Following feedback from viewers on his previous series of videos on creative play and non-standard lines, Mattraq1 has developed a new instructional vid format, designed in his own words to "incorporate a little bit of the feel of a coaching session". In this new format, a single video session is delivered in two parts. In the first part, Matt plays through a game, providing his usual commentary on the action, until he gets to the hand that is the focus of the session. Matt plays through the hand without comment until he finds the spot of interest, stops the video, and leaves the viewers with several discussion points. Matt's goal is to get his viewers to think about the hand and to lead the discussion of the hand in the forums before the second part of the session, the long analysis of the hand, is posted.
Check out the video, study the hand, and let Matt and other readers know what you think!
Fold. The only reason to continue playing this hand is that you feel your previous delayed-cbet has induced this raise as a bluff. You can't beat any of your opponents value range, with your 2nd pair - extremely weak kicker. If your opponent is raising on a turned draw, it's just a good play which we have to fold to. His value range is wide, I think, and includes Kx, Jx and many of the lower 2-pair type hands (he is calling oop preflop quite often). In terms of made draws on the turn, he can have 8-10 no problem, since he did not lead the flop with any of his range previously. It is interesting that he did not bet the flop if he has Kx, given that he will have noticed we have been checking back often, but I do not believe we can exclude Kx from his range on this basis. Semi-bluffs are restricted to clubs only, in my opinion. No other draw with solid equity appears on the turn (just gutshots). He could possibly be semi-bluffing a flopped gutshot on the turn. However, I think he is largely raising with a polarised range here - he either has a strong made hand or a total airball. I find it very hard to decide which is the case based on the limited information available. I think there are too many chips invested to consider calling the turn and folding the river. Our range looks weak, since we would be betting the flop with all strong hands, hoping to bring into play his large c/r frequency. However, since we cannot consider stacking off with our hand, I think a straight fold is best.
From the Youtube comment section:
thebanaap
14 hours ago
I feel he's got either a flush draw or 77.
So call then call again on a non club river.
Hey guys, just wanted to let you know i wont really be commenting on each individual analysis until after part 2 is posted.
After that i will copy comments from in here and reply to them in the second part of the video.
Villain is most likely trying to exploit your weak delayed cbetting range, I find that most regs prefer to lead turn and river with Kx/Jx and some draws rather than x/r turns, because we are more likely to call 2 streets with our weak sdv we checked on the flop rather than call an x/r and potentially an all in on most rivers. More often than not in this spot villain has a straight or air.
Being that we have balanced our range by checking behind a weak second pair, it's definitely too exploitable to fold here. I played a similar hand yesterday vs a reg, with the results being:
http://i.imgur.com/O2m4B3N.jpg
Hi there Sentient Ape
"Being that we have balanced our range by checking behind a weak second pair, it's definitely too exploitable to fold here."
You don't think it's rather exploitable to be stacking off with 2nd pair, no kicker?
Not shoving over on turn, just bluff catching 2 streets. This is the top of our flop x back range, and yeah we're not happy about it but I think it's better than folding.
"Not shoving over on turn, just bluff catching 2 streets. This is the top of our flop x back range, and yeah we're not happy about it but I think it's better than folding."
I'd be much happier folding, and then including stronger hands in our delayed-cbetting range in future. Just my two cents.