Quote:
Originally Posted by kommmaklar
I made a mistake because I included premium hands like AA/KK/QQ/AK in the simulation, which he cannot hold for obvious reasons. Just ran another simulation without them. Now your equity is about 42 %, so that dindt change much. Range was his top 25 % without 99+, AJo+, KJ+, but with all pairs.
OK rather than continuing to reply in small paragraphs, I now have some time so I am going to write a long post here explaining why I think it is correct to value bet, not bluff or steal or do anything other than raise for value, JTo on the BB with a limper in front and a limper behind. I'm going to start by saying that I have to renege on what I said earlier, I don't think this hand was played fine: His raise to 6 BB pre is way too big; I didn't really pay attention to bet sizing on my first go over and missed it, I was just looking at the action. I don't know why he made it so big. I would have made it 4 BB. If it was as a steal attempt trying to muscle limpers out of the pot, then it was a bad play. If it was a value bet, then it is too big: it will tend to force more of the hands we want to play with out and isolate ourselves with hands we are less likely to be ahead of, and also it isn’t necessary when we think about ultimate outcomes (hands that get all the way to the river that we may want to get it in with or have a decision on the river with). We are only 100 BB deep and we don't have to start with a pot that big to get it in if we hit gin, plus we have RIO problems with JTo but that’s kind of another subject. I wouldn't raise any bigger than to 4 BB ($1) here, which I believe is what would happen if you hit the pot button. If we had made it $1 to go then the pot would have been $3 on the flop, which would lead to a situation on the river where we wouldn’t have “commitment” issues, although I will talk more about the idea of “commitment” issues at the end of this post… to sum up why we should fold this particular hand on the river, if he is your standard fish, which limping suggests he is, he always has it when he jams on the river. This kind of player is checking behind worse jacks, nines, and anything else you beat after all the heat on the last 3 rounds of betting (unless he is a maniac, in which case we will happily call, and I hope if we’ve been at the table for even just a few orbits we will know he is a maniac, because we will have seen some weird lines). Maybe, MAYBE, he bets his T8 that missed on two streets, or 6h7h, Ah3h, Ah9h that turned big… but most fishy types will check behind these hands (more specific reads would be good here). If anything, jamming the river ourselves is better than folding, as maybe we get another street of value from Jrag that for some reason is in the hand, or a 9. I still like a fold though unless we know this guy is an absolute drooler who calls down any pair, in which case I like a shove… or if he is a maniac I like a c/c, give him a chance to bluff if was just randomly floating a couple times or has a pair of 3s or something.
But this particular hand aside, I am more interested in defending why I think JTo is good to raise pre on the BB. I do not think JTo is a premium hand fellas, but I believe it is good enough to raise in the context we are in. Here is why:
1) We get to play a bigger pot against one or more bad players: The first assumption I make when I see someone limp is that he is bad. Generic limpers are passive call stations who will call a street or 2 when they hit first, second, and sometimes even 3rd pair, will chase straights and flushes even if he doesn't have odds to do so, and will play dominated hands and get it in with top pair/weak kicker or a hand that he believes is the nuts despite board texture, like top pair on a 3 flush board or AK on a KQJ flop or will go all the way with A7 on an ace high board… something along those lines. They are zero level thinkers; they don't assess their hand strength in any sort of relative terms and are poor at valuing their hands in the first place. These are the kind of people we want to play pots with as they are very easy to value bet, and they are very easy to get out of the way of when they wake up and start raising as it almost 100% of the time means they have the nutterballz. Playing against them is how we make most of our money and we want to play big pots with them as often as possible. (In this particular hand, the odds of MP being this kind of player are even higher since he doesn’t rebuy to a full stack).
2) If our assumption that these guys are passive is correct, then we are ahead of their limping range: it is my understanding that these guys raise hands like QJ or KJ+ and 88+ while limping a wide range that includes Arag, 77-, JT-, suited connectors, suited one gappers, suited two gappers, suited 3 gappers, Kxs, sometimes 89o,9To, sometimes Q5s,Q8o, Jxs…. etc.etc... Someone stoved a range for them and gave us 38% equity against that range; I have a Mac so I can't stove but it has to be much better than that. Sometimes they also limp premiums like QQ+, AK,but they will usually wake up with these hands either pre or on a flop they like... Like I said earlier, they make it very obvious when they love their hand, and we can get out of the way easily.
If they are not this kind of player, than we adjust accordingly... I'm not going to value bet JTo against a passive rock who is limp/calling like 15-25% of his hands, but it is great against a guy any looser than that, something like limp/calling 25-45% of his hands and raising another 10%, which seems about right for our limits, with some variance in their range depending on just how fishy they are. JTo is even good against a player who limp/cals their entire fishy range and never raises… we may get value owned more often when we run into those QJ’s or KT’s or what have you, but we still have skill advantage and they will still wake up with the nuts and we can get out.
3) They play fit or fold post flop: even if A7o has whatever equity advantage against us and our JTo, they are folding to a cbet unless they hit their ace and sometimes their 7 if the board isn’t too scary, or maybe they always call when they hit even on scary boards like KQ7 that we brick, in which case our JT has at least 6 outs and, in most cases, another 4 gutter outs or (as with KQ7) another 8 straight outs (other examples, and part of the reason JT is good to raise here… K97, Q87, 873…etc etc… JT can make a a straight a lot of ways and has a lot of equity against lower pairs postflop as well as outs to the nuts against bigger pairs). When they don’t hit, they fold and we win a fair sized pot. They aren't going to play back at us or mix in a bluff. Likewise, they are folding their small PPs and their equity share on most boards that both our hands miss, like say if they have 66 on an AQ5 board and we cbet, or 55 on an A86 board, etc etc… in these situations they have a better chance of winning at showdown then we do, but they can’t stand the heat and will almost always fold. Being the aggressor can win us a lot of pots we have marginal equity in.
4) By playing so straightforward, their hands become extremely easy to pin down as action continues: if you cbet an ace high, two tone flop, say AdTd6o, they probably have an ace or a flush draw and they will check the flush draw (or QJ or 89 whatever straight draw they have) behind on a brick and weakly bet the ace. If you cbet on a Jd2d2c board and they call, they probably have any pair or a flush draw, or maybe even overs, and we can keep betting for value. If the flop is AdK6c and you bet and they call, we are going to get to stack them if that miracle queen comes, or they have the flush draw... I'm just trying to illustrate that they aren't going to raise these boards and make you think or do something tricky, they are going to play their hands exactly as they are.
5) Why JTo and not T9o, which I think is too thin (at least for me, maybe not for high stake sickos)? If we hit and their hand hits, against their range, we are probably ahead: Take for example the board in question in this post: what hands are calling a bet here? Some hands that are ahead of us: 33, QJ+, J9, QT... but way more hands that are behind us: AK, AQ will call usually, Jxsuited, T8, 9x, any 2 diamonds, A3, 78... many of these hands will call 2 streets as well, maybe all of them. We can extract lots of value with our hand. Sure we may not get a stack and sometimes we will value own ourselves, but this is outweighed by the times we get good value and the times they simply fold to a cbet.
Those are the reasons why I think it is good to raise JTo from the button, which in short can be summed up as this: we may not have a positional advantage, but between our skill advantage (which is by far the most important) and RELATIVE card advantage, we want to raise for value. JTo, maybe J9o, is the very bottom of my range for raising here, because of the reasons in 6): we start to lose our ability to value bet if we get any lower than that, and more cards can come that ruin us (T9 for top pair on a T54 board is going to be harder to v-bet when it is 25% more likely that overs will come to slow us down)
OK I’m done, I’d be happy to argue any of these points further… but I want to say one thing further about “planning ahead” so you aren’t “committed”…. Yes, we need to plan our bet sizes in an effort to get max value, and in some situations, our stacks in, but we also should be getting maximum value on every street. So if we have top pair and aren’t betting the flop and turn big to get value from people chasing draws or who have 2nd pair in an attempt to avoid having an awkward stack size on a river, then we are missing out on a ton of $... bad players aren’t paying attention to your bet sizing, they are saying “Oooh pretty diamonds!” or “look I have a pair!” and calling, and limpers are bad players. If that puts us in river spots where we have to make tough lay downs getting great odds even though we are never good, then so be it… it is better in the long run to do so. Most players don’t try and bluff you off top pair because no one ever folds top pair for reasons like thinking “I feel committed” or “wow I probably shouldn’t call but maybe he is bluffing”… almost everybody is going to call! Whenever I make that call against your standard bad passive player, I am never good. Alright, end of post.
, 10
(3 players)
