I didn't say hey look at me I'm a celebrity poster, but yes, I am so good that I don't need to point out where you're wrong if I don't want to. Same with apo5tol, and same with anyone else. Sure, you're not going to get as much out of our responses as if we broke down every point and went into detail explaining our reasons for various decisions and thoughts, but you're still getting access to what I believe to be pretty valuable information. If you disagree then you can say so and then i/we/whomever you are disagreeing with can either choose to rebut your points or ignore you or whatever the hell else they please. Nobody is owed anything, the very least of which is free poker advice from successful players.

I hate having to come off as so arrogant but it's hard to say it any other way. I don't proclaim to be the pinnacle of knowledge when it comes to PLO or poker strategy and I doubt OP or any of the other "celebrity" (basically anyone from the HSPLO forum then?) posters do. If I am reading RunItOnce and Sauce posts a 1 line response to a complex situation then I ****ing read the whole thread and try to figure out what he means and thank lord for the GOLD he has just imparted. Sometimes he goes into tonnes of detail and just unleashes mountains of pure brilliance and that's awesome, but I'm not going to lambaste him for a shorter response if that's all he wants to give at any given time.

It's pretty much the standard, and has been for ages. It's not 2009 any more. It used to be that someone posted a hand and you'd get 10 regs all discussing the hand from different angles and figuring out what's best to do. You rarely get that any more. Some situations have been figured out or "solved" or at least there is a "standard" play that most successful players will agree upon - so when these situations come up time and time again rather than going into tonnes of detail as to why a certain play is good, it has become fairly common for a veteran poster to just say that a certain play is good (and usually others will agree) and this will help out the OP or whomever is asking the question. Another reason you don't get it much any more is that as poker gets tougher and tougher you will find fewer and fewer successful players willing to part with their knowledge of what has made them successful.

Honestly poker strategy forums are getting worse and worse. HSPLO is all but gone, and SSPLO is wasting away. Troll posters like benni19 are derailing all sorts of threads and filling them with nonsense and spats like this one pop up way more often than they should. Not to mention the e-peen waving that certain regs bring up when certain other regs appear in the same thread - and not in the playful, in-jest manner that it used to happen. There's animosity everywhere now.

I still like having a place to discuss poker hands and indulge in chatter with other poker players, especially PLO players. SSPLO is one of the best remaining places to do that. So I'm gonna hang around and try to keep posting well and hope others do the same. I don't mean to come off as a "celebrity" poster, and I don't mean to offend when I tell you that your post is full of misinformation. I asked a couple of questions again not to ruffle your feathers but to get you thinking about the river situation, hand ranges, and what each player would/should do with their ranges.

That doesn't seem true or accurate at all. He definitely asked the question if he should fold the turn so if, as you say, he "refused to even consider that he may have made a mistake" why would he ask if he should fold the turn? It's because he thinks he might have made a mistake in calling turn.

Okay here's one example from your first post:

I strongly disagree with this. I think calling turn and folding river is a viable option. A lot of villains, especially at lower stakes, won't follow through on a bluff when they're extremely deep. They might fire one barrel to try to get hero off on the turn but shut down. It's possible he has a hand like AAxx or KKxx that will check back river. It's possible he'll do something like bet 1/3 pot with 2xxx. It's possible he'll do something like bet 1/3 pot with 88xx to, sure.

We're not trying to "put him on a bluff", or put him on any one type of hand. We want to make smart estimations of his frequencies with the various types of hands he can have. If we think he's likely to be bluffing and value betting a lot worse on the turn with a high frequency but bluffing and value betting worse on the river with a low frequency then we can call turn / fold river.

Tl; Dr but I'm not a frequent poster here but it's pretty SOP in other forms for the top posters to be able to get away with one line responses without having to break down every little minute detail. Generally you should just learn to live with it.

Pf might be marginal but he's never lol stacking off with bottom straight and it's double suited and you have position. Folding is fine if you are bad post flop but I'm not folding there.

Obviously not folding otf, ott I'd want to fold but I'd peel once more.

Otr I mean, we have at worst KK up abs haven't folded yet. Not GTO to fold our hand but I only worry about being exploited when somebody is trying to do it.

So I fold otr and move on but definitely make a note.

In the spirit of the earlier part of your post, I could say that you are wrong on so many levels I don't know where to begin, and that's that! There, makes for short and rather uninteresting posts, doesn't it?

In the more friendly spirit contained in the latter part of your post:

What you strongly disagree with is not necessary misinformation. I hope that is clear. You still haven't justified that it is, but I digress. So on to the hand.

But but but....but we have no reads except for what's happened in this hand, and some very basic stats, meaning we are basically readless, and that is according to the OP. So how do we make 'smart estimations of his frequencies with the various types of hands he can have. If we think he's likely to be bluffing and value betting a lot worse on the turn with a high frequency but bluffing and value betting worse on the river with a low frequency then we can call turn / fold river'? On what basis do we make those guesstimates?

Poker, apart from anything else, is mainly a game of information once we get past the basics, so in the absence of information, do we not revert to standard play? The standard play here is not to get involved with these sort of stacks whilst conceding position with a hand which if flopped well, but not perfect, is easily dominated once there is strong action. Hence the 'fold pre' comment that the OP wont even consider discussing.

Having made the mistake of getting in the pot in the first place, we must try to make the best of a bad job. Flop is good for us, but can we be happy if we get strong action? I like the donk bet, its asking questions on a dry board. However, the weak structure of our hand now manifests itself. The fact that we flopped as well as can be expected without miracles happening, yet still do not feel strong enough to repop a min raise on a dry board after donking out says it all. Or are you suggesting the flat call on flop was a trap, to keep the opponent's betting range wide, and we can comfortably call any turn except 7, 8 or 9?

Check call a pot bet of 118BBs on turn with the intention of folding the river if bet strongly into? All without the absence of any reads? That is good poker? Ok, if you say so. Me, I am a donkey. If I have no reads, I take the basic advice offered to me when I first started the game all those years ago: Believe in what they are representing, and big hands for big pots. Both would lead me to check-fold the turn and pick a better spot. Now that may be that wrong on so many levels for poker masters, but not for mere mortals.

In summary, what you are defending is we ought to be calling off a large part of our very deep stack with a marginal hand in the dark. Interesting, to say the least, especially coming from a self-professed successful good player.

Lastly, once the OP had called the turn bet on that board, when combined with the flop action, surely he is representing at least a full-house. Can you please enlighten me why the OP feel that is the wrong approach to poker hands?

Thank you.

'Top posters' Interesting. But never mind. Reminds of the 'top posters' I used to have fun with at RGP.

So, all posters are equal, but some are more equal than others. Whatever gets you through the night, I suppose.

Yes, with position, the hand is very playable, even more so when stacks are this deep. But he does not have position. He is OOP to the other deep stack.

I'd respond but not really worth my time just move on

So you are not responding by responding. Cool!

Move along, nothing to see here!

I didnt say preflop wasnt worth a discussion, I said I wasnt interested in having one because to be honest I dont think it matters all that much one way or the other. I was interested in what people had to say about further streets.
I said that you might have misread the action because it seemed to me that you thought button was the 3bettor, when he wasnt.

When you say "if you call turn you have to call river" you're assuming that villain's range for betting those streets is the same, while I think it can/should be very different.

If I thought this hand wasnt interesting and I played it well/standard I wouldnt have posted it.

If I thought there was value in a river bet, then yes. Being afraid of re-opening the betting is going to cost you a ton of ev if it means you don't value bet thinly.

How much are you betting OTR with quads, and what other hands are you going to have in your range when you bet? These are things you need to think about to get any good at poker. Just thinking "i have quads, must bet and not miss out on value" is bad. What bluffs will you have & what worse value hands?

As I said before, we also fold out villains bluffs by leading river ourselves unless villain is sick enough to jam over our river bet - but generally, this is not the case and aggressive villains are more than happy to bet when we show weakness.

The problem with talking about pre is that it detracts from the discussion of turn/river that apo5tol wanted opinions on. Pre is w/e, having 2345ds in our range is good for board coverage and a good player can get away with eeking out a small profit/breaking even. 2345ss is obv a snap fold pre in these positions tho.

If I thought there was value in a river bet, then yes. Being afraid of re-opening the betting is going to cost you a ton of ev if it means you don't value bet thinly.

And here is the thousand and one dollar question: Is there value in betting? I'd say no on that board given the action on previous streets. Do you think there is value in betting, and why?

How much are you betting OTR with quads, and what other hands are you going to have in your range when you bet? These are things you need to think about to get any good at poker. Just thinking "i have quads, must bet and not miss out on value" is bad. What bluffs will you have & what worse value hands?

I agree with this, but what has this to do with the price of fish? What are the hands in his range given the prior action and the stacks. If you think he has less than a house, AND will bet again with less, based on nothing more than FPS (no prior reads, remember), than I'd say you are the one who is bad.

Quadtwo's this whole time you've been telling others they are unable to listen to you or change their minds. However, i think this is just as applicable if not more so to you yourself

Quadtwos,

I agree that people should continually question their beliefs and not fall prey to the epistemic paralysis that turns poker players into dinosaurs. But what you are doing in this thread is roughly comparable to marching into a geology lecture and barking at the professor, "But what if the Earth is MADE OUT OF COTTON CANDY? WON'T YOU CONSIDER THAT?" and expecting him to spend time wrangling with and attempting to rebut your claims. It's just that the arguments you've put forth are so violently at odds with how poker works that giving them the treatment you think they deserve would be a waste of everyone's time. New beliefs have to have some minimal level of apparent legitimacy. Apostol probably had his sights set on a rebuttal at first but -- after being inundated by the deluge of wrongness and flawed thinking -- had to tap out.

Forget about villains range - I'm talking about your range. If you only lead out river here with quads (and maybe 88?) you are going to be pretty easy to play against.

I frequently play against players with a similar flawed thought process to you and it makes decisions vs them so easy.... you can get away with bluffs + thin value bets OTR because you know their range is capped since they always lead with value and never bluff. Plus it saves me from putting more money into the pot on a bluff.

But OK, keep donking river with quads.

the analogy here!

Saying that a person should not have a bluffing range in any particular river spot is wrong from a theoretical standpoint.

I am quite happy to change my opinion, if they can back up with reason why I am wrong. Instead, all they have been doing is first, saying 'you are wrong because we are better players, so just accept it', and some have even defended this approach. Second, some than try use over-used general poker platitudes to defend their position, but either unwilling or unable, to say how these apply to this particular hand.

Peace

I think you have it the wrong way around. The way the hand was played, against most rules of standard poker without justification based on reads, it is like me walking into the room challenging the professor's assertion that the world is made from cotton candy, and that we should accept his word because he happens to be a professor., so no other evidence is required.

What part of my posts are so at odds with the way poker works. Please do enlighten me rather than making baseless assertions. We can all do that. You post shows that you suck at poker. There, I just done it. Easy, isn't it?

beautiful thread...

So in your play, you would only ever consider your own range before considering what action to take, and never the range of your opponent? This is consider good poker by poker masters here? Wow!

How did you get from my statements that I never bluff OOP? Everything that I had said refers to the way this particular hand only. How did you get from that to my only leading for value in general?

Buy yes, by all means check all your nuts and always bluff by representing quads at river when your opponent has represented strength on the turn. See how easy it is to make generalisations? Two can play that game.

Pretty hard to do when you ignore everything poker-related you're told and just focus on non-poker or general statements.

Hopefully you do realize that none of us owes you anything. You are not entitled to a detailed explanation from anyone in the poker community.

If you dont understand some concepts and how they could apply to this hand it doesnt mean that they are "over-used general poker platitudes".

Anyways, if you think you're god's gift to poker you should go make some money, stop wasting time on forums.

I wasn't going to respond to you directly given our previous replies, as if you think you are so much better and its beneath you to reply properly, there is not much point. However, you made a semi-attempt to clarify your thoughts here a little, so let's see if this can be a little more civilised.

Sans reads, we revert to standard play. Now one of the most fundamental rules in big bet poker is that people don't only fold to a present bet, but more so from the threats of bets to come. For example, if the turn bet was allin, than it becomes a quick call. If he than shows you 88/55/82, its just poker and you move on. However, you have over another pot bet behind after calling, and you are holding a marginally hand with very little chance of improving, so surely you must consider the next street? If you feel you cannot call another bet on the river, you are basically calling 118BBs in the hope that he'd check behind on the river. Why do it when you have no idea either of his holdings nor his tendencies? That's why I think the decision should be made on the turn, and mine would be either to bet 1/2 pot/fold or check/fold to a big bet. If I am outplayed, well, even the best players get out-played when OOP holding marginals sitting on ultra deep stacks, so donkeys like me are used to it.

Of course turn/river betting ranges 'can' be very different, but I am not sure that it 'should' be very different in this case. We just don't have the information to determine one way or the other, and we need to put in 118BBs to find out. Discretion over valour and all that?

Basically I'd say that you lacked any plan beyond 'call and hope' in the way you played the turn.

Lastly, I am genuinely interested regarding what hands you think he should put you on after your turn call. You seem to disparage the idea that I think you are representing at least a house with the call. Maybe people over here are operating at levels way above my imagination, but surely that would be the logical read in this situation?

LOL. Whatever you say.

apo5tol, you should have 3b/fold flop to find out where you are. That's where you went wrong in the hand

Roy #51 is soooo much spot on

Bet/call flop is, by far, superior.
Turn is close and I'm prob. cry-calling ingame, though this type of player's bluff frequency are very low given flop.
I think river is a pretty easy fold against the average plo50 guy. Also, the "call turn = call river" logik is so flawed.

yea man, and after the hand was done I should've moved up to where they respect my raises!

An open apology:

In my naïve and simple mind, I had assumed this was an open poker forum, where people interested in poker come to discuss the finer, or even the not so fine points of poker. Instead I find myself wandering into a self-congratulatory mutual self-fornicating clique that seems to exist in some sort of parallel poker universe.

In this strange parallel poker universe, the normal standards of poker do not seem to apply, and any sort of play or comments, no matter how bad or inane, can be, and is defended against outsiders on the lines of, 'Oh but we are so much beyond your level, just take our words for it. We are so good we don't need to justify our bad plays/inane comments, and even if we did, you plebs wouldn't understand anyway'. Such solidarity are hard to find anywhere in the real universe these days, and if it doesn't exist, would need to be created. I wholly commend the group for their sense of solidarity against any outsider who is foolish enough to ask the question why the Emperor is walking around stark naked.

A total disregard of your opponent's range, or the opponent's perception of your range, and just concentrate on your own hand when making betting decisions, plus the calling of big bets with weak hands OOP with a deep stack into the unknown (otherwise known as the 'call and hope for a free showdown on the next street syndrome'), seem to be the epitome of good poker play in this strange poker universe.

I offer my unreserved and whole-hearted apology for thinking that this place is a poker form that exist in the real poker universe, and acknowledge that it is a huge error on my part for making this unwarranted assumption. I further promise never to repeat this mistake again.