$2 NLHE Full Ring: Should I have folded TPTK?

So this happened to me today. Wondering if I should have called the all-in bet on the turn. For me, it was a toss-up... but would love to see what you guys thought.

pokerstars - $0.02 NL - Holdem - 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

CO: 95 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, hands: 7)
BTN: 161 BB (VPIP: 42.86, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 7)
SB: 81 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 1)
BB: 189.5 BB (VPIP: 25.00, PFR: 18.75, 3Bet Preflop: 20.00, Hands: 16)
UTG: 51 BB (VPIP: 42.86, PFR: 42.86, 3Bet Preflop: 33.33, Hands: 7)
Hero (UTG+1): 126 BB
MP: 102 BB (VPIP: 14.29, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 50.00, Hands: 7)
MP+1: 97.5 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 7)
MP+2: 96.5 BB (VPIP: 42.86, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 7)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has Kd Ac
fold, Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, MP+2 calls 3 BB, fold, BTN calls 3 BB, fold, fold

Flop : (10.5 BB, 3 players) 5s 9c Ah
Hero bets 7 BB, MP+2 calls 7 BB, BTN calls 7 BB

Turn : (31.5 BB, 3 players) 4s
Hero bets 15.5 BB, MP+2 raises to 86.5 BB and is all-in, BTN calls 86.5 BB, fold

River : (220 BB, 2 players) 3d


So here's my thought process: everything was pretty much standard play pre-flop and on the flop for me, but when villain raised my cbet all-in, it gave me pause but I probably would have called if it was heads up. But BTN also calls the all-in bet, so I figure one of them probably has something stronger than TPTK... either 2 pair (like A9) or completed a set. And then there was the river to go, which could have easily paired one of their cards (if it didn't pair up already). In hindsight, those would have been such a narrow part of their particular ranges, that calling would have been reasonable, given what I stood to gain.

Thoughts?

Wow...with the overcall from the button, I would have folded and hated life.

I thought it was a good fold given the weak 3bet with AK. Sure they had AQ and AJ this one time and you missed out, but I would be expecting at least two pairs or sets with that kind of action. I like to learn though, so if anyone can put this through the EV calculator that would be good to see.

Easy fold on that shove. Also if they are nits you could just check turn oop vs 2 people.

Its important to remember, that even we have TPTK, we dont have the best AX. A9, A5, A4 beat us, and fishy guys like these can absolutely have those hands. Or they can have a set. Also there are no real draws, they can be calling with, so when we get action from both of them on a relatively large C-bet, alarm bells should already go off a little bit.

Therefore I dont hate checking the turn for pot control, as someone else suggested. As played I guess, you can say, we got the information, we needed, and there is absolutely no way on earth, we should ever call. This is insanely strong action, and its extremely unlikely, our hand is good. Even if BTN had folded, we should still not give action, unless MP+2 is like an absolutely crazy maniac, and we have seen him do this before with some wild bluff.

Thanks for your responses. I think I was trying to convince myself to call, but it sounds like my gut was right.

I purposely chose a slightly larger cbet on the flop than my usual 1/2 pot cbet because of position and number of players in the pot. Yes, when they both called, I was surprised. I considered checking the turn but felt it would have indicated too much weakness. Would the plan be to check-call turn if it was a small bet but any kind of overbet would be a fold? And then if I’m still in the hand on the river, check-fold on river?

Just as an aside, I was watching MP+2 more closely and he lost most of his stack within the next 2 orbits on some questionable plays on one hand. I guess you can call him an aggro-fish, but I didn’t have a strong enough of a read at the time.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions.

nameless1537 said:

I considered checking the turn but felt it would have indicated too much weakness. Would the plan be to check-call turn if it was a small bet but any kind of overbet would be a fold? And then if I’m still in the hand on the river, check-fold on river?

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Somewhat underrepping our hand is the whole point in checking the turn. You WANT to induce bluffs or overvaluations, and the plan is to call all the way down, unless you face some crazy overbet, or one player bet and the other raise, or the runout is completely awfull.

If this is something, you never do, you need to start working it into your game. There are so many players in the micros, who will call preflop and float the flop in position, and who think, that whenever the preflop raiser bet the flop but check the turn, he is just giving up and check-folding.

Picking off a bluff and showing down a hand as strong as TPTK is also a way to stop that action for the rest of the session, which frankly you want. There is nothing worth in poker than having someone on your left, who is over using position and floating you all the time.

You have to fold there. No question. They can't do this with AQ or AJ. Some players can do it with the but I doubt these guys can. 2 pairs, sets, even a straight. They have +40% VPIPs

I thought you played well. I agree with others on looking to check the turn. They have to be calling flop with something- if they are towards the nitty side (fold weak, call with strong) then you may be beat

$2 NLHE Full Ring: Should I have folded TPTK?

fundiver199 said:

Somewhat underrepping our hand is the whole point in checking the turn. You WANT to induce bluffs or overvaluations, and the plan is to call all the way down, unless you face some crazy overbet, or one player bet and the other raise, or the runout is completely awfull.

If this is something, you never do, you need to start working it into your game. There are so many players in the micros, who will call preflop and float the flop in position, and who think, that whenever the preflop raiser bet the flop but check the turn, he is just giving up and check-folding.

Picking off a bluff and showing down a hand as strong as TPTK is also a way to stop that action for the rest of the session, which frankly you want. There is nothing worth in poker than having someone on your left, who is over using position and floating you all the time.

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What you write makes so much sense and I don’t know why I never came to these conclusions earlier. One of the holes in my game has been not using my position enough so I don’t call enough raises from the CO or BTN. I also hadn’t started floating the flop until recently, so I’m also getting used to the idea of playing the turn without the betting lead.

Now, I’m going to add this element to my game too, which is coming at just the right time. I’ve been caught trying to bluff on the turn with a call out of a player OOP and then ended up checking the river if i didn’t have a huge hand. So playing the other side is something I need to do too.

Thanks for the tips. As usual, your thoughtful posts have been great for me as I am learning more of the nuances of post-flop play... something I never had a chance to develop while playing microtourneys.

snap fold turn is fine TP/TK is dead 95% of the time vs 3x overbet + a call. Depending on HUD stats I might call the first shove against some agro fish but the overcall makes this hand a snap fold.

fundiver199 said:

Its important to remember, that even we have TPTK, we dont have the best AX. A9, A5, A4 beat us, and fishy guys like these can absolutely have those hands. Or they can have a set. Also there are no real draws, they can be calling with, so when we get action from both of them on a relatively large C-bet, alarm bells should already go off a little bit.

Therefore I dont hate checking the turn for pot control, as someone else suggested. As played I guess, you can say, we got the information, we needed, and there is absolutely no way on earth, we should ever call. This is insanely strong action, and its extremely unlikely, our hand is good. Even if BTN had folded, we should still not give action, unless MP+2 is like an absolutely crazy maniac, and we have seen him do this before with some wild bluff.

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Why would you check the turn for pot control, you aren't even in position and V will call down with AQ/AJ/A8/A7/flush draws at those stakes. There's way more combos of those than 2 pairs, you are just missing value because you are scared of a monster.

In my perspective, a lot of people tend to overplay AQ and AJ. That is what happened here, and I would have called the turn. If you are facing a two pair hand, then you have outs to catch. If you're facing a set then so be it. That much of an over-bet on the turn would raise my suspicions and I would tank and call with TPTK.

tuckfrump69 said:

Why would you check the turn for pot control, you aren't even in position and V will call down with AQ/AJ/A8/A7/flush draws at those stakes. There's way more combos of those than 2 pairs, you are just missing value because you are scared of a monster.

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Sure we can bet the turn, if we assume, that our opponents will make a lot of calling mistakes, and that they will only raise, if they have us beat, so that we can play perfectly against them by bet-folding.

In this case however betting resulted is us being value bluffed off the best hand, because the donkeys piled it in with AQ and AJ. If we had checked, we would likely have gotten to showdown and won, which in my opinion is a more favourable outcome than bet-folding the best hand.

fundiver199 said:

Sure we can bet the turn, if we assume, that our opponents will make a lot of calling mistakes, and that they will only raise, if they have us beat, so that we can play perfectly against them by bet-folding.

In this case however betting resulted is us being value bluffed off the best hand, because the donkeys piled it in with AQ and AJ. If we had checked, we would likely have gotten to showdown and won, which in my opinion is a more favourable outcome than bet-folding the best hand.

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First of all, if you checked turn he might have blasted all-in anyway, are you calling then? It's not like once you check MP is just gonna let it check through or bet a reasonable size just because you checked.


More to the point, yes maybe sometimes you get bluffed off the best hand by a donk shove followed by a donk call. But that's like 1/20 times or something. The other 95% of the time you are missing value against worse aces that both MP, BTN will happy call down with. I can see merit in checking turn against a maniac with HUD agro stat of 10-15, but most microstakes player are passive and you have to build the pot for them.

To play good poker you have to allow yourself to get bluffed sometime. As someone who grinded up a couple of hundred bucks on stars 2NL/5NL (No, I'm not proud of this), I can tell you it's more profitable on the long run to get bluffed off the best hand once in a while than take a super passive check/call line with top pair on a dry board.

So drawy turn... But I think there was easy fold on NL2. Good cases are 1 of opp had AsXs/A3/A2 and 2nd had AK/AQ and there was tone of bad situations like sets, 2pairs and even straight for the BTN) I see only fold there

tuckfrump69 said:

First of all, if you checked turn he might have blasted all-in anyway, are you calling then? It's not like once you check MP is just gonna let it check through or bet a reasonable size just because you checked.

More to the point, yes maybe sometimes you get bluffed off the best hand by a donk shove followed by a donk call. But that's like 1/20 times or something. The other 95% of the time you are missing value against worse aces that both MP, BTN will happy call down with. I can see merit in checking turn against a maniac with HUD agro stat of 10-15, but most microstakes player are passive and you have to build the pot for them.

To play good poker you have to allow yourself to get bluffed sometime. As someone who grinded up a couple of hundred bucks on stars 2NL/5NL (No, I'm not proud of this), I can tell you it's more profitable on the long run to get bluffed off the best hand once in a while than take a super passive check/call line with top pair on a dry board.

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I am not saying, that betting the turn is a terrible play, but checking is definitely the more correct GTO type line. Actually you could even argue for checking the flop, since the cold callers should have a stronger range than the preflop raiser, and they also have position. However I will admit, that this is fairly far from the 2NL or 5NL reality, so I am also at least betting the flop.

However the issue is, that this is 3-ways, which mean, that the pot is growing alarmingly fast, when they both continue. What is the river plan, if we get called, and the pot is 60BB or even 90BB, if they both call?

If we bet again on the river, we are definitly putting our stack at risk, and its almost impossible to fold to a raise. And if we have to check the river, because the pot is already to big, then why not check the turn? Its not like, there are any draws, we need to worry about charging. Alternatively we can go for 3 streets of betting, but then we need to bet pretty small.

fundiver199 said:

I am not saying, that betting the turn is a terrible play, but checking is definitely the more correct GTO type line. Actually you could even argue for checking the flop, since the cold callers should have a stronger range than the preflop raiser, and they also have position. However I will admit, that this is fairly far from the 2NL or 5NL reality, so I am also at least betting the flop.

However the issue is, that this is 3-ways, which mean, that the pot is growing alarmingly fast, when they both continue. What is the river plan, if we get called, and the pot is 60BB or even 90BB, if they both call?

If we bet again on the river, we are definitly putting our stack at risk, and its almost impossible to fold to a raise. And if we have to check the river, because the pot is already to big, then why not check the turn? Its not like, there are any draws, we need to worry about charging. Alternatively we can go for 3 streets of betting, but then we need to bet pretty small.

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Great points to consider, and I do see the value of the check-call in terms of pot management. For me, I've always thought that maintaining the betting lead (and role of aggressor) was important overall (especially if you have a somewhat decent hand) so that I can win the pot in multiple ways (by opponents folding or simply having the better hand), whereas calling a bet only gives me one way to win a pot (having a better hand at showdown) if plan is to check-call all the way down.

What I am reading here is that there are situations that the principles of pot management trump the advantages of being the aggressor? I guess being OOP does seem to play into this a bit more, since if we were playing this pot in position, we could simply call a donk bet or just check the turn if opponents didn't donk bet at all.

Anyway, thanks for the food for thought. Always learning something new in these forums.

Its also a possibility to keep the betting lead and control the pot size via our sizing. You bet fairly large on the flop, which on such a dry board is not considered the best strategy today. Yeah it has merits at 2NL, where people call to much, but even then, when the board is so dry, you can get your value later. At higher limits many players would bet like 1/3 of the pot in a situation like this.