Flat min raise with Q7o @ 25BB.
c/r flop expecting to take it down a lot of the time, but make it NAI, giving villain room to donate value with his draws & low pairs.
The turn is effectively a blank, completing only a very narrow range of SDs which I expect villain will alert me of by raising (given the FD on the board). I barrel for value (note I think I may be able to get away with a bigger size given the turn card but I want to get the rest of villain's stack and a larger size could make him rethink calling with the range of hands I'm ahead of due to pot-committment).
* All pretty standard to this point (feel free to comment if you disagree). I suspect it might actually be better to c/r jam in this spot vs thinking players because we can get called by Kx and Ax with the FD on the board? That said, we are 4 hands into the match vs a presumed fish @ the microstakes.
The river completes the FD and brings an overcard to top pair.
There is only 10BB left behind after villain calls and 27BB already in the pot.
I'm OOP and need to decide between jamming and checking to villain.
If I check to him and he jams, he will be laying me 10 / (10 + 10 + 27) = 21% pot odds and it sucks when he jams it in with a passively played FD, over pair or Kx float but I don't think I can fold.
There would be an argument for checking to villain to let him jam his bluffs but other than some middling gutshots he may have spew continued with on the flop and turn, it is really difficult for him to get to the river with many bluffs given the action to this point.
When I was playing the hand I figured there was so little left behind that I couldn't fold if I checked so I just stuck the rest of my stack in hoping I wasn't value owning myself vs a rivered flush.
With the hand villain shows up with, this proved to be valuable as he spewed off the rest of his stack with a stubborn pair of 4s (lol, why can't all villain's be so generous when you c/r for value?).
But, what do you guys think about the river?
Are you:
- jamming?
- check-calling?
- check-folding?
Is there enough value to stick the rest of the chips in with a lead?
No Limit Holdem Tournament • 2 Players
$3.40+$0.10
Hand converted by the official HUSNG.com hand converter
| BB | Hero | 530 | |
| SB | FCDRATEK | 470 |
Effective Stacks: 24bb
Blinds 10/20
Pre-Flop (30, 2 players)
Hero is BB
FCDRATEK raises to 40, Hero calls 20
Flop (80, 2 players)
Hero checks, FCDRATEK bets 40, Hero raises to 100, FCDRATEK calls 60
Turn (280, 2 players)
Hero bets 130, FCDRATEK calls 130
River (540, 2 players)
Hero goes all-in 260, FCDRATEK goes all-in 200
Final Pot: 940
Hero shows a pair of Queens
FCDRATEK shows a pair of Fours
Hero wins 1000 ( won +470 )
FCDRATEK lost -470
The straight and the flush draw both will win the hand and neither are you representing in your bet action after your initial preflop call.
Maybe 3bet and fold to any action pre would have given you more information about his hand.
As played...
Chk call the flop,
He's not raising with 56, not min raising the flop with bottom, middle pair and not with a Q.
Your check raise at the flop is unesasary unless you want to win every hand, which inevitable ends in failure. Clue.
As played jam the turn bet as the 2 doesn't improve his hand against your holding....
Basically if your beat here, your beat. By checking down his action and analysing his action or lack of it of further streets you know where you stand.
You could make a small value bet on the river, but he'd most probably blow you off !
All of this is with the privilidge of hindsight, so forgive me if I am wrong.
Q7o from the BB facing a min raise, fold, 3bet fold or jam that motherfucker, what u waiting for !
:-)
Go forth and CRUSH !
Thanks for your reply but I'm a bit confused on a number of points ...
"The straight and the flush draw both will win the hand and neither are you representing in your bet action after your initial preflop call."
+
"Your check raise at the flop is unesasary unless you want to win every hand, which inevitable ends in failure. Clue."
=> I have top pair, and am about a 70/30 favourite vs FD or OESD
=> If villain has [FD+OESD] or [OESD + 2 overs] or [FD+2 overs] we're flipping
=> If villain has over pair im an 80/20 dog
=> If villain has a set im a massive 95/5 dog
I almost always have the best hand on the flop. The combos of hands that I'm behind are a very small part of villain's [PFR + cbet] range so I'm not too worried about betting into a better hand. It's pretty much a mandatory raise for value here to charge all villain's worse hands for their equity in the pot. You could argue for check-calling with reads that the opponent is aggressive but this was only a 4 hands into the match and the population isn't double barrelling bluffing enough for check-calling to be better than check-raising. Additionally, life sucks when the turn completes the flush and we have a very close decision without the reads we need about villain's double-barrel bluffing frequency to decide if we can profitably continue. Or if villain was passive postflop, checking back a lot of Kx and Ax here, we could donk. Readless, I think c/r is best. I make it NAI because I think it gets the most value vs his marginal holdings.
"Maybe 3bet and fold to any action pre would have given you more information about his hand"
I think Q7o is a hand that is too strong to fold to a min raise @ 24BB and so our decision is to 3b or call.
The hand is not strong enough to 3b for value, so we are pretty much doing turning a hand with decent equity into a bluff. Especially once we account for the implied value ordinarily donated by the population's cbetting frequency when we flop well.
Even worse, if villain calls in position, we have terrible reverse implied odds even if we hit a Q because a lot of villain's call 3b range @ 24BB will contain hands which dominate us.
By process of elimination I think this hand is a call @ 24BB pre flop and has better expectation than 3b.
^^ If my logic is flawed and the play up to the river could be improved please let me know.
I was posting primarily to see if anyone had a framework the think about the river decision? ...
My thinking is that even though you won the hand you dug yourself a really deep and dangerous hole to get out of.
Here we are on the river putting all our chips in and we're not sure if we're totally crushed.
Really for me there's no need to put your life in jeopardy here, I would relax and cruise down to the river disembark quietly and take another ride when the scenery is more pleasurable.
Some game play thinking without math -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_(martial_arts)
Go forth and CRUSH !
I apologise if my replies are confusing but I see the games more as a dance than a cold mathematical theorem.
I understand that the mathematics and the understanding of it with help us a lot, but not many seem to cover the subject of the human personality in a situation of conflict and how they react.
I believe you can use game flow and a profile of how your opponent ( as a human, with emotions ) will react, even to estimate and set him up for a defined reaction in future hands.
To have control or an overview of this can help you dominate your opponent better.
Go forth and CRUSH !
Thanks for clarifying,
It is clear we approach the game very differently.
It is interesting to see how different people think about the same game in totally different ways.
Like many math-oriented players my mantra is simple: maximise risk-neutral EV.
When cards are exposed, poker becomes a mathematically solvable game.
By observing villain's frequencies and how he plays different types of holdings, we can narrow the range of hands he can hold in different situations.
These observations become assumptions built into solvable equations to determine the best play (max EV).
The better we can observe what villain is doing, the better our assumptions and the closer we can play to the way we would if his cards were face up.
It has been said that holdem is a people game played with cards.
There is huge scope to exploit the behavioural tendencies of various types of villains.
Once we work out how someone thinks and their weaknesses, we can find opportunities to maximally exploit them.
The output of a mathematical model is only as good as the assumption which drive it.
Good poker players don't just understand the underlying math of the game; they develop the ability to translate obsservations of their opponents into accurate working assumptions to maximise their expectation against their opponent's exploitable tendencies.
The interest in economic game-theory applied to poker has increased because being able to approximate what unexploitable play might look like allows you to identify when your opponent's frequencies are heavily deviating from it.
This has been something of a poker philosophy digression.
I really just wanted some feedback regarding how to play the hand with the best expectation with no reads other than the opponent had min raised 2/2 buttons so far?