FE ftw

If he came back and won it would have been post worthy imo

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.10(BB) Poker Stars
SB ($14.68)
BB ($16.91)
UTG ($15.32)
UTG+1 ($19.21)
Hero ($14.91)
BTN ($10.10)

Dealt to Hero 4 A

fold, fold, Hero raises to $0.30, fold, SB raises to $0.50, fold, Hero calls $0.20

FLOP ($1.10) Q 5 3
SB bets $0.70, Hero calls $0.70

TURN ($2.50) Q 5 3 A
SB bets $0.70, Hero calls $0.70

RIVER ($3.90) Q 5 3 A A
SB checks, Hero bets $1, SB calls $1

SB shows 6 2
(Pre 41%, Flop 25.8%, Turn 25.0%)

Hero shows 4:h

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.10(BB) Poker Stars
SB ($5.28)
BB ($15.31)
UTG ($10.57)
Hero ($10.72)
CO ($10)
BTN ($15.25)

Dealt to Hero A Q

fold, Hero raises to $0.30, fold, fold, SB raises to $0.80, fold, Hero calls $0.50

FLOP ($1.70) Q 3 5
SB bets $0.90, Hero calls $0.90

TURN ($3.50) Q 3 5 3
SB bets $1.50, Hero calls $1.50

RIVER ($6.50) Q 3 5 3 A
SB bets $2.08 (AI), Hero calls $2.08

SB shows 6 7
(Pre 42%, Flop 23.6%, Turn 9.1%)

in the first hand you bet far too little. yes i know hes a ****** and called with 6-2 but you really should bomb the river

really? The best he can have that pays me off is a Q (KK I suppose), and i feel like he can't call a big bet with that sort of stuff (or, you know, the second nut low)

well thats wrong assuming all your bets are the same size, value or bluffs. which obv they should be. in this spot you're probably just as likely to be called if you bet 2.75 or something and it's better for your overall game

it was crazy 3b night or something. i think i also got 3b by T3o.

lol no

worrying about balance against fish is just leaving money on the table for no reason at all

and fish can be extremely sensitive to bet sizes, far moreso than regs

his line and sizing up to the river have shown a lot of weakness and there's no reason to believe he'll call a large bet (the pot is 39bb so any large bet is going to be reasonably significant in relation to the stakes)

I don't want to make a definitive statement about what the exact optimal bet size is in this spot because I don't play those stakes, but based on my history with fish across a variety of stakes and game types, I'd expect the 1/4 pot bet to get called far more than a large bet. The weak bet is exactly how fish bluff and so they will call that bet with anything when they see it from someone else. The strong bet looks strong so they fold. And counterintuitively, I've found that players actually get nittier as you go down in stakes, so the fact that it only costs one cheeseburger to call the river doesn't make people any likelier to actually call with a bluffcatcher.

And returning to the subject of balance, I always size my bets based on the strength of my opponent's range. From a theoretical standpoint, no one should ever be calling you if you're betting huge in a spot where your range just absolutely crushes your opponent's range. Optimal play would be to make a small bet with 100% of your range (example: you threebet preflop and an ace or king flops: you should never bet big here because it's a very polarized situation, with your own range being ahead by a decent amount depending on the specifics of the situation). And against fish, you need to valuebet smaller to entice them to call with weak hands. You need to size it so that it looks to them like just a weak stab to pick up the pot. And of course with a bluff against the fish then you size it big enough that it reads like a value bet from a strong hand.

soah is right mostly, tho i do love bombing rivers

i have no idea why you think villain is calling 1 way more than 2.75 but it isnt true. kokiri backed his way into an absolute monster, pretty much everyone but ESPECIALLY every single bad player on planet earth discounts villain having an ace when they peel off on the turn and river. most villains would call any pair otr if kokiri bets 2.75 im very certain. psychologically they dont feel bad about calling with 56 if you have an ace because they feel you got "lucky" to win

plus of course villain made small stabs pre, on the flop and turn, hes calling so many hands on the river its insane

The key question is how villain knew that 24s was ~33% of my range here.

no bru he loses to 24

he has the nut low

Lol me.

i remember one time playing live limit poker with a friend. he was heads up on the river with a four-flush on the board (no straight flush), and they were reraising each other back and forth. i was thinking to myself, "5-1 that my friend loses this hand", and sure enough, he thought he had the A when he actually held the A.

way back in college, i played this hand at hollywood park in LA. 3-6 limit. i was involved in a hand against a savvy reg. on the river, i had a pair of threes, no kicker. i don't remember the action, but i called his river bet; given the action, it was a reasonable call iirc. he called out, "three" without showing. i just sat there, silent. i was debating to myself if i should just muck, as i was feeling kind of embarrassed at showing my hand which was just barely beat by a guy who had valuebet threes against me. but before i could do anything, he mucked his hand. i realized right then that he was playing an angle. he probably had no pair and was hoping that i would muck a bluffcatcher worse than threes.

or maybe he was just too embarrased to show his three when he thought he was obviously beat. i'm still wondering.

65 doesn't just lose to an ace, it loses to 98% of hands that hero would call the flop with

it's hard to be objective in defining a range for the guy since I saw the results immediately and know that he's a clown, but then min-threebet is often a pretty weak or marginal hand and this really isn't the type of board where there are a lot of potential second-best hands that would be happy calling 30bb on the river

if we could somehow put him on KK or KQ then we could make a big bet and expect to get called a lot since it seems unlikely for us to have made a hand better than KK here, but he can also have stuff like 44 which beats pretty much nothing

I'm not going to take a stance on the definitive correct bet sizing here because I don't know the metagame and general tendencies of the player pool for that game, but it's clearly wrong to say that you need to balance your bet sizes against random fish, and to say that people are going to call the same amount regardless of what you bet. There are circumstances where that is true, but those are situations where your opponent has a very strong hand or where a non-fish is clearly trying to induce a bluff from you and doesn't give you credit for recognizing what he's doing. It's not true of situations where your opponent is weak and looks like he's giving up on the pot. The smaller bet will get called more often here, but I don't have enough information to put a number on it. At worst, it is a small mistake. And the results here do help illustrate how very small bets can get looked up by hands which are basically never good, and which would never call a large bet.

1. if you bomb fish thinks you are polarized. "either he has a big ace or hes bluffing!!!" he will call with 56 a lot

2. given that villain called $1 with the absolute nut low you cannot say he would have folded to $2.75. you have absolutely no idea

reminds me of a story that rbk posted years ago about a three-handed game with an unknown young guy who was pretty aggressive

unknown guy would always just muck his hand when his bluffs got called

unrelatedly, rbk picked up a tell on the guy when he was bluffing

eventually, they get involved in a big pot, rbk ends up at the river with absolutely no hand, and the unknown guy goes all-in

but unknown guy gives off his tell that he's bluffing, so rbk calls all-in with a hand that can't even beat a bluff, and unknown guy mucks


I can't find the post... might be on the archive server

i mean quite frankly you are being way too kind to this villain. he called with a 6. 62 and 64 are the worst possible hands. he chops with 64 or 62. loses to ANY TWO CARDS. bet big stack a fish imo

ive considered doing this before. unfortunately at foxwoods they makes you show the winner and the floor is so randombad they would prob allow the other guy to take his hand out of the muck and table his hand. im not even kidding

do you play cash games?

I was recently playing 1c/2c while teaching someone how to play, I've occasionally played in other low stakes games in recent years while figuring out Zoom and Rush poker, and literally all of my experiences tell me that microstakes players are scared money and make most/all decisions based on the absolute strength of their hand and the odds/size of bet they are facing. Like, I once dropped down a bunch of levels to see if I could turn a profit playing 50% of my hands at six-max, and almost all of the players still just folded like it was their job, aside from one guy who joined all my tables and donated like 8 buy-ins to me.

I think you mostly play tournaments, and tournaments are different because people play with chips instead of actual cash, and psychologically it is far easier to do stupid stuff with chips than it is with cash.

The fish probably misread his hand and thought he had a straight or a flush. Even the world's biggest fish don't call rivers with the nut low.

I pretty much agree with annie in this instance. Most of the time he's either c/folding with air or c/snapping any betsize.

I found it on the archive server; it's actually posted near the end of this thread which is also a great story along similar lines

all of my play (now) is live, all games are obviously played with chips. im too lazy/bothered to travel for the most part and there are a limited number of tournaments in connecticut worth playing so i have started playing cash. ive noticed different stereotypes of bad players. of course theres the guy who buys in for the minimum and sits on his stack and never does anything, but there are also tards who limp with everything, min 3bet, make tons of blocker bets, and call rivers like 90% of the time and complain about how bad they run. if villain is THAT GUY, and it seems like he is, hes calling with 44 or 66 or Q3. of course you can disagree about whether thats his profile, but that whole class of players will call a big river bet with hot garbage