25nl: is this potential spew

[Keith]

villain is 22/21 9.8% 3bet and 3bet my steals for the last 3 orbits.


Poker Stars, $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

SB: $32.62 (130.5 bb)
BB: $26.55 (106.2 bb)
UTG: $62.39 (249.6 bb)
MP: $27.42 (109.7 bb)
Hero (CO): $32.83 (131.3 bb)
BTN: $25.70 (102.8 bb)

Preflop: Hero is CO with T T
2 folds, Hero raises to $1, BTN raises to $3.35, 2 folds, Hero calls $2.35

Flop: ($7.05) 6 5 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $3.50, Hero raises to $8

I reasoned that with the paired board he's got to be worried that his over pairs won't be any good, the fact that he has 3 bet 4 orbits running he could well be light, and he'll have a job continuing with AJ,AQ,AK KQ etc.

Check raising the flop rather than 4 betting potentially gets extra value out of his cbet.
still not sure if this was just potential spew though.

[Malbrack]

Why are you raising his flop bet? Is it a bluff? If so, what better hands do you fold out? Would he fold JJ-AA? Is it for value? What worse hands would he call with? 77-99, maybe. But you can still get value from those hands on the turn or river. You don't need AJ-AK, KQ, etc. to fold because you're already beating those hands.

[EasyPoker]

4bet small or fold pre.

As played fold to his cbet. Nothing that you beat is continuing with that flop 3bet.

Your reasons seem like you're trying to convince yourself that this was a solid play, I dunno...but in my experience, TT will rarely be good here.

[jackvance]

Nice hand, but I'd 4bet pre if he's constantly 3betting you, not necessarily TT but some hands.

Why are you raising his flop bet? Is it a bluff? If so, what better hands do you fold out? Would he fold JJ-AA? Is it for value? What worse hands would he call with? 77-99, maybe. But you can still get value from those hands on the turn or river. You don't need AJ-AK, KQ, etc. to fold because you're already beating those hands.

The reasoning is that you want to fold out AK-type hands before you get outdrawn.

4bet small or fold pre.

Way too tight to fold TT vs a guy who has been raising you constantly. 4bet/call

[griffey24]

I don't mind it vs the right villains. Some ppl will always spazz jam overcards here. I would probably raise to $7.50 to make it seem like a cheap bluff, but $8 is not bad.

It's high variance for sure, but if he's capable of jamming overcards then I don't mind it.

[EasyPoker]

Way too tight to fold TT vs a guy who has been raising you constantly. fold/call

You mean pre or on the flop?

To me, the flop raise was bad because as a bluff (which is surely all it should have been for since nothing calls that we beat) we should be bluffraising where we at least have a good chance to improve on later streets.

[rpm]

C/Fing to a 1/2P CB heads up on a low paired board from a known light 3bettor seems absurd. i'm definitely calling at least the flop, i don't mind C/R/calling it off here against some players, but i would rather have a bit of history between me+villain dicking about on dry/paired boards before i'm keen on the idea.

[seven-deuce]

He seems aggressive i would check-call two streets here and decide river if he fires a 3rd barrel.

[eugmac]

From the description it sounds like he has plenty of 3b bluffs in his range, and if you have a feeling he's gonna continue with his bluff postflop I say you should just let him. If the c/r is gonna induce spazz then go for it, but that means not folding when he comes over the top.

is this the first 3bet you call OOP vs him?

[Cobra_1878]

Any cbet stats on villain?

Also, is he the type of villain to continue against a c/r with AKdd or AQdd?

[Keith]

You mean pre or on the flop?

To me, the flop raise was bad because as a bluff (which is surely all it should have been for since nothing calls that we beat) we should be bluffraising where we at least have a good chance to improve on later streets.

who said i wanted worse to call? I felt that i was ahead but there a shitload of yuck cards that can come on turn and river. Any card >T is gonna hit his 3bet range and diamonds are gonna hit some parts of his 3bet range.having raised and folded to 3 of his previous 3bets in the previous orbits , it looks like i'm trapping him with a strong hand, in fact does it pretty much turn my hand face up in that JJ+, AQ+ i'm probably 4betting pre pretty much only leaving 99-TT and some suited Axd calling pre and raising this flop. To a certain extent its a bluff , but mainly to realize my current equity and i didn't fancy calling down and seeing an overcard come.

To be honest , i hadn't considered that he may spazz shove overcards and had assumed that he'd only be shoving over with overpairs.

[jackvance]

You mean pre or on the flop?

To me, the flop raise was bad because as a bluff (which is surely all it should have been for since nothing calls that we beat) we should be bluffraising where we at least have a good chance to improve on later streets.

Sorry I meant preflop, that was supposed to read 4bet/call as options, I edited it.

[EasyPoker]

who said i wanted worse to call? I felt that i was ahead but there a shitload of yuck cards that can come on turn and river. Any card >T is gonna hit his 3bet range and diamonds are gonna hit some parts of his 3bet range.having raised and folded to 3 of his previous 3bets in the previous orbits , it looks like i'm trapping him with a strong hand, in fact does it pretty much turn my hand face up in that JJ+, AQ+ i'm probably 4betting pre pretty much only leaving 99-TT and some suited Axd calling pre and raising this flop. To a certain extent its a bluff , but mainly to realize my current equity and i didn't fancy calling down and seeing an overcard come.

To be honest , i hadn't considered that he may spazz shove overcards and had assumed that he'd only be shoving over with overpairs.

Equity now doesn't mean equity later. It's a huge mistake to view equity on the flop as justification to spew.

1) You don't want to be playing big pots with ONE pair (and an average pair) vs this villain. Irrespective of him 3betting you 3 times. He could just be running good tbh.
2) Bluffraising this flop vs that villain in a 3bet pot will never show positive expectation.

[ColdDecked]

Is this your standard raise size pre for a steal? I'd consider making it smaller given that the villain is aggressively restealing.

As for the hand, this is really villain dependent. There's a lot of villains who will just go, oh you're making a small raise on a low paired board, I'm going to 3b w/ overs.

[Malbrack]

The reasoning is that you want to fold out AK-type hands before you get outdrawn.

I can see the advantage of getting AK type hands to fold, since you wouldn't be able to really get any more value from them anyway (unless you think villain would double barrel AK); however, doesn't a flop raise allow the villain to play near perfectly? Wouldn't the villain fold overcards, probably fold 77-88 (and maybe 99), and call or shove with JJ+ (and NFDs+Overs like AdKd which have so many outs they are almost ahead anyway)? (I would if I were villain.)

But I guess the real answer depends on the villain's post-flop tendencies. If you know he is likely to play in a way that raising the flop can exploit (as Griffey mentions), then go for it; otherwise, without some kind of good read, it seems like spew to me.

[jackvance]

I can see the advantage of getting AK type hands to fold, since you wouldn't be able to really get any more value from them anyway (unless you think villain would double barrel AK); however, doesn't a flop raise allow the villain to play near perfectly? Wouldn't the villain fold overcards, probably fold 77-88 (and maybe 99), and call or shove with JJ+ (and NFDs+Overs like AdKd which have so many outs they are almost ahead anyway)? (I would if I were villain.)

But I guess the real answer depends on the villain's post-flop tendencies. If you know he is likely to play in a way that raising the flop can exploit (as Griffey mentions), then go for it; otherwise, without some kind of good read, it seems like spew to me.

Betting or raising when you are likely ahead is one of the fundamentals of poker. You have to protect your hand from being outdrawn. If he wants to see if he can spike his A/K/Q/J he'll have to pay for it. The only reason you would not is if you estimate your range isn't (that much) ahead of his. Another element is how strong your hand is, and how easily you can be outdrawn. This hand where many overcards can kill your hand is one, another example would be bottom pair. If your hand is secure (like, you flopped top set on a dead board) then there is less pressure to bet. The only reason you wouldn't want to bet when you are squarely ahead is when you want to slowplay to bet for value lateron. Or alternatively, to push your opponent into a bluff, but that's a play that only really starts to matter in 50NL+ and tournaments.

[Malbrack]

Jackvance, maybe I am just misunderstanding poker strategy. I thought you only want to value bet (or raise for value in this case) when you are ahead to the point that you are still ahead of villain's calling range. In this case, hero can instead call the flop and still have the turn and river to get money in without having to over-narrow villain's range by raising the flop. (If hero calls the flop bet, the pot becomes $14.05, which makes it very easy to get all the money in by the river.) I mean, if hero's flop raise already narrows the villain's range to something like JJ+, AdKd, what is hero going to do on the turn or river? I actually ask this in seriousness. I'm not trying to be combative. I honestly don't raise very many flops (I play at 10NL). When I do, it is usually either two-pair+ (or whatever it takes to be clearly ahead of villain's calling range) or a strong draw semi-bluff. So if calling instead of raising hands like this is a leak in my game, I want to try to understand why my reasoning is weak.

[d0zer]

To be honest , i hadn't considered that he may spazz shove overcards and had assumed that he'd only be shoving over with overpairs.

That makes this flop play pretty bad then because you're intentionally narrowing his range to stuff that beats you just because you're scared of seeing a turn.

[jackvance]

The most basic principle of poker is to get as much money in the pot as possible when you are ahead.

Let's say I follow your idea of only raising/betting if I'm ahead of someone's calling range. I know a guy at the table only calls 3bets with AA. Does that mean I should only 3bet him with AA myself (as per your strategy) or should I 3bet him a shitload?

[Savy]

The most basic principle of poker is to get as much money in the pot as possible when you are ahead.

Let's say I follow your idea of only raising/betting if I'm ahead of someone's calling range. I know a guy at the table only calls 3bets with AA. Does that mean I should only 3bet him with AA myself (as per your strategy) or should I 3bet him a shitload?

If you had a value hand it'd be a stupid idea to 3bet him as it narrows his range so much.

[Malbrack]

Let's say I follow your idea of only raising/betting if I'm ahead of someone's calling range. I know a guy at the table only calls 3bets with AA. Does that mean I should only 3bet him with AA myself (as per your strategy) or should I 3bet him a shitload?

If a villain only calls 3bets pre with AA you can 3bet him wider, sure, but these would not be value 3bets, they would be bluff 3bets. You could 3bet JTs and get him to fold AKs, for example. But you wouldn't necessarily be betting while ahead in that case.

It sounds like you want to raise the flop in the OP's case to collect dead money (i.e., to get all hands that you already beat to fold). But if you're going to do that, why do it with TT which can still get value from 77-99 and broken draws? 72o could collect dead money just as well, right?

[griffey24]

To be honest , i hadn't considered that he may spazz shove overcards and had assumed that he'd only be shoving over with overpairs.

I mean... this is the ONLY reason I'm raising the flop. If he's not going to spazz overcards, and is only shoving better than us, then you are turning your hand into a bluff.

Just to clarify, are you raise folding?

[jackvance]

If a villain only calls 3bets pre with AA you can 3bet him wider, sure, but these would not be value 3bets, they would be bluff 3bets. You could 3bet JTs and get him to fold AKs, for example. But you wouldn't necessarily be betting while ahead in that case.

This is not an example of implementing my idea (you just raise every crap hand to exploit him), it's to show that your idea doesn't work.

It sounds like you want to raise the flop in the OP's case to collect dead money (i.e., to get all hands that you already beat to fold). But if you're going to do that, why do it with TT which can still get value from 77-99 and broken draws? 72o could collect dead money just as well, right?

So your raising range is 100% bluffs? That doesn't sound good.

[Malbrack]

No, I am not advocating bluffing with 72o. My point is that by turning TT into a bluff, you might as well be doing it with something weaker (like a draw). I don't like raising when only better hands call and all worse hands fold. My strategy is to raise when I am ahead of villain's calling range (for value; and even then it is sometimes more +EV to take a less aggressive line) and when I have a strong draw (as a semi-bluff). I thought this was fairly standard, barring good reads on villain's post-flop play.

Your AA example is not the same thing. In that example, a 3bet is never for value, since I am never ahead of his calling range. Yet by 3betting wide, I'm getting lots and lots of better hands to fold, so it is a good bluff. In the OP's example, I'm not sure he could get any better hands to fold, so it is likely not a good bluff.

[rpm]

i don't like this C/R if your plan was to fold to a shove. i would only be C/Ring here if i believed i could induce a spewy 3b, and i would be going down to the felt if needs be (hence in my previous post i said i like to have a bit of history on these boards before i start C/R/calling it off for thinnish value). C/Ring for the reasons you have described here seems to basically be you saying "i think i have the best hand at the moment. i don't expect villain to continue in any way (whether raise or call) with a range i have good equity against, but i'm willing to make this bet because there are some runouts which i wont be comfortable playing OOP on". i'd rather just C/C than C/R/F whenever he 3bets.

out of curiosity, did you find yourself doing this kind of stuff when grinding 10nl? it seems like you could be playing on slightly scared money?

[jackvance]

No, I am not advocating bluffing with 72o. My point is that by turning TT into a bluff, you might as well be doing it with something weaker (like a draw). I don't like raising when only better hands call and all worse hands fold. My strategy is to raise when I am ahead of villain's calling range (for value; and even then it is sometimes more +EV to take a less aggressive line) and when I have a strong draw (as a semi-bluff). I thought this was fairly standard, barring good reads on villain's post-flop play.

Your AA example is not the same thing. In that example, a 3bet is never for value, since I am never ahead of his calling range. Yet by 3betting wide, I'm getting lots and lots of better hands to fold, so it is a good bluff. In the OP's example, I'm not sure he could get any better hands to fold, so it is likely not a good bluff.

That's way too passive. You're only gonna be betting a small value range and leave a lot on the table. You're also going to get outdrawn a lot, and see action killers. You're gonna show your hand a needless lot. Your passive play will make it more obvious when you have a strong hand and try to get value. I could go on..

[eugmac]

i want to see ev calculations for this specific hand comparing 3betting with the intention of taking the pot immediately, with calling to see turns. If he 3bets a very high % and he cbets flops a high % i guess we're gonna win the pot here a high % of the time too. is there really no money to be made here on future streets?

i guess we have to make some guidelines on what turn cards we are willing to put more money in with. if we're gonna check/fold every overcard that comes, that sounds fairly bad?

[OngBonga]

I'd move table.

[seven-deuce]

Why don't you look at villains 3bet range pre-flop and your calling range, then see if you think TT should be in your check-raising range or not. Surely there are better hands to bluff with if you think he's folding a lot here and those hands would weaken his range too, hands like AQdd AJss etc these block AA JJ and AA QQ so he will be continuing less when you raise AJ or AQ compared to TT.

[eugmac]

I suppose we're value 4betting KK+ preflop, so say QQ is the top of our range getting to this flop - are we check/raising this too? and calling it off?

[Savy]

That's way too passive. You're only gonna be betting a small value range and leave a lot on the table. You're also going to get outdrawn a lot, and see action killers. You're gonna show your hand a needless lot. Your passive play will make it more obvious when you have a strong hand and try to get value. I could go on..

That's just not true.

TT is a hand which is probably ahead of this persons continuing range on that flop, whereas it's probably behind villains range is he calls or reraises.

We will see this flop with hands that are worse than TT and probably behind this persons continuing range, which we can profitably turn into bluffs and we have good hands which we can legitimately raise for value. TT is too good to turn into a bluff and not good enough to raise for value.

When we c/c it doesn't give away our hand strength either because we can do this with a fairly wide range of hands.

[eugmac]

Villain, being the light 3bettor in position, might have for example A5s or 56s in his range, whereas we can't really have a piece of that flop at all apart from a few combos of flush draws, and our overpairs are largely capped at QQ or so. What I'm saying is, since our value range is so weak here but villain has many bluffs in his range, why are we ruining a perfectly fine bluff catcher?

[eugmac]

I mean if he correctly folds all of his bluffs, and continue with his value range which is way stronger than our value range, we just made it so so easy for him to play utterly perfectly.

[seven-deuce]

We're definitely ahead of his c-betting range on that flop if villain is 3-betting a bluffing range versus us. I reckon our hand is strong enough to check call twice regardless of the turn card. Since if he has a hand like A4s or something and hits an ace on the turn and we call, he will probably check behind a lot of hands that beat us on the river i.e weak top pairs and without reads we can assume he isn't going to lose his mind and 3-barrel us really wide here so he will most likely check all the hands we beat as well. That leaves his betting range on the river really strong and it crushes us so we have an easy fold.

I was just thinking about the talk of inducing a spazz raise with overcards anyone else think donking TT would be more likely to induce an overcard bluff here?

[eugmac]

I think we might be able to c/fold on any street when an A comes 'cause his value stuff like KK will slow down on the A, and it hits so much of his bluffing range. A quick playing around in Flopzilla or Equilab with a feasible preflop 3betting range for Villain with lots of bluffs {JJ+,AK,A6s-A3s,K9s-K5s,Q9s-Q7s,A9o-A5o,KJo-KTo,QJo}, I think the only really bad card is an A, and K would be marginal. This is assuming villain is employing a strategy of 3betting a polarized Ace-heavy range for blockers. Of course, I just made an assumption about villain's 3bet bluffing range make-up, which of course we can only make guesses about.

[griffey24]

I mean my general thinking in this type of spot is that I'm more or less willing to stack off with TT in these positions, vs this particular opponent pre. If I'm choosing to call pre it is because I want to keep in nonsense hands and/or fade an A/K flop and go from there. If his strict value range is JJ+, AQ/AK/AJ then that is 24 combos we're crushed by and 48 combos we're doing very well against.

Suppose we were c/r bluffing to 8 here, then we are risking $8 to win $10.50. Our bluff has to work 43% of the time. Using the above hand combos, if he's only continuing with JJ+, then he is folding 67% of the time. So clearly in that situation a bluff isn't bad. Obviously the more he starts shoving on us, the worse a bluff is and the better c/r calling TT is. You'll need some form of reads to know this.

[kickass]

Lets say that villain folds all unpaired hands to our raise now what's the value of disallowing him 2 cards to improve as oppose to bluff catching bearing in mind villain will never fold an overpair here cos we rep nothing higher than say JJ maybe occasional slow played AA. I don't know the answer to this obv but the value of not being bluffed along with protection when we only loose to a small amount of combos seems to be higher to me than hoping he'll bluff some more on a 7 or diamond or any broadway.

[kickass]

Also this isn't actually putting that much into the pot even if the only aim was to make villain fold his equity with unpaired cards cos we would never just fold this flop so 3.5 is always going in 4.5 doesn't seem much of a price for the bennifits of having villain fold now.
My standard is to Chk call but I'm just putting ideas out there

[jackvance]

What noone is mentioning is that if you have the choice between betting/raising and calling, you should always bet. As you go up in stakes you will notice people get more and more aggressive. I don't like playing 400NL because people are so aggressive that I almost can't play my normal game anymore. Hammering every chance you get is a good idea.

[Savy]

What noone is mentioning is that if you have the choice between betting/raising and calling, you should always bet. As you go up in stakes you will notice people get more and more aggressive. I don't like playing 400NL because people are so aggressive that I almost can't play my normal game anymore. Hammering every chance you get is a good idea.

Because that's complete rubbish?

[kickass]

I had not read any responses in this thread but it seems you all have my point covered and better than me too

[jackvance]

Because that's complete rubbish?

That people become more aggressive if you go up in stakes or what are you talking about?

[Savy]

That people become more aggressive if you go up in stakes or what are you talking about?

"What noone is mentioning is that if you have the choice between betting/raising and calling, you should always bet."

Is rubbish.

Aggression is good yes but it has to be calculated aggression.

[jackvance]

I mean ofcourse if it's a more or less neutral EV decision to do either, as in this case it's a standard c/r for me.

[Micro2Macro]

this thread makes it pretty damn clear that you should all be playing a wide range in position

[griffey24]

What noone is mentioning is that if you have the choice between betting/raising and calling, you should always bet. As you go up in stakes you will notice people get more and more aggressive. I don't like playing 400NL because people are so aggressive that I almost can't play my normal game anymore. Hammering every chance you get is a good idea.

I think you have to becareful about generalizations. As a 400nl reg I would agree that yes the games are MUCH more aggressive, and I'm definitely on the more aggressive/bluffy side of that scale. I would definitely say that it's not always the best option. As players get better, they also get better at hand reading, and their frequencies get better. I can speak first hand that being too aggressive as you move up can be a costly mistake sometimes!

[jackvance]

I think you have to becareful about generalizations. As a 400nl reg I would agree that yes the games are MUCH more aggressive, and I'm definitely on the more aggressive/bluffy side of that scale. I would definitely say that it's not always the best option. As players get better, they also get better at hand reading, and their frequencies get better. I can speak first hand that being too aggressive as you move up can be a costly mistake sometimes!

Agreed. What I meant by not being able to play my normal game anymore is in part due to not being able to bluff so efficiently because they're all better hand readers. I ended up only mentioning the aggression part because that was relevant to my point.

[baudib]

Raising is not always better than calling, I don't see how anyone can say that and especially not in this thread where we seem to have agreement that his continuing range crushes us.

Flatting to keep his air and worse value hands that he will either double-barrel or pay off a small river bet if it goes c/c on the turn is good. The value in "protecting your hand" from being drawn out by overs or draws doesn't begin to outweigh keeping the weaker parts of his range in the hand. I, for one, am certainly not auto c/f if an overcard happens to hit.

[Keith]

I mean... this is the ONLY reason I'm raising the flop. If he's not going to spazz overcards, and is only shoving better than us, then you are turning your hand into a bluff.

Just to clarify, are you raise folding?

yeah, when i played it , i assumed only better was shoving over so would have folded. As it turned out he folded to my raise. Although he folded , I wasn't sure about my play at all hence the original question. I think some of the resulting discussion has been some of the best strategy discussion I've read in the bc for some time, so thanks for the comments.Sorry for not responding earlier but been on a tractor all day with no net access.

Given the comments , i think it was spewy for the reasons I gave and think Ong was probably right in moving table.