Strange situation

chesslw · Strange situation

I was playing a very agro guy live at husng poker 75bbish deep i think. He seems fairly competent, but imo he is too aggro in a lot of spots (maybe I'm wrong about this, and he is playing perfectly...), but he is thinking, and definitely not a maniac. The hand was this:

Preflop: he minraised button, I flatted with A6o (no hearts).

Flop: board is 356 two hearts, I check and he cbet between 1/2 and 2/3 of the pot.

My problem is this- I have been check calling a lot of my medium value hands to bluff-catch, and only really checkraising (or just raising in general) with very strong draws and made hands (and some timely bluffs).

If I checkraise though, it is perceived as super strong, and will fold out a lot of his bluffs. But if he then reraises me then I'm kind of in a nowhere spot (since I so rarely checkraise, he must know I'm not doing it lightly)- probably a meh, get it in kind of mode (though imo I'm rarely good here).

So then we check-call and re-evaluate. The problem with this is that the majority of his range either has us already crushed or has at least 25% equity against us (2 over cards)- and also he is very aggro/barrel happy (also capable of thin valuebets for balance), which will leave us guessing on the next two streets (i.e. makes me feel kind of being exploited).

So what would be your line here?

If you can further help me out (and each other), could say what you would do with your entire range here (not just A6)? If you say A6 is an easy gii hand, then what about K6? Or another way to think about it- what about if we increased stacksizes to 100bb (or higher)? At what point does your hand become a check call with this dynamic?

U Cook Socks

If the money goes in, I don't think you are in good shape very often to be honest, especially against a decent player. (I know you already mentioned this)

I think it's a clear check/call and evaluate turn. In all honesty, if he is putting you in such difficult spots post flop, I'd consider either 3betting or folding A6 preflop, it's probably the worst of all Ax hands.

Playing out of position sure does suck, I think i'd probably play this hand pretty passively. You could always lead the flop too ?

chesslw

U Cook Socks

Well, I think as a general rule, you don't want to be raising hands you aren't going to get it in with right ? (apart from complete bluffs, which aren't going to be a good idea on this board, to many hands with equity can play back)

It really does suck, cos if he is a thinking player, he is going to know your range is pretty weak if you just flat, your actual hand is probably the top of your range for flatting here I would think. So it's going to be profitable for him to put pressure on you to fold on 3 streets. Not going to be pleasant having to call 3 streets to find out if your good or not. BUT, that doesn't mean you should raise the flop, just to make your life easy Very Happy

I am going to admit, I don't actually know the answer, but look forward to other people offering there input.

two2go · Re: Strange situation

I like this thread, and hope some higher stakes players comment. My standard in this spot against someone who I think is barreling most overcard turns is to call-call. This gets him to put in another bet when he only hits the over ~13% of the time. We get to river without overplaying our hand while allowing him to bluff a huge % of his range on the turn. I think for the turn, whether or not you have been check raising draws matters (I don't know how you draw the line b/w draws and "very strong draws"). Since our opponent is thinking, his perception of how the turn card helps our range will change how often he will bluff at it (and how often we should call). Same for the river. In general when I'm thinking about calling down that's what I try to go through. What does our range look like to him, how does this effect his bluffing %, and how often does he have value? It's easy to ask but hard to answer.

BetMagicMoney

never folding pre

call flop, probably call turn, reevaluate river

i think an overcard comes alot on the turn so villians barrel range is going to be really wide so calling turn is going to be good a large percentage of the time possibly folding 4x turn as standard

chesslw

lol you're making me change my mind about checkraising here (check-calling seems best now)... But my point is solid. Villain technically can exploit us by 1 barrelling and 2 barrelling with some of his range (and giving up with some other part of it) if we play passively (there is the "mathematical" reason why playing passively is terrible in poker) with A6 here. In this instance though, I think you are right- since villain won't be doing that- he is too aggro and will be barrelling on any scarecard.

Though asking about the line was only the first question. If you are not checkraising here with A6 for value, then should you checkraise this board at all (balance is over-rated I know, but...)?

Also similarly, as stacksizes decrease, mathematically we should be playing more aggro (think about Nash as an extreme example), and obviously the more hands we should be comfortable getting it in. So at some point (at least at 25bb) this becomes a fistpump checkraise flop, look to get it in (of course anything under that and we can jam over his minraise pre). So what at what stackdepth does this transition happen for you?

U Cook Socks

aggsyb

How often is he minraising? you can define his range better if you have some sort of idea how often he is raising, your check calling flop and calling almost every turn as hes going to barrel all overcards, all connecting cards to rep straights. Depending on runout you will give yourself 2 easy calls on turns and rivers, hes going to shutdown all his 6x by rivers , so by trippling off hes repping at the very least 2p depending how often hes raising pre you should be able to eliminate certain hands from his range and think how you do against his whole range by the river (obv depending on runouts) but if hes being this aggro c/c all the way down on most runouts is prob going to show the best expectation especially when you cap your c/c flop range.

Next you need to work out just how capable he is in terms of thinking, does he think your floating your KJ / KTs with backdoor draws , Ax hands just 1 or 2 streets? as he will not fire A/Kx turns if he does and if hes just mindly barreling "Its an overcard I bet" then obviously you should be calling down alot lighter.

kierkegaard1

it's a big 'it depends' situation.
it's all based on the tendencies of villain. If he cbets once and then gives up unless he improves then we can c/r to avoid giving the free equity.
if they're super barrell happy we can call off even on terrible runouts.
Basically our hand is never improving and the board can get horrible. Based on our perception of him and our perception of what he thinks makes up our range/how nitty/loose we are means that there are arguments for both c/calling and c/raising these spots.

chesslw

Cool- thanks for the replies.

They gave me more than enough food for thought- there were points I hadn't considered before too.

I forgot that I should think about my perceived range as well (since I will be floating with Ax and some backdoor fd high cards)... So imo against this villain I definitely should call, call again, and possibly call river a third time. He will value-own himself with 6x, and shut down with 5x, but probably fire with any 4 for 3 streets unless he gets some showdown value.

Probably one of my biggest leaks is being a nit- and folding almost always on bad board runouts...

I'll be playing him again probably sometime later (not serious though, but there is money involved), so I guess my reads will develop more as well to answer some of the questions asked ITT (i.e. more than just aggro, barrel happy, fairly competent) Smile

ty

Brokerstar

Given that there will likely be a couple of over cards by the river, I'm not sure how often he fires a one pair 6 for value on three streets and value owns himself?

chesslw

Strange situation

Re: Strange situation