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Re-Raise or Flat call???
Never played the villain before, have no real reads he has been on the table 10 mins and doubled up early. What would you do here and why ???
goodylad21 Small blind £0.50 £0.50 £136.23 SBig blind £1.00 £1.50 £249.30 Your hole cards A A h Fold r Fold fFold a Fold goodylad21 Raise £2.50 £4.00 £133.73 S Call £2.00 £6.00 £247.30 Flop 3 J 8 goodylad21 Bet £4.50 £10.50 £129.23 S Call £4.50 £15.00 £242.80 Turn 8 goodylad21 Bet £9.00 £24.00 £120.23 SRaise £18.00 £42.00 £224.80
goodylad21 Small blind £0.50 £0.50 £136.23 SBig blind £1.00 £1.50 £249.30 Your hole cards A A h Fold r Fold fFold a Fold goodylad21 Raise £2.50 £4.00 £133.73 S Call £2.00 £6.00 £247.30 Flop 3 J 8 goodylad21 Bet £4.50 £10.50 £129.23 S Call £4.50 £15.00 £242.80 Turn 8 goodylad21 Bet £9.00 £24.00 £120.23 SRaise £18.00 £42.00 £224.80
Comments
You basically have 2 pair aces and eights with jack kicker....and nut flush draw....but....I would be flat calling for the simple fact you have no reads on the guy and once the board has paired the full house could be beating you and even if that doesn't come if you miss the flush you will be left with only 2 pair when he may well have already hit trip 8's.
For me if i'm not very confident i'm ahead I'm flat calling to minimise losses rather than re-raising.
ps...gonna go kick him in the head now as he has forced me to play tighter when shoving is my move!!!!
The preflop raise from you looks like a standard blind vs. blind hand, and if you've been playing actively in those ten minutes (again, a bit of what you imagine your image to be at the table might be helpful), this looks like a bet which barely narrows your range of hands down at all.
I'd be raising out of the small blind with any suited connectors, some unsuited connectors, J8+/Q8+/K7+ as well as any ace and obviously pairs. He can easily look at any similar hand in the BB and defend, so we learn relatively little from the action here imo.
The flop is a very interesting one. It could either be smack-bang in his defending range (J8 or 33 for two extreme examples), more likely be a board he could have connected with in a half decent way (so JT or A8 for example), or maybe - just maybe - he thinks it's the sort of board he can float the flop and play depending on the turn.
With a pot size of £6, I think your bet of £4.50 is standard and again doesn't really say too much about your hand strength. Continuation bets are going to be around this kind of size, so we're not really telling him we have a real hand here.
For that reason I might have been more inclined to go for a check-raise or a weak lead hoping to enduce a situation where we can get more in on the flop. Of course, he could take a free card which might be a disaster on a textured board, blah blah, but again this is dependant more on yours and his image. If you're the kind of player who he's seen c-betting all of the time then go with that. If he's seen you check fold in some spots then I'd weak lead and try and induce him to move you off the hand. If he's seen you check raising... well, flip a coin and either lead or do it one more time
The turn raise is the key spot. The 8c could be seen as a really horrible card by some, but I actually think this isn't such a bad turn for us. His raise suggests he's in one of the following situations:
1) He has something like QJ and wants to shut the hand down. He'd be overplaying the J of course, but it's a contender.
2) He floated the flop and thinks this is a good turn to represent on. And I'd have to agree with him in a lot of cases. If you have TT here you bin the hand a lot of the time. If you have KJ you slow down and will probably be wary of your river decision. The turn raise has a lot going for it, but in this case you have AA and it's tougher to get you to fold those.
3) The 8 has given him trips or worse still a boat. Well, we have a redraw to the nut flush as well as the two remaining aces. His little raise means we can easily look to call and re-assess on the river. In this river scenario I check call most instances, unless of course I bink an ace in which case I lead out for 2/3 pot and pray to the Poker Gods that he has J8/A8.
4) He could also be combining (2) with a Kc in his hand, for instance Kc-Qx and thinks that - seeing his hand has gained a lot of equity vs a hand such as AJ - this is a good spot for him to raise.
As I said above, I don't mind the 8c turn. I think he's playing any Jack like this and we have a draw against a decent chunk of his range. I'd flat the turn and lead any good river such as a club or an ace. If he raises a club river we throw up a bit, say "nice hand" in his head and call - he's never doing it with just an eight so he's either boated or just played something like QJ very badly indeed
That's my two pences' worth - I tend to run into a lot of full houses though, so do take it with a pinch of salt!
I would call the turn.
I would also check call the river, pobably any card other than a jack - including a club.
Queens, Kings, KcJx, QcJx, 9T with a club, mabe even KQ with a club.
If you believe a player has exactly what theyre trying to represent every time, your just gonna become a pushover.
He cud have 44-77, 99,TT with 1 club...
Its blind on blind, Im not folding, everrrrr unless he makes some ridiculous bet on the end. (or a jack comes)
Im more towards the calling station ed of the NIT - STATION Spectrum
sky_dave the problem i see with your reasoning is that a thining player, which you said you would assume he is, would never be minraising this turn, either for value or as a bluff. if he has a strong hands he wants to get stacks inb so he raises more, if he is bluffing he wants to give a worse price for hero to call so he raises more,
8c is probably worst card in the deck? possibly 2nd worst after a Jack. his flop calling range should consist of Jx 8x flush draws, straight draws, we only beat Jx & draws now, as said earlier i think he almost never has a draw (more likely to raise flop that turn, or just flat call turn as you are 130bbs+ deep so implied odds are ok) doing this with Jx is turning your hand into a bluff. think he has a flush alot more than 8x tbh as minraising with 8x on that texture is just super bad.
in summary:
do what beaneh said
Don't get me wrong - I don't like the raise size at all and it doesn't tie in too well with the 'thinking player' assumption (min-raises like this make me scratch my head every time, and not in a good way), but I also think it's a situation where we can't rule out he's capable of taking a weird line to entice a spew...
surely there are so many hands villain calls 3x but folds for 4/5x? also would he not be more likely to 3bet 3x raise seeing it as weakness?
obv if you have been raising 4/5x b v b for a while then keep going but the last thing id want to do is raise too much and see an insta fold