Hi there TakMits, good morning, how you doing? Thank you very much for sharing your hand with the CardsChat community! Nice hand.
Without any further duo, let's take a closer look into this scenario:
One: We are not playing AK or AA in the first place. We are playing the opponent and our relative equity vs its range. Our opponent here loves to bluff postflop, so why do we care for putting chips in the middle when the Seat 4 will certainly do it?
This Villain seems very spewy, and against a player like this, I see no reason at all for making the pot grows. Yeah, people say a lot the "aggression prints money" but what they never explain is when is profitable to be passive.
In a thousands scenarios at the micros it would be more profitable to be passive than aggressive and this is one classic scenarios. (seat 4 is way too spewy)
How would I play this hand when I raise from UTG the top of my range and get two callers, one of them in position?
A) In the flop there is a nice pot for fighting for (10 blinds) and the recreational player in the SB made a ludicrous donks flop (donks flop for 1 blind). Here is the critical point of the hand, IMO:
Personally, I would never raise here with ANY PART OF MY RANGE!
If I had KK, JJ, 77, AA, KJ, AQ, A7s (that I decided to open because I saw two weak players ahead, seats 4 and 5) and specially with AK, I would simply call the 1 blind donkey and wait for the spewy player to try to bluff and buy the pot.
When I raise those weak players here, I am simply making them fold all of the trashes they would have and continue only with the best part of their ranges. (most of times)
By the same token, the Seat 4 loves to bluff, loves to vomit chips in the table and I don't care how strange it will look if I call a donks flop of 1 blind here, what I care the most is to induce the Seat 4 Villain to make even more mistakes and bluff 100% of its range, which it will probably do.
Turn:
Lol, when you raise here and get two callers, I would simply rethink the situation again, and I would not -C-Bet turn with any part of my range, again. Even if I had QT here.
My other value hands are now weak in the face of this turn. If I have now pocket aces with a set I am not comfortable because either Villain can have QT or it can have a Qx or a Tx, or two spades that could easily bluff me out of the pot.
With a particular Turn like this, I am never happy if I have KK, JJ, 77 and AA (The sets), I am never happy if I have KJ, AJ, AK, A7s (two pair).
However, although we do not have the nuts in the turn (far away from it), checking can give us the possibility of controlling the pot and not folding this very strong hand in the river. Yes, we have a strong hand, NOT THE NUTS! We should not play our strong hands as we have the nuts itself.
We can check this turn and let Seat 4 in position bluff us, so we call. If it comes a scary river such as Qx or another spade (Villain will never have too many flushes of spades here but..), as the pot geometry it is in a respectful size, we can either easily call, knowing that the player is going to bluff us a lot with worse two pair (KJ, A7, AQ, etc), seat 4 is going to float and bluff us with absolute air, any Kx, Jx, Ax, Qx that it decided to float, and once in a while, even when Seat 4 have a Tx, we can call this river because we didn't bluff turn with two pair.
Our line is very common at the micros: Bet flop/bet turn/check-river. By doing this versus a player in position, we turned a precious value hand into a complete junk. If we do either call flop, or check turn, we will have much more possibility of calling the river with our very strong value hand.
Many weak players as Seat 4 will defend that a board like that is good for bluffing and sometimes seat 4 have just air, or a small pocket pair and floated you out of the hand in a very scary river (because we bluffed a player who loves too much to bluff)
Sorry for my candor, I hope it helps you! Anything I am right here, just ask. Have a nice day!
Regards;
Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa
