Bottom set, 3bet pot, virtual unknown

Poker Stars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.05 BB (6 handed) - Poker Stars Converter Tool from http://flopturnriver.com

UTG ($7.08)
MP ($5.59)
CO ($5)
Button ($5)
SB ($4.55)
Hero (BB) ($6.18)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 4, 4
3 folds, Button raises $0.12, 1 fold, Hero raises $0.40, Button calls $0.33

Flop: ($0.92) 7, 4, 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $0.45, Hero calls $0.45

Turn: ($1.82) 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $0.87, Hero raises $2.25, 1 fold

Villain's stats over 12 hands - 33/33/60/100/0/-/-

Layout - vpip/pfr/steal%/Fsteal%/3bet/cbet/fold to cbet


Checking the flop a mistake here? No reads on this guy at all, no idea if he's calling 3bets wide or not. Couldn't see too many 9's being in his range or draws so I elected to check. In my head I was probably thinking this guy had a lot of missed broadwasy AQ and the like. Didn't wanna just fold them out.

I would also check and hope that villian would take a stab at it, as he did here.

The way you play the top of your range, you're simply never going to be able to barrel light. This is BU vs BB, dude, he's going to find all sorts of excuses to give you his money. There are plenty of 9xs hands, some overpairs, split pairs that can turn more outs, strong overcards that might float and catch a card on the turn, some pair+BDs that might get tricky on the turn, some overcards+backdoors that might get frisky, etc.

I don't think this is a bad hand to check if we want to strengthen our flop checking range, but if we're going to have a large checking range, then we should have a c/r'ing range, and if we're going to have a c/r'ing range, then this hand *has* to be a c/r. For now, to keep your strategy simple and manageable, you can just cbet this flop a massive %age of the time. This flop hits your range very hard. 22/33 are the only hands where you'll hate life, but that's 12 combos, so whatever.

Just barrel imo.

If you're going to c/c down I would c/c twice and c/bomb river.

Originally Posted by griffey24

Just barrel imo.

If you're going to c/c down I would c/c twice and c/bomb river.

me too

I wouldn't be betting flop for balance or to strengthen flop ranges etc. This is 5nl, noone gives a fuck about that. I'd be betting because people are terrible and will peel light, or maybe even spazz out thinking we fold Ax. If we have better reads and we know he's gonna stab when we check, then I like flop check but yeah what griff said, I'd wait until river before spunking over my monitor.

Originally Posted by seven-deuce

Checking the flop a mistake here? No reads on this guy at all, no idea if he's calling 3bets wide or not. Couldn't see too many 9's being in his range or draws so I elected to check. In my head I was probably thinking this guy had a lot of missed broadwasy AQ and the like. Didn't wanna just fold them out.

checking the flop seems bad. He's not folding any pocket pair, he's not folding any flopped pair, he's probably not folding a-high, he's possibly not folding any two overs, he's probably not folding any gutter or open ended straight draw.

Originally Posted by OngBonga

I wouldn't be betting flop for balance or to strengthen flop ranges etc. This is 5nl, noone gives a fuck about that. I'd be betting because people are terrible and will peel light, or maybe even spazz out thinking we fold Ax. If we have better reads and we know he's gonna stab when we check, then I like flop check but yeah what griff said, I'd wait until river before spunking over my monitor.

2 things:

1) Our points aren't at all mutually exclusive. It's a much preferable GTO strategy to bet here, and if anything, at these stakes (even against unknowns), you should skew your range even more heavily toward value, making this a very obvious bet. My point was that full sentence; your point was, "Screw the first half of the sentence, let's apply the second half of the sentence."

2) I disagree that "noone gives a fuck about that" here or at any stakes. Sure, everyone's idiots, no one knows how to properly exploit the patterns they recognize, no one likes to fold, no one knows how to value bet, etc, but most opponents do try to pick up patterns on how you play and do try to exploit it. Most of all single-tabling fish, tilt-monkey wannabe regs, beginners who WAY overcompensate for the lessons learned in their first 100 hands, etc.

If you want to sustain a wide, profitable range of hands to play in a lot of situations (and if you're 3b'ing unknowns with 44 OOP, then your range is gonna be a bit wide), then you have to have the goods enough of the time when you put money in to ever win big. Otherwise, if you find yourself betting a whole lot in any given situation while rarely having a hand that can play for big pots, then you're gonna find that the money only is getting in when you're behind, and the pots stay small when you're ahead. If it's somehow therapeutic for you to never give your opponents credit, then you don't have to call this exploitation: you can call it accidental exploitation, you can call it exploiting yourself, whatever, it's still the same thing.

The point is, players at this level make adjustments. In fact, a lot of them are paying a helluva lot more attention to the table than you are. To some extent, we can make some probable guesses at what the general nature of those adjustments will be and exploit them even harder: fish will keep playing wide ranges preflop, calling stations will continue to call wide, passive players won't become aggro enough that you really need to defend yourself much, etc. But to a large extent, it's helpful to play in a way that they're going to lose money regardless of what adjustments they make (within certain parameters).

It might just be an approach thing. It might be easier to learn some high-level generalizations about the stake and use a few simple heuristics to beat the stake. I agree that the stakes are bad enough that that will work. Putting consideration into how you play your range overall will make you money too, and the lessons you learn from playing that way can apply at all stakes and games.

Of course you're right. All I've done is emphasise why I can make money at low stakes but my game doesn't evolve to beat higher stakes. Shrugging my shoulders and thinking "fuck balance, it's 5nl" might make me money against the average 5nl muppet, but it's teaching me nothing about the skills I need to beat higher stakes.

But I doubt many 5nl'ers would notice if you only cbet when you have a hand, and those that do note it and adjust effectively won't be at 5nl for long enough to rape your br.

Originally Posted by OngBonga

But I doubt many 5nl'ers would notice if you only cbet when you have a hand, and those that do note it and adjust effectively won't be at 5nl for long enough to rape your br.

The more often you raise PF and cbet the flop, the lighter you'll be called down, especially by fish. I guarantee it. Again, the thought process behind it might be so thin that we might hesitate to call it an adjustment, and the adjustments certainly aren't going to be good ones, but the result is just the same: if you don't keep your ranges under control, then you're going to bleed chips.

If anything, I would say that the reason 5nl'ers don't need to familiarize with this concept has more to do with the fact that they play weaktight/ABC poker than it is because players don't adjust at 5nl. In other words, seven-deuce's training wheels aren't the fact that his opponents suck; his training wheels are the fact that he would never dream of iso'ing a 40/10 fish with K8o. Postflop play probably doesn't warrant *that much* dissection when you always have a pocket pair, TPGK, or strong overcards. It becomes much more difficult to know when to check or when to bet when you can't just auto-bet every flop and assume that you're winning money in the long run someway or another.

Cliffontes: I don't think the difference between playing big boy poker and playing lolmicros poker (or to put it in FTR terms: playing SSNL poker or playing BC poker) is the opponents you face. To even get as far as beating 40/10s exceptionally well, you have to start leveraging the myriad advantages you get in a poker game beyond just the occasional strong preflop holding and even more occasional postflop monster. And in order to do *that*, you have to learn how to vbet as thin as you can get away with/recognize hands where you have SD value/play draws intelligently/manage pot size/run multi-bet bluffs/etc.

Or, if it makes you more comfortable, I can put some massive qualifiers on my main premise, and my point would still be true:

At least some players at 5nl are adjusting to you at least some of the time. This alone means that the overall frequency of you being played back at (in some way or another) will go up the more you bet.

You might be able to think that you can spot which players will do it, exactly how they will do it, exactly when they will do it, and exactly when you'll get just the right hand to lay the trap. But speaking for me personally, I spent years banging my head against my ego before I learned that it really can't work like that. Not just because you're not the fucking Don Juan of poker (because, let's face it, we're all god's gift to poker), not just because we're playing 500 hands/hour against 30-50 different opponents all at once, but because the information you gather in a poker game is too incomplete to ever really allow you to pick and choose your spots. (Even in live poker--where you can play MUCH more exploitatively because you can literally watch players get frustrated with you right before your eyes--the kinds of adjustments available to your opponents are too varied and the amount of showdowns you see are WAY too limited to ever pinpoint exactly how they're going to play a hand).

So to a certain extent, you have to play a style that makes you either 1) unexploitable or 2) very unlikely to be exploited by the given player based on the (limited) information we have on that player.

Originally Posted by surviva316

, you have to learn how to vbet as thin as you can get away with/recognize hands where you have SD value/play draws intelligently/manage pot size/run multi-bet bluffs/etc.

^ nice
if you aren't ever losing at showdown when your value bet is called then you're doing something wrong.
I'm not entirely sure what it means when a reg calls your 2/3pot river bluff and you win at showdown with Q-hi though.

I think you did right with checking on the flop. The board was pretty dry with the only possibility of him having a straight draw or a pair, and by checking you made out to him you had nothing on the flop.

the only thing i can see here(and i'm not even saying itsa mistake is your pre 3b. it seems like his dude is going to be super wide with hiis buttton open. idk maybe he doent fod to 3b.s ,

anyway we you 3b and then check the flop it just seems like your setting up for a c/r. did you intend to c/r if he bet duece?

Originally Posted by OngBonga

I wouldn't be betting flop for balance or to strengthen flop ranges etc. This is 5nl, noone gives a fuck about that. I'd be betting because people are terrible and will peel light, or maybe even spazz out thinking we fold Ax. If we have better reads and we know he's gonna stab when we check, then I like flop check but yeah what griff said, I'd wait until river before spunking over my monitor.

lol yes either bet bet jam or x/c all the way and jam river