Check this river call

Villain seems like a bad tag, has been playing fairly tight and agg for a small sample.

I basically instacalled this river, but I am curious as to your thoughts. I felt like this river bet was a bluff a pretty good bit of the time, and a frustrated JJ-KK a good bit of the time as well.

I didn't threebet the flop this time, because I thought I could play my hand better with position, although I am often threebetting anyway, even in this spot.

POKERSTARS GAME #6883699077: HOLD'EM NO LIMIT ($1/$2) - 2006/11/03 - 21:46:49 (ET)
Table 'Shane' 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: JOKER1029 ($51.95 in chips)
Seat 2: kamsa ($201 in chips)
Seat 3: dreieier ($145.50 in chips)
Seat 4: Pleet ($197.15 in chips)
Seat 5: Renton555 ($237 in chips)
Seat 6: McG_1 ($354.95 in chips)
kamsa: posts small blind $1
dreieier: posts big blind $2

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Renton555 [2c Ac]

Pleet: folds
Renton555: raises $6 to $8
McG_1: folds
JOKER1029: folds
kamsa: calls $7
dreieier: folds

*** FLOP *** [5c 3h Tc]

kamsa: checks
Renton555: bets $12
kamsa: raises $16 to $28
Renton555: calls $16

*** TURN *** [5c 3h Tc] [6s]

kamsa: bets $40
Renton555: calls $40

*** RIVER *** [5c 3h Tc 6s] [Ah]

kamsa: bets $125 and is all-in
Renton555: calls $125

renton,

With the amount of strenght villian has been showing (especially with the flop c/r) do you really think villian has less than two pair here? I fold, the river bet is 3/4 pot, I cant imagine being good enough times in this spot to make a river call profitable. But there's one thing one has to realisze in spots like these: If your gut tells you to call, then call! When one has played a fair amount of poker one develops a specielt gut feeling, which cant really be explained (probably a combination of reads and betting patterns). I've followed my gut a lot lately in spots like these with great succes.
BTW, I like the flop call instead of three-betting.

note that the flop check raise is barely more than a minraise and that the turn bet is 40 into a 70ish pot, turn bet seems weak considering the number of draws out there

If he has a monster, then I would say that his bet sizing is perfect in regards to building a pot to get allin on the river. I think most (bad) TAGs give up bluffing on the turn or the river when OOP (and wisely so).

A little harsh UG?

Renton, I think it's fine. I put him on an overpair too, maybe ATs. You're getting the right pot odds on the turn, assuming aces are clean outs.

Yup, too harsh.


Post was deleted.

3-bet big on the flop. As played, I'm torn between calling and pushing the turn. I probably lean towards calling. River looks bad. At least it's very clear though in that you beat all bluffs and lose to all value bets. *shrugs*, I've made worse.

i didn't even see ugs post

theres no need to hold back people

I wouldn't have posted the hand if I didn't feel at least a little unsure as to whether I played it alright. As it were, the river was the Case Ace, and I felt like a fool.

I essentially got one outered here, because there was no chance of me putting in any bad money on the river if ANY other card would have fallen. alright, enough whining, im gonna start playing poker again now.

Renton,

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and was a little too critical of this hand. That's all.

Needless to say.....I didn't really like it.


UG

Originally Posted by Renton

i didn't even see ugs post

theres no need to hold back people

Excellent!

I wouldn't have posted the hand if I didn't feel at least a little unsure as to whether I played it alright. As it were, the river was the Case Ace, and I felt like a fool.

I essentially got one outered here, because there was no chance of me putting in any bad money on the river if ANY other card would have fallen. alright, enough whining, im gonna start playing poker again now.

The only thing that you can't control in poker is the cards that are dealt. Instead of focusing on the fact a glimmer of hope came on the river (which gave your opponent the effective nuts and giving you a hand with some showdown value), you should instead focus on what really amounts to a very poor call on the river, in my opinion. Remember that he called preflop with the worst seat on the table, made a pot building c/r on the flop, led the turn, and pushed the river. How often is a pair of aces, no kicker good here?

Renton, I think you need to get out of the habit of making these hero calls against tags like this. Nothing about his line looks like a bluff, and if he happened to have an overpair on the flop he would never push the river like that when the ace hits, that makes really no sense. Hard to put him on a stone cold bluff from a tag, at the very least it's not going to be the case that he has absolutely nothing a very large portion of the time.

I was pretty damn harsh in my previous reply. I didn't explain myself very well, so I deleted it, and moved on. I'll try to explain myself in a more constructive way...

This hand stinks. Big time. Other people have already given reasons why it stinks, what you should have done differently, etc, so I'm not going to rehash that stuff. Hopefully you've learned from this mistake.

But this isn't the only hand you've posted lately where I've sat here after reading and thought, "wtf are you thinking?" Now don't get me wrong, we all make mistakes, we all have bad hands here and there. I know I've had plenty of those. Maybe you're just a bit more forthcoming about the mistakes you've made, and you're trying to learn from them...

But then I read your most recent blog post.....and your words, along with some of the posts you've made recently, don't see eye to eye.

Another breakeven month. I would have made meaningful posts in here these past two months, but they would be contrived and largely untrue. When a seemingly winning poker player loses money at poker for 80,000 hands, theres nothing really all that interesting about it. You just suck it up and continue. Whenever, if ever, that I start to run decently again, I'll make more posts in here hopefully.

Running bad and playing bad are two totally different things. We all have downswings, we all have break-even stretches...but 80k hands? With the hands you've posted recently, combined with your most recent blog post (especially the part in bold).....it just makes me wonder if over the last 80k hands you've not just been running bad, but possibly playing bad instead. In a nutshell, that's what I wrote earlier.

Just something to think about.



P.S. Maybe cut down on the number of tables you play. Maybe tighten up. Maybe look at hand histories after every session, looking at the hands you lost the most on.....and try to figure out why. Bad play, bad call, bad beat, etc. What was it that made you lose money on each particular hand. Figure out why and then try to not let it happen again in the future.

just repop the flop until you know what you are doing on later streets

I understand that this call is bad, but is it really as bad as you are saying, UG? His line on the flop and especially the turn reeked of a one pair hand that he wasn't very confident in (as it were he had AA, which actually isn't setting too pretty given that board), or even a draw of some kind, possibly JT. There have been tons of times where bad aggressive players have pushed JJ-KK in this spot against me in the past. Actually the only hands that have me beat that make sense given his line are AT and AA. Any other hand is almost always going to raise the flop a larger amount, or bet the turn a larger amount. The way I look at it, the ace gave me the best hand over a very large percentage of villains range (namely the overpairs, JT, and busted draws), and only improved a small percentage of villains range (namely AA and AT), PLUS my line against him reeks of a draw, so its actually a decent spot to bluff me.

As for the breakeven stretch, I have mentioned many times and particularly in a previous blog entry that I believe my edge in the 1/2 shorthanded games probably quite modest, even though I still believe that I have one.

The fact that my edge is modest is most likely responsible for the extreme length of this downswing. But the fact still remains that I have not run good in a very very long time. I have played 265,000 hands since I started, and I'm positive that I know what it feels like when I am running good, running OK, and running bad, and this is bad, and has been bad.

I am not going to go into details, but I get owned for my whole stack in a three way all in or a headsup deepstack hand when I have the nuts on the flop about once per session on average for the past 1 1/2 months. It is extremely difficult, regardless of the size of one's edge to overcome that inherent deficit.

wow this is a useless post

Renton, this hand is really bad, river call is spew.

Originally Posted by Renton

I understand that this call is bad, but is it really as bad as you are saying, UG?

Yes. I understand your reasoning, however faulty it may have been with this particular hand. Even bad poker players get premium hands every now and then. It's already been discussed, but here's what I think of the hand in general:

1) You raise a mediocre hand from a not-so-strong position. (I can see raising this from time to time on the button or in the CO, but I'm usually ditching this hand everywhere else. Fold preflop to keep yourself out of trouble.)

2) Our "bad tagg" villian calls from the SB. (This is the worst position in the game of poker, he's first to act after the flop...what range of hands are you putting him on? Probably PP's, maybe AK/AQ. Maybe his range is wider, but if he's a true "tagg," even a "bad" tagg, it's probably right around this range.

3) You c-bet. (this is fine)

4) He check raises you. (Utt-ohh, what on earth could our villian have here that would make him check-raise us?)

5) You just call. (I think this is a point where you should either 3-bet or fold. Calling is okay since you have a gut-shot straight and a flush draw, but if we don't hit it....)

6) You don't hit either of your draws and he bets big again. (Okay, so you've been check-raised *and* he's betting out big...what type of hand can we put him on now? He may be a "bad tagg" but c'mon, most bad taggs aren't going to do that without a big hand.)

7) You call. (Again, this is either a fold or a push, and I'm leaning heavily towards folding b/c of the crazy strength villian has shown.)

8) You hit your ace. Yippie! (Awesome, you hit your ace but don't have a kicker....we have exactly PP's that didn't turn into sets beat, and nothing else. Ohh yeah, we have bluffs beat, if he decides to bet....but if he bets on the next street how often is it a bluff?)

9) He pushes on the river. (If he has JJ-KK he's probably checking...but he's not stacking off here. He's probably not going to bluff like this, ever. No way you can call this unless you've seen him do crazy shit like this before.)

10) You call, hoping to pick off a bluff or a weirdly played JJ-KK. (This is a tagg we're talking about here, and even bad taggs probably won't take a hand this far unless they *really* like their hand.)

11) You get stacked.


I repeated myself a bunch up there, but I've got two main thoughts I want to stress...

First off, even "bad players" wake up with hands every now and then. On this particular hand you should have been able to "listen" to his bets, they were telling you preflop and every single street after that exactly where you stood.

And finally.....are you a big-time proponent of using HUD? It's almost like you labled this guy, put him on a range of hands....and then decided you were good and insta-called, pretty much ignoring all of the action that went on during the hand. I used to rely *heavily* on HUD (actually, gametime+), and would pigeon-hole certain players into having certain hands because of their stats and disregard what was going on during the hand. I hope you didn't do that here. I still use gametime+ when I play but I don't use it like a crutch anymore, it's just an extra piece of information I throw into the equation....

I dunno. Just something to think about.



P.S. Fuck that was long. Hope it helped.

george, can you send me the unedited version of the post that you deleted earlier? thanks.

Originally Posted by Renton

I am not going to go into details, but I get owned for my whole stack in a three way all in or a headsup deepstack hand when I have the nuts on the flop about once per session on average for the past 1 1/2 months. It is extremely difficult, regardless of the size of one's edge to overcome that inherent deficit.

LMAO, frame this one and file it under "why suckers will keep comming back to this game." It's stupid easy and lazy to blame your results on a few big lost pots. They will consume you and blind you to the hundereds of mistakes that made that suck-out break your back.

ug,

how do you consider a bet just over half the pot a "big" bet?

Originally Posted by Renton

ug,

how do you consider a bet just over half the pot a "big" bet?

I'm just going to let this one go...