Hey TwoPlusTwo,

I'm having a really hard time playing $1/2 and $1/3 live. I try to play correctly but I am really losing a lot of money in a couple spots I'd like to ask some questions on.

Let's say we have AA on the button, there are 3 limpers and the game is such that nobody is calling or making a preflop $20 raise (very often). Stacks are $100-600 with the $600 stack pretty tight.

It is heads up with the small blind who calls.

The flop is 6 8 2 rainbow. I continue for $15 and the villain raises to $35 so I call, thinking he might have flopped a set.

The turn is an 8. He bets $35 and I go all in for about $77 and he calls. The river is a 6 and he shows A6 and wins the pot.

This has been happening to me CONSTANTLY.

In another $1/3 table, for my entire stack of $300, UTG opens for $14 and I decide to flat, since the player to my right has been consistently limping or flatting AK and AJs type hands. Player to my left calls.

Flop is A A 8. I check and the player behind checks. I check, player behind bets about $30. I raise to about $90. He goes all in with about $300 and he shows over A3 and I have AJ, and he hits the 3 on the river.

Could anyone tell me how I could have played these hands differently? The second is obvious by 3-betting preflop I could have gotten A3o out of the hand. But what if UTG is opening and player to my right is flatting AJ+? Should I fold AJ?

Note:
I am a losing player who does things like sees a flop of 8 8 3 and has 77 and check-raises often to get players in position with hands like AKo. Usually I call a re-raise and am way behind against something like 1010 or sometimes I get players off a hand but always seem to river me.

Can anyone give me some suggestions? My tournament record is much better but I'm down about $5k in cash this year and I keep getting my money in good and losing. Thanks a lot.

-Bl

In the first hand, it's not crystal clear what happened pre? You isolated against three limpers with a $20 raise and only the small blind called in the end? Anyway, given that there apparently isn't much left behind on the turn as played, you probably could have just got all the money in on the flop. Still doesn't seem like you did anything wrong; the guy put his money in way behind and sucked out on you. You definitely want to play more pots with that player lol.

Second hand, I'm still very confused about the action, but you got the money in way ahead, yet again. You want to be up against A3o in that spot. The fact that in this particular instance you got coolered doesn't matter. It feels like you're looking at these situations wrong if you want "A3o out of the hand". A3o is awesome to see. What you don't want to see is AK, AQ, A8 or 88. It's still possible that you misplayed the hand (I can't really say because, as stated, I don't really understand who was in the pot or who did what lol), but it seems like you did fine.

Check-raising with 77 on 883...in general that seems a little ambitious, but I think calling off the re-raise is the biggest problem here. As you said, you're often just completely crushed in this spot when you get called.

The reoccurring issue with your thought process is this desire to "get players off a hand". And that is part of poker, yes, you like to deny players their equity. You are pretty happy if someone with AK folds when you have 77 on 883, because they don't get to realize their equity and you get to win the pot right away. However, folding out worse hands is, typically speaking, not as good a result as getting value from worse hands. You'd rather people put in money when behind, allowing you to win a bigger pot. That's what "getting value" is all about. Think about it, when you have AA, do you just shove all in preflop to discourage people from calling because you're terrified of being outdrawn? No, you put out a smaller raise because you don't want everyone to fold. You want at least someone to call and to put money in postflop when they are most likely behind. Incidentally, this is exactly what happened in the first hand, and in that hand, you won a ton of EV. You lost a bunch of money, but you made a good series of decisions with a high positive expected value. And that's all you can control in poker.

When you're playing live, you're not playing a lot of hands in a lot of time, and it can take a long, long, long time for playing better than your opponents to actually be rewarded. It would help if you put some time into studying the game to better understand how these situations you're describing are actually really good for you in the long-run, regardless of the results of the individual hands.

To start with, let's compare the fates of AJo and A3o on a board of AA8. AJo wins about 70% of the time, loses about 10% of the time, and there is a tie about 20% of the time. You can easily find a program to calculate this sort of stuff just by googling. In this exact instance, you can win, lose or tie, but if you got in this spot say a million times, you would have millions upon millions of profit, almost surely. Now, you don't get this exact spot a million times, sure, but you get very similar ones, and if you keep getting it in good, and play enough hands, you will win money.

Of course, I'm not saying just keep doing what you're doing and you'll win, because maybe there are other issues in your game (well, I already identified calling off with 77 on a board of 883 to be not too great). I'm just saying that, from what I can tell, it seems like these two hands were played very profitably.

You're getting the money in ahead. Best advice is to have a bankroll big enough that you can afford to lose your stack 30% of the time, and still have enough to double up next time when the cards come up good 70%. A lot less people would play poker if the luck factor wasn't there.

You played the two hands just fine ... I have other questions ...

1) Why are you getting called down so light? Are you playing too many hands, playing table captain or ultra aggro?

2) Are you letting these beats affect your play in the following hands ... causing symptoms of Q #1?

The hardest thing in poker is looking at the play rather than the results. If you start to alter or slow play these two spots then you are really missing out on long term value against these Players since they would be 'allowed' to fold out when they miss the Rivers and you win much smaller pots than you lose.

I'm well known for taking some horrendous beats and missing 'half the deck' draws. But that's not going to stop me from continuously putting those Players into those spots when I think the move is +EV. GL

Thanks everyone for contributions.

math42, a bad habit of mine when getting raised with 77 on that paired board is simply calling off. But I see from your suggestion now, that 77 has 8.38% chance to win in that hand. A lot of money, even if it's the remaining 20% to 25% of the beginning stack left could be saved with a fold here. It's probably quite embarrassing, but the wiser thing to do because it's extremely rare that opponent would ever do this without an overpair and given I didn't reraise preflop he knows I would not have JJ+, your advice is going to save me a lot of money if I know for sure I'm behind as I'm going to fold whenI know I'm in these spots and the equity doesn't justify the call. Really appreciate the detail here.

ToiletBowler, recently understand a bankroll is needed and expecting these losses in the results


answer20, in some games I've played super aggro in, but in this game I had played only 3-4 hands over about 90 minutes. I think the natural emotional response for newer players like myself is to just get frustrated from bad beats and hopelessly throw away the rest of the chips to be all-in in a later situation. That's money that can be put with +EV spots. Perhaps that's why I called off.

Cheers,
Bl

what happens with every player is that they remember the so called bad beats and think that is why they are losing. it has some merit but they forget about all the money they threw away on bad call and bets.

its your total game that makes you a winner or loser. good luck and work on all your deficiencies and play much tighter.

Obviously Ray is right here. You've posted two hands that arguably have no problems at all, you just played two big pots with a big edge but unfortunately don't win.

You suggested that you take pairs and "check raise the flop to protect against AK" and then when your opponents three bet or continue you don't give them credit for, you know, not having AK anymore. Thus you pay off these bets in (almost) hopeless spots.

Your strategy decision to check raise with this logic is a bit shallow although the play you end up choosing has some merit. But the real problem is the extra losses when your opponents don't fold to your check raise and you have these marginal hands.

I think you already know that is an actual problem, but I would encourage you to post more hands like that and get constructive feedback on your problem spots.

Actually, I would say that's a good "strategy". Have implemented similar thing to that one when I also got stuck. However, I was prepared to lose my stack at half of the time

The answer is obvious: fold river.