Live $1/2 NL - Bad turn play, bad river/good fold?

Live $1/2 NL

- Hero is chip-leader, 3 med stacks, rest small stacks, stacks range from ~1/3 x -> ~3x max buy-in of $200

- My table image at this stage in the game is 'wild' because in a previous hand, I tried to make a move on some one by rep'ing a str8 and flush card with my TT and it turned out he had slow-played AA in a 6-way pot ( I pushed him AI thinking I could easily move him off his top pair; I hit a T on the river ). [I won't try this without thinking that I've got some real solid fold equity. Bad spot, but I liked the results ]

- I've been working hard on knowing when to fold'em and how to get paid off huge by managing the size of my bets/over-bets in conjunction with managing my image. I'll also gamble in high implied odds situations and accept the variance that goes along with it; I won't pass on small edges if I think I've got one. Basically, I'm playing my usual 'try to exploit their weaknesses with post-flop play/selective lag' style of play.

- MP2(?3) has made some whiffed/behind/were do I stand? type c-bets into multi-player fields. Pre-flop, in this hand, I put him directly on {TT+ (maybe 99+), AJs+}.

- I have to treat him as a relative unknown; I only had about ~3hrs to watch him play about 12 to 15% of his hands, and had watched him take ~6 to 8 hands to show-down. I rated him as predictable/conservative. He gets the 'you play predictably pre-flop, and tend to over value over-pairs/top-pairs' treatment from me until he proves otherwise.

- Bet amounts and stack sizes are estimates based on memory

-Don't ask about the 8x pre-flop raise ... the standard raise range is 3x to 1ox BB and sometimes more in these live, NL games. If you've been following any of the Sklansky threads over on 2+2, he calls this playing NL as if there's an invisible ante and advocates tight play in games like this. I really think that that might be an over-generalization and doesn't take stack sizes into account. But, it is 'good' advice particularly suited to players who don't enjoy having to make tough decisions.

saw flop|saw showdown

MP (~$425)
Hero (~$650)

Preflop: Hero is Button with K, 9. SB posts a blind of $1.
all others fold, MP2(or 3?) raises $15, CO calls $15, Hero calls $15, SB (poster) calls $14, 1 fold

Loose call on the button to a raise for sure, but I'm obviously willing and able to lay down a flopped K, and I like the players and the stacks entering the hand and my positional advantage.

Flop: ($62 less rake ($4)) K, Q, rag (4 players)
SB checks, MP bets $70, CO folds, Hero calls to $70, SB folds

I value-floated (don't want to get re-raised and I don't want to build the pot, and I likey his stacky) knowing that I'm very possibly behind to a likely AK and a less likely AA, QQ and less than likely KK. I'm feeling ahead of enough his range to take one off and see what he does on the turn and to see if I pick up any additional outs.

Turn: (~$200 ) 9 (2 players)
MP bets $60, Hero raises $100 to $160, MP calls $100.

His lead bet seemed either weak or very strong. I couldn't get a read on his demeanour. On one hand, I was torn between wanting to keep the pot size down, and being able to get away from my hand if re-raised. But, on the other hand, I felt that I was raising for value. After he calls , I think .... nice I got him where I want him and then **duh, light-bulb** -> "Oh Shit, I think maybe it would have been a better play to I have raised more, or go all-in, what if an A hits, nah that's only 3 outs!!??"

River: (~$500) A (2 players)
MP bets all-in his last ~$200, Hero folds

Oh, F***, shitty river and now he's leading, spider senses are tingling. The way this passive a player took the betting lead back, his body language, and the way he seemed to insta-fire on the A added to the picture for me. It just seemed too likely that he had QQ or AK. So, after some thought, I mucked.

Bad turn play, good river fold .... right? Or, for this type of turn-decision, is it just a question of reads and the level of variance you want to take on as to whether you go all-in, call again, or re-raise a larger amount?

Anyone think I should have called the river? Sometimes I make this call, sometimes I fold. I know I was getting pretty good odds on the river, but I like to trust my reads in situations like this. This guys just seemed to really like his hand now.

Our table broke up right after this hand, so the guy knew we wouldn't be playing at the same table anymore. As we were racking our chips, he 'confirmed' he had AK. I obviously don't know 100% if he was telling the truth or not, but I think he was.

I think the saved-$$ being able to make folds like this in the right spots (on the turn or river), is a definite edge over the competition. BTW, this was a definite adjustment from LHE river play that I've come to focus on in NL. In LHE, you rarely, if ever fold on the river in a big pot. I really feel that these extra earned fold-based sklansky-bucks account for a good percentage of a good NL player's overall take (I wish I could track this stat)). Add to that, the extra money you make on laggin' it up, and that's where I believe you need to look if you want to beat a game for the maximum in live, small stakes NL play.

Pre-flop, in this hand, I put him directly on {TT+ (maybe 99+), AJs+}.

This preflop call is absolutely hopeless, and you don't have any business in this hand. Fold preflop.

Fold flop, villain fires into a field of 4 players in poor position for an overbet. TPBK plays like dogshit to his range here, especially given what you put him on preflop.

Turn your raise is less then 1/3 pot size. I don't get it. Just push. You now beat a lot of hands he could have and there are a LOT of rivers that you don't want to see, for multiple reasons.

River I'd probably call because I'm a fish, but it looks like you made a good fold.

i have no idea what you're doing calling with that hand preflop...

anything that calls you on the river will have you beat...

edit: disregard that second sentence... i misread that hand history... i thought it was YOU that pushed all in with K 9 on the river...

defenitely was the correct laydown... i would've showed too...

If the villian is as bad as they are in most live 1/2 games, I make that preflop call every time. OP said he liked the stacks and players in the hand, plus he has position. Understand that when you're playing live, you have more information than you do playing online.

You really do have to push the turn over that weak bet, but other than that, nh!

No way I'm laying down K9s on the button in a loose, live, weekend game when 3 other average/transparent-to-horrible players enter the pot with their big stacks. They give away so much information. With deep stacks, hand values normalize if you play well after the flop. You can call my pre-flop call horrible if you want, but this is where the money is made in these live games. The implied odds your opponents give you are insane. You can play tight in these games and over the long haul, you can't help but make money. But to beat it for the max, I strongly believe laggin' it is the way to go. Online play is definitely tighter and multi-tabling and HUD stats etc. make for a different game. If the pre-flop raiser's range was narrower and it was heads up (and perhaps even if it wasn't), I'd very likely fold pre-flop. I'd also tend to play tigher pre-flop on non-weekend nights when the donk to non-donk ratio is lower. If I wasn't last to act that would be taken into account too.

As played, let's focus on the turn play, because it's widely believed to be the hardest street to play, and I think we all stand to learn the most from that analysis.

Someone said I'll only get called by a better hand on the river .... uuuhhhhhhh ......... No one is calling me on the river; I didn't bet on the river; he lead out all-in, and I folded.

On the turn, my raise was definitely too small, and I knew it as soon as I made that bone-headed manouver. He had to call $100 more and the pot was now $260+$160=$420, so I offered him 4.2:1.That was a clear mistake on my part. With that price I offered, if he's good now, or by the river more than ~19% of the time, he's making a correct call (and that's assuming I don't pay him off on the river). Dumb-ass Monkey!!

I know my turn play in this hand sucked. That's why I posted this one. If one doesn't push the turn, and just increases the bet size relative to what I bet, what bet size/odds do you want to offer you opponent? I don't necessary know if this is always a push on the turn (say with very deep stacks).

It's too results-oriented to say, "should have pushed to protect against an A coming". Following that line of flawed reasoning through, I'm a 86% favourite going into the river assuming you can put him square on AK (which of course you can't unless you've got x-ray vision or are totally results oriented), so if that were the case, we could make pretty smallish bet relative to the pot and it would be EV+ve. But that's not the right way to think about poker!

We gotta look at ranges. We can start getting into assigning probabilities to the hands in the refined ranges etc by using Bayes or read-based %'s etc. But, let's just look at possible ranges with Poker Stove given the action on the flop and turn to get a rough feel ......

According to Poker Stove on the turn:
- against {QQ, AK}, I'm about 59:41
- against {QQ+, AKs, AKo}, I'm about 67:33
- against {AA, QQ}, I'm about 56:43

Would anyone use different ranges here?

So, sounds to me like I need to offer him somewhere between 1:1 and 2:1, but obviously closer to 1:1 with my turn raise. So, maybe a raise of about 2xPSB or a little less???

All-in certainly does the trick given the stack sizes in this hand, but so would smaller bets (assuming deeper stacks). I really just want a bet size that will allow villian to make a FTOP-mistake by calling. After that, if I increase the bet above that mark, doesn't it just come down to the amount of variance you want to take on and what you think he'll call??

Bueller? Anyone?

Originally Posted by Lukie

Pre-flop, in this hand, I put him directly on {TT+ (maybe 99+), AJs+}.

Fold flop, villain fires into a field of 4 players in poor position for an overbet. TPBK plays like dogshit to his range here, especially given what you put him on preflop.

Turn your raise is less then 1/3 pot size. I don't get it. Just push. You now beat a lot of hands he could have and there are a LOT of rivers that you don't want to see, for multiple reasons.

River I'd probably call because I'm a fish, but it looks like you made a good fold.

I respect this advice for sure, don't get me wrong. It's solid advice (although the more I think about it, the more I think the river was an easy fold) . However, when the stacks get deep, sometimes I like to make a loose flop call in position to see what the turn brings and what your OOP opponent does. I'm not calling the flop with plans to take this hand to showdown without improving unless I sense some real weakness on the turn. This is sort of an extension of the loose-flop call LHE idea that Miller touches on in SSH.

I'll play my own devil's advocate .....

If I folded pre-flop, I'd have kept $15+$70+$160 =$245 more in my stack and not had to make that tough fold on the river.

The question clearly is if I make this pre-flop call selectively against the right opponents with the right stacks, will it earn or lose more over the long haul? How much will deep stacks and implied odds offered by bad opponents make up for loose pre-flop calls? Loose flop calls? Those are obviously theorectical questions that can't be answered without some particulars specified.

I truely believe that I'm a consistent, big winner in this game because I put myself in many post-flop hands where I can exploit bad players with better decision making.

This is one of the gears that I play in and not one that I'm always in. I'll be the first one to freely admit that at higher limits, this looseness won't fly because you won't get paid off often enough. How about that for being the master of the obvious.

Originally Posted by xX zorrito Xx

i have no idea what you're doing calling with that hand preflop...

anything that calls you on the river will have you beat...

You're kidding.....right?

Originally Posted by lambchopdc

Originally Posted by xX zorrito Xx

i have no idea what you're doing calling with that hand preflop...

anything that calls you on the river will have you beat...

You're kidding.....right?

i mis read that hand history... i thought hero was the one that pushed... my apologies...