Hi all,

I'm working on improving my OOP play. This is a hand I played yesterday and I'm curious if I'm on the right track here. For many perhaps uninteresting, but for me it crystalized an important point.

Villain: relatively new to the table but from what I had observed he called too much both pre- and post-flop and bet too rarely and too little. Stack 150bb.

I raised 15bb pre-flop from MP with KhQh and he called. We are heads up.

Flop (34.5bb): 3h9hKc. I bet 20bb, he calls.
Turn (74.5bb): 7s. I bet 45bb, he calls.
River (164.5bb): I check, he checks. Villain shows AdKs

I find the turn interesting and very different than if I were playing IP. IP, I could elect to take a free card. Granted, given all my outs to improve and the fact that I believe his calling range is wide, in this case I would have bet either way. But in terms of general play, OOP we can't elect to take that free card (at the cost of giving up initiative), so we have check more often on the turn against a V who called us on the flop. Am I making sense?

I know people make stupidly large raises d live but $30 at 1/2 is hilarious

Would you say the same if he had AA and stacked villain on the river?

I don't like the sizing with the specific hand, but the best live games are the ones where you can make it 15BB preflop with QQ+/AK only and still get calls from weak players.

@OP: Against someone who calls too much, you can bet less postflop if you want to. If you don't have the FD to go with your top pair, nobody is stopping you from betting only 20BB on the turn if you don't want for the pot to get too big. But then again, don't open to 15BB with K-high preflop if you don't want to play a big pot. If somebody with a <100BB stack calls you pre, your sizing means that every significant turn bet commits you.

I'm sorry, I made a big mistake! I opened with $15 so I should have written 7.5bb and calculated accordingly. Sorry about that. I was just drinking my first cup of coffee when I wrote the OP.

Flop (19.5bb): 3h9hKc. I bet 10bb, he calls.
Turn (39.5bb): 7s. I bet 23bb, he calls.
River (85.5bb): X (brick). I check, he checks. Villain shows AdKs

I've tried to follow a strategy where I always use the same pre-flop sizing regardless of hand. This is also true on the flop and turn. (1/2 pot on dry boards, 2/3 on wet boards, on paired dry boards 1/3 and paired wet boards 1/2) I know most people aren't paying attention at these stakes, but some are at my poker room and I want to get in the habit for when I eventually get to 2/5.

Preflop is different because usually there are both good and bad players left to act after your raise, but if you apply a "one size fits all" approach to your postflop sizing regardless of your opponent(s), you're leaving a lot of money on the table. Not only at 1/2 but also at 100/200. If you are in a game where everybody is too solid to do that, you might want to start to look for a different game.

Just watch a 5/10 game for a couple of minutes and check how differently hands play out postflop when it's reg vs. reg or reg vs. spot.

Thanks for the insight. It's hard to know who will actually call though. We can anticipate callers based on what we've observed, of course. Iso'ing works the way you describe so it must be possible to use variable sizing open with some success. I will experiment with it and try to make it work.

Yes, it's hard to anticipate who is going to call preflop. But as soon as you are postflop, you know who you are playing against and can adjust accordingly.

Or you could have written "I raised to $15" because that's what you did?

Someone explain this attitude to me. I see it a lot on this site.

Why convert to big blinds? It's completely unnecessary in every single case and to assume that we can't work things out unless everything is normalised is an insult to our intelligence, and provides an extra way in which the OP can misreport a hand, as we saw here. It also probably hinders your development as well, in live games someone is not going to tell you they are playing an 80bb stack if asked, nor is anyone going to say "raise to 7.5bb" unless they think looking weird is +EV. You need to be able to calculate odds etc regardless of the size of the blinds, it's just the same calculation multiplied by a constant, it's not difficult

The reason I am using bb as a unit is that it makes it easy to compare my performance across games of different stakes. I use it in my personal accounting, so I choose to use it here. I don't believe I'm a pioneer in using bb to describe amounts in poker games. I can understand being annoyed at the mistake since it changes the feedback to the OP. However, I'm not trying to be difficult. Just consistent.

I will add that after some consideration, most HH are given in $$ and doing so would prevent this kind of confusion in the future.

No. I said "attitude". I was talking about your attitude.

no

You raised pre and called a smallish 3 bet, then donked the flop & turn.

Why? Do you have a reason to think his 3-bet range is super wide?

When you flop a hand with that much equity and then donk into the 3-bettor, are you prepared to play for stacks if he raises? If not, just check-call.

There's no 3bet preflop. Hero bet, villain called and hero made a continuation bet on the flop.

That said, if hero raise/called preflop and then led the flop, there shouldn't be any question about playing for stacks. Hero has >45% equity vs. AA/AK and there's only one single combination of KK that he's in bad shape against plus whatever is left from 99/33 after discounting. Even if there's "only" 30BB in the pot on the flop after a 15BB (close to) min 3bet, hero has a very clear spot to stack off.

How awesome is this that the conversation turned to 3-betting. I've just been reading these posts:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/3...notes-1234791/

I'm especially interested in 3-betting because soon I'll be able to go back to 25nl online where the game is more interesting. The only live game will be a 2/4 stakes game, and I'm not sure what kind of skill level I'll encounter.

The reason I raised to 7.5bb pre-flop in this situation is that in the typical 1/2 game where I play now there are lots of limpers and I like to punish them and there's generally no one else who punishes me for doing it.

About 3-betting: if I was going to 3-bet with KQs OOP, I would be doing so hoping to get a fold. The reason is that my post-flop skills aren't quite there yet. However, given this flop, I'm not sure how I would react (assuming I had 3-bet). Given the equity I already have, I would be inclined to check the flop and see how V reacts. If he checks back, then I would turn aggressive. Not sure how to best react to a bet though. Obviously, I would have to call on the flop, but the turn and river aren't clear if he keeps barreling, depending how the board plays out. Donking into a 3-bet pot here would never have entered my mind. I think I've only done it against a passive opponent that I think I'm sure I've already got beat.

I'm just concerned about the old "who calls that bet" if I were to bet the flop here.

I would probably not call a 3-bet OOP with KQs since I feel it is dominated by a significant part of the 3-betting ranges I'm accustomed to.

In live 1/2, when a typical passive villain 3-bets smallish, my experience is that it doesn't mean their range is any weaker. The action of 3-betting seems to be more important here than the bet size. Do you agree?