Poker Stars, $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
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BTN: $34.68 (346.8 bb)
SB: $5 (50 bb)
Hero (BB): $11.87 (118.7 bb)
UTG: $10 (100 bb)
MP: $13.11 (131.1 bb)
CO: $11.81 (118.1 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with K K
2 folds, CO raises to $0.30, 2 folds, Hero raises to $1.10, CO calls $0.80

Flop: ($2.25) J 8 Q (2 players)
Hero bets $1.20, CO raises to $2.70, Hero ???

villain is: 31/19/27% postflop agg, 52hands
fold to 3bet 17%

Looks like a fold to me. He'll be showing up with QQ and JJ a lot of the time, rarely with 88. Doesn't make that play with anything that you beat.

Folding.

you guys dont think he can do that with TPTK?

He's a sLAG. He's raising in LP. With those stats he's probably raising something like 30% from the CO. He's flat calling pre- with most of what he raised with (we have him folding to a cbet 17%, he has position post-flop, and it forces hero to play a big pot OOP). He has no reason to think our 3bet is a strong hand - he'll be used to getting 3bet light from the blinds.

To compound that, we just massively under-represented our hand with a halfpot bet on a very dangerous board.

The only reason to cbet this small on this sort of board against this sort of player is to get them to reraise light. Get it all in.

well to be honest my cbet sizing in 3bet pots is pretty much always around 50-65% at most when flops are really wet.. i didnt find that flop so much dangerous since there was no flush draws, but now i kinda understand why you're saying its a wet flop. Hand i was the most scared of when facing his raise was QJ since its very possible that its in his calling range.
what is a sLAG btw? i know about LAG.. but sLAG is the first time i ever hear this :O

Actually, I misread the flop as having two hearts, although that is still a pretty wet board for his range even without the FD.

Betting too small OOP in a 3bet pot is asking for trouble (unless you're trying to get raised). It costs him very little to put pressure on you with a raise here - he doesn't need a hand to do it. He's no more likely to believe you if you bet pot, but he has to put his whole stack at risk if he wants to bluff raise a larger bet.

sLAG is smart LAG, or sometimes selective LAG. LAGs who know what they're doing.

Def folding imo. Villain is a passive fish who calls too many 3bets. He would flat hands that you were beating. Getting the money in here would be bad. Villains post flop agg % would be much higher if villain could have TPTK in this spot imo. No reason to assume villain raises AQ or something like that. This should be QQ, JJ, and QJ most of the time.

Find me the games where a 31/19 with 17% fold to 3bet is considered a smart LAG.

Please, do it. Now.

31/19 on only 52 hands is very sLAG-looking, as is a low fold to 3bet (because they're mostly getting 3bet from the blinds when they're stealing in LP). He's only been 3bet 6 times in that sample, so 17% is a very approximate stat.

If you're stealing a lot in LP, 3bets from thinking blinds should be 10-15%ish at 6MAX. 4betting light or flat-calling and playing in position with a very wide range is exactly what sLAGs do.

If you tell me he has a non-zero open limping % or a low cbet %, then I'll wonder if he's a fish. But on the information so far, and action posted, he looks like a sLAG.

You're assuming a lot.

I'm assuming a lot by saying that sLAGs do not raise/fold in position pre-flop very often, or assuming a lot by saying that (in the absence of other fishy tells that the OP has not told us about), this player's stats look sLAGgy on a small sample?

And if he is, in fact, a maniac, that is even less reason to fold when our bet-sizing is begging for a bluff-raise.

i'm not too sure what other stats i can give you guys since the sample is so small..
33% WWSF, 23% Steal, CO Fold to Resteal 0%(3)

Sample is too small do deduct anything concrete at this point, but you're making false assumptions, and I can tell you that 31/19 is not your average "sLAG" stats (unless it means sucky LAG).

I can also tell you that basically no one can fold 17% to 3bets and show a profit long term, especially not in the micros.

come on pepole, SPR<5, I'm not going to fold vs this villain, happy all in

It's too small a sample size to know anything much for sure. You can only go on what you can guess from what you can see.

With this one, I'd be looking at open limping (should be zero if he's any good), c-betting (should be reasonably high if he's any good), and positional awareness (EP/MP vs LP/BTN raise %) for clues as to whether he knows what he's doing.

But it doesn't really matter whether he's any good or not, because he can make exactly the same play for the wrong or right reasons anyway.

You can't just say "he called a 3bet and now he's raising on a Q high board, therefore he has my overpair beaten". That might be true if he's a TAG, but not if he's a LAG or a maniac. You have to play him based on how he plays, not on how you would play if you were him.

On 52 hands, you will only have a sample size of about 3-5 for previous steals from the CO, so you have to guess his range from his overall PFR. It's likely to be 25-30%. You only have a sample size of 6 for folding to 3bets, but he's likely to be calling with about 15, maybe even 20%, there. Not the S-C top 15-20%, it'll be heavily weighted towards AK/pairs/SCs. If he's any good.

Now you have to understand what a LAG does to make money that is different from a TAG. They don't make their profit at showdown, they make it by getting other players to fold before showdown. Check out isildur1's graph against Durrr for the $4.5 million he took off him:



Showdown winnings depend on how well they're running, non-showdown just keeps on giving. Especially when TAGs fold because a TAG wouldn't do what a LAG does.

Three-betting out of position against these players is a decent defence - and obviously a necessity with KK - but that's not the end of the story. If they have position, they will use it, so you have to bet strongly post-flop if you intend to keep the lead OOP. If they sense weakness, they will pounce - and if you bet small you give them lots of perceived fold equity for a bluff, which puts you in the kind of ****ty situation you have here. He could easily have QQ/JJ/T9, but he has plenty else besides. Betting more on the flop and turn would make it a lot more obvious that he has you beat when he raises.

You are reading way too much into a small sample. The 17% is 1/6 ffs! 52 hands for VPIP/PFR is a bit better, but there are a large number of factors which contribute to the variance in these numbers (and especially the gap between them). 31/19 is perfectly consistent with a decent LAG before the numbers have firmed up. He might be a 30/25, he might be a 25/20. He's probably not an 18/15.

His VPIP/PFR and low fold to cbet tell you that he is likely to be playing LAG, unless you have other obvious indicators that he is a fish.

Whether he's any good at it or not, is another matter. But if he's bad, he's raising this turn with TPTK or worse anyway.

Here ya go - a similar hand I played, except I am (perhaps) your villain.




And if raising the cbet gets too obvious, they might wait until the turn ...


He doesn't have to have a hand here, he just has to think that you don't have much of a hand either. Which is why you have to bet a vulnerable hand strongly. Weak bets are for when you want them to try and steal the pot from you.

It's very stressful playing LAG. You can make it waaay too stressful for them to pick on you if you if you understand what they're up to.

thanks for all the answers guys, i did reraise shove the flop and he woke up with T9o.. so he's probably definitely not a good LAG like you thought :P

shove flop and im feeling pretty good about it.

Good move!

Why does having T9o make him anything but a good LAG though? That is exactly the kind of hand a good LAG calls with in position. Bad LAGs raise-fold. Good LAGs beat you up in position.

I put T9 in his range earlier. It's exactly what I'd have in this spot. About half the time.

T9s i'd understand since you have a lot more room for plays in position, but T9o doesnt make any sense to me.. especially since he's raising my cbet while he's on position on a board where he has the absolutely nuts and theres no flushdraws, thats my point of view at least

Suitedness doesn't make a whole lot of difference to our equity and flushes are harder to get value from anyway. It does help with barrelling.

Suitedness doesn't make a whole lot of difference to our equity and flushes are harder to get value from anyway. It does help with barrelling though, so far preferable, but unsuited connectors are in there too.

LAG 3bet calling ranges in position will likely be heavily weighted towards AK/pairs/connectors. Stuff that can make huge draws and huge hands and is pretty easy to dump when beat. Fewer dominated As and broadway than you'd think from a simple % range.

Ymu, so much of what you've posted in this thread is just plain weird if not really bad.

Assuming someone is a good lag player because they're 31/19 after 50 hands is just levelling yourself.