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40NL - TP + 2nd NFD
There are 2 types of spots I always get confused in (and one is below), either I have 2 overs + NFD or like the situation below. It becomes more confusing when I'm the guy acting in the middle of the other 2 because I don't know if I should be raising as I normally would HU w/ 2 overs +NFD or flatting to let the villian behind come along.
Anyway, won't go on about it, here is a situation...
So I'm pretty confident I have the best hand atm. This is just my thinking so tell me if it's wrong, but to get stacks in the middle here I'm gonna need to raise at some point and I'll be given credit for a wider range raising the flop with a FD out (and some straight draws) than I would raising the turn, especially if it's a club and I flat flop, then raise turn. BUT, I have a pretty decent lock on the hand on the flop and don't wanna make either of them fold really. Obv, I have position which is good, no fear of it ever getting checked back on any street
I'll post the later stages of the hand once the flop decision has been discussed, because I wanna discuss them too.
Anyway, won't go on about it, here is a situation...
So I'm pretty confident I have the best hand atm. This is just my thinking so tell me if it's wrong, but to get stacks in the middle here I'm gonna need to raise at some point and I'll be given credit for a wider range raising the flop with a FD out (and some straight draws) than I would raising the turn, especially if it's a club and I flat flop, then raise turn. BUT, I have a pretty decent lock on the hand on the flop and don't wanna make either of them fold really. Obv, I have position which is good, no fear of it ever getting checked back on any street
I'll post the later stages of the hand once the flop decision has been discussed, because I wanna discuss them too.
| Player | Action | Cards | Amount | Pot | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RyanC7 | Small blind | £0.20 | £0.20 | £40.67 | |
| eagle05 | Big blind | £0.40 | £0.60 | £42.03 | |
| Your hole cards |
| ||||
| jonkwondo1 | Raise | £1.20 | £1.80 | £46.98 | |
| MonkeyJay | Fold | ||||
| Nokesy | Call | £1.20 | £3.00 | £37.40 | |
| Lambert180 | Call | £1.20 | £4.20 | £88.35 | |
| RyanC7 | Fold | ||||
| eagle05 | Fold | ||||
| Flop | |||||
| |||||
| jonkwondo1 | Bet | £2.10 | £6.30 | £44.88 | |
| Nokesy | Call | £2.10 | £8.40 | £35.30 | |
| Lambert180 | Raise | £6.80 | £15.20 | £81.55 | |
Comments
Therefore it follows that when we have a strong made hand/draw like what we have we also want to raise. Love the raise size as well!
Both call the flop and both check a relatively blank turn, what do you think of my turn sizing?
I'm still confident of having the best hand, wanna keep them in and I know the SPR makes it easy to get their stacks in the middle even with this small turn bet.
Even if only 1 of them calls the turn, the pot will be near enough £50 (£60+ if both call) and they'll either have £30 or £20 left behind (depending on which villian calls) so it's very easy to get it in on the river and I'm pretty much happy to get it in on any river so betting small just allows them to continue with weaker holdings which is obv good for us.
It also means when I'm bluffing, it's cheaper for me to barrel.
FWIW, I'm obv bet/calling
flat is good
These are the spots where I'm not sure what to do, cos I don't need to semi-bluff w/ my FD cos I'm pretty confident I already have the best hand and am not scared of many turns.
BUT it's a fairly drawy board and people can/will call with TP/2nd pr cos they like to say 'I put him on a FD' or w/e and they will also call with decent draws (granted me having KQcc makes it hard to have many FDs). We're gonna need to raise at some point if we wanna play for stacks, right?
I probably even get light call downs if I miss my draw because they think I have JUST a missed draw.
Meh I dunno.
How would you play this spot if you had KQo? How would you play this spot if you had AcJc?
With KQ, we have top-pair. It's almost immaterial to our objective that we have a flush draw because we only want to get value from weaker hands. We don't want to find ourselves relying on our flush draw to get us there because that means we're putting money in when we're behind. Our flush draw is more like a back-up plan when we bump into bad news.
So when deciding to raise the flop, just ask yourself if you can be called by weaker hands than top-pair second kicker. If not, then we don't want to raise. If so, then of course we're value-raising... Obviously if we're 3-bet we've got to again assign a range to that 3-bet and, given that we're holding two clubs, it's tougher to think that we're getting it in against a draw.
If we had the draw and only the draw, we're no longer really raising for value. We're semi-bluffing with good equity. So if we had AcJc here and felt that there was a good chance we could get a couple of folds, winning the pot without showdown, then that's what we should do... We know it's unlikely that anyone putting more money into the pot is doing so with a weaker made hand than our Ace-high, but we have good equity against anything and a big lead against weaker draws.
The hands with which we balance our desire to semi-bluff with draws are not necessarily one-pair hands. When we're readless I'd say that we should balance our semi-bluffs with nutted made hands like sets and two-pairs. That's because I think we need specific reads that our opponents are going to stack off with weaker one-pair hands against us, giving us credit for draws or bluffs. We shouldn't assume that a randomer is doing that. We should assume that an unknown randomer stacks off tighter than that until we see otherwise.
So when you're playing top-pair, second kicker, play it like the value hand it is. The draw gives us a lot of extra equity if we happen to run into the top of our opponents' perceived ranges but if our opponents aren't calling raises or 3-betting with worse made hands or draws, then raising is just value-owning ourselves. If they are calling or 3-betting with worse, then happy days.
Essentially your never ever bluffing here, if you think you would be "for balance" into two then ok good luck with that spew
You should be raising 100% for value where your pretty certain they gonna call with worse.
How can you be so certain the PFR ain't got a big hand.
Suppose you gotta ask if you can raise for thin value here, problem is the thinner you go it turns into spew.
Spot is just puke when they come over the top
Pot is big enough on flop to get effective over the line by river.
We have a lot of equity against anything but it doesn't mean we need to raise to narrow villains' ranges to hands that also have strong equity.
Tell us Ivan