https://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/...talk-about.php

Mason

I think this hand is pretty poorly played. What i don't get is the value of your play seems to come from your opponent being a complete idiot and raising you with his KJ on the flip to protect your hand. Yet you don't discuss what happens the vast majority of the time bb doesn't get dealt a hand like KJ here and instead checks his pos 70 percent of tje time. Now you still less the 446 flop nobody makes a stupid raise and all that happens is your opponents play equally bad CD Ymir check as they would had you raised per except you miss out on tons of value by not raising pre

Thinking about it more I think this hand is s lot worse than i previoisly thought and signifsnty worse than the not calling JJ example. It may be the worst way possible to play TT Here other than folding pre

Also people don't play KJ like that near the frequency you seem to think or suggest they do

Also...ive mentioned before I think you make up outcomes or inferences to support your position. Here is a classic example.

Then when the QD hit on the turn, my pair of Tens would have most likely become second best, but because of the large pot, I would have paid off on the river and lost a likely $140. Notice this is a $500 swing.

Now for those who don’t know, $40 an hour, or one big bet, is a rough guideline for what the best players are able to achieve in this game. And at $40 an hour, it will take 12½ hours (on average) to make up that $500.


5 people limped and we auto assume that one if them has to have Qx here and they have to peel the 446 flop after we raised pre. This is an absurd assumption and to further infer this is a 12 bet mistake is just hilariously misguided. They didn't raise pre so AQ and KQ are discounted and we block QT. They probably don't have Q to offer and when they do it's often a crappy Q that won't peel the flip for one bet anywhere near a 100 percent frequency after we raise per and c bet 6 ways

Mason-

Other than playing from the sb, are there any other positions that you would call pf after some limpers with TT?

yeah i think this thread goes the way of the other threads where the guys who are more experienced at the live LHE + claim to be more math inclined dismiss pre and turn as being mediocre and mason says "nope"

stylistically i can understand the merits of pre and flop (i'm raising pre 100%) but turn seems bad and results oriented. the pot is too small to put the guy on overcards that you don't want to give a free card to. 4x/6x/straight draw/PP 22-99 seems way way more likely. against that range i think it's best to seek balance which starts with checking and probably calling since it's WA/WB.

as played river also seems bad because i'd be putting villain more on the 6x/PPish hands which are calling a bet but not necessarily betting when checked to. again i think it's analysis that's results oriented that you managed to catch the small % of his range that was a poorly played airball.

Reading through the responses to Mason in the several threads, it seems to me that many of you are missing his point. Which, if I am understanding him correctly, is that there can be situations where not raising preflop can help you win the pot where raising could have hurt. Dead Money's response here is an example. Mason hasn't automatically assumed someone had a Q. He's saying his TT is vulnerable to overcards and not raising preflop can help eliminate opponents who might have one. He's not saying they "have" to peel on this flop, he's saying they're more likely to (correctly) do so on the flop for one bet if he had swollen the pot preflop than they would be for two bets in a smaller pot. Assuming nobody has AQ or KQ in this game in Vegas is also not necessarily correct. I recently played a hand in which 2 opponents didn't raise preflop with AQ at the Bellagio 20-40.

agree w/ this, i wouldn't see the Q as a scare card if i raised pre and a couple people peeled my flop bet. would comfortably keep valuebetting.

i mean this just gets back to winning the pot versus winning the most EV, yes by keeping the pot smaller you deny your opponents the right to make some borderline profitable peels with overcards but by raising you make the pot twice as big when you have a large multiway equity advantage (something like 40%+ six ways or w/e?) which seems like the ed miller desirable thing to have.

imo the person claiming that checking or not raising here is the better play has to claim it through math and sims; it's easy to back up the play anecdotally when it works. it's less easy to explain when raising it up pre works cuz the times it does are just dismissed as the positive side of variance.

the actual act of raising it from sb or bb ought to be relatively easy to define mathematically in this day and age with the robots and the sims and stuff (what does the robot do? maybe a mixture of both?) but we are discussing it like fleshy humans with opinions.

""i wouldn't see the Q as a scare card if i raised pre and a couple people peeled my flop bet. would comfortably keep valuebetting."

It's more of a scare card the more opponents there are.

if i ever actually came upon a game that saw 6 way multiway limped pots and 4 people are peeling 644 flops with weakish distributions, that's just more incentive for me to raise it up pre with TT (plus even more speculative hands) as a means to build up pots. this is just straight up ed miller stuff.

yes the Q is more of a scare card the more people are peeling, but we're now reaching a point where we're trying to find the small % of times that TT would have functioned better as a check. a majority of the time in this example we are getting called by two or three players at most and the Qx is not that scary.

you could set an arbitrary rule that TT checks if a jack or higher comes on the turn and i think you'd still have a profitable line (don't wanna sidetrack this specific argument tho since i can't quantify it)

+1. I'm not saying "who's right", but it's certainly worth considering.

Agree. Presently I'd still raise the TT for the reasons most pros would say, build the pot, increase your raising range, etc. because while anecdotes communicate the rationale behind just calling, it proves nothing more than in some circumstances in hindsight we see that calling has benefits.

Mason,

I think there are several problems with your analysis:

1) Your river play isn't consistent with your flop reasoning. Presumably, you bet the flop because BB is likely to raise with overcards as well as pairs below 99, putting you on a bluff, straight draw, or weak pair/Ax. Given he raised pre flop, his overcards are heavily weighted towards big Ax and maybe hands like KQ/KJs etc. Against this range, your opponent should be much more likely to call your bet (putting you on a busted draw) than he is to bet himself, despite the fact that he is described as "aggressive."

2) If he is so aggressive that he would bet the river when checked to no matter his holding, then you should have probably raised preflop so that he could 3bet from the BB. This would confront the limpers with the prospect of calling two cold pre flop and could result in them folding, which would increase the chances of you winning the pot.

3) I notice that you didn't 3bet the flop. If he's really raising hands like KJ here (and presumably all his KQ, Ax, etc.), aren't we surely ahead of enough of his range to 3bet? Or do you expect him to fold his worse hands on the turn to a 3bet and turn bet? And if this is the reason, isn't this a good outcome given he will often have 6 outs as per your analysis? If, however, the reason is that you want to wait for a safe turn card, then why do you bet on such a terrible turn card as the Qd? If he's as aggressive as described, why not assume that he will bet the turn?

4) Your analysis is surprisingly non-mathematical. You give short shrift to the tradeoff between narrowing the field to increase your win % and extracting EV from your opponents. You don't ever put the limpers on ranges, for example. What if the 5 limpers are holding 33, JT, J9, K5s, A2o. Are you really happy that they are all folding instead of calling an additional 1-2 bets preflop and one on the flop? I think any analysis of this length should at least contain an estimate of hot and cold equity preflop. Obviously this measure if somewhat fraught since it assumes everyone realizes all their equity, but at least it is a starting point to figure out how much EV we are giving up immediately by not raising pre.

5) There is also a game theoretic issue that is relevant there. The fewer strong hands like TT we raise here, the fewer hands like J9s that we can raise profitably. I think it's quite possible that from a game theoretic point of view, we'd prefer to have a wider raising range that includes both hands like TT and hands like J9s/T9s/etc.

Yeah, I think when you donk this flop usually everyone just calls. Counting on the aggressive player to just raise his entire range seems optimistic.

Taking this hand to the flop 7 ways in the worst position will often put us in a tough spot, but I don't think this means we shouldn't push our obvious edge.

NO I understand his point completely, its just wrong. And he implies that we lose to a turned Q at a 100% frequency when we take a normal line, which is pretty frustrating. There's so much wrong with the analaysis that I don't even know where to begin but I'll try and address some of it

(1) preflop. 70% of the time bb probably just checks his pos hand. This mean s our entire plan falls apart because we cant create our implciit collusion (that actually never happens anyways) because the guy isnt going to raise K3 on the 448 flop. What really happens is that most opponents will just peel the 448 flop when we lead the sb with the exact same range they woiuld peel had we raised pre-flop and lead the flop....

(2) Mason will say thats amazing they are making bad calls without the odds, depsite the fact that they are most likely peeling live 6 out draws getting 7-1 or better so its not that bad. For exampe, they limp A-10 pre, we raise pre and the peel 448 flop. It checks through pre and we lead 448 flop, they also peel A-10. Clearly we make much more money when we raised pre....

(3) What really happens the 70% of the time BB checks is the flop comes with a J, Q, K, or A. Since we've already establshed that when the Q scare card hits on the turn we lose that means we can't possibly lead (or win the pot) on and flop with an overcard, and will basically be left playing the hand oop vs opponents that can play their hands close to perfectly vs us or at least with some impunity.

(4) So lets assume Mason's line is somehow the most profitable, please answer me this (and its very easy to give an exact number for the mathmatically inclined). WHAT % OF THE TIME DOES THE BB raise (lets say 30%) AND THEN THE FLOP COMES WITH 3 CARDS ALL 9 OR BELOW AND THEN THE BB ALSO RAISES OUR FLOP LEAD WITH 2 RADNOM OVERCARDS WITHOUT A FLUSH OR STRAIGHT DRAW......AND EVERYONE ELSE FOLDS....AND BB DOESN'T GET THERE.

(5) just to further illustrate how awesome we play the hand instead of value betting the river to get called by AK we check so a hand that would never bluff in a million years bluffs so we win even more money

I forgot to address this, but its a really good point. If you are not 3 betting the flop (when you think you are way ahead of his range) then you are just lighting money on fire, unless you are planning to checkraise the turn.. but that can't possibly be true because you didn't checkraise this turn and if he wasnt going to bet any turn hes betting this turn (we never had a Q) so the only reason to lead is you are afraid he has A Q and don't want to lose 2 bets which is silly because you can just check call the turn and accomplsih the exact same thing. So not 3 betting the flop is jsut horrible

A 20/40 game where they just limp with AQ, kind've a sick brag when you think about it. (Though I've done it to deceive over-aggros before.)

they limp AQ when we need them to and they raise KJ on 448 flops 7 ways when we need them to, easy game

What i dont like about this hand is, ok we might be able to win more often the pot by not raising pf here but we win big pot less often as well ( when we hit a set for example).

I have nothing to back this up with but, i would not teach low limit player this play of not raising pf because winning more smallish pot in low limit game is not profitable due to the rake.
Much better imo to win less often bigger pot by raising pf with strong hand ( because you got outdrawn more often) and pay less rake at the same time, no ?

You make money by forcing them to make mistake, i agree.
But if you dont punish them with strong hands pf, they actually dont make a mistake by limping and tho you do not give them "infinte odds" to outdraw you, because they actually put money in the pot already, failling to raise a hand as strong as TT with limpers ( especially with a lagtard that could 3bet kj from the bb..) is almost close to giving them infinite odds to outdraw you imo...

I would actually cry if i would of flop a set but fail to raise pf in a limp 6 way pot.
When that happens, it should compensate for a couple of "smaller won pot by not raising pf".

ps: usually imo, has your position gets worse and worse, always better to cash in your equity edge early in a hand because you can never know how the hand will play out multiway has the number of players increases.
donking here hoping to get raise by kj is playing poker on hoping player will act badly but i would rather play a hand the right way in case no one will play badly....If it happens they play badly well you gain more money in the process but at least you wont lose money if they play "correctly".

Yeah, expecting somebody to raise overcards in this situation on the flop is a fools errand I think unless you have a specific read on a really dumb and weird player.

Also, donking the turn as played doesn't make sense to me.

And donk checking the river seems misapplied as well.

Lots of misplays in this hand. And it started by calling preflop.

I'd lay odds in the future that sims will disprove the "keep it small" strategy with almost zero exception.

The anecdotes are just flukes, nothing more.

aren't we already at that point? if there are "solvers" for 6m big bet why not minbet

Can't respond in full just now but mason didn't imply he loses 100% of the time to a Q on the turn. He specifically said "usually."

There's a full tangent about how it will take 12 hours of play to make up for the times that Q peels the flop which is just an absurd statement

Ripped from the text...opponent bet, I called, he showed KSJH, and my pair of Tens won the pot producing a profit of $360.....On the flop, I would have bet and probably would have gotten several callers. Then when the QD hit on the turn, my pair of Tens would have most likely become second best, but because of the large pot, I would have paid off on the river and lost a likely $140. Notice this is a $500 swing.

Now what do you think this implies