Ha I should have figured you were on here.

Ummmmm, all this talk about the turn and river play, but why aren’t we raising on the flop???

Because its really really bad?

Even a lot of good players don't rebluff enough on dry 448 flops. Given that, I don't think raising 55 here is too bad. Gaining FE is huge. Can safely fold to aggression on turn or river. Or since we're IP, can also often get a free card or cheaper showdown.

on 844 flop, i'm not raising anything and peeling with basically everything i opened with. you're costing yourself information imo and giving up the advantage of position by raising when the hand essentially isn't going to start until the turn. like, if you're villain, what hands are you checking on turn if btn calls?

Whaddya know there's a whole thread about people who double barrel too much!

Honest answer, mostly weak sd hands that hate getting r'ed, mixed with some give ups and monsters.

I haven’t played LHE in 2 years. Has the game totally changed somehow? When did an aggro line with a pocket pair on a trash flop in position in a heads-up pot become “bad.” This is absolutely a spot where I’m charging all opponents max and taking control of the hand (and hopefully the table, in turn). I’m happy to cultivate a super aggro table image to induce passive play in my opponents in future hands, and we have a ton of equity here with our pair of 5’s against “expert’s” range. With a bad runout, we can check back on turn or river, saving a big bet if we have to re-evaluate on later street(s), and otherwise we get max value from expert’s A-x hands when we do, indeed, bet for value on this river. This is a flop raise, AINEC IMO. But...

It’s always been bad.

Ok.

My inference here is that you charge the max by raising a sizable majority of turns, winning a large fraction of a big bet instead of a slightly larger fraction of a small bet.

Someone please correct if I'm misexplaining; I'm pretty mediocre to bad at LHE compared to the population of this thread and probably would get this wrong at the table.

I feel you. But your line assumes that villain will always bet the turn, and if he really is an expert, he will often check/call the turn and then check/raise the river, and he will also frequently check/raise the turn and lead the river with A-x, so in this situation, the extra bet is often realized anyway, plus we get in the additional small bet from the flop raise. (And against experts, I’m really not folding 5-5 here to my opponents’ check-raises on either street, like, ever, unless I have some strange, atypical reason to do so.)

does seeing whether he checks or bets have any value to you?
in general my view is, the ip player should never be the first to define or narrow their hand.
do you think villain's going to be betting and checking at the perfect frequencies? why not let him make a mistake? is this of no value?
are you saying your 100% getting to sd with any pair you raise on flop?

If villain is true expert, the relative value of information ascertained from seeing whether he leads or checks the turn is slight. This is because an expert will mix up his play in this spot, so either a lead or a c/r is standard and doesn’t help to define our expert opponent’s range.

I’ve not ever in any game at any stakes encountered a live expert capable of achieving “perfect frequencies.” Not even the best play perfectly, so, yes, I agree that there is some value in letting expert opponents make mistakes. But experts make fewer mistakes, so we shouldn’t count on them, and, in LHE, specifically, I realized max value by taking the aggro line immediately in hands like this one because this achieves benefits beyond the single hand in question. Creating that super-lag image induces future opportunities for all of our opponents to make more and larger mistakes against us in later hands. Factor in my reasoning above that against experts we do, in fact, realize max immediate equity when they get in the c/r on turn or flop, and I’m raising this flop against experts most of the time.

And no: I’m not saying I’m going to showdown 100% of the time after raising the flop with any pair. I’m saying that almost 100% of the time I’m calling expert turn or river c/r’s with this particular runout with 5-5 in a heads up pot.

being aggressive with the middle part of your range in a way ahead/way behind spot has never been good:

1. think about what happens when the opponent has air that he'd barrel off but then you play it this way vs calling.

2. think about what happens when the opponent has a draw or a pure bluff and is an aggressive fellow. your line allows him to present us with a gross decision here or on a later street (when he raises us) where we may fold the best hand.

3. conversely, think about what happens when the opponent has a better hand than ours and your line allows him to reopen the betting and make us pay more money to see showdown.

several of the things you mentioned or implied (taking control of the hand, making a free card raise, disregarding balance, not thinking about opponent's range and how he reacts to our action) are what i'd describe as old-school/sub-optimal strategies/thought processes. a lot of people used to play that way, and a decent number of people still do, but those folks tend in the long run to lose to the folks with more solid, centered, well-rounded strategies.

is it possible to play those sub-optimal strategies and still be a winning player in soft or medium-soft games? absolutely. but it sort of puts a ceiling on your progress and makes it hard to hold your own in tougher games.

i think perhaps what DD is referring to is that lhe poker theory has come a long way, and a lot of people have had exposure to strong strategies. as a result, some of the less strong strategies are much more likely to stand out and be exploited these days, compared to X years ago, and that that process is likely to continue.

OK, but it's one thing to say "Your strategy is good enough to beat 20/40 but not THAT good, so you should play better strategies that will beat 20/40 for more money and prepare you to move up to 40/80 or 60/120 or whatever."

It's another to say, "Your strategy is optimal for 20/40, but you could learn a 'better' strategy. Learning this other strategy will still win, but less, at 20/40. You should accept a more modest win to prepare you for bigger games."

I suspect in practice it's closer to the latter but I really don't know. It's healthy to always be learning, but that doesn't mean we have to apply all the new learning to maximize win at our present stakes. And less win means you have less evidence you're ready to move up, probably less bankroll, etc.

Since this is an "expert" it's a great spot to learn a better strategy, but there's also the question of how a live 20/40 expert compares to a median live 40/80 player. I presume that's highly geographical--CA 20/40 is different from Bellagio 20/40 or Foxwoods etc. Anyone have any thoughts?

You keep saying “think about x,” as though I’ve failed to do so, but I’ve written about each of the scenarios you enumerate above in subsequent posts. I’ve played a lot higher than 20/40 for a long time, and I stand by my results and reputation. (Although there is no LHE where I live now, so, it’s true, I haven’t played for 2 years.) And maybe it is, as you suggest, a matter of stakes. 20/40 LHE is definitely a different game from 100/200, e.g. That said, it’s also true that I’m 40 years old, so in poker I suppose that makes me “old school”; however, it’s inaccurate to say that the line I’m advocating here is at odds with more recent thinking on the game by top players who take a more “well-rounded” approach to the game. (And, funnily enough, another person on here said that no top players ever took the aggro line I advocate for in this hand because “it was always bad.”)

But a debate about the merits of strategy has degenerated into my feeling the need to defend my bone fides, so I’m gonna duck out of this thread and wish you all GL! I at least hope that what I wrote got a few people to consider that perhaps there’s the possibility of making an extra $20.00 in this hand if it’s played as I suggest...

when you call, your range is still the exact same as preflop. when villain acts on the turn, his range narrows. these are both good for you and is a big part of "the advntg of position".
when you raise flop, you're range narrows, when he calls and checks turn, his range is still the same as preflop. this is good for him.
you're not earning $20. you're equity is 55%. this means you're essentially handing villain the btn for $2. not to mention, what this does to the rest of your range (not good).
whether it's this hand in a vacuum or taken with an overall strategy, it's horrible in either case.

Good post

Raising is awful especially if you plan on folding to aggression.


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If I have a raising strategy on this flop I’m damn sure that 55 is not going to be low enough in my range to be folded unless I get a really gnarly runout.


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It's bad because we blow out a ton of hands we make money against by letting them know cheaply that they've little to no FE, while QJ might triple on a turn 9/T. Plus if we raise out all of our semi-strong, our opponent gets to barrel relentlessly on like any turn card.

I would like to start a petition to eliminate the description of expert from poker parlance. It just does not fit within the context of a zero sum game. You can be an expert in basket weaving as something can be produced. Just use skilled.

Any co-signers?

Seems like a super thin value bet, check seems better

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It's all semantics but I don't see your point. Artisan poker player would be absurd but I don't think of expert as a synonym for artisan. Didier Deschamps or Bill Belichick would probably be considered experts in the inherently zero-sum world of sports.