$4 NLHE 6-max: Lets play a small pot against a smack-tard.

This is 2NL, and villain is an idiot among 2NL idiots. Pretty epic bad. Don't ask for more reads than that, because I'm too lazy to fire up a HUD, and you shouldn't be HUD'ing at 2NL anyways.

My image is probably bad. I can't know for certain, but every 'tard down here complains that I raise every hand.

poker stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 4 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Hero (BB): $5.03
CO: $2.04
BTN: $2.83
SB: $2.67

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is BB with 5♣ K♠
1 fold, BTN calls $0.02, 1 fold, Hero checks

Flop: ($0.05) 4♠ A♦ T♦ (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($0.05) 4♣ (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $0.06, Hero calls $0.06

River: ($0.17) 6♣ (2 players)
Hero does something, and the button does something.


1) Who here likes the turn call? Is a raise better?
2) What do you do on the river when we're first to act?
3) After you make your river action, how do you respond to future actions from the BTN?

Lol this hand is horrible and I keep looking for the fold button so I can get a new one.

His range is likely small pairs and trash if he's an uber-tard. The turn doesn't improve him and he likely still has nothing after the c/c flop. If we're calling then it's for some showdown value with k high which is fairly sick at 2nl. The river bricks and I'd probably just c/c again. I'm not betting cause he calls with everything. He can defo bluff something tard like though.

I fold to the turn bet. If villain is a loose passive drooler he probably could check the flop with a rag ace, ten or four. As played i check fold river

I would fold the turn, but raising is better than calling...

atlantafalcons0 said:

I would fold the turn, but raising is better than calling...

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Why?

Such a tiny pot, and you're OOP, why even bother bluffing or contesting the pot? If you're gonna try to steal it, be the one betting first. Once he bet the turn, I just let it go.

Just wait till you have something to risk the chips. You have position on him every hand except this one. Why pick this one to take the risk. If he's as bad as you say, then he's gonna pay you off.

Okay, apparently this hand sucks at stimulating discussion. Here's my thought process & the results of the hand and you guys tell me if its FPS or not.

1) Villain limped preflop on the button, so we can likely remove AK & maybe AQ from his range. We can probably discount AA & TT as well.

2) I have a read on villain that he min-donks 2nd pair type hands into the PFR. Not a huge read since most retards do that at these stakes, but I suppose I should've included it.

3) Villain overbet the turn. Which in my opinion polarizes his range to bluffs and monsters.

So I have showdown value with king high, my opponent doesn't likely have a big ace or a big set, and he's narrowed his range to bluffs & monster hands. So we're looking at 4x, AT, and air in his range. Given his crazy looseness preflop, I figured I was ahead, and pokerstove agrees:

59.691% { 99-22, AJs-A2s, K2s+, Q2s+, J7s+, T7s+, 96s+, 86s+, 75s+, 64s+, 54s, 43s, 32s, AJo-A2o, K7o+, Q8o+, J8o+, T7o+, 97o+, 86o+, 75o+, 64o+, 54o }
40.309% { K5o }

Even if I don't narrow his hand range at all, and just give him the standard donkey limping range (the top 50% of hands, with TT-AA & AQ/AK taken out) I still have enough equity to call this bet (assuming he gives up with his air on the river and bets all his good hands). But that includes all the 1 pair type hands in his range that I don't think he has.

So yeah, my idea was that he's repping monsters & bluffs, because he overbet the turn. If he has a legit hand, he'll probably continue to bet pretty big on the river. If he has air, he'll check back, or kinda chicken out & bet sorta smallish. Thus my plan is to call here, and call a river bet that's less than say... half pot?

Anyways, a lot of you guys said "Oh, on to the next hand, why even mess with this?" Because we're not just trying to make big hands, or stack him in one large pot. We're trying to make +EV decisions in every pot. Just because the pot is small doesn't mean there's no money to be had here. In fact, its my opinion that the small pots tend to have the largest edges floating around in them because no one really cares about that small amount of money in the middle. Blind stealing is one of the most +EV things you can do, and that's just to steal a 1.5bb pot!

Plus, this post is a bit of a brag. But seriously, I outsmarted a retard at 2NL, so its kinda like I won the special olympics.

Turn: ($0.05) 4♣ (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $0.06, Hero calls $0.06

River: ($0.17) 6♣ (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

Final Pot: $0.17
Hero shows 5♣ K♠ (a pair of Fours)
BTN mucks 9♠ J♠
Hero wins $0.17
(Rake: $-0.00)

I think too often at these stakes he hits that 6 on the turn or some other BS and beats you.

fold and get away fom this small pot to stack another fish.

I don't mind it but I think we should be folding to even a 1/2 pot river bet. I probably call 1/4 pot river bet but any more than that and I just don't think he's bluffing 2 streets often enough. He needs to be bluffing with air > 25% if we're calling a 1/2 pot river bet (only greater than 16% for a 1/4 pot bet). Sometimes he'll be bluffing with the best hand (22,33,55) so once we add those to his bluffs I just don't think calling a 1/2 pot bet on the river is going to be +Ev. Don't mind the turn call at all though because I don't think he'll be bluffing an Ace high board on the river very often so I expect to see SD quite often and my hand actually has decent equity against his range.

Oh yeah and I don't get the mentality of several poster who don't think it's worth fighting for small pots. Winning more than your fair share of small orphaned pots will have a HUGE impact on your winrate. Most of our big pots are won with big hands in cooler situations that, believe it or not, don't add significantly to our winrates! How's that, you ask. Well because when the situations are reversed we generally lose just as many big pots in cooler situations as we win, so the net effect is zero. So the majority of our winnings come for stealing the blinds, winning small pots with cbets, value betting thinner than our opponents, AND picking up small pots that people don't seem to want to fight for. Do those 4 things well and you can crush.

WVHillbilly said:

Oh yeah and I don't get the mentality of several poster who don't think it's worth fighting for small pots. Winning more than your fair share of small orphaned pots will have a HUGE impact on your winrate. Most of our big pots are won with big hands in cooler situations that, believe it or not, don't add significantly to our winrates! How's that, you ask. Well because when the situations are reversed we generally lose just as many big pots in cooler situations as we win, so the net effect is zero. So the majority of our winnings come for stealing the blinds, winning small pots with cbets, value betting thinner than our opponents, AND picking up small pots that people don't seem to want to fight for. Do those 4 things well and you can crush.

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I want to quote this so all of you people playing 2NL have to read it twice. Because you should probably read it 4 times.

I think you’re overthinking it. It’s the very bottom limit. Since this villain is purportedly an “idiot,” it’s a waste of time to figure him out.

It’s extremely easy to win consistently at 2NL. Just play straight forward ABC poker. Rarely bluff and avoid building a big pot unless you have a big hand. Value bet when you do have a big hand. Many newbies will keep calling you with mediocre hands, and fail to punish you fully when they have the better hand.

Against stiffer competition, it is necessary to find an edge everywhere you can, but at the very bottom level, don’t overthink and assume villain knows what he is doing. You’ll just trip yourself up.

blueskies said:

I think you’re overthinking it. It’s the very bottom limit. Since this villain is purportedly an “idiot,” it’s a waste of time to figure him out.

It’s extremely easy to win consistently at 2NL. Just play straight forward ABC poker. Rarely bluff and avoid building a big pot unless you have a big hand. Value bet when you do have a big hand. Many newbies will keep calling you with mediocre hands, and fail to punish you fully when they have the better hand.

Against stiffer competition, it is necessary to find an edge everywhere you can, but at the very bottom level, don’t overthink and assume villain knows what he is doing. You’ll just trip yourself up.

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Figuring out your idiots is FAR from a waste of time. They have $$s and they're just looking to give them to someone. First one to them wins, so be quick about it.

Also no one ever mentioned trying to bluff the idiot or building a big pot. Well actually someone said they would rather raise the turn than call but they have no idea what they're talking about so it got ignored.

And you're right about value betting when you have a big hand, but I bet our definitions of "big" hand would be quite different when we're in a hand against an idiot. Remember it's all relative and if we have someone who will call often enough with worse 3rd pair can be a big hand, especially true at 2nl because there are a lot more idiots.

Remember too that if you're not finding every edge possible you're stunting your development and your advancement. 2nl players should work a lot harder than someone at 100nl because 1) they have more to learn, 2) the opportunity costs of studying rather than playing are very low for the 2nl guy, and 3) they should be trying to win as much as humanly possible to move up quickly to make more money.

Oh yeah and I think this hand can be considered ABC poker assuming you know the full alphabet.

WVHillbilly said:

Figuring out your idiots is FAR from a waste of time. They have $$s and they're just looking to give them to someone. First one to them wins, so be quick about it.

Also no one ever mentioned trying to bluff the idiot or building a big pot. Well actually someone said they would rather raise the turn than call but they have no idea what they're talking about so it got ignored.

And you're right about value betting when you have a big hand, but I bet our definitions of "big" hand would be quite different when we're in a hand against an idiot. Remember it's all relative and if we have someone who will call often enough with worse 3rd pair can be a big hand, especially true at 2nl because there are a lot more idiots.

Remember too that if you're not finding every edge possible you're stunting your development and your advancement. 2nl players should work a lot harder than someone at 100nl because 1) they have more to learn, 2) the opportunity costs of studying rather than playing are very low for the 2nl guy, and 3) they should be trying to win as much as humanly possible to move up quickly to make more money.

Oh yeah and I think this hand can be considered ABC poker assuming you know the full alphabet.

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Would a check raise here to see where you are at on the turn? BB limps on there postion to represent a set. You have came along this far on the hand, why not make the steal here? Villian raising here on the turn to say what? I'm slowing playing aces or my rag ace is now a fullhouse. This put in better postion to act first on river for what ever card comes. Have to assume with villians postion, you check the river they going bet (didn't play out that way though).

Not so sure the comment made to raise the turn not check isn't a good move. Maybe stated as re-raise, does give you little more control on what the river card is. They could give the hand up on turn, come along to see river card if doesnt improve there hand they checked down like they did. Any bet you make on river gives you a better chance to steal without a showdown.

Like you mentioned in a prior post "Winning more than your fair share of small orphaned pots will have a HUGE impact on your winrate" (great point btw). Think the turn check raise would apply here, if not you sure have some information to make a play on the river.

That is my two cents on a 17 cent hand.

WVHillbilly has a crush on me.

He seems to target me for public humiliation.



I was just talking about generally anyway.

A check raise could be great against a smack-tard.

The thing is "finding out where we are in the hand" is not a valid reason for betting/raising. We can't raise the turn for value, since he's not calling with worse that King high and we can't raise as a bluff because he's hardly ever folding anything that beats us (at least he's not folding the stuff that beats us often enough to make bluff raising profitable).

So the only thing raising the turn accomplishes is to take away the small amount of equity he has when he holds worse (in this case the 6 pair outs he has for about 12% equity). Also I think that we're going to find out "where we are" on the river without risking additional money. If he bets any decent amount on the river we can pretty happily fold knowing that we didn't have the best hand. It's a spot where we're calling the turn expecting to see lots of SD with a decent chance of winning as long as no (or close to no) further $$ go into the pot.

atlantafalcons0 said:

WVHillbilly has a crush on me.

He seems to target me for public humiliation.



I was just talking about generally anyway.

A check raise could be great against a smack-tard.

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I put a little after my comments.

Why do you think a ch/raise would be great here?

WVHillbilly said:

I put a little after my comments.

Why do you think a ch/raise would be great here?

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Sorry, I didn't see that.

I was just thinking it would give us a better chance to win the money right now.

atlantafalcons0 said:

Sorry, I didn't see that.

I was just thinking it would give us a better chance to win the money right now.

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Doesn't it also give us the chance to lose more money right now? Does your raise function as a value bet or a bluff?

I think it functions as both.

??? So you expect him to both call with worse AND fold better?

atlantafalcons0 said:

I think it functions as both.

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Obviously villain will call our raise with QJ drawing to a straight, and fold pocket 2's. Thus its both! Jesus WV, you're so bad at pokerz.

... Falcon. Put our opponent on a range. Once you do that, you should see pretty obviously why raising the turn is so awefully bad here it makes my head spin.

WVHillbilly said:

The thing is "finding out where we are in the hand" is not a valid reason for betting/raising. We can't raise the turn for value, since he's not calling with worse that King high and we can't raise as a bluff because he's hardly ever folding anything that beats us (at least he's not folding the stuff that beats us often enough to make bluff raising profitable).

So the only thing raising the turn accomplishes is to take away the small amount of equity he has when he holds worse (in this case the 6 pair outs he has for about 12% equity). Also I think that we're going to find out "where we are" on the river without risking additional money. If he bets any decent amount on the river we can pretty happily fold knowing that we didn't have the best hand. It's a spot where we're calling the turn expecting to see lots of SD with a decent chance of winning as long as no (or close to no) further $$ go into the pot.

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Makes a lot of sense. Well said and well taken.

This thread deserves more <3 and is full of nuggets of gold advice. Must say though, using the word retard seems to be below you c9. You are obviously very intelligent and think you could use a better term. Don't mean to derail here cause I really, really like this thread. Just do not care for that word. And in case you're wondering it's not because I'm the politically correct police, have a friend's son who has Downs syndrome. Coming back tomorrow to highlight some of the good stuff here. Should be nominated for TOTM imo for the micro poker advice.

I think you can check-raise the river vs. a thinking opponent who can fold Ax on the river. We are the BB and BTN has to seriously consider that we have a 4. However, I don't think such a play would work at this level, and a really advanced player might see it as an attempt to fold out a chop with A9.

Raise pre IMO, lead flop, TID