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Always find this a tricky spot, any advice?
| Player | Action | Cards | Amount | Pot | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| s | Small blind | £0.10 | £0.10 | £74.32 | |
| b | Big blind | £0.20 | £0.30 | £51.99 | |
| Your hole cards |
| ||||
| robbie1992 | Raise | £0.60 | £0.90 | £75.33 | |
| x | Raise | £2.20 | £3.10 | £34.12 | |
| Fold | |||||
| Fold | |||||
| robbie1992 | Call | £1.60 | £4.70 | £73.73 | |
| Flop | |||||
| |||||
| robbie1992 | Bet | £2.35 | £7.05 | £71.38 | |
| Raise | £9.40 | £16.45 | £24.72 | ||
| robbie1992 | Fold | ||||
Comments
It's the donking that has put you in a wierd spot imo, but I think we're gonna be beat here a lot with his raise sizing.
Don't/Can't play cash......I'm not a fan of the donk bet either but as played I'm curious to know why we should fold?
That's something that's lacking in your posts: You don't seem to be thinking about his range for 3-betting and how you're going to exploit it. You have QQ which is a super-strong hand... However, if he only 3-bets with AA or KK, then QQ isn't such a super-strong hand. It's no stronger than 22 or 33 against those hands. So what range do you give him for 3-betting?
If you give him that super-narrow range, then - and here's where I disagree with liamboi - surely we should be calling that 3-bet simply to set-mine. Presumably, an opponent who waits for AA or KK to 3-bet isn't going to find a fold on a Queen-high flop. Couple this with us being ~175BBeff deep and we're getting great implied odds to flop our set. We must be willing to check-fold on any flop that doesn't improve our hand, though. After all, we "know" he can only have better hands than us.
If we give him a much wider range than just AA or KK for this 3-bet, then we should ask ourselves how much his range will be narrowed by a pre-flop 4-bet. If he's going to call or 5-bet with lots of weaker hands, then we should prefer the 4-bet. Obviously we'd want him to put as much money in as possible before the flop with those weaker hands. Sometimes it means we run into the top of his range but if we're confident that he continues with lots of worse hands, then in the long-run the 4-bet will be profitable. Against this type of opponent we want to get more money in pre-flop rather than play the flop out of position with lots of betting still to be done.
If his range would be narrowed down alot by a 4-bet, then we can call to allow him to bluff or value bet worse down the streets. We'd need to reassess through the streets and perhaps would need to call three streets or make a big lay-down, depending on the board. We won't always be right.
Those are the leading options for playing this hand. None of them should really involve donk-betting on the flop, in my opinion. You seem to think he's got a narrow 3-betting range, so you need to think about how to exploit it.
You say that you donked as a blocker but the question is; as a blocker to what? If we bet and he folds, we've stopped him from bluffing us with AK or AQ but we have QQ, so why do we want to stop him bluffing with AK or AQ? If he has AA or KK, he's obviously not folding and we're just giving him more money than we need to. If he decides to come over the top of us, do we really know that he has us beat?
If we donk-bet this flop it has to be because we think we can induce a bluff from him with a weak range or we can be called by weaker hands which he might not bet himself. It's going to take a pretty solid read to say that this is better than checking to him to let him c-bet, because by betting ourselves we inevitably fold out alot of weaker hands and risk levelling ourselves if he raises and we don't know what it means.
It seems as though you donk-bet without really knowing what you wanted him to do in response.
I think the problem with this hand is that you didn't really think about your opponent's range, you just thought "He's strong but I have QQ". Forget that you have QQ and think about the hands in his range and how you can best exploit them. Then stick to that plan.
+1 Borinloner. Great post.
read it at least 3 times OP it will help u alot.
Thanks for all your responses, especially yours borin that was as detailed as it comes lol But can i ask, this is a 20nl game with deep stacks does that not change the mindset of our moves at all....surely it does?
The fact that it's deep will affect your thoughts on how your opponent will play. However, if he has a hand that he wouldn't fold to a 4-bet with 100BB, there's no reason to think he'd fold it to a 4-bet 175BB deep. He might flat-call instead of 5-bet but he's not going to fold his AK, JJ, TT, etc. when he's got 150BB behind if he wouldn't fold with 75BB behind. He may actually be more likely to continue with weaker hands when he has lots of money behind. Maybe he can even 5-bet light to put you in a tricky situation, leveraging his entire stack without putting it all into the middle.
If a 4-bet would be profitable 100BB deep against this opponent, then it's likely to be profitable 175BB deep too.
You shouldn't be thinking "I'm playing 175BB. I can't get that all-in profitably with just QQ/AK". That's the sort of thing you hear and read alot but it's a really bad way to think. If you're playing somebody that only gets this much in with AA or KK, then obviously you can't get it in with QQ profitably. If your opponent is the type to put in 175BB with JJ, TT, 99, AK, AQ, AJ, etc. then getting it all-in with QQ sounds pretty good.
Can this opponent barrell three streets with air? Does this opponent play face-up post-flop? Does this opponent fold his big pairs on wet boards? That's how you need to be thinking. Obviously we won't always have superb information on every player but we can have a general idea.
You should think about how the stack sizes affect the play but your first thought in any hand needs to be "what does my opponent's action mean for his range and how can I exploit it?" Encorporate the stack sizes into your thinking on that.
I've also discovered that there's a new bambino in The_Don's life. It seems we should be talking about buying you a drink. Congrats.
c/c flop. How many streets you c/c depends on reads. As others have said pay attention to BLs posts
If you only EVER 4bet with QQ+ then yeah 4betting turns your hand face up, but if you 4bet light sometimes or even just 4bet a bit wider against an aggro opponent who is capable of getting it in with more than just KK+ then it can be fine, but we should always imo be 4bettign to GII, not 4betting to 'find out' they have KK+ and fold.