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Crazy live hand

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  1. #1

    Default Crazy live hand

    Blinds are 50p/£1. 6-max atm.

    BB has around 65BBs, I have 120BBs and MP has me covered.

    I have been at table for about an hour and I've barely played a hand, 2 hands maximum. I am perceived as tight.

    BB is young kid, fairly tight and hasn't played many more hands than me. Haven't seen him show anything down either.

    MP is somewhat of a reg. I have seen him in a few different casinos but I'm not sure how to classify him (I seem to be having problems 'labeling people' lately). He seems to be on a heater/playing well tonight, just recently called off a c/r jam for 80BB on Q83r flop w/ K8o.

    UTG folds, MP limps, CO limps, I limp on BU w/ 5 5. SB folds and BB checks.

    Flop is Q 5 2. Pot is £4.50.

    BB leads out for £3. MP calls, CO calls, I call. I just called because I believe I have the best hand here like 95% of the time and I want to keep everyone in the pot.

    Turn is the 3. Pot is £16.50.

    BB checks, MP bets £10, CO folds, I raise to £32, BB thinks for a short while and flats. MP is eating food, he turns to table and briefly looks at board and action before very casually announcing he is all-in.

    What do we do?
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  2. #2
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Call.

    You are only behind QQ, and A4... Can you ever narrow Villain's range to a single hand of QQ?
    "Somewhat of a reg on a heater" is limping QQ PRE from MP?
    Even A4o is fairly out of the question, right?

    ***
    You have 2nd set. There's no flush. There's only the A4 that makes a straight, and you have 10 outs to beat that straight.

    I think it's equally likely that Villain limped with 22,33, and has a lower set.

    Either way, unless I've seen him do this 10 times, and he had the top set all of the times, then I'm calling.

    At time of call:
    You start with 120 BB
    - 1 BB PRE
    -3 BB OTF
    -32 BB OTT
    Leaving you with 88 BB to call the shove.

    The pot is 16.50 + 10 + 32 + 88 (ESS) = 146.50

    88/(88 + 146.5) = 88/234.5 ~= 37.5%

    Pot odds of 37.5% to call. You are beating everything except QQ and A4, with 1 out to beat QQ and 10 outs to beat A4.

    What is Villain's range here? How much of it do you solidly beat? This makes the difference.

    EDIT: Oops, 64 has a straight as well, but I didn't even mention it. Again, I find it hard to put a low 1-gapper in a solid reg's MP range.
  3. #3
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cobra_1878 View Post
    Turn is the 3. Pot is £16.50.

    BB checks, MP bets £10, CO folds, I raise to £32, BB thinks for a short while and flats. MP is eating food, he turns to table and briefly looks at board and action before very casually announcing he is all-in.
    Oops. I missed that the BB had called your raise.

    16.50 + 10 + 32 + 32 + 88 (ESS) = 178.50

    88/(88 + 178.50) = 88/266.50 ~= 33%

    Also, I think it's important to note that you have under-repped your hand OTF.
  4. #4
    Not raising flop is criminal at UK live 50/1, especially if the weekend.

    Call it off, as villain can be jamming worse for value and we can still outdraw straights. Not that stoked about it though - villain's behaviour is a classic Mike Caro line of strength.
  5. #5
    I feel like he has the A4 but I think I would call to find out and probably have to rebuy lol, what was the result?
  6. #6
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    PLEASE DO NOT POST RESULTS!
  7. #7
    Firstly, thanks for the input MMM. Are you not concerned that BB merely flatted behind us leaving himself with around half the stack he started the hand with?

    Quote Originally Posted by The Bean Counter View Post
    Not raising flop is criminal at UK live 50/1, especially if the weekend.

    Call it off, as villain can be jamming worse for value and we can still outdraw straights. Not that stoked about it though - villain's behaviour is a classic Mike Caro line of strength.
    Really? I didn't even consider raising on such a dry board. I think I would be super annoyed with myself if I raise and get 3 folds here.

    The behaviour is what gave me pause. When I posted the thread I half expected to get 'LOL, fist pump call' so I'm glad to see some good, constructive feedback. When he did it, I was just sitting there like...wtf? I did note that my hand was hugely under-repped but when I raise the turn on a board like this villain has to know I have something, right?

    Quote Originally Posted by MTCashman View Post
    I feel like he has the A4 but I think I would call to find out and probably have to rebuy lol, what was the result?
    Calling to 'find out' is a pretty bad reason for making any call.

    I won't be posting results. It's not about the results, it's about the thoughts and reasoning behind the hand.
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  8. #8
    Eric's Avatar
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    I would have raised on the flop. It was not raised pre-flop so people could have straight draws connecting with the deuce five.


    On the flop we were about 2:1 to get a boat or quads by the river. Obviously our boat+ chances go down by the turn.


    Hard for me to say what to do on the turn. Hard to say what percentage of MP's range is made up of hands like 46 and 4A.

    One thing is sure, I hate folding sets when there are no flushes out there.
  9. #9
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cobra_1878 View Post
    Firstly, thanks for the input MMM.


    Quote Originally Posted by Cobra_1878 View Post
    Are you not concerned that BB merely flatted behind us leaving himself with around half the stack he started the hand with?
    Yeah. I hadn't noticed it in my first post.
    It makes the river call harder.
    It's just that your perceived range is very wide.
    Within that range, your actual hand is near-nutted.

    The BB flatting is worrisome. Now you have to figure out how much of his range beats you, too.


    I feel like this hand is a perfect example of getting caught in the squeeze position with a medium-strong hand. It's just odd because you're on the BTN. However, the MP has taken control of the betting and hand, which effectively leaves you 2nd to act, with the BB closing the action after MP bets.

    I am conflicted about betting OTF. My gut says to always bet the top of my range. If they fold too much, then I'll bet some semi-bluffs, too. The conflict is that this is a pretty dry flop and you may rep a very thin range by raising. I doubt you raise AQ here. Q5, Q2 are pretty out of the question. Even 52 is a nope. So what do you rep with a raise OTF? Sets and KK+ and..? 64s? Raising A4s seems like burning money except as a balance to repping so tight a range.

    I feel like I want to raise OTF and balance the range to suit Villains' tendencies.

    I wonder what spoonitnow thinks of this spot.
  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Cobra_1878 View Post
    Really? I didn't even consider raising on such a dry board. I think I would be super annoyed with myself if I raise and get 3 folds here.

    The behaviour is what gave me pause. When I posted the thread I half expected to get 'LOL, fist pump call' so I'm glad to see some good, constructive feedback. When he did it, I was just sitting there like...wtf? I did note that my hand was hugely under-repped but when I raise the turn on a board like this villain has to know I have something, right?

    No brainer raise, if this plays anything like most Grovsenor casinos at the weekend - you're getting called by everything.

    Thing is with the body language, what he's perceiving as the nuts is probably way off what he should be. I really wouldn't be surprised to see KK+ here, AQ and all this shit two pair combos. He can have the straights as well, but I'm not too worried about stacking off. We're drawing dead sometimes, have decent equity against straights and good often enough against everything else.
  11. #11
    Eric's Avatar
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    Yeah, let's keep the results out of this. I'm guessing people are more likely to post hands like this when the villain has 4A/46/QQ than when we win.
  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Eric View Post
    Yeah, let's keep the results out of this. I'm guessing people are more likely to post hands like this when the villain has 4A/46/QQ than when we win.
    You'd guess wrong.

    I regularly did things like this with hands I won when I was posting hands from my online sessions. Part of it was to avoid people automatically thinking 'lol, hero lost this hand'.

    Sometimes, it's good to get other people's opinions even if you won the hand and I thought that this was a weird spot so I posted it.
    Currently grinding live cash games. Life is good.
  13. #13
    Interesting. I ship, way too many two pairs in the BB range and lower sets in the MP range. I don't see anyone having QQ, straights are possible, but would have expected a ship from BB on turn if he was actually slow playing a straight.

    I'm definitely shipping in this situation.
  14. #14
    It's one thing to be HU vs PFR cb and flat on a dry Q52 with 555. Villain is likely drawing very thin on pretty much his entire range (likely 2 outs with any overpair, or runner boat with TP). It's also more likely that a player runs some bluff HU, so calling with a set here makes sense often imo.

    It's a completely different thing to be in a 4-way limped pot where ppl can have all sorts of unexpected two pairs Q5/Q2 (so they will continue to a raise), and nobody is folding any gutter or SD (A3/A5/46,34) - and may also continue to a raise. People are also calling with mid pairs likely >5x, so 66-99 I'd imagine (though these would fold to a raise). Bare Qx also prob calling a raise.

    It's a spot where you're giving a free card to get action, but a lot of the hands you will get action from are hands that improve to beat yours (gutters sitting on 4 outs, mid pairs on 2). so with 3 ppl already in the pot you're likely dodging up to 6-10 outs on the turn. That's not a lot of outs either, but with so many possible hands that may call a flop raise anyhow, I would definitely raise.

    Not to mention it just looks suspicious that the player IP is raising with all this dead money.

    As played - you have to call. MP can definitely have 222 or 333 (6 combos) and A4s (4 combos). I'll discount 46s open limping a bit so maybe 2 combos.
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  15. #15
    Miffed22001's Avatar
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    Open limp MP looks more like an Ax/small PP/QJ/KQ type hands to me with an occasional AA/KK limp FPS

    Texture of the board gives me reason to support your reasoning for not raising the flop - i probably would raise given the tendencies of people to call a flop raise with a limp-in hand that has TP that they like (QJ/KQ).

    Griffey has the turn range for me when he says that it looks like sets and A4s but this could be a someone grossly overplaying a limped overpair AA//KK and TP hand like KQ - but when you mention the guy is a reg - in the sense he plays in cash games regularly I cant see him overplaying his hand this badly.

    You certainly cant fold when your hand is very underepped but I think you'll see the straight/limped overpair/overplayed QJ/KQ here a lot and occasionally 222/333

    These games play so bad that you see Qx suited for 2 pair or a random small 2 pair sooted as well - but nothing you have given about villain suggests that is part of his game.
  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Cobra_1878 View Post
    I just called because I believe I have the best hand here like 95% of the time and I want to keep everyone in the pot.
    This is really bad. Flatting is debatable and I don't know how these games play, but this reasoning is awful. There are a lot more considerations than just your likelihood of having the best hand and the fact that it's not two-toned.

    This is an over-simplification but hopefully a better one than what you just gave: two-pair is going to get coolered here pretty much no matter what (unless future cards kill their action), so think about how to take Qx along for the longest, most unpleasant ride possible. You have a lot of money left to get in and you're not playing people who can be relied upon to do all the betting for you. There are 4 bets to get the money in and only 3 streets to do it. We should not be surprised at all if this is our last chance at getting a raise in on any street, since passive players often pot control turns with single-pair hands on dry boards; if they didn't, they wouldn't be called passive players. Again, this doesn't automatically mean the conclusion is that we have to raise here, but you should understand the steep odds you're laying against yourself for getting stacks with anything that wasn't going to continue to a flop raise anyway.

    Also, realize that we're 3-way, our set is low, and both players have a ton of midpairs in their range. Also, anything lower than your set completes straights (usually 20+ combos of them), and anything that pairs the board will kill a lot of your action from two pairs. Not to give you paranoia over having a fucking set on a fucking Q52r board, but just to let you know that even on a dry board, things do aft go awry with low sets in 3-way pots.

    And since you're posting a hand after we get action when a 3 rolls off, this advice is all-the-more relevant.

    Also, from villain's perspective, what the fuck could we possibly have? Unfortunately we have a super tight image, so people might just put us on a set and fold if it's that sort of game, but anyone with any kind of doubting instinct will get taken for a ride here.

    Anyway, with such a low SPR against players that I'm assuming are passive until proven otherwise, I'm inclined to take the driver's seat unless I have a good reason to act otherwise. And if these games play at all loose as has been mentioned earlier, then I'm putting the pressure on and assuming they're going to make expensive mistakes often enough for it to be well worth me not playing small ball with midpairs and skittish kickers. Again, that's an oversimplification in-and-of itself, but it's an improvement on ~"my hand is awesome and the flop is rainbow, so it's time to flip to the slowplay chapter in our books."~

    (A meta game note: the fact that the reg won 80bb on the flop on an almost identical board probably makes it less likely that he'll give us unnecessary action here. When live regs are feeling good about how they're playing, they're more willing to take a you-win-some-you-lose-some approach and won't push their luck winning a big pot with a mediocre hand twice. But this is secondary to everything else above, hence the parenthesis.)

    As played, I'm not folding. Unfortunately, all 20 combos of straights make perfect sense, especially for MP, but we have outs in the worst case scenario, and there are still enough two pairs and worse sets to make calling profitable.
    Last edited by surviva316; 10-06-2015 at 12:58 AM.
  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Cobra_1878 View Post
    (I seem to be having problems 'labeling people' lately).
    I wanted to comment on this, too: I think it's helpful to focus on preflop passivity when sizing up regs. When they're involved in hands, is it mostly because they raised, or are they limping in a lot or flatting PFRs? When they are limping, are they doing it in EP and MP? If so, pay the fuck attention to what they showdown with because these show downs are going to be gold for you. If it's a low pair or a suited ace, that's a boring finding, but pretty much everything else is valuable information (OMG, they open limped JTo in EP? Holy hell, they don't raise AJ in MP? Even knowing whether they open or limp SCs is notable, though people are so clueless how to play SCs that I wouldn't take how they play it in any one hand as gospel).

    Beyond that, I mostly assume they're passive until proven otherwise. Aggressive live regs are not only in the minority, but they're usually so inelegant at being aggressive that it sticks out like a sore thumb. And once you get a decent feel for their preflop play (passive or aggressive, positionally aware or not, how tight they are), and you have them tagged as passive postflop, then you pretty much have them classed.

    There are still a million and a half tendencies to get a feel for (especially how cally they are, how they play draws, what their small bets mean in family pots, etc), but I think paying attention to preflop limps and flats is a nice bite-sized way to start out, especially for converted internet players who are used to thinking in terms of TAgg/passive fish/etc.
  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by surviva316 View Post
    ]Not to give you paranoia over having a fucking set on a fucking Q52r board, but just to let you know that even on a dry board, things do aft go awry with low sets in 3-way pots.

    And since you're posting a hand after we get action when a 3 rolls off, this advice is all-the-more relevant.
    And for the triple post, I wanted to clarify what I meant here so I don't come off as a nit:

    I don't so much mean that this turn was really bad for you or that this flop is really scary and you need to protect against it (though protection adds some nice padding to the EV of our aggressive lines here). I am more-so referring to stack-off ranges. If flatting the flop makes it so that getting a ton of action on the turn is so rare that it creates a HH with the thread title "crazy hand" and it makes you doubt that your second set is good enough, then flatting the flop probably wasn't the best way to milk lesser hands for all they're worth. (Obviously this logic isn't airtight because we *are* now facing a 3b with a 3rd player who has b/c'ed, but I stand by my assumption that getting this much action on the flop would have been less crazy, and our opponents' ranges would have included lesser hands).

    So stop thinking so much about how to string along mediocre hands for an extra bet or two. Start thinking about how to make it so that when the 120bbs (or at least the 65bbs) go in, their range is as fat and dominated as possible. This perspective isn't equally useful in all situations against all players, and if you're playing a bunch of nits who aren't going to budge much of their money with much less than a set, then you have to worry more about how to massage the pot. But assuming these are the type of players who are at least capable of putting in 80bbs on the flop with second pair, we're better off maximizing our gains in the pricy pots and let the mediocre hands in their range play out as they may.
    Last edited by surviva316; 10-06-2015 at 01:30 AM.

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