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How do you play this spot?
Limper has a very wide range when he limps, so the button has been raising ATC to £2.50 for the past few orbits. I reraise to £10. Is this enough? TBH i was a little surprised by the button call. I was expecting SB to be the one who came along as he is the one with undoubtably the stronger range.
The flop comes down 3J3.... Villain has about the size of the pot behind but ive airballed. Just wondering if anyone plays this any different by shoving? I'm likely still to be good against most of his range (hes very loose) but if im called im certainly behind.
I hate these spots. I cant bet/fold. Check/give up just seems horrible v this opponent. Check/call is pretty meh too. I dunno!
The flop comes down 3J3.... Villain has about the size of the pot behind but ive airballed. Just wondering if anyone plays this any different by shoving? I'm likely still to be good against most of his range (hes very loose) but if im called im certainly behind.
I hate these spots. I cant bet/fold. Check/give up just seems horrible v this opponent. Check/call is pretty meh too. I dunno!
| y | Small blind | £0.25 | £0.25 | £29.85 | |
| gazza127 | Big blind | £0.50 | £0.75 | £141.51 | |
| Your hole cards |
| ||||
| delpotty | Fold | ||||
| ACES925 | Fold | ||||
| x | Call | £0.50 | £1.25 | £30.82 | |
| Villain | Raise | £2.50 | £3.75 | £32.82 | |
| y | Call | £2.25 | £6.00 | £27.60 | |
| gazza127 | Raise | £10.00 | £16.00 | £131.51 | |
| x | Fold | ||||
| Villain | Call | £8.00 | £24.00 | £24.82 | |
| y | Fold | ||||
| Flop | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||
| gazza127 | All-in | ||||
Comments
The main issue in this hand is preflop not on the flop.
Before you 3-bet preflop looking at the stacks of the players remaining in the hand shows that anyone who calls will have pot or less behind them on the flop. This gives you no room to move down the streets at all against any possible opponent 2 out the possible 3 you would also be out of position with.
It is a pretty awful flop as you will get two thirds of the time with this hand. But you options are so limited here any decision has so much potential to be wrong.
With the stacks the way they were preflop i would probably have just 3-bet shoved to remove these tricky situations. 2 players have shown weakness in the hand and a potential race against a shortish stack is not a bad option especially with the dead money in the pot as a second prize.
rather than putting yourself into this spot in the first place I would go with just shipping it preflop.
if you are only going to 3bet pre are you going to therefore fold pre if he were to do a jam that's the only way I can see it.
the stack size is the key
he has put most his money into the pot so although he didn't reraise preflop he is 8/10 times going to call his hand post flop. the main times he might not is if your hand were to hit unless of course he had a weaker A. the only other time he might fold without you hitting was if he has a weak pair and the board shows 2 cards out of 10 J Q but it still is difficult for you as them are very likely cards to be part of his range.
as for the SB, it has just called so I would rule out a decent hand on him as for the limper he likely just wants a cheap flop.
We'd be 3-bet shoving 70BB. That's not something we'd ever do with AA. Jamming huge like this with AK just to avoid difficult decisions post-flop is going to be very -EV. We're only going to be called when we're flipping or dominated. If we're really lucky we might be called by AQ, but we're crushed by the range that calls us. We also fold out a huge number of hands that we have dominated, that might call a smaller 3-bet.
So the real question is: Why are we 3-betting so big? We've come over a 5x iso-raise with a 21BB 3-bet. That's way too big and narrows our opponents' ranges a lot.
On the flop, meh... We have to give the villain some sort of range for flatting our huge 3-bet. We can't expect him to fold any pairs he's peeling with pre-flop (assuming he's no fool) because he couldn't afford to simply set-mine with those. On this board, you're very unlikely to have improved and, besides that, our line of huge 3-bet followed by a shove on this dry flop does not look like AA. We don't seem to want action.
So since we only force villain to fold out weaker hands than ours when we bet the flop and only get called when we're beat, it stands to reason we should check the flop. we then have to reassess;
If he bets, does he have enough bluffs in his range? Yes/No
If he checks, can we value bet the turn? Yes/No
Usually our bets are gonna be something like 3xBB />>> 9-10xBB >>> 22xBB for a raise, 3bet and 4bet respectively. Granted it's a 5x iso and someone has called but don't think we need to go to 20xBB with our 3bet, unless you intend on just never folding.
As played, I hate shoving cos you're just letting them play perfectly. You're not gonna get called by worse ever, and there's very few better hands you're ever gonna make fold (if any), he prob just 'puts you on AK' (lol) and sigh calls it off with as low as like 77/88.
Just cos they have a PSB doesn't mean we HAVE to shove. We'd never just open ship the flop here with JJ+ imo, so if we bet small or even check these hands, then we can also bet small/check AK too.
It comes down to what you think e flats with pre, if it's nearly 100% PPs then just check/fold imo.
Does that change anything?
My intention was to 3 bet to this size and snap a jam from this villain pre, Or barrel any flop. I'm just wondering if thats +ev play or not against a villain who is very loose preflop but will probably be folding a lot of flops given his range.
And the 3bet is still too big imo. It's fine to be happy getting it in against him but that doesn't mean we have to 3bet massive, and the villain you're talking about (that went to the flop) isn't even the only person involved when we 3bet this size.
if your reads are spot on then ensure you have only AK as a bluff
if villian never folds pre and post we just need to ensure we get paid, which by all acounts we will post because if villian called pre they ain't folding post
sometimes villian may fold 55-1010 and even AJ/AQ but who cares
play da player ensure your range is good and so much value to be had
you want villian to call you flop jam 100% of the time because they so bad
Mixed opinions here and the only one I can disagree with is the one that says im bluffing by raising pre... Don't understand why im 'turning my hand into a bluff' by raising when I'm trying to induce a shove or get him to fold. Either of which im happy with.
However, in his OP he said he was surprised to be called by the button, so he didn't expect to be called by the villain's entire range. He evidently only gained that read on the villain after seeing him showdown the 34 in this hand. Without this specific knowledge, we should be thinking that the villain's range is substantially narrowed by our big 3-bet (Even if that doesn't necessarily mean a super-tight range).
Moreover, Teddy, we need to think about the logic of the shove on the flop. We have the nut-no-pair hand, and when we shove we can't expect the villain to fold any of his pairs. If he has a pair and was calling pre-flop intending to fold if he misses his set, that would be horrendous play. Again, without a specific read that this is likely, we should assume that it is not. So when shoving the flop, we're not giving our opponent a difficult decision at all, we're giving him an extremely easy decision - He'll call when we're beat and fold when we're ahead.
Checking might allow the villain to bet his worse hands than ours, but that's not a bad thing. It means he might be putting his money in when we're ahead. Our hand is a bluff-catcher at this stage and we have to ask if it beats enough of the villain's range for betting. We shouldn't be afraid of that tough decision because these apparently tough decisions are where we'll make most of our money if we are good players.
So if we check and the villain shoves, do we beat enough of his range to make calling +EV? That's the only question.
We know that shoving is -EV because we can't win any more by doing it, only lose more. We might allow the villain's junky hands to catch up on the turn but, realistically, with no draws on the board, we're only worried about him catching one of a maximum of six outs. Since many of the hands we beat in his pre-flop calling range contain an Ace or King, it's likely to be three outs. So against those hands, there isn't much equity for us to steal from the villain with our bet and we can't imagine there are many unpaired hands with six outs against us in that pre-flop flatting range.
So the best thing to do is check and present the villain with the opportunity to bluff with his worse hands. If he doesn't have enough worse hands in his range for betting, we know he doesn't have enough worse hands in his range for calling our bet, either, so we should be check-folding this flop.
Don't be afraid of tough decisions, though. Just don't give your opponents easy decisions.
If we 3-bet smaller, we can leave the villain with the impression that we might still fold, leaving open the possibility of inducing him to 3-bet hands we beat rather than hands we're racing or dominated by.
I had gotten to showdown before v this villain a fair few times and it was clear he was playing ATC preflop... especially on the button - where do you think most of my money in my stack came from?
What surprised me was that he still wanted to call a chunkier 3 bet than the ones I had previously done. My previous couple of 3 bet sizes were about £7 to him (as he kept raising to £2.50 pre). With another player in the pot I decided to raise more. The call did surprise me as I knew he was loose preflop, but not that loose. I did wonder if he had a PP, but ruled out 1010+ as this villain, even with stack sizes would still be jamming all these hands over my raise (amongst a lot of other hands) - so even though I was worried about a PP, i certainly didnt think it was a high PP, and indeed it only makes up part of his calling range. Previous hands he'd called a 3 bet with included 107os and K8s... amongst many others when I had c-bet and he had folded.
I wanted to raise an amount preflop to show villain im happy getting my money in (dont think it matters that ive turned my hand face up in this situation). After i've 3 bet, as I said in op, I can't bet/fold flop, but because villains calling range is so wide I feel like I have to c-bet to take down the pot uncontested rather going into C/C mode and end up losing to a hand like 22. Or let him hit the turn. There is a fair chance that I still have the best hand on the flop and as I can't bet/fold, check/calling is pretty meh and check/folding is super weak v this villain I felt shoving is the best option to ask him the question for his stack whether he wants to commit to his low PPs and other rags.
However, now it sounds like we have pretty decent reads on this villain. So ask yourself this:
If he has some raggy 75o or whatever, and we bet really small - £3 or so - what does he do?
If we think he folds, then we're stealing his equity for £3 instead of £24. If he calls, we're getting value from a weaker hand. If he shoves, we can call and get a lot more value from a weaker hand.
On the fold equity point: The villain doesn't need to know what it is to realise that you've bet so much that you're not going away. If he's the type to 4-bet jam his junk into us then great, we're inducing. However, he didn't jam here and presumably wouldn't with his other junk. Obviously that doesn't make the big 3-bet bad because he's calling light, but it isn't inducing a light 4-bet.
Even PPs im not too unhappy to call against pre and take a flip against a shorter stack.
flatting with AK in these spots rather than 3betting, knowing ur gonna get peeled by at least one is decent - and vs 3 vilalins stacking hands like KQ or Ax (given SS) isnt too difficult.
what if everyone calls and we dont hit with PSB behind- yeaaaa great spot lol
i often flat with strong Ax hands here and its immensley +EV imo
Of course we don't surrender our own equity when we check, so we can't assess the options as "Shove to pick up the 50BB pot or check and give up the 50BB pot".
If the villain is not going to put another chip in the middle with any hand we beat, then we can steal his equity with a much smaller bet than the shove. If he's going to call a smaller bet with weaker hands, then we can value bet. If he might ship a weaker hand over a smaller bet, we can induce that bluff. We just have to trust ourselves to assess the villain's range correctly.
The only reasons to shove the flop are:
i) We can be called by worse hands.
ii) He can fold better hands.
Obviously the first option is a much better reason to shove because there are more weaker hands in his pre-flop range than there are better hands and many of those better hands don't fold to our shove. Either one would require history with our opponent to make the shove better than a smaller bet or a check. Without that specific history, shoving is definitely the worst option because it's the most costly way to steal our opponent's equity and the best way of missing value from worse hands.
However, you're still strengthening your range with this big 3-bet and making it tougher for the villain to shove. If we're really trying to induce, then we would 3-bet a size that he won't see as unusually big (We're repping a range that crushes the hands you've quoted, so the shove requires a degree of lunacy). I don't think there's anything wrong with this 3-bet size when you think you're going to be stationed a lot. I just don't think we can say it's a size that both induces a light 4-bet and will be stationed light.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned this in my earlier posts, but playing our hand with the shove on the flop never looks like AA or KK. Presumably you don't just shove those on such a dry flop. If we can't have AA or KK, we're more likely to be called by those pairs. We might be more likely to be called by worse hands, but realistically our pre-flop 3-bet isn't going to be viewed as weakness too often. We basically play our hand face-up as AK or maybe AQ, so we're still not going to be called by his junk.
what do we do with our entire range
deffo a portion we should be flatting pre
3 bet with reads should be max value hands, where we getting it in on the flop because of SPR
if your 3 beting the correct range then the fact we have AK here doesn't matter it's going to be +EV for our range to be betting, jamming or checking <----depends on oppo tendacies post
re: 3 bet size pre
if you have a wally calling big 3 bets then ofcourse go bigger, kinda obvious!
It doesn't mater how stroung we look cause they obviously don't care lol
Would we really open-shove JJ+ on this flop? If we would, then it would be because that's the best way to gain value from as wide a range of weaker hands as possible. We may still beat that range with AK and therefore a shove would not be bad.
If we wouldn't shove this flop with JJ+, then shoving it with AK is obviously unbalanced. If shoving this flop with JJ+ would only gain us value from a very small portion of the villain's range, then shoving this flop would not be the most +EV decision with those hands and would be -EV with AK.
I haven't continued in the debate since my first reply but I hate the flop shove and as I said in my first reply, I don't think we'd be just shipping the flop with JJ+ so we shouldn't with AK. If we do just ship with JJ+.... I hate that too lol.
only dependant on oppo perceived range and tendacies post as to if we check,bet or jam.
in turn what we do on flop can change our range pre
ie. can we hold 40% bluffs if oppo folds x amount on flop
given reads I would opt to jam 100% of range