1/2/5, 10 handed

Most of the players in this game play their hands, limp a lot and rarely/never raise pre, will chase w/ incorrect odds, limp/call w/ almost anything, etc. Just your average bad PLO players. Only three of us, V included, have any understanding of the game.

Hero (~$400): MAWW, tight, more aggressive than most of these bad, passive players. Bought in short for $200, which I rarely do, but trying something new. Most players buy in for $300 or less.

V (covers): MAAG, one of the best players at the table. Very tight, buys in deep ($1,000) and always stacks up. He plays online in a pretty big 5-card game daily, which I used to play in. He does have one tell: seems to bet pot when he has a big hand and less when he doesn’t, but I’m not positive this is always the case.

OTTH:

Three limps, including V in CO (BTN folds). H in SB pots ($30) w/ KsKcQhJc, three limpers call.

Flop ($115): JsTsJc two spades.

H checks thinking, bingo, but it checks to V who bets $75. I 100% know he has a J, but he didn’t pot, so I’m thinking he doesn’t have JT, but why pot the nuts here?

Does anyone bet flop?

Hero? This is a pure flat, correct? Anyone raise? Fold?

I would call and see a turn - I think the turn plays pretty honest in a spot like this so it shouldn't be too hard to navigate turn/river.

I would lead flop (medium or small) and call as played.

Never mind I misread the stack size as $200 starting. Yeah, this.

It's entirely possible, even likely given your description, that V's sizing tell is just something he does exploitively against the fish.

Jc on the flop is a misdeal.

I think I prefer check call to betting. As for your sizing tell maybe that would make sense on wet boards, but why would he want to pot the nuts here? He can easily get all the money in whenever he wants and obviously would want calls from draws.

Yep. Sorry. I screwed up the suits. I did not have a flush draw is what I remember, and now I remember more: The turn brought the second spade. No flush hit, regardless.

Hero calls.

Turn ($265): JsTcJd 2s

Hero checks. I didn't think betting accomplishes anything. V checks behind.

River ($265): JsTcJd2s 3c

Hero? This is a check, correct? Or do I throw out a bet and fold to a raise?

I would expect to have the best hand at this point but what's villains range? We do block KQ - would QQ/worse jacks call a bet here? Maybe he has some AJ that he slows down with I guess as well every now and then. You did say he 100% has a Jack here - if that's the case and he most likely bets full houses/AJ on the turn then I would think we should bet.

Definitely check turn, hard to get called by worse and hard to improve if he has a boat.

On river block tiny and check both viable.

Block betting vs this particular player is not that attractive since he will correctly fold the majority of weaker hands - the main benefit is losing less vs AJ exactly and some (many?) of villains AJ combos bet turn.

Villain also sounds capable enough to bluff-raise our blocker bet.

River might be a pure check/ often call, villain value range is mostly boats and some of his flop semi-bluffs with little showdown value. Villain may also checkback AJ sometimes, but room for a lot of different strategies he could take, especially from observant live pros.

Edit: in previous post you were 100% sure villain had a j, in this case we can play more of a pure check/fold strategy and maybe mix in a few large donks to fold out aj and possible even j2/j3/tt at some frequency.

Why are you so sure it is a J rather than TT?

TT is possible, but it's that or a J.

I checked the river and V checked behind. He had AKJX (8 or 9 I think) with A-high spades. We talked about the hand, and he said he was not folding the turn, but might have folded to a river pot.

I did consider betting the river, and probably should have. I don't think he'd check the turn w/ JT (maybe TT, but honestly that didn't cross my mind at the time). It's so unlikely that this player has a 2 or 3 in his hand. Still, he might have sigh-called.

If only the last K had hit!

He can easily have a 2 or a 3. AKJ2, QQJ3 etc. I don’t think we should try to bluff him off AJ. Maybe if we are very deep and he bet small in position we could consider a big check raise repping JT only.

Maybe, but I'm not sure he'd call a raise from me pre w/ one of those hands. I guess suited he might.

V is in position and best relative position with three fish in between. In his spot we really shouldn’t fold any hand we deemed decent enough to limp. QQJ3 can make the nuts . So can any suited ace or small rundown that isn’t good enough to raise. He could also be limping good hands trying to keep the spr high in position.

If he isn't folding turn he is either drawing to a 6/9 outer or doesn't believe you have the full house. He wouldn't have folded.

1) x/c Flop is good .. I don't think a good Reg would bet here w/o Jx/TT too often on this rainbow Board 'to see where he's at' when weaker Players will more than likely x/r strong holdings, thus bloating the pot. (Not that we wont GII)

2) Never really like holding pp when we have trips .. and straight outs may not be good .. best to just hang on and hope action stays reasonable We have our two overs, however reduced by 1 out.

3) IMO 'good' Regs will 'soft' play each other in these spots simply because they know that it's the other Players at the table that are targets. Exceptions of course, but do you and he have a history of 'playing hard' against each other?

4) Turn is 'he knows I know spot' .. More than likely doesn't have more than Jx and doesn't really want to call off unless forced to

5) (Really 3A) .. block or check is fine .. just get to Showdown as cheap as possible. Probably only blocking with Ax since you say V is tight and we have an extra K. Would've been interesting if 7+ non-pairing had hit the Board. And of course 'any' bet in PLO makes it that much harder to call a raise.

I think 'good sense' was shown on both sides of this hand. Normally Players want to GII with 'any' trips, especially Ax trips even if they have a pp. Even more amazing how Players GII with 3 unders here. GL

SMH pretty hard at the fact that this place still thinks a) you can get useful information from racial and gender profiling and b) even if it were the case that a) were true, it still wouldn't be acceptable ethically or morally. MAAG = middle-aged asian guy? not african? presumably if they were black it would be MAAAG? and that information is going to sway any of our thought processes from a call to a fold or whatever? and why so american-centric anyway if that's the case?

How do you 100% know he has a J? Try to shy away from being 100% anything, ever. Why can't he have TT? Maybe you mean '100% sure he has a J minimum'. In terms of 'why would he bet pot with the nuts', lots of people do that even if it's not correct to do so. Could be that they're scared of getting outdrawn, or that they think their opponents are bad and will pay full pot, or more likely they're looking at the remaining stacks and thinking 'a small bet looks scarier than a full pot here so maybe they'll level themselves into thinking full pot can't be the nuts'.

I bet flop because there are lots of cards that can come to give someone a better hand than me, once they do make a better hand it's harder for me to redraw on them given I have my own outs in my hand, and so I don't really want it getting checked through.

I'm confused now, was there or wasn't there a flush draw on the flop?

As played and with the hand history edited for their not being a flush draw on the flop, I do indeed throw out a small bet on the river and fold to a raise. I would guess that this is both exploitable and exploitative i.e. it will not work well against a good thinking player who will reasonably well read you for the hand you have and therefore not fold any better hands nor call worse, so if he is as good as you say probably just check and decide.

Leaving aside (a), which could keep us busy for days, I'm really curious how you would proposed to make (b) actionable given that like all of us, you must have a subconscious.

This isn't the right forum I'm sure (where is?) but I would love to continue this convo in light of all that's known about implicit bias. Do you say to yourself at the table, "I'd be stereotyping to expect HJ to do _______ because she's visibly __________, and it would be unethical of me to use this info if it were valid, but since it isn't, my subconscious is off the hook"? Because if you are wrong about (a), and firmly believe (b), it seems really hard to come up with a way that you could just resolve to not use that information in unethical or amoral ways. You'd have to quit playing poker in the (b && !a) parlay, wouldn't you?

Me, I've always figured that if my loosely-held stereotypes are wrong, more power to the opponent who realizes that and uses them against me to take my money. I don't see anything unethical about me giving a certain opponent EV in the case that I have completely misjudged tendencies for any reason. (This is why I try to be ready to update priors quickly.)

Anyway tell me where to move such a polarizing conversation and I'll see anyone over there who cares.

To clarify. I'm not suggesting that there's a single person on the planet, myself included, that does not have some level of unconscious bias going on that's related to superficial stuff like gender and race. I've been playing live poker for ~17 years now, much of that professionally, and have studied psychology and the nature of cognitive biases. That has led me to conclude that where people think a certain superficial trait means more of a likelihood to play poker in a certain way, they're far more likely to be placing the conclusion before the evidence, and their evidence-gathering and sorting and analyzing software in their brain is so hilariously biased away from truth (short version: evolution is not interested in truth, it is interested in survival to the point of reproduction, and then maximizing chances of reproduction) that their conclusions will serve little better than fabrications.

I would add the caveat that there are cultural considerations that can be taken into account. Different countries have different cultural relationships to gambling, and this could translate into, for example, a greater tendency to play looser, or more aggressive, or bluff more, or something. You could combine these with visual ideas, like, say, if I was playing a cash game in London ~15 years ago and a smartly-dressed person in their 60s with a Spanish accent sat down at the table, starts riffling their chips awkwardly, I would make certain assumptions about their likely lack of experience. But these would be very weak assumptions that will be trumped or confirmed by things like how they physically handle themself, their cards and their chips at the table, how loose they play, and the hands they turn over at showdown. I.E. they are VERY weak indicators and they are immediately updated by the better quality information available very soon. They are no more than 'if I get into a spot with them very early on, and I have nothing else to go on, assume they like a gamble', but then again, in general, a random in a cash game in London 15 years ago likes a gamble.

If someone is born in America, those cultural considerations are largely a wash, and the colour of their skin is not going to give you damnedest useful bit of information on how they play.

These details are only small parts of a general aggregation of minutiae that serve into a general impression. They do not need to be shared. These details are not salient ones. How are they dressed? Are they friendly? What tranche of experience am I putting this person in, < 100 hands lifetime, < 1000, < 1k, < 10k?

Lastly, I think that racial and gender profiling are morally objectionable. But this is far less important than the idea that it's next to useless, because poker is already a game of 'lie to people and manipulate them to take their money off them. are they broke and you're feeding their gambling addiction? not your problem! papa's got bills to pay!' so you know it's whatever. If I thought it were profitable, I might do it, but I don't. There are more important details to focus on.

If he were black, it would be MABG. I don't know how I was being American-centric, but I'm an American, so...

I have played with this player a ton over many years, so can be 100% sure about a few things. I already addressed TT and a few other points you are trying to make to somehow disagree with me, the OP, about how I perceived the situation. I was actually there.

I am a middle-aged white woman, and I know 100% that most players expect me to play a certain way until they learn differently -- and as wazz noted, I take advantage of it. I also know that I stereotype (I'm not profiling) at the poker table -- and probably a lot of other times in life, too. Whether it's right or wrong or morally or ethically horrible doesn't change the fact that I do it. I do make judgments at the poker table based on those stereotypes until I learn differently. It's hard for me to believe you don't, and I'm not sure why you wouldn't. Using what I consider stereotyping at a poker table has helped me more than hurt me when it comes to winning.

(FWIW, I am about as liberal as you can get, but I'm also honest and not a hypocrite.)