Hey guys,

I played a warm up session after vacation. Just one table, 50nl, all tags at the table.

Most hands didnt see a flop. Just one interesting hand. I opened T9s from CO and the button 3bets. I wanted to play this hand postflop because I put him on a wide range, I can flop good hands and I thought there might be a chance that if he misses the flop he will shut down. I thought that if I saw weakness I would try to take the pot down. But...I as at went I lost the hand, didnt find a good spot to bet and just couldnt get to showdown. Im wondering how you guys would have played this.

Check it out:

***** Hand History for Game 372374231158 ***** (Merge)
$50.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Saturday, July 09, 04:05:18 ET 2011
Table Waimea Bay (37237423) (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Seat 1: player 1 ( $99.59 USD )
Seat 2: HERO ( $51.83 USD )
Seat 3: VILLAIN ( $50.00 USD )
Seat 4: player 4 ( $94.74 USD )
Seat 6: player 6 ( $105.94 USD )
player 4 posts small blind [$0.25 USD].
player 6 posts big blind [$0.50 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to HERO [ Tc 9c ]
player 1 folds
HERO raises [$1.50 USD]
VILLAIN raises [$4.00 USD]
player 4 folds
player 6 folds
HERO calls [$2.50 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Jd, 5h, Td ]
HERO checks
VILLAIN bets [$5.37 USD]
HERO calls [$5.37 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Qc ]
HERO checks
VILLAIN checks
** Dealing River ** [ 3h ]
HERO checks
VILLAIN bets [$12.99 USD]
HERO folds
VILLAIN wins $31.51 USD from main pot

Hardly any hands on VILLAIN, he seemed like a standard TAG

A note on preflopplay: In general I dont like calling 3bets oop, but in this case I had suited connectors and the 3bet was only to 8 bb.

The flop gave me some showdown value. I decided to call the cbet, because I put him on a wide range and figured he might shutdown on the turn. After the turn Q, I decided to stick with my plan of trying to get to showdown. He checked the turn and the river was brick. He bet 13 dollars into an 18 dollars pot.

I thought that OR he sensed that I was weak and tried to bet me out of the pot, but the betsizing seems more like a valuebet. He could very well have connected with the board in some way and I only beat a bluff. So I gave up.

At 25nl I have seen this type of play where I called the river to see my opponent bluffing, but with my 3rd pair weak kicker it seemed out of line.

What do you think?

Erik

hi Erik

what if i change the order of your comments just a little?
now what would you do?

legian62 wrote:Hey guys,

Hardly any hands on VILLAIN, he seemed like a standard TAG

A note on preflopplay: In general I dont like calling 3bets oop, but in this case I had suited connectors and the 3bet was only to 8 bb.


I opened T9s from CO and the button 3bets. I wanted to play this hand postflop because I put him on a wide range, I can flop good hands and I thought there might be a chance that if he misses the flop he will shut down. I thought that if I saw weakness I would try to take the pot down. But...I as at went I lost the hand, didnt find a good spot to bet and just couldnt get to showdown. Im wondering how you guys would have played this.




The flop gave me some showdown value. I decided to call the cbet, because I put him on a wide range and figured he might shutdown on the turn. After the turn Q, I decided to stick with my plan of trying to get to showdown. He checked the turn and the river was brick. He bet 13 dollars into an 18 dollars pot.

I thought that OR he sensed that I was weak and tried to bet me out of the pot, but the betsizing seems more like a valuebet. He could very well have connected with the board in some way and I only beat a bluff. So I gave up.

At 25nl I have seen this type of play where I called the river to see my opponent bluffing, but with my 3rd pair weak kicker it seemed out of line.

What do you think?

Erik

as tempting as it is to call here, and god knows we have all been there, but i think we all recognize the majority of the time it works out like this hand and we wish we would of just folded preflop, which would be my vote vs most tags, my 2nd choice would be a 4 bet if i thought opponent could 3 bet a non narrow range AND be able to lay a hand down. And i would just channel Tim again, no real read on opponent, OOP sucks, i will wait for a better spot


that being said, once you make the call, i am fine with the flop call for reasons you stated

but on the turn i would suggest this thought- bet, be the aggressor
why do we bet? to get value or make better fold
since the Q makes broadway for AK on a rainbow board, a bet is to get better to fold since no worse is ever calling. I would consider a 2/3 donk and be done if i got called or raised
you can very credibly rep AK and get virtually all better hands to fold, also prtects your hand if somehow you are best
if you are repping the hand he has it happens and he will let you know,
AK is likely part of his 3 bet range, but not all of it or even the majority of his likely 3 bet range
Do not check raise since it is the same situation but for a lot more chips

the river is a tough situation and why we hate being OOP, i cant fault a fold since i dont think worse bets this board very often and you need about 40% equity ie best hand 2/5 times to break even

hg

Hi HG,

Interesting line you propose on the turn. It seems risky being oop and after oppopent cbets, but since he still has a wide range a bet on the turn might work a lot of the times.

But most important I will carefully consider folding preflop unless I have a better read.

Erik

I agree with 4 bet/fold pre. You want your 3 bet calling range to be like medium strength pps (99-JJ) and like AJ-AQ, you can throw in some KJ/KQ hands if you really think he's light. You can balance it with stronger hands like flatting AA-KK from time to time so that your opponent can't just nail your range with his read, but I think T9s is a little weak to throw into your calling range. Maybe use QJs or TJs sometimes to call, but T9 is pretty much always a fold. Since it's a standard fold and one of the higher combos in your folding range, you can use it to 4 bet bluff to polarize your 4 bet range assuming you think he is 3 betting a polarized range and not just the hands he's willing to get all in with pre.

That's just my style though, there are other effective ways of countering specific 3 bet ranges and I don't really hate calling T9s, but it seems like too weak of a hand imo. You really need to crush a flop with it and your dream flop would be like 3 9 T against an over pair or AT... If you play like JT or QJ you have a much better shot of hitting a straight that connects with his hand and making 2 pair vs his AJ or AQ.

I think you have a real problem with this hand OOP because you plan to check the flop which means you aren't going to be able to semi bluff unless he decides not to cbet and at that point you only have 1 card to come so if you haven't made your hand yet you will have reduced equity compared to the flop. If you were BTN and he was SB it would make a little more sense to flat I think.

Once you have played a lot of hands against the guy you can start to make weird plays like that to throw off his read, but if you are under like 500-1000 hands against him, there's no way he can read your ranges tight enough for you to really want to make such a strange call.

As played, I'd go for a flop check raise. If it fails, fold. The way you did it you never let yourself make a play at the pot. You were relying on a bluff to win it but never made your play. I'll also mention that I like to check raise a lot of flops with top pair good kicker and sets to try to let me bluff in situations like this. I've actually been experimenting a bit with min raise bluffing on boards with very few draws.

interesting thoughts Emit

i agree that being OOP is a huge problem when you call, remembering being IP is vastly better for all hands and it allows you to be aggressive vs passive opponents and control pot size vs aggro opponents when you have a drawing type hand. I think i like a call option a lot better IP to give me more options/control postflop.

my general thoughts on these type situations are this
9T, JT, QJ etc are all drawing hands and basically all hit the same type of flops although 9T hits some more medium cards type flops than QJ. Generally none of these hands make a top pair you want to go to war with, also none make a 2 pair you are totally in love with due to the potential set or better 2 pair or a pair with a draw type hands that will continue (opponent air will fold many of your good flops giving you no value) depending on the flop. When you flop 2 pair w/ these type hands there are a ton of turn cards that will kill your desire or the opponents desire to put more chips in the pot.

Also a lot of the “good” flops are going to give you a draw which is typically a substantial underdog to a made pr or at best a coin flip, or even possibly drawing to second best hand. Being OOP in these scenarios make it much harder to create solid +EV outcomes

i agree w/ the comment as played that hero didnt give/create themselves a chance to win the pot. i much prefer aggressive mistakes since they have 2 chances to win, by making a hand if called and by "scaring" opponent into folding, calling never causes an opponent to fold, and rarely scares them.

In general i don’t love a flop check raise with medium strength hands (most of my check raises are a bluff or a big hand) as it cost a lot more than a flop donk w/ generally the same result i.e. fold by opponent air and call by made hand/draw and then what OOP on turn if you get called? If you check raise you grew the pot and made it harder to let it go with a medium strength hand. A flop call controls pot size and gives you a cheaper chance to improve your hand or pick up more equity that could allow a semi bluff donk on the turn. A flop call and then a turn donk will fold some opponent draws since their call odds are not good with 1 card to come (assuming a real bet is made and not a wussy min type bet). This is a win/win for you, if they call w/ bad draw odds you profit, if they fold your equity goes from maybe 60% of the pot to 100%, again you profit. A turn donk might also fold some weak made hands that villain Cbet the flop with, but will be uncomfortable (at best) to call a turn bet and potentially face a bigger river bet as well.

i like the preflop 4 bet as an occasional option to balance your 4 bet range of premium hands/bluffs/a hand that hits a ton of flops and rarely going to be dominated by A9 AT K9 KT (hello 9T). Do you like playing opponents that any flop could hit their hand? me neither. Maybe it is not a bad thing to be that type opponent? I also like that i can fold to a 5 bet preflop and I can Cbet virtually any flop as a semibluff with a draw/made pair vs likely AK no pair preflop caller. I can bluff on very dry raggy flop vs AK no pr preflop caller, I can represent Ax vs any under pair preflop caller if an A flops, I can rep AK on a Kxx flop. Although all of these hands I can rep are in opponents range, he can’t have them all so a heads up cbet has a good chance to win the pot.

hg

Thanks for your replies it will hopefully make me a stronger player.

I agree with most in your posts. Somewhere there is still that tempation to play a hand like T9s. Especially with the smaller betsizing these days.

I dont know if I like the checkraise, Emit. Opponent will fold if he has nothing, that might be the case a substantial number of times, but otherwise if he calls/raises Im behind. My hand on the flop has some showdown value and doesnt have great chances of improving...but on the other hand I dont want to be a sitting duck. Thats not why I decided to call preflop! Ahhh the more I think about it the more it sucks to be oop. And that must be the best lesson