I play fairly laggish which makes it worse (though honestly it'd f me up if i played tight too).

I just wind up in situations where i feel like i have to choose between folding all my mediocre hands (both pre and post flop) or playing in huge reverse implied odds situations.

If i call with top pair mediocre kicker on the flop i'm gonna win a small amount lose a small amount. If i fold it i'm getting taken advantage of as it's usually on the high end of range of possible hands i can have.

pre-flop sucks too, I lag it up which used to be great but with so much more small three or fourbetting nowadays I find myself lost post-flop having very little idea whether i'm good or not.

Do i just need to have very specific reads on everybody's small raise range or do people have any standard lines for dealing with this until the situation become more clear.

I suppose just folding a lot pre isn't the worst idea, but i really loathe folding medium to strong hands to this type of play post-flop and continuation bet.

bump once because i think this is actually a very interesting topic.

if there is a really exhaustive thread i'd love a link.

tyia

I agree, it's an interesting topic, you probably didn't get much replies because it's a really difficult topic as well...

Pre I think you're best off just folding medium strength hands unless it's a really good or very laggy player, if he's very laggy just try to find some hand that has decent equity against his calling range and push once in a while, you'll still be folding a lot, but they're often comitting a lot of their stacks even though it's a small 4-bet and if you do run into a good hand (it does happen once in a while!) you're in pretty decent shape.

Post flop gets more tricky, it would be good with an example or two, probably stuff like check-minraise to your c-bets etc? I find that one quite difficult, so far I've just been folding to be honest.

I think part of the problem is that it freezes me up, say I have tpwk, second pair or something like that, if he called I would be pretty sure about what to do, if he raised properly I would be pretty sure what to do as this is something I'm used to. But for the life of me I can't see what range a check-minraise is a good play with so it just confuses me endlessly and I just end up calling down (get valuetowned), checking down (not getting value from him) or just plain folding (getting bluffed). Not ideal in any way.

(On a sidenote: The minraise might actually be good play if you manage to do it with a good range as it confuses people in general and especially good players. I'm yet to experiment with it though and I don't know if I will, I still don't like it.)

Thinking about it though, normally it should be one of the following things:

1. Pure bluff, nice cheap bluff, wuhuptidu I won a pot type thing.
2. Monster hand looking for value, stupid way to play it, but makes sense to this guy.
3. "Information minraise" - Thanks to a friend of mine for either telling me the name of this (someone else named it) or naming it himself, what do I know. For example: Q75 flop, villain iss oop after calling preflop with 88, he checks, we c-bet, villain thinks "hm, my hand might be good here, but I don't want to loose a lot of money, he might have a Q, I know, I'm gonna minraise him and see what happens!".

So, to counter this, my plan is to try to use the min 3-bet in some situations, let's see how that fares against the hands villain might do this with.

1. Assumably he folds, but who knows, he might call, he might min 4-bet us, if he does, whatever you do don't leave the table, make a note and be happy.
2. Either he calls looking to extract some tiny tiny amount on the next street or he raises big thinking "haha, got you now". Of course we fold unless we have something good if he bets big. If he calls we probably need to proceed with caution, a small bet on the turn would just suck monkey balls, but that will be for another discussion, if we do have a draw we probably get to see some cheap cards if he's not betting big at least.
3. He probably calls and either goes into check-call mode or check-fold mode depending on his style of play and the board. Quite good for us, not great for him obv.

All in all I think we're doing pretty well here, better than just folding weak-to medium hands and raising strong hands big and not doing anything else.

What hands might this be profitable with? We probably have to adjust, but I think we need to have a lot of strong hands in our range, a few draws definitely and the odd complete air/bluff hand.

Don't know if this will make sense to anyone.

I think this all relates to your image... if your playing laggish, expect players to make moves on you and expect fish/donkeys to min bet you. If I see a player folding freqently to small bets I will start small betting them as I have much better fold equity. The trick is to find out what these bets mean, which is very opponent specific.

Some will be min betting you because they think you are crazy and will come over the top of them to pay off their monsters. Others will do it as a pure bluff because they think you are playing crazy and can get you to fold.
Start to notice people who min bet then bet again on the next street. If they do bet make a note of how much.

This can all help as I find alot of players who do this bet small on a subsequent street so it makes my life easier to goto showdown.

It's an interesting topic and I was hoping for better when I opened this thread.


I think a few different specific examples would really help the conversation here.

Personally, I find the min-raise makes my opponents play more honestly. It scares them so much, I almost never see anyone come over the top unless its a real hand. It just looks like a monster and everyone keeps respecting it. I use it all the time when I am IP w/ a flush draw that is weak, with no over cards. Villain usually (75+% of the time) calls the min raise- checks to you on the turn, and you can usually see a turn for cheaper than just calling the flop then calling the turn. Also, I don't like PSB raising weak flush draws on the flop because I won't felt them if villain moves in.

To mix my play up, after villain has seen me show this down, I will min raise a set/2 pair hoping to get AI after they push over my "weak draw".