$25 NLHE Full Ring: 1st cash game ever

sedlacekj

sedlacekj

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I bought in a min $ so I am shortstacked at 20 BB

Hero in SB has 4.57
BB has 9.50
UTG has 14.68
UTG-1 has 19.78 and is inactive
LG has 16.04
HJ has 36.12
CO has 17.20
Button has 8.75

Hero has 3s4c in the SB and action folds to the Button who raises to .50 (min)
Hero decides to play marginal hand and calls
BB calls.

Flop AhTd5h

Hero check
BB check
Button raise .35
Hero call
BB fold

Turn 2s

Hero check
Button raise .25 (he seems either nervous of the flush or straight draw, but I expected a jam here, or he has a TX hand rather than an AX hand for showdown value)
Hero raises 1.54 (2/3 pot) I have a straight, and want to extract value.
Button calls

River 10s
I jam all in
Button calls shows KhTh (It was him with the flush draw! and I was right about the T in hand)
I win pot

Was my 2/3 pot raise too risky of him folding? Was I reading the player right on the lower bet size at the turn? Did I just get lucky? Is there something I should be considering that I missed? Was putting my stack in correct?
 
Matt Vaughan

Matt Vaughan

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What the heck... you say it's your first cash game ever. Okay, great!

Then you buy in for 20bb... whyyyyyyy??? This is not even really a "cash game" if you're going to short stack with 20bb. But fine, whatever, at least you should know you've gotta play really tight ranges and be looking to mostly just get it in pre--

NOW WAIT A MINUTE.

Seriously man what are you doing with 43o and no stack behind in the SB???

Fold pre. AND IT'S NOT CLOSE.

Fold flop. AND IT'S NOT CLOSE.

Okay, cool, we got there on the turn... no justice in poker.

I guess once we get here we can start stuffing the money in but seriously what the actual hell. I feel like this whole hand is a troll cause you are telling me you buy in for 20bb and start playing like 70% of hands out of the SB in your first cash game ever... So for your bankroll and my own sanity I hope this isn't real.
 
bbennie1

bbennie1

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I wanted to be nicer about it than Scourrge but in truth I couldn't agree more. I'm playing micro-stakes and I'm winning long-term, but there are times where I loose $10 which is 5 buy-ins and then win 6 buy-ins. If you loose, you loose your bankroll. If you want to be able to keep playing and learn the game as a beginner you should play as low as possible.
 
sedlacekj

sedlacekj

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What the heck... you say it's your first cash game ever. Okay, great!

Then you buy in for 20bb... whyyyyyyy??? This is not even really a "cash game" if you're going to short stack with 20bb. But fine, whatever, at least you should know you've gotta play really tight ranges and be looking to mostly just get it in pre--

NOW WAIT A MINUTE.

Seriously man what are you doing with 43o and no stack behind in the SB???

Fold pre. AND IT'S NOT CLOSE.

Fold flop. AND IT'S NOT CLOSE.

Okay, cool, we got there on the turn... no justice in poker.

I guess once we get here we can start stuffing the money in but seriously what the actual hell. I feel like this whole hand is a troll cause you are telling me you buy in for 20bb and start playing like 70% of hands out of the SB in your first cash game ever... So for your bankroll and my own sanity I hope this isn't real.

Clarification note: Yes this was my first cash game (a real game), but I had about 50.000 hands at MTT already. I do usually fold this hand, but I thought I should defend the blinds with something and hadn't decided what I should do that with just yet. I know it is a bad hand! I also thought a min bet was a weak blind steal attempt. I would not have raised though, just call for 2 BB then fold was my plan, but the flop was decent for me, so I chuckled devilishly and continued to play the hand. Post-flop I have 4 outs to a straight, so 16% chance to win my out. When the button raises .35, this gives me 17% pot odds, so it is still close enough for call. (1% off). I am not sure why his raises are so small. Notice how each raise the villain gave was progressively smaller? Once I made the straight, he still had TT and flush draw, so I am surprised he calls, but once he makes the set on the river no surprises there.

The nice thing was that I showed a 43o at showdown, and everybody placed me in the maniac category and gave me value for all my AA, KK, AK, and QQ hands for about 50 rounds. They just could not imagine I played tighter after that.
 
M

mikeisthebestever

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My eyes.. wtf lol..

Fold preflop.

This type of play is what the guys at my local casino do at 1/2. They get value bet to death chasing draws. They get there once in awhile but lose it all back within an hour.
 
Matt Vaughan

Matt Vaughan

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Clarification note: Yes this was my first cash game (a real game), but I had about 50.000 hands at MTT already. I do usually fold this hand, but I thought I should defend the blinds with something and hadn't decided what I should do that with just yet. I know it is a bad hand! I also thought a min bet was a weak blind steal attempt. I would not have raised though, just call for 2 BB then fold was my plan, but the flop was decent for me, so I chuckled devilishly and continued to play the hand. Post-flop I have 4 outs to a straight, so 16% chance to win my out. When the button raises .35, this gives me 17% pot odds, so it is still close enough for call. (1% off). I am not sure why his raises are so small. Notice how each raise the villain gave was progressively smaller? Once I made the straight, he still had TT and flush draw, so I am surprised he calls, but once he makes the set on the river no surprises there.

The nice thing was that I showed a 43o at showdown, and everybody placed me in the maniac category and gave me value for all my AA, KK, AK, and QQ hands for about 50 rounds. They just could not imagine I played tighter after that.


You have to take an objective look at what you are doing man.

You say "I hadn't decided what to defend the blinds with yet" - so you think you are supposed to defend the blinds, but don't know what that means, since in general we shouldn't be calling hands out of the SB, particularly really really bad ones.

You say "I know it's a bad hand" but you played it anyway without any sort of concrete reason - do you know what makes this hand bad? That it's really hard to play profitably? The fact that we're in the SB and not the BB?

You say "my opponent played really badly" - that's true but doesn't make what you are choosing to do inherently good. We beat bad opponents by playing well. We beat good opponents by playing REALLY well.

We make money by making good decisions, which starts with preflop. If you don't know what constitutes a good preflop decision, then I suggest free training resources on preflop ranges in cash games as a bare bones starting point.

Edit: I just noticed you also are misusing the rule of 2 and 4. He's giving you 17% pot odds but you don't know whether he's also going to bet turn, so you can't use the rule of 4 to say you have 16% equity off of 4 outs. You need to use the rule of 2 since you are only guaranteed to see the next street. This is just a massive gap in understanding and you're applying it to a hand that is near the absolute bottom of the starting hand distribution. 50,000 hands means nothing if you're misapplying concepts like this.

This may seem harsh but everything does when you don't realize what you need to work on yet. I hope the statements above make it a little clearer where some of those gaps are.
 
sedlacekj

sedlacekj

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You have to take an objective look at what you are doing man.

You say "I hadn't decided what to defend the blinds with yet" - so you think you are supposed to defend the blinds, but don't know what that means, since in general we shouldn't be calling hands out of the SB, particularly really really bad ones.

This may seem harsh but everything does when you don't realize what you need to work on yet. I hope the statements above make it a little clearer where some of those gaps are.


Thanks for your advice here, really. I have since looked into what hands constitute blinds defence, and it seems broadways are best because they are blockers.
 
John A

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If you learn anything from this hand it should be that you need to have a tight range in the SB, and connectors need to be played in position as much as possible.

Fold the flop. Just take some time and read up on poker more. There are some really huge mistakes in this hand.
 
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G00fyAA

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I look at this and see a big mistake in your short buyin...just don't do it...you want to get full value when you get AA and villain will go all in, right?

Also... as you go up in stakes (particularly live) the villains will punish you for buying in small.

Second just folding the flop
 
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