$2 NLHE Full Ring: Suspected trap by a passive player... what to do on a river?

Hero (BTN): $3.48
SB: $1.06
BB: $1.00
UTG: $0.80
UTG+1: $2.32
MP1: $2.16
MP2: $0.94
CO: $1.00

CO posts a big blind ($0.02)

Pre Flop: ($0.05) Hero is BTN with T ♦ A ♣
4 folds, CO checks, Hero raises to $0.08, SB calls $0.07, 2 folds

Flop: ($0.20) Q ♠ T ♠ Q ♦ (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $0.06, SB calls $0.06

Turn: ($0.32) 8 ♣ (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $0.10, SB raises to $0.20, Hero calls $0.10

River: ($0.72) 2 ♣ (2 players)
SB bets $0.34, Hero calls $0.34

Villain is 24 / 11 / 1.8

I am walking into this kind of hands all the time, sometimes I win sometimes I lose. This one was fishy after he bet river due to his stats.

1. His bet says he has a Queen. Call or Fold?

What's with your bet sizing, it looks so weak.

Bet more on the flop, check back the turn. Then call/bet river.

As played I'm probably folding this.

Well the thing is today I lost like 5 hands in a row to exactly this pattern:

I have something, they flopped something better, I bet they call (twice) and on the river regardless if I bet or not I get bet into/raised and lose.

So I reduced the bet size here due to his stats since he is tighter than normal calling station and both more likely to have Queen/trap me and more likely to fold if he has air.


Yesterday I tried to clear the 2 pair dillema a bit, today and further I want to see what is up with this pattern. My biggest losses all come from my betting into persistent passive callers... but this is also how I win a lot. My biggest wins though are when I have the nuts and intice someone with bet sizing to go All In.

flop sizing?

bet turn and check river imo.

I can't check river, only call or fold.

OK I just played 250 hands and lost 4.55$ mostly from losses in 7 big pots, every time hitting a good hand and getting trapped by the one unlikely hand that was stronger than mine and was just waiting for my betting into it.

Meanwhile the biggest pot I won was whopping 0,24$.

Every freaking player in these stakes just slowplays nonstop, especially multitablers. How can this be so profitable? Granted, I am an idiot to walk into this kind of crap all the time but still, isn't aggression supposed to be a good thing in poker? Everybody here just sits, waits, calls when they have the nuts, folds when they don't and that is that.

Not to mention a hand that I got off lightly in since I suspected a slowplaying trap. I had TT, another guy JJ and the third QQ and everybody just waits and does nothing. Geez.

BTW the guy here obviously has a Queen. At least he raised the turn, that makes him super mega aggressive compared to the rest.

LD1977 said:

OK I just played 250 hands and lost 4.55$ mostly from losses in 7 big pots, every time hitting a good hand and getting trapped by the one unlikely hand that was stronger than mine and was just waiting for my betting into it.

Meanwhile the biggest pot I won was whopping 0,24$.

Every freaking player in these stakes just slowplays nonstop, especially multitablers. How can this be so profitable? Granted, I am an idiot to walk into this kind of crap all the time but still, isn't aggression supposed to be a good thing in poker? Everybody here just sits, waits, calls when they have the nuts, folds when they don't and that is that.

Not to mention a hand that I got off lightly in since I suspected a slowplaying trap. I had TT, another guy JJ and the third QQ and everybody just waits and does nothing. Geez.

BTW the guy here obviously has a Queen. At least he raised the turn, that makes him super mega aggressive compared to the rest.

Click to expand...

Yeah there are a lot of tight players, but there are a load of loose Passives as well. I played 2nl a month ago to rebuild confidence after a bad spell at 25nl, my winrate was over 20bb/100. This limit is so simple, bet bet bet when you hit and learn to fold TPTK type hands.

OMG I think is countering my suggestion which was check turn, bet river. He prefers the other way around.

My win rate is now 24.4/100 over 3,5k hands while playing one table at a time (whenever I try two it gets really bad quickly; tournaments do not influence anything since then I concentrate on cash game 95% of the time) so insignificant sample really, with some crazy and illogical stats too. But I am bleeding money with all the trapping crap going on. It is really eating into my self belief since it is philosophically opposite to what I consider natural ("attack when ahead" basically) and yet I am getting owned here

If I could fix it or find a cure I would feel a lot better about myself. It is one thing to suck and know it and get beaten by clearly better players, but another when I am being exploited by people who I think also suck but am clearly unable to prove it

The win rate is steadily falling (but total profits are going up) as I am trying to implement advice from here and elsewhere seems I was at my best when I had no idea what I was doing it is like that saying "Man with one watch knows what time it is, man with 2 watches is never sure". I do have faith in the process, all this is going to be useful if I move up stakes eventually and people start getting more aggressive, but I am not going anywhere any time soon.


youregoodmate - It is more natural for me to do bet, bet, check too. In any case the trappers would just check turn and nail me on the river so I don't see much difference except the loss of initiative, and checking turn also entices bluffs which I then probably couldn't call.

I am coming from a chess background and we value initiative by instinct so giving it up voluntarily is counter intuitive. It is a hard habit to break.


Anyway, you guys might find in interesting that I crunched some stats in HM2 and despite the small sample some things are becoming obvious:

1. When I raise preflop (323 hands out of 3.481), my win rate is 295 BB/100 (!!!)
- Completely unrealistic I know since all of you can see how badly I play postflop.
- Most of this is on the BTN but amazingly I am annihilating people from EP with 756.25 BB/100. Only reasonable explanation is mixture of luck and the fact I play more tightly from EP on average so I have better cards in hand. Also I get the 1st postflop bet in so it counts as initiative (many people fold, not many people reraise).

2. When I limp (mostly from SB, 275 hands out of 3.481), it drops to 78.2 BB/100, which is pretty damn great anyway since I suck so much postflop. Whatever I win is mostly card strength though.

3. When I am posting blinds (143 hands out of 3.481), it is -11.17 BB/100, not too bad.

Basically, I suck even more horribly than usual when I don't have the initiative.

Main problem is that I fold easily when I know I have nothing, but when I have something juicy and there is only one or two hands which beat me I tend to fire away like a total donk (with the idea that these players call a lot with bad hands, which is kind of true but often they are trapping me with their passivity). I need most of all to grow a brain when it comes to trapping, I am falling for it 75% of the time.

Especially I always seem to think that hands that called preflop raising are something logical and not 68 offsuit and such, so when 68 is the hand that beats me I think they don't have it since who would call 0.24 preflop with that? And then I fall into it and their preflop play gets validated. Insulting isn't it?

Well if you can hold that winrate over say 30k+ hands then that's good.

Just keep posting hands and remembering the advice.

The reason I prefer checking the turn is because I think we get called by Tx more often and small pairs are more likely to call. It's pretty close either way I think.

either lines fine.. prefer betting turn because we get value from draws etc and we can 3 street Tx if he checks to us on rivers in all honesty.

why are we ever limping preflop?

I limped quite a bit more at the beginning, now I do it with small PPs (especially EP on a passive table, although if I know the table is not passive I just fold) and I usually limp from SB when there are several limpers before me since then I can score big for only half a blind extra. I figure pot odds are pretty good.

SB limps seem to tend flopping 2 pair hands and then I mess it up postflop, but that is a matter that I need to solve in any case if I am going to progress.

It's best to just Fold small pairs in EP.

Bet 12 on flop, fire small on turn (14) and fold to a raise.

I play against these players all the time and although he is not the most passive he is certainly more passive than aggressive. Even after a bad run of cards I make the same mistake thinking that these players are willing to make a move or raise as a bluff. The fact is they simply don't.

Well they do sometimes but not often enough to merit calling as often as I do. It is a major leak I have, at least at this level of play.