Dan just got moved to the table, I obviously know he's smart, aggro, and very capable, but I don't have a ton of history with him playing deep. I don't think I've been involved much since he sat down.

If you're four-betting, what action will cause you to fold and what action will cause you to get it in? If you're flatting, give a general idea of post-flop for 2, 3, and 4-way pots. If you're folding, how wtf is it?


Poker Stars $200+$15 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t200/t400 Blinds + t50 - 9 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Doli (BB): t6877 M = 6.55
dj_ponytale (UTG): t40794 M = 38.85
puska_zg (UTG+1): t18339 M = 17.47
djk123 (UTG+2): t49119 M = 46.78
Hero (MP1): t80058 M = 76.25
sunf204 (MP2): t22600 M = 21.52
heavenwalker (CO): t5777 M = 5.50
pablito_2121 (BTN): t44843 M = 42.71
VernonH (SB): t25478 M = 24.26

Pre Flop: (t1050) Hero is MP1 with Q Q
dj_ponytale raises to t980, puska_zg calls t980, djk123 raises to t3660

call

he's capable obv... but i just think we can find better spots this deep at this tbl cuz it looks fairly soft.. id prolly just let it go

trivial call

+1

Strictly speaking, couldn't we setmine here?

Edit; not a suggestion, was just pointing out how absurd folding is

i wouldnt call deuces

Be sure to type "i have QQ" in the chat box after calling, it's the only chance you have of convincing him that you might not have QQ.

hate folding and hate 4betting.

i think everyone agrees that we r deep enough to make this a call (i never fold here and raising is exploitable turning your hand face up etc)...but plan for post flop??
I think I bet any none ak flop to catch him by surprise and try to guess from reaction/time if i should proceed...i usually fold flops with a or k...

maybe stupid but against a good aggro player u r bound to play a guessing game at some point or another

actually now that i think about it again i could just fold and save myself the trouble and keep grinding but i never fold QQ when the action is like this so why change against djk

given that my train of thought while you were tanking was, "**** he's trying to come up with a good 4bet size," i think folding is terrible and you should probably make some random 4bet to induce a spaz.

I guess I'm just not image-aware enough to realize I'm supposed to be four-betting UTG+2 squeezes from the lowjack because it looks weak. I decided to fold because whenever I'm in a tough spot I do what makes the least sense. It's called "outlevelling."

hof

With your images this looks like a fairly standard 10830/call.

Protect your bluffs people

Can't tell if this is a level or not but a) this is a spot that we're so rarely deep enough to find ourselves in in a full ring tournament that balancing loses all meaning and b) that size is way too big for a four-bet bluff with effective stacks.

a) balancing against other thinking regs goes further than doing exactly the same every time in similar (common) spots. Dan expects you to bluff here a decent amount (and rightly so), even though this spot has never come up before..

b) Matter of preference; I guess you like 8800 better? With stacks like this 11k seems to me the best bet to put pressure with our polarized range but I can't really explain why so I'd like to see arguments for a smaller bet.

I thought it was a call, but I'm not sure how aggro the dynamic between the two of you is. Interesting that DJK says is 4ball/call.

what busto_soon said is good, although it might be what you call outleveling, but if you're often flatting AK, AA, KK, JJ + other here sometimes then call is fine.

what type of hands are acceptable to just call here... i feel like its a very polarized range? isnt that really going to make it very difficult to play post, even in pos?

I'm not sure you need to 4bet/call here with QQ to balance against the times you're bluffing. You're going to bluff raising here infrequently enough that the KK and AA in your range should cover that. However, if QQ is basically the only hand in youir flatting range, then that is an exploitable strategy which makes me want to sigh 4bet/call QQ and flat precisely zero hands. What are people doing with AK here?

I think it's more narrow than polarized, and this is one of my gripes with flatting against two good regs (at least one good reg and one reg I recognize, don't really know much about DJ_Ponytale).

To Busto:

I think if I'm trying to balance with air, I should be making my four-bet smaller so that my range could profitably include more air. I really don't think making it 8800 is going to increase the frequency with which DJK flats OOP, and making things bigger than they have to be to force DJK to a get it in/fold scenario is not ideal. If I was sure he was going to play wholly preflop I would probably make it 7500 to give him room (?) to five-bet/fold.

I actually really dig a flat with AK precisely because it's the complete opposite of what people expect me to be flatting here and it's going to induce a lot of spazz post-flop.

yea thats basically what im saying...is it possible to mix some random hands in your range to make it a little less exploitable without spewing?

Are you seriously considering bluff-flatting 87s here to balance your postflop range because you don't want to fold QQ? Because that is completely and utterly awesome.

EDIT

I mean, I of all people would love to start flatting jank here to blade people postflop, but I think at the point you start considering that for the purpose of balance, you should probably start considering folding QQ pre.

DCJ: I really don't like flatting KK+ here because we're going to create a 3-way pot with deepish stacks where or RIO are pretty terrible. Not as bad as with QQ, but definitely not good.