$20 NLHE Full Ring: Top set facing jam on monotone board

pokerstars, Hold'em No Limit - $0.08/$0.16 - 7 players
Hand delivered by CardsChat - https://www.cardschat.com/hand-converter.php
UTG: $14.88 (93 bb)
MP: $28.05 (175 bb)
MP+1: $12.52 (78 bb)
CO: $3.24 (20 bb)
BU: $36.22 (226 bb)
SB (Hero): $20.46 (128 bb)
BB: $21.69 (136 bb)
Pre-Flop: ($0.24) Hero is SB with Ac Ah
2 players fold, MP+1 raises to $0.32, 2 players fold, Hero 3-bets to $1.44, 1 fold, MP+1 calls $1.12
Flop: ($3.04) 6♦ Q♦ A♦ (2 players)
Hero bets $1.45, MP+1 raises to $11.08 (all-in), Hero?

Villains HUD-stats: VPIP 23 / PFR 4 / AF 1 over 146 hands

Getting back into the cash games on PokerStars after a long absence, and they are pretty good right now due to the virus. Thinking this might be my chance to finally make it into 50NL, which is my intermediate goal.

Gonna share some hands along the way and starting with this one, which is mostly for fun. Simple question here: What do we do, when we flop top set with aces on a monotone board, and a passive opponent just ships it in on the flop:

a) Fold because its to risky to gamble
b) Fold because he always has a flush
c) Fold because we are not getting the right price
d) Call because we have top set and we just cant fold
e) Call because we have enough equity against his range
f) Beat him into the pot

I will share the results later.

We hate our life and call. Quite likely he has us beat but we have topset in a 3betpot. Also, loooking at the stats snapcall, this guy could be jamming all his 2 pair, sets, AK and KQ with Kd, JTsd so yeah, Vs reg we hate our life and call, vs fish its a snap imo.


Also good to see you posting some Hands!

Tough spot and would expect to see a flush here regularly but maybe not the nutted type. maybe 87s who isn't wanting another diamond to roll off. We have 6 outs to boat up on the turn and 9 on the river plus the case ace. Definitely not getting odds to call he could have Kx with Kd but think your up against it more times than not here. It all depends on how you are rolled and may be willing to gamble it up here for me I think I'd hate it but depending on player type make that call and see the bad news

You should undoubtedly bet on the flop. And I really prefer a large size 60-75% of the value of the pot. Maybe overbet if we suspect that the villain plays wider. It seems to me that right now with 146 sample hands, you should go deep with your hand. This is the moment where you want to get to know your opponent a little better. Maybe if we think that villain only has flush combos in his range, it is the only alternative that allows us to fold. At this moment we know that MP + 1 plays with 80bb? He apparently doesn't want to play full stack, which may be a sign that he doesn't feel completely comfortable in NL16.
Why would the villain push a flush line on the flop and lose the possibility of extracting more value on the subsequent fairways? I think this is a strange context and it seems to me that the call is a profitable action here.
Greetings.

gustav197poker said:

You should undoubtedly bet on the flop. And I really prefer a large size 60-75% of the value of the pot.

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Yeah I can see that. Probably auto-piloting a bit to much with my half pot button after playing a lot of tournaments, where that kind of bet sizing usually work well

The Leveling Wars, Episode I: The Fish Menace

fundiver199 said:

PokerStars, Hold'em No Limit - $0.08/$0.16 - 7 players
Hand delivered by CardsChat - https://www.cardschat.com/hand-converter.php
UTG: $14.88 (93 bb)
MP: $28.05 (175 bb)
MP+1: $12.52 (78 bb)
CO: $3.24 (20 bb)
BU: $36.22 (226 bb)
SB (Hero): $20.46 (128 bb)
BB: $21.69 (136 bb)
Pre-Flop: ($0.24) Hero is SB with Ac Ah
2 players fold, MP+1 raises to $0.32, 2 players fold, Hero 3-bets to $1.44, 1 fold, MP+1 calls $1.12
Flop: ($3.04) 6♦ Q♦ A♦ (2 players)
Hero bets $1.45, MP+1 raises to $11.08 (all-in), Hero?

Villains HUD-stats: VPIP 23 / PFR 4 / AF 1 over 146 hands

Getting back into the cash games on PokerStars after a long absence, and they are pretty good right now due to the virus. Thinking this might be my chance to finally make it into 50NL, which is my intermediate goal.

Gonna share some hands along the way and starting with this one, which is mostly for fun. Simple question here: What do we do, when we flop top set with aces on a monotone board, and a passive opponent just ships it in on the flop:

a) Fold because its to risky to gamble
b) Fold because he always has a flush
c) Fold because we are not getting the right price
d) Call because we have top set and we just cant fold
e) Call because we have enough equity against his range
f) Beat him into the pot

I will share the results later.

Click to expand...

Hello buddy, let's take a look into this fish menace situation. Thank you for posting!


The Preflop

We are never flatting AA from SB so 3-bet is okay.

The Non-Sense Flop

One thing I know about this flop: Villain/MP+1 should never be going all-in flop. bluffing the nuts? It is very scary because this Villain is so unbalanced and passive and it is broken stack. Lemme try to help you here:

a) Fold because its to risky to gamble

Whoot? Hard to fold here since Villain is broken stack and could have dominated hands doing the same such as 66, QQ, AK, even KK with a diamond. It is risky to gamble this is why we do play poker, otherwise we would be playing Assassin's Creed on X-Box.

b) Fold because he always has a flush

Villain doesn't always has a flush. However when Villain jam this flop it is representing only the flushes. Given that Villain is passive 'ish' it can have more value hands, but I believe that when MP+1 shoves flop it doesn't have any bluffs, because it is maximum polarization: either it has a set, two pair, TPTK or the flush (AF 1).

c) Fold because we are not getting the right price

If we already put 1/3 of our stack on the flop I believe no matter if we have the price or no. If Villain has the flush good for it! We are still drawing to a Quads and a Full-House. We are going mostly because Villain is too passive and started the hand with a broken stack. We know that we can be losing here, but we are still drawing some turns/rivers.

d) Call because we have top set and we just cant fold

We can fold anything that is not the Royal Straight Flush. We can fold Top Set but I believe that versus this guy it is not the best ideia.

e) Call because we have enough equity against his range

This is true. If for some reasons this guys decided to bluff 'the nuts' or the flush, let it comes because we still can beat it in some turn/rivers.
Well, summarizing here: if Villain was 100 BB ES I could fold more here. But given that it is a passive tight I can call, not happy, but folding seems exaggerated too.

f) Beat him into the pot

Whoot? Lol, what do you mean pal?

Regards;

Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa

Luepso said:

We hate our life and call. Quite likely he has us beat but we have topset in a 3betpot. Also, loooking at the stats snapcall, this guy could be jamming all his 2 pair, sets, AK and KQ with Kd, JTsd so yeah, Vs reg we hate our life and call, vs fish its a snap imo.


Also good to see you posting some Hands!

Click to expand...

A regular is never shoving this flop with anything. A regular never plays broken stack. A regular almost never bluffs the nuts on a spot like this. If I am playing versus fundiver199 and flop a flush why would I bother bluffing AK, AQ, AJ, AA out of the pot? I am calling all day til the river, if fundiver199 keeps betting.

Regards;

Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa

Aballinamion said:

A regular is never shoving this flop with anything. A regular never plays broken stack. A regular almost never bluffs the nuts on a spot like this. If I am playing versus fundiver199 and flop a flush why would I bother bluffing AK, AQ, AJ, AA out of the pot? I am calling all day til the river, if fundiver199 keeps betting.

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Generally i agree, depends on the reads V has i think. If Hero had the image of a nit id shure be bluffing that spot with my JTsd and QJsd. And anything but Topset will have an awfull time calling. Like from the stats we can deduct its most likely a recreational player. If you play that spot vs a aggresive regular he might be thinking, "well ok, i have a FD+GS but i wont get the equity to call on turn if he cbets, so we take the equity on the flop we have, ad the foldequity we generate and lest go"

Aballinamion said:

A regular is never shoving this flop with anything. A regular never plays broken stack.

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A regular also does not have a gap between VPIP and PFR of 19%. I call this kind of player semi-loose passive, and its definitely a recreational player or a very bad reg. The difference to a pure fish is, that he has learned to get rid of most trash hands preflop.

Semi grunch. Snappity snap call in my opinion. We sized our 3 bet well so V has like two flush combos on this board, really with his 4% PFR I doubt he has any flushes here because KJs and JTs may not be in his PFR range and then both of those hands should fold to the strong 3 bet from a tight solid player. He has 3 combos of KdK along with some other AxKd combos and 3 combos of QQ that are all more likely than a flopped flush. SPR is < 4 so if he has a flush and gets led into he can easily get it in OTT or by the river without jamming flop and scaring away Ax. The times he does make a loose call and flop a flush and spaz jam we still have decent equity to boat or quad up.

Thanks to everyone for sharing your opinion, and yeah I did of course call. As several have said, even if he has a flush, its only a marginally losing call, and if he ever has anything else, it becomes profitable. So no I am not folding top set here. In fact my answer is f) "beat him into the pot" also known by some as "snap call".

Villain had 6h4h, which is probably not a hand, any of us were expecting to see. And I think the point here is, that recreational players are not always logical or linear. With a PFR of only 4% we would never expect him to be raising 64s. But maybe he was tired, that his limps always got raised, so he decided to go for a mini-raise instead, still just trying to see a cheap flop. I see that fairly often, so just because someone has a low PFR, does not mean, I give a mini-raise a ton of respect.

And then of the flop he turned his hand into a wild bluff, when he caught a "piece of the board". Quite frequently recreational players start out playing in a passive way trying to make hands. But then at some point they get tired of all those "bullies", who push them around, they go on tilt, and they actually become a maniac. And if you are lucky enough to wake up with a hand, when that happen, it is extremely profitable.