference.
"Bet-fold is so 2013" is partly a joke, but there's some truth to it. Two years ago, villains were making a lot more calling mistakes, and rarely bluffed the river if you checked. These days, villains are slightly better at folding, but they also make lots of betting mistakes if you check to them. (Villains are particularly apt to make bets without purpose with hands that should check back and see a showdown. I've lost count of how many times I check the river in spots like this and a villain makes a nonsensical bet with 99, QQ, or AK.)

With this hand, I'm not totally convinced that we will be good >50% of the time if we bet and get action, but I haven't counted every combo religiously. I initially thought a bet only targeted AT/KT, which only make up 14 combos, whilst flushes and boats are at least 25, but I had villain on a tighter range when I first looked at the hand. If he's going to call with all combos of QT/JT/T9 (I wouldn't), then we're more likely to be ahead.
I just think that if we check, villain bets with more or less the same range that calls, but also bets a few random trash hands. Besides, it's fun to have a WTSD number of over 30%. #Ihatefolding

so much discussion for a hand that is pretty darn standard

So much wasted storage space on a thread with so much good discussion.

This is BQ. Discussion of standard hands is standard here. Comments like yours add no value.

If there is so much discussion about it then by definition is isn't "standard". I actually like it because this is a hand that would have been a snapfold for me 5 years ago but is now a snapcall. It's good to argue why that has become instead of just assuming it.