10NL 6max set w/ bad turn card again...

Villain is unknown to me. Whats my line on the turn?


poker stars, $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter
Hero (BB): $28.15
UTG: $1.45
CO: $5.85
BTN: $9.85
SB: $11.75
Pre-Flop: 8:heart: 8:spade: dealt to Hero (BB)
2 folds, BTN raises to $0.40, SB folds, Hero calls $0.30
Flop: ($0.85) K:heart: A:club: 8:club: (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $0.65, Hero raises to $2, BTN calls $1.35
Turn: ($4.85) 9:club: (2 Players)
Hero ???

bet-call/shove. A flush isn't a big enough part of his range to worry (combinatorially anyways), and since most of his range will be decent top pair hands that will have a club in them, we want to charge them to draw out.

3-bet Preflop. You're losing tons of value by flatting OOP vs. a steal attempt.

As played, lead the turn for about 3/4 pot and be prepared to call a shove. As chuck said, made flushes don't make up a large enough part of his range to be worried about.

Don't get paranoid about people always having the nuts against you here. It's good that you're cautious about the possible made flush, but it's a lot more likely villian has a King or Ace here, which explains the pre-flop raise. If this is the case, you're ahead and should bet here. I would make a pot-sized bet here. If the river is a club, you're probably beat and can get away from the hand, but if it's not, I would bet for value.

Edit: Didn't see the responses that were made before mine. It's good to know we're all thinking the same though.

dsvw56 said:

3-bet Preflop. You're losing tons of value by flatting OOP vs. a steal attempt.

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This came up in another thread recently, but I don't particularly like 3-betting PPs out of position, because of all the troubles that come with it. "Tons of value" is a bit exaggerated in my opinion, since even with a 35% stealing range on the button - which I think is high for this level - we're still only 56% to win. "Tons of fold equity" might be true, but with a hand that has such nice implied odds, it's a bit of a waste to cancel its value in exchange for fold equity.

8 times out of 9 that we see a flop after we 3-bet, we'll be looking at a pair of eights out of position in a big pot. It's not ideal.

As played, lead the turn for about 3/4 pot and be prepared to call a shove. As chuck said, made flushes don't make up a large enough part of his range to be worried about.

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This I agree with, though.

Yeah I kind of disagree with that too. On one hand we can say that if we're up against a tough or even just a slightly loose/aggressive player that it gets us in tons of shitty situations. ex we 3bet, he calls, flop comes JTx. yay.

On the other hand, just flatting OOP leaves us in some tough spots too, but we're at least playing a much smaller pot and can either get away from our hand easier, or get to showdown cheaper.

fwiw I don't think 3betting is terrible, but I actually like calling better. But basically this sums it up:

F Paulsson said:

8 times out of 9 that we see a flop after we 3-bet, we'll be looking at a pair of eights out of position in a big pot. It's not ideal.

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F Paulsson said:

This came up in another thread recently, but I don't particularly like 3-betting PPs out of position, because of all the troubles that come with it. "Tons of value" is a bit exaggerated in my opinion, since even with a 35% stealing range on the button - which I think is high for this level - we're still only 56% to win. "Tons of fold equity" might be true, but with a hand that has such nice implied odds, it's a bit of a waste to cancel its value in exchange for fold equity.

8 times out of 9 that we see a flop after we 3-bet, we'll be looking at a pair of eights out of position in a big pot. It's not ideal.


This I agree with, though.

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The problem with flatting OOP vs. a wide range is :

A) We're OOP, so getting paid off is going to be a bitch and it's going to be hard to pick up the pot or ever get to showdown unimproved.
B) He has a wide range so he's rarely going to flop something that can pay us off.

Small pairs have tons of implied value, but situations like this SEVERELY cripple them.

Also, he only has to fold to a 3-bet like ~70% of the time for it to show an immediate profit. Not including all the easy pots you pick up just by C-betting the flop.

I think it's situational. I feel like there are times to 3bet, but generally I think flatting is best. I think this issue would make a great thread on it's own (although we've basically hijacked this one).

I mean you're turning your hand into a bluff - rarely getting called by worse and rarely getting folds from better. Add on to that the fact that getting pushed off the best hand in a big pot is way more disastrous than getting pushed off the best hand in a small pot (ie by flatting) and I really don't think I like 3betting the small pairs.

dsvw56 said:

The problem with flatting OOP vs. a wide range is :

A) We're OOP, so getting paid off is going to be a bitch and it's going to be hard to pick up the pot or ever get to showdown unimproved.
B) He has a wide range so he's rarely going to flop something that can pay us off.

Small pairs have tons of implied value, but situations like this SEVERELY cripple them.

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I agree that these are problems, but A and B are somewhat mutually exclusive. If it's going to be hard to pick up the pot unimproved, it's going to be easy to paid off when we hit our set. Conversely, if we struggle with our implied odds, we can probably re-steal (or more likely, legitimately take down) the pot after the flop.

The way I figure, it comes down to this:

If we 3-bet, one of three things will happen:

1. We take down the pot. Value: 5BBs.
2. We get called and play a bit pot out of position.
3. We get 4-bet and pushed off our hand. Value: -12BBs (or whatever we re-raise to)

#1 is by far the most likely. I don't think anyone wants to be in situation #2, and #3 is probably very rare (~5% of the time?) and sucks hard. 5% of 12BBs is 0.6.

If we guess that he calls with 10% of his hands, repop 5%, and folds 85%, and that it's neutral EV when he calls, the EV of 3-betting becomes

EV = 0.85*5 + 0.05*(-12) + 0.10*0 = 3.65.

If we somewhat pessimistically assume that we have absolutely no equity in the pot if we miss our set, we need to win an average of 31BBs the times we call and hit our set to be on equal footing with 3-betting. While may sound hard, I return to the fact that it's either difficult to steal the pot unimproved or it's difficult to win money with our set. But it can't be both.

ChuckTs said:

bet-call/shove. A flush isn't a big enough part of his range to worry (combinatorially anyways), and since most of his range will be decent top pair hands that will have a club in them, we want to charge them to draw out.

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Yeah this is what I ended up doing. Been running terrible this month (coolers, tilt, yadda yadda)which I think is causing me to question a lot of of my plays and expecting to lose whenever I don't have the absolute nuts and get my money in, which has recently been the case. Can't wait for August imo.

By the way, while I believe this shows that it's generally better to call, I have absolutely no problems admitting that it's close. 3-betting might fit better into someone's overall strategy, and it's probably much better versus some opponents, e.g. light stealers who play very tightly to 3-bets, and very good opponents who we'd just rather not play a pot with.

I think this would be an interesting topic for the strategy section. 99-1010 especially is a wierd kind of in between hand for me.

Seriously, flatting this is like burning money imo. We beat his range so much here. Calling to see a flop, then getting pushed off it on the flop is just way passive imo. If we 3 bet here, more often than not we take it down. If he calls, we define his hand better. If he 4 bets were behind.

Flatting will leave us with pretty shitty decisions if the flop is not textured.

35% steal att is about avg for most TAG's, most strat articles advocate nearer 40%, not sure though about 10nl.

The amount of times I 3bet this and take it down pf, far outway the amount of times I call and get myself into trouble imo. Yes it's situational, and I'm not doing this if villain has a steal att of less than 20%, fwiw.

Just my 2 pennies worth.

Jagsti said:

35% steal att is about avg for most TAG's, most strat articles advocate nearer 40%, not sure though about 10nl.

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If we for the moment ignore the fact that we don't know that villain is TAG, there's also the point that 88 doesn't precisely destroy a 35% stealing range.

Can you throw in some ranges for which hands you per default assume him to 4-bet, call and fold?

F Paulsson said:

If we for the moment ignore the fact that we don't know that villain is TAG, there's also the point that 88 doesn't precisely destroy a 35% stealing range.

Can you throw in some ranges for which hands you per default assume him to 4-bet, call and fold?

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Without stats were making a big assumption, so basing this on a unknown:

4bet range: QQ+, AK
Call range: TT+, ATs+, AQo+, KTs+, 56s+ maybe
Fold: everything else

So if he's stealing with 35%, that range reacts to the 3-bet in the following way:

4-bet: 7.5%
Call: 12.5%
Fold: 80%

With the EV above, that puts 3-betting at 3.1 BB, which is even worse than I originally thought. I think it's pretty trivial to overcome that value by just set mining and occasionally offering some resistance so he can't steal happily away postflop.

We're 51:49 vs. his calling range and out of position. Although we have some stealing equity postflop, that equity comes from making 6-out hands fold, because it gets difficult and expensive to try to fold out better hands than ours. Not to mention we're extra vulnerable to draw semibluffs/floats since our flop c-bet will mostly be of the bet/fold kind.

The more I think about this, the more convinced I get that 3-betting is the wrong thing to do vs. this range, unless he plays fit/fold a lot on the flop.

3.1bb is goot imo, no?

Only if it's better than how much you expect to win from flatting. Even if you check/fold every flop where you don't hit a set, you still only need to make 26BB on average the times you hit a set to make that particular strategy more profitable. If he c-bets, you're halfway there.

F Paulsson said:

Only if it's better than how much you expect to win from flatting. Even if you check/fold every flop where you don't hit a set, you still only need to make 26BB on average the times you hit a set to make that particular strategy more profitable. If he c-bets, you're halfway there.

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Good analysis, FP. I still think a +ev play is still the correct line for me. I play a lot more aggro since I returned to 6max, as I think it plays into my hands with metagame. I get easily paid off a lot more as a consequence.

Right, like I said it can definitely be the case that 3-betting fits better in with overall strategy. This was a good thread.

Maybe at 50 nl+ this is a standard 3-bet. But at 10$ NL, they still think AA & KK are the only hands worth 3-betting for the most part...

I'm flatting here every time and playing a flop, rather than trying to push a very small preflop edge. Plus who says we can't play a small pot with middle pair against these 'tards who never double barrel the turn without a hand.

And their range isn't so polarized on the button that we have 0 implied odds. If they've got a full stack, we'll be getting ~24:1, which is double the 12:1 required. Maybe at higher stakes, flatting pairs in the blinds is easy to pick up on, but IMO at 10NL, 3-betting is burning money. The range villain calls a 3-bet with has us crushed.

F Paulsson said:

Right, like I said it can definitely be the case that 3-betting fits better in with overall strategy. This was a good thread.

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Good point, because what else would you be flatting in a spot like this to balance?


(And I appologize to Rich for totally hi-jacking his thread)

dsvw56 said:

Good point, because what else would you be flatting in a spot like this to balance?


(And I appologize to Rich for totally hi-jacking his thread)

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I flat stuff like KQ suited, QJs, KJs. Hands that can hit a lot of flops. I don't like tto 3-bet this stuff, since most players are folding worse broadway hands, and making life terrible for me with hands like AQ/AK when they call.

And maybe I just don't mind check/calling a c-bet out of position against weak opponents, and playing back at them on later streets.

yep, flatting AQ/AJ/AK for balance is also very sexy.