Quote 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.