$25NL 6Max 1010 3betpot

I have ~200 hands on the sb
12/12/7
cbet 100%
turn cbet 100%
3bet of 8% all of which have come from the blinds 19%sb, 10%bb
Small sample but I think it's big enough to assume he's not doing it with just JJ+

Pretty sure he's capable of double barrel bluffing, not sure about 3 barrels.
If I call his flop bet, I'm gonna feel inclined to at least call most turns bets. If I raise at any point in this hand I don't think he ever calls me/shoves with a hand I beat. Not sure the best way to proceed here, call off over half my stack fold to river bet,call flop fold turn, call down, or turn my hand into a bluff on the flop. Any ideas?


--------------------
HAND #1
--------------------

party poker, $0.10/$0.25 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
Hand History Converter by Stoxpoker

BTN: $19.60 (78.4 bb)
SB: $25 (100 bb)
BB: $48.35 (193.4 bb)
MP: $23.95 (95.8 bb)
Hero (CO): $25 (100 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is CO with T:heart: T:club:
MP folds, Hero raises to $0.75, BTN folds, SB raises to $2.50, BB folds, Hero calls $1.75

Flop: ($5.25) 7:heart: 9:spade: 4:club: (2 players)
SB bets $3.50, Hero ?

Seeing as villain is tight I'd prefer to raise flop and find out if he's got bigger pair straight away. Chances are he hasn't since he seems to be 3 betting the top of his range OOP rather than just AA, KK or AK. You'll probably find AQ, AJ or even AT in his 3 bets as well. Any A,K,Q or J on turn is going to make life difficult for you as well. Calling gives you very little information and in this spot you need it.

His range is really wide, but I still don't think there's very many 9's in it (which is the only reason to raise the flop). His AF is large enough that he'll be double-barreling pretty often. I'd call here & call/raise any non ace turn card.

Raising for information is, um, bad.

c9h13no3 said:

His range is really wide, but I still don't think there's very many 9's in it (which is the only reason to raise the flop). His AF is large enough that he'll be double-barreling pretty often. I'd call here & call/raise any non ace turn card.

Raising for information is, um, bad.

Click to expand...

Raising for information might be considered bad by some but I prefer it to calling with the worst hand on multiple streets when raising earlier could have saved me some chips. TT is tricky hand unless you hit the set because so many overcards can come that will leave you guessing where you stand. If villain has overcards here I'd prefer to make him pay more to see turn.

Another reason I prefer to raise here is to give more cover to my flopped sets and straights which I would play the same way. So even if my reason for raising was mainly for info I think the fact that it was an aggressive play helps to get paid later because people give less credit to aggro players. Besides that TT here is fairly weak and taking down the pot isn't a bad result.

Another reason I prefer to raise here is to give more cover to my flopped sets and straights

Click to expand...

Flop a straight, 1010?

Evil means for balance, so villains can't know that all raised flops are monsters. Not talking about flopping straights with specifically TT.

D'wilius said:

Evil means for balance, so villains can't know that all raised flops are monsters. Not talking about flopping straights with specifically TT.

Click to expand...

Balance @ 25NL is worthless. ****ing worthless to be more accurate.

I prefer it to calling with the worst hand on multiple streets when raising earlier could have saved me some chips.

Click to expand...

How the hell does raising save you chips?

c9h13no3 said:

Balance @ 25NL is worthless. ****ing worthless to be more accurate.

How the hell does raising save you chips?

Click to expand...

I think your first statement is wrong. Sure you don't need the balance that you would need at 2000NL but you do need some especially if the table has been stable for a while. There are lots of players out there trying to improve their game even at 25nl who do observe whats happening at the table. You cant just wait for sets and straights to raise or you'll likely get no action.

If the table has lots of players changing then of course it's not important because they wont have time to notice that your basically nut pedalling.

How does raising the flop save me chips? It's cheaper to put in a 3x raise than to call down pot size bets on all streets especially if 3 or more players called initial raise. Against some players even a min raise will do it which makes it cheaper still. Also in the OP's hand with TT raising might fold overcards hand which could hit on turn or river.

eg. you are on button and call UTG 3x bb raise, mp calls, folds to you, you call and blinds fold.

10.5 BB pot
flop
UTG bets 10BB mp folds you raise to 30BB
UTG now has to make a decision to fold, raise or call
if UTG has mediocre hand he might decide to call raise and try to check it down and then you can do the same for pot control or try to extract more value if you really feel you are ahead
if UTG has air and folds you might have missed some value but you have taken down the pot
if UTG has monster you'll more than likely be reraised since he'll probably assume you have a great hand that you might want to stack off with and you can fold knowing that you are probably way behind a great majority of the time.

total invested so far 33bb

or you can call:

10.5 BB pot
flop
UTG bets 10BB mp folds you call 10BB

total invested so far 13bb

30.5 pot
turn
UTG bets 30BB you call 30 BB

total invested so far 43bb

90.5 bb pot
river
UTG shoves for remaining 57BB
you call for 57BB and UTG shows higher PP or hit one of his overcards and takes your stack

The calling scenario has happened to me a few times when I've had medium to high PP's and flopped an overpair. At each stage a call seemed reasonable but the end result was watching my stack get shipped to villain. It just hurts too much playing passive except against maniacs who love to bluff all their chips off.

EvilEmperor said:

I think your first statement is wrong. Sure you don't need the balance that you would need at 2000NL but you do need some especially if the table has been stable for a while. There are lots of players out there trying to improve their game even at 25nl who do observe whats happening at the table. You cant just wait for sets and straights to raise or you'll likely get no action.

Click to expand...

Umm... wrong. Some of the biggest winners in my database at 25NL ran like 15/14 and just nut-peddled their asses off, even playing 6-max. No one adjusts at these stakes, not even the regs. I bluffed like a complete crackhead while playing 25NL, because players just wouldn't adjust their calling ranges. Regs just do not stack off without TPTK, so I'd raise like every single flop. 25NL players DO NOT ADJUST and therefore you DO NOT NEED BALANCE. And if you're going to balance raising a flop like this, there are a trillion better hands to balance it with (AK, AQ, KQ, T8s, A7s).

EvilEmperor said:

How does raising the flop save me chips? It's cheaper to put in a 3x raise than to call down pot size bets on all streets

Click to expand...

1) Why do we have to call down all 3 streets? Often we can make reads later in the hands based on the turn card, his bet size, timing, and make some folds earlier. Also, villain is not betting pot the whole way, obviously... He bet 3.50 into 5.25 on the flop. Raising the flop is pretty much equivalent to calling a turn bet.
2) Raising shuts out all worse hands, and gets action from hands we don't want.

TT is too strong to turn into a bluff, and too weak to raise for value, so we call! By raising it, you're essentially turning it into a bluff. When you call with TT against a 3-bet, you have a bluff catcher on like 80% of flops. But blind vs. button, a bluff catcher in a big pot can be pretty profitable against aggro maniacs like this. And how do we catch bluffs? We certainly don't raise... All you new players raise all of your weak hands that are bluff catchers because you're weak/tight, and you slowplay all of your hands that want to play big pots. Its such a backwards way of playing. When you have a hand that can only beat a bluff, you should be more inclined to slowplay, because you want to induce bluffs.

His range is like 10% of hands, and yes, we can fold out a ton of his hands with a raise. But we have a lot of those hands crushed! Why would we want to stop them from bluffing the turn? We just make it easy to play all of his hands (he folds his bluffs, and he 3-bets his overpairs). Calling makes it more likely that he will make a mistake.

And villain will bet the turn 100% of the time given his stats, so call and let him continue bluffing with his whole range. If we get another bet out of all 10% that he 3-bets preflop, that is WAY more profitable than getting him to fold his bluffs on the flop.

So yeah, you can raise this flop and make a play that's like +$2 in EV most of the time by raising. I'm not disputing that you will get him to fold a large percentage of the time. However, you can also call and get him to spew tons of money to us because of his over-aggressiveness. The EV of getting him to bet the turn with his entire 3-betting range is huge, and its a bet we really shouldn't pass up on.

We're not playing to win pots, or get information. We're playing to win money. Take that line that allows us to win the most money against our opponent's entire range.

I understand what Evil is trying to say, although I'm not quite following the whole "saving money" concept. However, I gotta agree with C9. He basically already pointed it out:

We have a player with decent size hand range going into the flop for which we can use our 10's as a bluff catcher. We could raise this flop and possibly get calls from overcards, but if he doesn't hit on the turn he's probably shutting down. Not to mention him possibly shoving and now we're looking at a pair of 10's for our whole stack.

We just call the flop, and according to his stats, we are getting at least one more bet in there from him.

c9h13no3 said:

His range is really wide, but I still don't think there's very many 9's in it (which is the only reason to raise the flop). His AF is large enough that he'll be double-barreling pretty often. I'd call here & call/raise any non ace turn card.

Raising for information is, um, bad.

Click to expand...

Raising for information could be bad, but you don't raise post flop just for information, you have a hand (an overpair) and your raise could give you a free card after a turn check and you have there the option to control pot size.
Flat call and call/raise in the turn have a problem with pot size, and you must try to control the pot size beeing in position with a good hand, but clearly not the nuts.

This is kind of the classic tradeoff between raising to price out a draw and calling to induce bluffs. Against passive players, you want to raise because they will not continue to bluff you and will only put more money in if they hit their draw. Against aggressive players, you want to call, because they will keep betting even if they miss. This guy looks to be in the latter category.

I see what Evil is saying about sometimes losing less money by raising when you're behind, but you'll win so much more than that by picking off his reckless 3-barrel bluffs on future streets.

Thanks for the helpful responses, much appreciated

c9h13no3 said:

Umm... wrong. Some of the biggest winners in my database at 25NL ran like 15/14 and just nut-peddled their asses off, even playing 6-max. No one adjusts at these stakes, not even the regs.

Click to expand...

I adjust at these stakes and I'm sure I'm not alone (OP for one). I use the notes and I use a HUD and if I got you marked down as a nit you're never getting action from me. The reason some regs dont adjust is because they're multitabling and playing autopilot poker.

If you've been at the table for an hour and betting a lot of flops and suddenly you're facing a raise for the first time it doesn't take a genius to figure out you need more than 1 pair to be ahead here.

Of course at 25nl you'll get some action even if you've been playing nothing but the nuts but you'll get a lot more if you've been taking stabs at lots of pots and raising players a lot. Even total donks notice a maniac on the table who seems to be trying to take every pot and will call him down lighter than they would anyone else.

Maybe FR is different but at 6max where I play stats of 15/14 usually aren't big winners. Too easy to see them coming. Especially the ones who never cbet. If table has high turnover they'll find some suckers but if table has had the same players for a while the action dries up for them pretty quick.

There are plenty of 25NL players out there who are using HUDs and posting hands on forums like this one. Are you saying that none of these players adjust to their opponents actions?

EvilEmperor said:

There are plenty of 25NL players out there who are using HUDs and posting hands on forums like this one. Are you saying that none of these players adjust to their opponents actions?

Click to expand...

You adjusted to someone who bets the turn 100% of the time by raising the flop with a bluff catcher. Even players who know what's going on and do adjust, they don't adjust correctly.

Raising the flop represents strong hands. Therefore, you're going to fold out you opponent's weak hands, and get calls from his strong ones. This isn't rocket science. So if your opponent is folding too much, you don't raise a hand like TT. You raise a hand like AK, that has 6 outs to a possible best hand.

Richyl2008 said:

3bet of 8% all of which have come from the blinds 19%sb, 10%bb

Click to expand...

off-topic but where do u get the 3bet% from sb and bb from ? You're using HEM right ?

eNTy said:

off-topic but where do u get the 3bet% from sb and bb from ? You're using HEM right ?

Click to expand...

Pop-up stats.

LOL I havent finished the thread yet but seriously hilarious someone telling c9 that you cant only be aggressive with monsters and that he needs to stop being a nit. Not that poster should know how ironic this is but really funny.

As for balancing your play at 25 its very rediculous. Losing tons of value randomly doing this and if any regs are catching on and adjusting then they wont be there long anyway.

OK, so this is a call for sure I would say. While your sample size is a bit small to really trust turn cbets the fact its 100% makes me think he is at least doubling a lot more than he should. C9 is right that there probably arent too many 9s in his range. The only reason to raise here is for value but as c9 pointed out we dont have much value against hands that will call.

FWIW I am flatting sets here too, while a A or K might scare QQ or JJ type hands here I think its worth the risk of the times he barrels with AK or similar and I think we can still get it all in here if he has an overpair and no scare cards hit.

c9h13no3 said:

TT is too strong to turn into a bluff, and too weak to raise for value, so we call! By raising it, you're essentially turning it into a bluff. When you call with TT against a 3-bet, you have a bluff catcher on like 80% of flops. But blind vs. button, a bluff catcher in a big pot can be pretty profitable against aggro maniacs like this. And how do we catch bluffs? We certainly don't raise... All you new players raise all of your weak hands that are bluff catchers because you're weak/tight, and you slowplay all of your hands that want to play big pots. Its such a backwards way of playing. When you have a hand that can only beat a bluff, you should be more inclined to slowplay, because you want to induce bluffs.

His range is like 10% of hands, and yes, we can fold out a ton of his hands with a raise. But we have a lot of those hands crushed! Why would we want to stop them from bluffing the turn? We just make it easy to play all of his hands (he folds his bluffs, and he 3-bets his overpairs). Calling makes it more likely that he will make a mistake.

Click to expand...

Can you elaborate on this bluff-catching c9 ? How do we know if we're catching a bluff and not just paying off hands that beat us ?

I mean do you keep calling down to river. What are the cards you shut down on and if you do do you just check/fold ?

Isn't this a form of spew and unprofitable ?

Also I don't really understand how calling makes it more likely for him to make a mistake. Do you mean that if he doesn't have us beat he will most likely continue to bluff and give us more money. But then again, what if he already has us beat ?

eNTy said:

Do you mean that if he doesn't have us beat he will most likely continue to bluff and give us more money. But then again, what if he already has us beat ?

Click to expand...

Because we are playing against his entire range, and at this point the vast majority of his range is unpaired overcards. We are against an opponent who has shown a propensity for 3-betting from the blinds and double barreling a lot. We have his range pretty well crushed at this point, but if we raise, his range will only ever consist of hands that beat us. Therefore the best course of action is to try to get to showdown as cheaply as possible, with the added bonus of knowing his bets are most likely bluffs.

If we call the flop I'm pretty well convinced we have to call any non A/K turn as well. I also think we have to fold if he triple barrels.

You are on the right track. What C9 is getting at I beleive is that against his 3betting range we pretty much have a bluff catching hand, as in he doesnt have draws and any overpair beats us. Since he fires so often here he will be bluffing a ton at the turn so its best for us to be flatting this and calling a turn bet instead of raising since he will be firing a turn bet with anything here. Since its the same amount as raising its better to call two streets since if he keeps going against our raise we are almost certainly beat and if he folds we had him beat and lose the turn bet that is likely to follow. The money lost from him hitting six outer here does not make up for the times he barrels again on a missed turn.

The problem here is the river bet if he triples, I think I can find a fold there depending on bet sizes so if he is doing this as a bluff we lost value since a raise folds him out but that isnt too likely. Raising here instead of just call call is pretty bad IMO.

OK, so by raising we're only polarizing his range to hands that call/shove and have us crushed and hands that fold which were bluffs. correct ?

I'm starting to see the sense here

dsvw56 said:

Therefore the best course of action is to try to get to showdown as cheaply as possible, with the added bonus of knowing his bets are most likely bluffs.

Click to expand...

While I agree with most of your post I dont think we are flatting here to keep it cheap as possible. If he checks the turn we have to bet. Also, if he didnt double barrell so often raising would have some merit(not enough) since calling may just give him a chance at hitting an overcard.

widowmaker89 said:

While I agree with most of your post I dont think we are flatting here to keep it cheap as possible. If he checks the turn we have to bet. Also, if he didnt double barrell so often raising would have some merit(not enough) since calling may just give him a chance at hitting an overcard.

Click to expand...

Yeah, "cheaply as possible" was bad phrasing. Keeping the pot size manageable would have been a better term.