[200NL] AT flops middle pair, OOP vs. fish.

Villain is horrible: 46/17/1.5 over a large sample. His WTSD is 33%. All other stats available on request, of course.

I'm not surprised he called preflop, but I had to think about the flop decision for awhile. By betting, I'm opening myself up to being raised off the best hand by a draw. By checking, I'm allowing him a free card but I give him the chance to take a stab at it with nothing.

What do you think I should do on the flop and what's my plan for the rest of the hand?

party poker, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
Hand History Converter by Stoxpoker

BB: $203 (101.5 bb)
MP: $463.30 (231.7 bb)
Hero (CO): $213 (106.5 bb)
BTN: $487.63 (243.8 bb)
SB: $287.45 (143.7 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is CO with A T
MP folds, Hero raises to $6, BTN calls $6, 2 folds

Flop: ($15) Q T 8 (2 players)
Hero...

Passive fish don't raise draws, I'd c-bet/fold for value, and pray for no sticky turn cards. Plan for the hand is if called, check all turn cards & call 1 street. Possibly two if his fold to c-bet % is very low, but given his high WTSD, its unlikely he bluffs like that.

1.5 is not really passive when you're playing 46% of hands, although you make a good regarding his WTSD.

F Paulsson said:

1.5 is not really passive when you're playing 46% of hands, although you make a good regarding his WTSD.

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Hence why aggression percentage is a way more applicable stat.

His AFreq was 35%.

Your OOP with a weak hand. Given you represented strength pre-flop you continue by betting 2/3 pot. If he does anything but fold your basically done. Your folding to a raise and it is going to be hard to maintain aggression if an A or T doesn't hit on the turn.

Even a fish opponent can hit a Q on the flop. The cards don't know he is a fish. I raised KQ last night and had a fish hit Q6.

I see your play being bet, check, check (folding if your opponent makes any reasonable size bet).

Dr_Dick said:

Your OOP with a weak hand. Given you represented strength pre-flop you continue by betting 2/3 pot. If he does anything but fold your basically done. Your folding to a raise and it is going to be hard to maintain aggression if an A or T doesn't hit on the turn.

Even a fish opponent can hit a Q on the flop. The cards don't know he is a fish. I raised KQ last night and had a fish hit Q6.

I see your play being bet, check, check (folding if your opponent makes any reasonable size bet).

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Are you taking this particular opponent into account at all?

Your saying he is super loose, so what? Your OOP with mid-pair. Is this the hand you really want to get into a battle with? Who cares if you have the best hand at this point. If your opponent is as loose/bad as you are saying then trapping later in the session is a much better play than trying to get fancy with the hand you posted.

IMO you want to find out if your opponent legitimately has a hand here, i.e. a Q. And you don't want to find this out after the turn or river. You want to find out right now. So I suggest betting 2/3 the pot. However, I'm thinking based on your response your saying 2/3 is an easy call for this opponent. So if you don't think 2/3 bet is an option than either slightly overbet the pot or check/raise. The one thing I can't see doing here is firing 3 or even 2 barrels here just because your opponent is loose.

Dr_Dick said:

Your saying he is super loose, so what? Your OOP with mid-pair. Is this the hand you really want to get into a battle with? Who cares if you have the best hand at this point. If your opponent is as loose/bad as you are saying then trapping later in the session is a much better play than trying to get fancy with the hand you posted.

IMO you want to find out if your opponent legitimately has a hand here, i.e. a Q. And you don't want to find this out after the turn or river. You want to find out right now. So I suggest betting 2/3 the pot. However, I'm thinking based on your response your saying 2/3 is an easy call for this opponent. So if you don't think 2/3 bet is an option than either slightly overbet the pot or check/raise. The one thing I can't see doing here is firing 3 or even 2 barrels here just because your opponent is loose.

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I disagree with almost everything you just said, except that I agree with not firing 2 or 3 barrels.

Let's start here: "Your saying he is super loose, so what?" It matters a whole lot whether he's loose or tight. Are you saying you play this the same way regardless of who's on the button? I don't.

Your OOP with mid-pair. Is this the hand you really want to get into a battle with?

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This is a huge oversimplification. Again, it doesn't take into account anything but my own two cards. It doesn't even particularly mention what the board is like. You're asking if this is a good hand to get into battle with rhetorically, meanwhile I've actually considered getting all-in with it. I wouldn't be thrilled about it, but I'm not dismissing it outright. We're clearly not on the same page.

Look: It's borderline impossible for him not to have anything on this board. Pokerazor (cool program) tells me that a 40% range has low pair or better 55% of the time, and that doesn't include the many gutshot straight draws that are in his range. You say to bet 2/3rds the pot and I ask you why. To get him to fold? To get him to call? What do you accomplish by betting? What's almost certainly going to happen is that you're going to bet into him and he's going to call, because 75%+ of the time, he has something he's willing to call with. And when that happens, the only thing we can strike from his range is the hands that were drawing nearly dead versus us. Nothing much changes with a pot overbet, except that the pot gets bigger on the turn.

You want to bet for information, and I feel pretty confident that all you're doing is betting. You're not getting any information, except "ah, he didn't have 65s."

Betting folds out the only part of his range we don't want him to fold. It bloats the pot and makes the turn much more difficult to play, because if we bet the flop and then check the turn, we're inviting him to bet. And quite frankly, we don't want him to. Check/raising is even worse; I get the same result as betting (folding out only hands that I beat) but putting in much more money out of position and taking back precisely the initiative that I didn't want in the first place.

If, on the other hand, we check to him on the flop and call a flop bet, we can check to him again on the turn. We can even call a second bet by him on the turn, because his range is much weaker at that point than it would be if he called the flop as opposed to betting it himself. On the river, versus this particular opponent and if the board stayed roughly the same, I'd consider making a small value bet (with the intention of folding if raised) that both gets value and serves as a block bet.

This particular line works best against an opponent like this. Versus a nit, I'd bet/fold the flop and give up if he just calls and I don't improve.

I hate hate hate having our plan for the hand be to ch/c, ch/c, bet tiny/fold. Its just asking for all sorts of bad things to happen. Many turn cards will allow him to fire us off the best hand, and often times he'll check back (or min bet) things like 89, which allows him to improve cheaply. Check/calling just does not give him the opportunity to make a mistake since bluffing/semi-bluffing has a good chance of working & fish tend to play more straightforward poker, so they'll likely not bet large with the hands we want him to put large $ in the pot with.

I c-bet this board because roughly 30%-50% of the time, its going to make life SOOOOOOO easy for us because he'll just fold, and a c-bet of half pot doesn't have to work much more than that. Additionally, he will peel us with hands we beat, and sometimes the turn & river will allow us to make a call down from that point on (we'll improve, bricks will hit, ect). Yes, he puts more money in the pot with a wider range if we check, but I don't think that makes up for the fact that its going to be easy for us to get into situations where we'll make a serious poker mistake. Giving up a small edge on the flop bet is worth it to avoid giving up a bigger edge on the turn/river when the bet/pot is larger.

Two points:

1. He's not folding the flop the requisite amount of time for us to turn our hand into a bluff. He caught a piece of this flop pretty close to 80% of the time. The only thing he folds is the absolute trash that we have no particular interest in him folding.

2. You need to explain how this sequence:

We bet the flop. He calls. We check the turn.

is better than this sequence:

We check the flop. He bets, we call. We check the turn.

... in terms of making money. Also, he doesn't necessarily bet the flop when we check, and that outcome is a good thing for us. Had I been in position, I would have checked this back 100% of the time. Sure, he'll take a free card with a hand like T9 some of the time and get there on the turn for free, but it's not like we're giving up a boatload of value in that happening. His equity is pretty strong, and his implied odds are decent as well, especially if our plan is to bet the flop and c/c the turn.

In short, I don't see how the line you "hate hate hate" is worse than what you're suggesting. The only difference between the two, as far as I can tell, is that with your line we ALWAYS put in money on the flop, and in my line we sometimes do. You fold out his trash, I give him a chance to bluff.

F Paulsson said:

2. You need to explain how this sequence:

We bet the flop. He calls. We check the turn.

is better than this sequence:

We check the flop. He bets, we call. We check the turn.

... in terms of making money.

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1) He gets to chose the size of his bet based on what he wants to accomplish. I figure he'll be min-betting with all his bottom pair type hands that need to improve, and we'll be calling larger bets for sure when he has a queen. We put more money in when our equity is low, and less in when our equity is high.

2) Most of my advice isn't based on his range or anything like that, but just my recent review of mid-pair type pots in HEM. I was spewing money with mid-pair too often by calling down & taking passive lines. Thus I try to avoid the situation. I'd end up calling when my opponents improve in some weird way that I didn't expect because the fish have a wide range, and just checking down when they had nothing.

For example, fish would check this back, turn would be a 2, and they'd pot two streets with a set of 2's or something similar. I think we have the potential to spew reverse implied odds here, and that's what I'd like to avoid.

I suppose bet/fold, cheap showdown is just my default line in these situations, but I really don't think its all that inferior to c/c, c/c, block b/f.

I guess I agree, we definitely see the line to take here differently. My thought process is much more along the lines of c9h. Check calling is really playing the hand as if you were setting a trap, but you don't have a trap. You are giving up the initiative, will lose pot control, will potentially allow free draws, etc.

I see playing against this opponent as throughout a session, not looking at modifying every hand played. Eventually you will have a hand you can trap with and stack em, but this is not the hand. For example, if you had AA would you check/call this flop just because your opponent is loose? How many times have all of us tried to slow play AA and gotten our butts handed to us? And you don't have AA here.

i love checking for pot control as much as anyone. when i first discovered the concept of pot control i started pretty much always checking in spots like these, until i realized betting is better as your standard play

that's not to say you can't possibly check to mix it up/based on your image and how you've been seen playing certain hands, but i maintain that you should bet here vs. this type of opponent more than you should check

he's 46/17 with a huuge WTSD, esp considering his VPIP. you're giving up tons of value by checking. he'll call with plenty of stupid draws and crap that he'd often check behind. if you get raised it's an easy fold because i doubt a player like this is raising pair + gutshots and stuff much, pure bluffs ~never on this board. again, he has a huge WTSD for his VPIP, which doesn't exactly indicate he's blowing people off of hands raising light. he might semibluff raise KJ, but you're OOP and don't have great equity vs. that hand anyway, so it's no big loss

as an addendum, against decent/good players (villain is not included in this), you should also be inclined to bet this because when you c/c on this board you basically give away the strength of your hand and make it easier for them to barrel you. you end up defining your range while leaving their range completely undefined, and they have position on you. that's a horrible position to put yourself in. it's also bad for balance if you're checking MPTK here since it makes your betting range super weak (either continuation bets with air, or super strong hands... i know which one is more likely)

Additionally to what Combuboom said, I wanna re-iterate a point that I didn't make very clearly in my post above.

When you plan to c/c a street or two, our opponent isn't betting 100% of his range. So saying "we get money from more of his range" isn't exactly true. Most opponents have some idea of hand strength, when to bluff, ect. By checking to him, we let him select what parts of his range he wants to put money into the pot with. And even most fish can figure out that you bet draws & hope they fold, and bet stuff like a queen and hope they call. This is a good board to bluff on, and we'd like to avoid inducing a bluff here, since so many turn & river cards can come bad.

So essentially, by check/calling we hope that the fish will bet wrongly. We're hoping that he'll make unsuccessful bluffs or that he'll value-bet too thin. I doubt a fish is going to v-bet too thin here, and this board will bring a lot of turn & river cards that will either make his bluffs work, or give him the best hand and make us pay him off. Our plan for the hand just seems unlikely to make the fish make a mistake.

I like betting this flop, and calling 1 more street depending on the card the next streets bring & how he bets them.

combuboom said:

as an addendum, against decent/good players (villain is not included in this), you should also be inclined to bet this because when you c/c on this board you basically give away the strength of your hand and make it easier for them to barrel you. you end up defining your range while leaving their range completely undefined, and they have position on you. that's a horrible position to put yourself in. it's also bad for balance if you're checking MPTK here since it makes your betting range super weak (either continuation bets with air, or super strong hands... i know which one is more likely)

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This is one of the most important concepts I've discovered recently. A set checks this board basically never. By checking this flop you basically tell villain "I don't have a hand I'm willing to stack off with" unless basically you flopped the straight. These are the kind of boards where if I'm villain I will consider triple barreling because I know your nut range is so so narrow that you fold often enough for it to be profitable, often after putting more money in (ie this hand). In general if there are two plays that are close, I take the one that keeps my range as wide as possible. But as combu said this is against competent opponents.

Against calling station this is a bet all day just for value. We want him to call with all his draws, bottom pair, underpairs, overs, etc. And if you're worried about being raised off a draw than he's perfectly capable of bet-bet-shoving missed draws when you take this line. So I think bet for value here and fold to resistance is a reasonable line.

c9h13no3 said:

So essentially, by check/calling we hope that the fish will bet wrongly.

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I think you just hit the nail on the proverbial head for what you're misunderstanding with the idea behind check/calling this flop.

We're not HOPING he will bet wrongly. We're checking because

a) he'll often bet with a worse hand,
b) he'll often check back, keeping the pot smaller

If this was about getting more money into the pot, betting is clearly superior. It's the combination of either keeping the pot small, or, when if it MUST grow, at least have him add some bluffs to his range.

By betting, we're getting money into the pot - sure. Our range is better than his when he calls the flop - sure. But since the rest of C9's line was to check the turn and check/fold the river, I just don't see the line here.

For those of you saying I miss value by checking the flop, are you saying I can get three streets of value out of a worse hand? Can you explain your lines (Zach, Combu) past the flop, please? If your line is to bet the flop and check/call the turn then clearly we're getting less money in while good. We can bet the flop, he will call almost always, ditching only the trash. He will raise some of the time, and you advocate a fold. That can be argued separately, but is probably not a big loss or win in the big scheme of things anyway. But:

If we bet the flop and he calls, and we then check to him on the turn, you're hoping he bets the turn rather than take a free card, right? Because otherwise, we're just giving up more value than you said we're missing on the flop, unless the turn hits a draw for him. We will have more equity on the turn (the majority of time), and if we're looking to get two streets of value with our hand it should be the turn and the river. So if you bet the flop out of fear of missing value, are you looking to get three streets of value, i.e. bet/bet/bet?

So, lines after the flop, guys.

Dr_Dick: I don't mean to come off as jerk, but it sounds like you're spouting catchphrases, and I'm not sure you know what "pot control" means if you're saying I'm losing it by checking. I advocate giving up initiative, but you saying that as if it's obviously a bad thing is not going to go unchallenged: why is that a bad thing?

The idea of giving up immediate value vs. an opponent because you'll be playing a session with him is really not good. You don't know how many more hands you get to play with him before he's off to watch TV, or before someone else stacks him and/or he simply leaves.

combuboom said:

as an addendum, against decent/good players (villain is not included in this), you should also be inclined to bet this because when you c/c on this board you basically give away the strength of your hand and make it easier for them to barrel you. you end up defining your range while leaving their range completely undefined, and they have position on you. that's a horrible position to put yourself in. it's also bad for balance if you're checking MPTK here since it makes your betting range super weak (either continuation bets with air, or super strong hands... i know which one is more likely)

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Eh. I'd never check a set, here, versus anyone. Part of the idea behind checking the flop is to avoid being raised when you'd rather see another street but this is clearly not the case with sets. People who check sets on this flop (or virtually any flop) are a bit funny in the head.

Regarding betting into a tag with AT, give me a range for that tag and explain your reasoning. I'm not necessarily against betting, but I don't think it's trivial.

Edit: I just re-read that paragraph and noticed "i know which one is more likely." Are you suggesting that you're more likely to bet air than strength on this board? I think that's horrible. I don't like checking monsters versus anyone on this board, and that includes the flopped straight or top set. We've already been over how rock hard this flop hit most calling ranges, so if you're worried about losing value versus villain with AT, but not if you check with a set, I think there's something wrong.

it's not really about getting 3 streets of value. often cards will come on the turn or river where we won't be able to even get 1 or 2 streets, particularly on a board like this. as a bonus, some of the time you will hit two pair or trips and then be able to get those 3 streets that you obviously miss when you check

against this player i'm betting any turn that's not a J, 9, or K. because players this bad will call again with every pair + gutshot, the majority of which we beat, KT, KJ, whatever. i'd be making the bet smallish but obv big enough that he's making a mistake by calling with those hands. and again, if he raises turn it's a super easy fold and we get to choose our bet size

F Paulsson said:

Eh. I'd never check a set, here, versus anyone. Part of the idea behind checking the flop is to avoid being raised when you'd rather see another street but this is clearly not the case with sets. People who check sets on this flop (or virtually any flop) are a bit funny in the head.

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huh? that's exactly the point. you'd never check a strong hand here... hence when you do check, vs. decent players, fill in the blank

Edit: I just re-read that paragraph and noticed "i know which one is more likely." Are you suggesting that you're more likely to bet air than strength on this board? I think that's horrible. I don't like checking monsters versus anyone on this board, and that includes the flopped straight or top set. We've already been over how rock hard this flop hit most calling ranges, so if you're worried about losing value versus villain with AT, but not if you check with a set, I think there's something wrong.

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you're completely misunderstanding. the entire point is that you should allllways be betting strong hands on this board. see above. where did you get that i'm saying to check sets? however when "strong hands" is defined as like TPTK or better, then when you c-bet, you're going to have more "weak hands" than "strong hands" in your range. i'm probably not c-betting this flop with air against this fishy player because he'll call so much. that's why i had this in the section about playing against decent/good players. you make yourself incredibly exploitable if you're only betting your TPTK+ and your air here

combuboom said:

it's not really about getting 3 streets of value. often cards will come on the turn or river where we won't be able to even get 1 or 2 streets, particularly on a board like this. as a bonus, some of the time you will hit two pair or trips and then be able to get those 3 streets that you obviously miss when you check

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What cards will come off on the turn that will deny us all streets of value? Why is a deuce a better card to bet/fold the turn with than a 9?

I check this flop, and if he checks back, I'm betting any turn, and I think I have a super easy fold if he raises. My line looks trappy (as Dr_Dick pointed out) and it takes a special breed of opponent to give up the option of a cheap river to semibluff raise the turn when I bet into him. This gets me two bets.

If he bets the flop, I'm calling and I'm calling most turns. If he bets the flop and checks back the turn, I'm betting any river. This gets me two bets.

If he bets the flop and the turn, I'll bet/fold small on most rivers. This gives me two+ bets.

against this player i'm betting any turn that's not a J, 9, or K. because players this bad will call again with every pair + gutshot, the majority of which we beat, KT, KJ, whatever. i'd be making the bet smallish but obv big enough that he's making a mistake by calling with those hands. and again, if he raises turn it's a super easy fold and we get to choose our bet size

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... and on the river you..?

This comes down to whether you want two or three streets for value. Unless you're advocating three streets, I don't see why betting the flop is the better line.

i'm probably betting tiny on river to get called by those weak pairs, assuming it's not one of the bad cards

but there are already several points in this thread made by me and others on the merits of betting the flop, none of them hinge on necessarily getting 3 streets of value

combuboom said:

You're completely misunderstanding. the entire point is that you should allllways be betting strong hands on this board. see above. where did you get that i'm saying to check sets? however when "strong hands" is defined as like TPTK or better, then when you c-bet, you're going to have more "weak hands" than "strong hands" in your range. i'm probably not c-betting this flop with air against this fishy player because he'll call so much. that's why i had this in the section about playing against decent/good players. you make yourself incredibly exploitable if you're only betting your TPTK+ and your air here

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It was the "your betting range is super weak" that threw me off. Now that I know what you mean, I just think you're wrong.

Count up the combos of air vs. the combos of monsters I'll have on this flop. The distribution is not heavily weighted towards air, because there's very little air for me to have. That's the tricky part about this board. I can have 22-77, but other than that, I have at least a gutshot, and most often a pair to go with it as well, which are hands that I check. So my "air" is 36 hands, and my TPTK+ is pretty close to that. TPTK is 12, straight is 4 (J9s; I don't typically open J9o), 9 sets and sometimes QT.

combuboom said:

i'm probably betting tiny on river to get called by those weak pairs, assuming it's not one of the bad cards

but there are already several points in this thread made by me and others on the merits of betting the flop, none of them hinge on necessarily getting 3 streets of value

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I get the idea that most of them hinge on him being a passive calling station who we don't want to miss value on the flop from.