[pokerpops]

It"s around 2am at The Vic.

Villain hasn"t been at table long but is clearly decent. He sat with the max and would have sat with more if allowed. Starts hand with c£200

Stacks are mostly between £100 - £200 with the exception of me and one other guy who is not in this hand.

He opens to £5 which is called in one spot and I raise     £14 from late position playing c £450

Flop      checked to me, I bet £22
Both call
Turn    checked to me, I bet £40, villain calls, other guy folds.
River  
He leads for £105 with not much back.....

[AMRN]

Don"t see how you can call here - I can"t see anything in his range that he leads with that you can beat, other than air of course.  Pretty simple fold for me.

[DodgyEnd (Tom APAT.be)]

Don"t see how you can call here - I can"t see anything in his range that he leads with that you can beat, other than air of course.  Pretty simple fold for me.

+1

Besides a bluff there is nothing you can beat I think.

[deanp27]

Pre should be bigger, especially in a squeeeeeeze spot. I"d need major history to consider calling river, he"d have to have 78s or something for you to win

[sedds]

I prefer flatting pre, with stacks closer to 200bb the squeeze has merit but i think here once the first guy calls, the second guy is always coming along, and you have to play with a small pot to stack ratio vs him. IP you can semi bluff alot of stuff which will put pressure on either villain with much more money behind that you can"t really do as well in a 3bet pot.

[WYoung83]

i dont mind the 3 bet, maybe c bet bigger on flop, But i actually think the turn is a really bad card and you should check. Easy fold now.

[noble1]

I prefer flatting pre, with stacks closer to 200bb the squeeze has merit but i think here once the first guy calls, the second guy is always coming along, and you have to play with a small pot to stack ratio vs him. IP you can semi bluff alot of stuff which will put pressure on either villain with much more money behind that you can"t really do as well in a 3bet pot.

Pre should be bigger, especially in a squeeeeeeze spot. I"d need major history to consider calling river, he"d have to have 78s or something for you to win

hmmm preflop 3bet sizing when deep, all depends on your personal style imho, i play a fair bit of deep stack cash online and i tend to 3bet very frequently ip  some might find this counter intuitive to make your 3bet sizing smaller, but deep and ip we should imo be encouraging calls then we can use the concepts of stack leverage and positional leverage to there full potential...

Question for David preflop - roughly what sort of continuing range did u think villains might continue with to your 3bet? [thats flatting and 4betting]

is there any specific reason for why you chose to 3bet J9s, plus at the time what did u think the villains perceived your range as?


another question for David postflop - what were your reasons for the bet sizes you made on the flop and turn?

[pokerpops]

I prefer flatting pre, with stacks closer to 200bb the squeeze has merit but i think here once the first guy calls, the second guy is always coming along, and you have to play with a small pot to stack ratio vs him. IP you can semi bluff alot of stuff which will put pressure on either villain with much more money behind that you can"t really do as well in a 3bet pot.

Pre should be bigger, especially in a squeeeeeeze spot. I"d need major history to consider calling river, he"d have to have 78s or something for you to win

hmmm preflop 3bet sizing when deep, all depends on your personal style imho, i play a fair bit of deep stack cash online and i tend to 3bet very frequently ip  some might find this counter intuitive to make your 3bet sizing smaller, but deep and ip we should imo be encouraging calls then we can use the concepts of stack leverage and positional leverage to there full potential...

Question for David preflop - roughly what sort of continuing range did u think villains might continue with to your 3bet? [thats flatting and 4betting]

is there any specific reason for why you chose to 3bet J9s, plus at the time what did u think the villains perceived your range as?


another question for David postflop - what were your reasons for the bet sizes you made on the flop and turn?

It was something "in the moment" tbh. I had the button, the stack, a hand that can flop really well, and generally not put me in the horns of a dilemma, and given this guy has only just arrived i also had the old guy image so I expect him to fold virtually zero because he plans on outplaying me postflop, so he"ll flat most of his range and 4bet the very top end, say JJ+, AQ+ and possibly the rubbish.
He has nothing to use to get to a range for me other than image (true for me of him too, but the kidz are easier to spot aren"t they) but he"s expecting me to be strong.

Half pot on the flop, in hindsight another £5 might be better.
Two callers.....
once the guy to my right calls the flop as well as villain it makes it tougher for any of us. I"ve sat with this guy for 5hrs, if he"s got a big hand, flopped set etc he"ll let me know by his betting. But his presence makes it harder for villain to make a move on the turn because it"s really hard to get through two players...
£40 felt right... It"s not necessarily the best way to decide on bet sizes, and it wasn"t based on the pot size at that stage.

Walk me through the process of improving that sizing..

[noble1]

Walk me through the process of improving that sizing..

jeepers hard to say without some idea of the villains ranges and there post flop tendencies...

in general my thoughts as a starting point on what your flop/turn bet sizing playing deep at this type of level could be are - the small flop sizing will generate looser calls, so villains can and most probably will peel with more marginal holdings that can improve on the turn, so i don"t agree with 1/2 potting top 2 in this spot, 75% to pot given flop texture and the pre flop 3bet sizing would be better imho, setting up smaller bets on a lot of turn cards which still threaten villains stack.. BUT still leaves room to set up profitable bluffs/vb"s for your range as a whole.

[TheSnapper]

It was something "in the moment" tbh. I had the button, the stack, a hand that can flop really well, and generally not put me in the horns of a dilemma, and given this guy has only just arrived i also had the old guy image so I expect him to fold virtually zero because he plans on outplaying me postflop, so he"ll flat most of his range and 4bet the very top end, say JJ+, AQ+ and possibly the rubbish.
He has nothing to use to get to a range for me other than image (true for me of him too, but the kidz are easier to spot aren"t they) but he"s expecting me to be strong.

This bit confuses me, villain is decent, oop and due to your "old guy image" expects you to have a strong range. Yet you think villain will "flat most of his range and 4bet the very top end, say JJ+, AQ+ and possibly the rubbish."

Surely if villain is decent, oop and expects you to have a strong range. He should never ever 3b lite excepting he reads your small 3b as weak.

Given you expect to be called 100% then your 3b is not a bluff right?
How did you see the hand would develop in a way that you could profit?

edit to add: Please hold off on posting results.

[pokerpops]

It was something "in the moment" tbh. I had the button, the stack, a hand that can flop really well, and generally not put me in the horns of a dilemma, and given this guy has only just arrived i also had the old guy image so I expect him to fold virtually zero because he plans on outplaying me postflop, so he"ll flat most of his range and 4bet the very top end, say JJ+, AQ+ and possibly the rubbish.
He has nothing to use to get to a range for me other than image (true for me of him too, but the kidz are easier to spot aren"t they) but he"s expecting me to be strong.

This bit confuses me, villain is decent, oop and due to your "old guy image" expects you to have a strong range. Yet you think villain will "flat most of his range and 4bet the very top end, say JJ+, AQ+ and possibly the rubbish."

Surely if villain is decent, oop and expects you to have a strong range. He should never ever 3b lite excepting he reads your small 3b as weak.

Given you expect to be called 100% then your 3b is not a bluff right?
How did you see the hand would develop in a way that you could profit?

edit to add: Please hold off on posting results.

Let"s consider villain"s attitude here, as I read it. He"s just arrived at the table and he believes he"s the best player at the table (he"s slumming it at £1/£1 and he may or may not be right). He wants to get involved.

I was really feeling it on the night, and there"s a lot of run outs where I can win the hand regardless of my holding. I can fold to a 4bet, and if the OR calls then I"m very sure the guy between us calls too.

I can win the pot on a lot of flops with a c-bet but having hit the flop this hard I"m going to be disappointed if they both fold now.

Obviously flop and turn bet-sizing are open to discussion.

Are we all still folding the river btw?

[AAroddersAA]

I am obviously going to agree that we have not enough info on our opponent here. My thoughts with what we have are as follows:-

Preflop

Don"t like the squeeze play much if we are not expecting to get folds and are in fact expecting three way action. For me this would be a reason not to squeeze. I may flat as we are deep enough but probably fold tbh.

Flop

On the flop we have created a pot of £54 and have hit top two. Now just using the info we have we though that our opponent was going to try and outplay us post flop and have another guy in the pot too. The flop does have potential for some kind of draw hand to be out. I am going to bet £40, this gives the guy a chance to try and outplay us. If he raises and the other guy folds I would most likely flat and look to get it in OTT. This gives him a chance to continue to fire his air on the turn and as we are in position we can still bet if he gives up and checks. The £40 also let"s draws call without the correct odds. Obviously it is live poker so somebody with a Jack is going to call us as well.

Turn

As played on the turn we have a pot of £120. Now at this point what is our opponents hand range? They have called a 3 bet pre and a weak looking c-bet. What would do that?

Hands that include a Jack? AJ, JQ, JT, KJ Maybe

Sets - not likely as you have blockers and they did not try to get in on flop

Stubborn pairs? Nope not seeing many of these in their range

Various str8 draws

I think the turn card is pretty bad for or hand, we go behind to a lot of hands that may have called on the flop. I don"t mind the bet as it means we keep the initiative in the hand and may get to showdown cheaply. I think I may check though and see what the river brings given the info I have I still think he may bluff the river at this point and I have to fold if I get raised and can end up in a tricky spot on the river if I am called. I am not too sure how often I get called by something I beat. I suppose AJ calls and JT which has now picked up a draw calls too.

River

The river is a terrible card, he bets basically half the pot, we have 3/1 on the call which is not good enough. Feels like he has a ten and although his two pair type hands should check/call they still beat us so we can"t call.

It is a fold for me

[noble1]

theres a few 100bb taggy type thoughts in the thread imho..

yeah u can argue that the 3bet pre sizing is to small, which is why i prefer to cbet pot"ish on dry"ish flops if using this strategy, we are so polarised [as eff stacks get deeper our cbetting range will naturally become more polarised] and at this level of play i"d expect villains to still peel a fair bit of crap..

David , u say u wanted to get value now that u had flopped top 2pair, tbh thats hand versus range thinking and tbf its ok to think like that at low levels BUT if say there are some decent players at the table or u take a shot in the future at higher stakes then u have to get to the stage where u are thinking range versus range...

what i mean with the polarised thingy is that on the flop we are no longer bet calling with hands that we might stack off with.. and if u are correctly opening your game up in deep eff situations and your 3bet frequency is higher then u have to think the long term with your range, its up to u on how u want to construct your cbet strategy on various flop textures and which ones u check back etc...

back to the polarised theory - as a rule of thumb when your ratio of bluffs to value in your range is wide then its best to bet bigger, when your ratio of bluffs to value is super narrow then bets should be smaller...
for instance in this spot, villain x/c"s flop and turn then leads out for way to much imho, its that sort of texture where u"d expect his bluffs to be near non existent, and to a std thinking half decent hand reader they will fold just about everything barring a ten, so villain should of bet smaller shouldn"t he? then the odd times he does bluff those will be cheaper and when betting for value [smaller sizing] he will still get u to call a fair chunk of your range.. [i hope that makes sense]

so from what u infer about him and that he"s supposed to be decent, if he can hand read your perceived range then on the turn he may well of decided to bluff at this point on spade rivers and/or decided to also rep the str8 draw.. because his sizing on the river sucks [unless of course he thinks ur a total idiot and cant fold a set no matter what ]

[TheSnapper]

so from what u infer about him and that he"s supposed to be decent, if he can hand read your perceived range then on the turn he may well of decided to bluff at this point on spade rivers and/or decided to also rep the str8 draw.. because his sizing on the river sucks [unless of course he thinks ur a total idiot and cant fold a set no matter what ]

Good point Mark and why I asked David to stall on posting results.

The river spot is one where reads can make this a snap fold or snap call depending on how thin villain is prepared to value bet. Some players will only value bet a flush here so their range is polarised nuts or air, by my reckoning only As9s or AsTs, 2 combos can have got to the river and now be a flush+ so I snap call.

Since villain is deemed to be decent (this doesnt always mean he will value bet the river with non nutted hands) he may well vb 2 pair+ assuming he gets to the river with a range of QQ-88,66,AJo,KQo,AJs-A9s,KQs-KJs,QJs thats 68% of his range.

If he classifies his 2 pr hands as bluff catchers and only vb"s sets+, it changes our equity a lot.

Villain bets £105 and the pot is now £295 so we need 36% to breakeven.

Versus his entire river range we have 32% equity
Versus sets+ and air QQ-88,66,AJo,AJs-A9s we have 44% equity and villain has air ~44% of the time.

Cliffs: I call the river bet

[TheSnapper]

Let"s consider villain"s attitude here, as I read it. He"s just arrived at the table and he believes he"s the best player at the table (he"s slumming it at £1/£1 and he may or may not be right). He wants to get involved.

You may well be totally correct but that's a pretty strong read considering "He"s just arrived at the table"

I was really feeling it on the night, and there"s a lot of run outs where I can win the hand regardless of my holding. I can fold to a 4bet, and if the OR calls then I"m very sure the guy between us calls too.
I can win the pot on a lot of flops with a c-bet.

Tbh this looks like the sort of thinking I lapse into often myself, usually its through over-confidence and I invariably end up levelling myself for lots of $$$, I now call it reinventing good play. I"m pretty sure its a place most of us have visited once or twice :"(