[100nl FR] Combo dr flop line?

Jagsti

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Villain is unknown, only 31 hands at 32/12/2. Im at TAG.

OK I'm happy with my 2 bet on the flop so what happens now with his 3/bet, fold - call - pooosh?

Is 2bet poooosh better than standard r/r?



poker stars, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

UTG: $105.95
UTG+1: $88.25
Hero (UTG+2): $112.35
MP1: $19
MP2: $115.95
CO: $126.75
BTN: $11.10
SB: $122.85
BB: $99.85

Pre-Flop: 9
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T
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dealt to Hero (UTG+2)
2 folds, Hero raises to $4, 5 folds, BB calls $3

Flop: ($8.50) A
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7
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6
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(2 Players)
BB bets $3, Hero raises to $13.50, BB raises to $40, Hero?
 
F Paulsson

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Why are you happy about your flop raise? There's a very strong case to be made for playing draws passively in position, but you went the other way - why?
 
Jagsti

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Well if I call and hit blank on turn, then I have a very strong hand that has now become a lot weaker. If he double barrels the blank turn, I then have no fold equity on the turn, and I'm probably not getting the odds to call his bet.

I do occasionally play draws the way you suggest, but I think it's ok to mix it up a little FP.

By playing the way I have I'm building the pot to a pretty good draw + I also have a fair bit of fold equity as well.
 
tenbob

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I don't see villian folding to a shove ever here if he three bets the flop, hence this becomes a pure and simple pot odds problem :)

Either line is fine on the flop as well IMO, pushing around a 32/12/2 is a little more difficult than pushing around a reg though, and against a loose player like this, I perfer to flat the flop and keep that pot smallish until we hit.
 
BelgoSuisse

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Well, pushing is slightly +EV if you are against a hand like AQ, it's break-even against two pairs, and it's very -EV against a set.

If you flat call, you are about 24% to hit your your hand on the turn. A bit less if 7h gives villain a full house. If you fold on the turn when you miss and manage to stack your opponent when you hit, then you have enough implied odds to make the call profitable.
 
F Paulsson

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Well if I call and hit blank on turn, then I have a very strong hand that has now become a lot weaker. If he double barrels the blank turn, I then have no fold equity on the turn, and I'm probably not getting the odds to call his bet.

I do occasionally play draws the way you suggest, but I think it's ok to mix it up a little FP.

By playing the way I have I'm building the pot to a pretty good draw + I also have a fair bit of fold equity as well.
Last thing first: I'm not saying that raising the flop is awful, not at all, but it seems you were "surprised" by him 3-betting (in the sense that it put you in a tight spot), which suggests that perhaps you hadn't thought your raise through.

Now, regarding your first paragraph, your reasoning is correct, but your conclusion ("don't call") isn't. Look at the four things that can happen if you call:

1. He checks the turn, and
a) you miss your draw. You can take the route of semibluffing now, or you can check behind for another free card to the nuts in a small pot with 100BB stacks. You're probably not going to win a big pot, but if he had nothing in particular on the flop, chances are pretty big he'd have folded to your raise anyway and you would have ended up with a 11BB pot.
b) You hit your draw. You have position; bet away. You might only win a small pot, but the same reasoning applies as above; he probably didn't have much anyway so the pot you win is usually the same as if you had raised immediately.

2. He bets the pot on the turn, and
a) you miss your draw. Now, understand that a pot-sized bet is only 14BB here. You still have 80BB behind in your stacks. While you're only getting 2:1 on your call (and you'd be 3.4:1 vs. AA), you only need to make up $20 on the river when you make your hand. In position, this is of course not a problem.
b) you hit your draw. You said you have no fold equity, so push away. Grats you, putting in 80BB as a 77% favorite as opposed to a cointoss.

A good reason to raise the flop is to fold out 88-KK. However, these hands don't generally bet two barrels (in my experience) and your fold equity is probably as good on the turn as it is on the flop. Also, if he shoves the turn (90BB into a 14BB pot) after you call a tiny bet on the flop and you miss, then it's unfortunate, but I also think you have to agree that that's a bit of a freak occurence.

Out of position, however, I raise this every time, since I want to nullify his positional advantage. But when I'm the one with the advantage, I'd rather keep it - generally speaking.
 
F Paulsson

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Addendum: "Out of position, however, I raise this every time" is a bit of an exaggeration, but let's go with "often."
 
Jagsti

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I respect your reasoning regarding calling and extremely well put FP. I have to say, if I open a pot with this type of hand and I hit it hard like I have, then I'm usually playing for stacks. Villain donk bets flop, which I have had a lot of success recently by coming over the top, which I did in this case. Now he 3bets me, so I'm putting him on sets, 2pr type hands, nut fl dr hands. Well this was probably what I was looking for by getting it in on the flop, so the question now is do I have enough equity against his range? Against this range I think I have around 40% equity. So if he calls a push I'm getting 6/4 on my money if I'm calculating it correctly so it's kinda a neutral ev?
 
c9h13no3

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Anytime you're getting pot odds to draw on the flop, I pretty much take them. Villain bet 3$ into 8.50, giving you 3.8:1. You have a 13 out draw so you're 3:1 to hit on the turn. I'd rather flat call the flop, and take the much lower variance play.

Maybe if this guy was scared money you could argue for the raise here. But his aggression factor of 2 suggests he's not afraid to get busy, so I'd just keep it cheap until we hit.

The time I use the RAWR, FOLD!!! line for combo draws is when you wanna trap dead money in, or you're not getting pot odds to draw to the turn. Here, we have a tough opponent to fold away, and we're actually getting odds to draw.
 
F Paulsson

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You definitely have odds to call his flop raise, but unless you think he's rebluffing, shoving isn't going to do you much good. What are you representing if you push? A set?
 
Jagsti

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I certainly don't think he's bluffing tbh if he's putting in 1/2 his stack on the flop.
 
arkadiy

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So where are the results? This one can get interesting ^^
 
F Paulsson

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The world suffers no shortage of bluffers. :)

But case in point: If your choice is between calling now (and calling off the rest of your stack on the turn) and pushing, then you may as well just call now. I suspect you're afraid that you'd be calling a bet on the turn that you don't have odds to call, but if you mentally commit to putting all of your chips in before the river, the cards will fall the same regardless of if you do it in one sweep now or in two smaller chunks between the flop and the turn. Without the fold equity, shoving the flop is pointless.

Put him on a hand that he'll never fold (e.g. AA) and check for yourself; the EV of calling off on either immediately the flop, or in two chunks on the flop and turn, come out to the same. And of course they do - in both cases you're putting in the same amount of money with the same chance to win! The only difference being that in one of them, you get to draw more cheaply to the turn but more expensively to the river, and you have the option of folding on the turn if you really, really want to. But the EV is the same, if you're committed.

Besides, some non-zero percentage of the time he's going to check to you on the turn regardless of if he's bluffing or not (he might even do it as a slowplay). Then you've suddenly created the opportunity to see a river for "free" and can save the other half your stack for when you miss. Again - this assumes that you have no fold equity.
 
Jagsti

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The world suffers no shortage of bluffers. :)

But case in point: If your choice is between calling now (and calling off the rest of your stack on the turn) and pushing, then you may as well just call now. I suspect you're afraid that you'd be calling a bet on the turn that you don't have odds to call, but if you mentally commit to putting all of your chips in before the river, the cards will fall the same regardless of if you do it in one sweep now or in two smaller chunks between the flop and the turn. Without the fold equity, shoving the flop is pointless.

Your right in assuming that I dont want a difficult decision on the turn if I call the flop bet. Although if he pushes a blank turn, I probably still have enough equity to call, just I think! The advantage of pushing now is if he calls and I hit I get his stack. If I just call his flop bet and hit the turn, do we really think he's gonna pay off on the turn or river?
 
F Paulsson

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You can't have no fold equity and fail to get paid off on the turn or river at the same time, really.
 
vanquish

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i think i either call or min-raise this flop, as played shove.
 
c9h13no3

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i think i either call or min-raise this flop, as played shove.
Why are we min-raising? Min-raising gives us no fold equity, and I doubt it will buy us a free card. A small raise, maybe, but opening the betting back up for another $3 is a bit transparent.

If I decided to raise this flop, it'd probably be for ~$7.75-$9. You want the ability to fold out some hands...
 
vanquish

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Why are we min-raising? Min-raising gives us no fold equity, and I doubt it will buy us a free card.

We don't want fold equity, we want to be putting money in while ahead (or close to it), and giving ourselves odds to draw to the next card. Minraising also makes villain hate the spot he is in, which benefits us more than most realize. Play like this will deceive villain away from playing optimally against our hand. Beyond this, reopening betting is a good play because it allows villain to 3-bet us, which we can either shove over, or fold to (preferably shove over). Basically, villain is in a tough spot whenever he has to play OOP, and minraising makes his decisions even tougher.

Let's say villain has AK (or whatever a decent part of his range is). He can flatcall our minraise, in which case we've still given ourselves odds to draw to a better hand, and he also has to decide what to do relative to what the turn card brings. Is he really going to stop-n-go a blank turn?
He can 3bet us pretty big, in which case he will be putting in a ton of money with TPTK, where what we're repping most likely has him crushed.
He can't really fold, because he has such great odds, but the spot is so annoying for him, because he basically has to check turn and hope we checkback (and get to SD).

Thus, our minraise either defines villains hand and puts us to a decision of "should we ship with combo draw against this villain (with reads, this is not tough to do), or should we fold because his range is so narrow?" or puts us in a spot where we can play a decent pot with plenty of equity and see an extra street for free. Our decision there is much easier to make than him deciding how to react to our minraise.
 
F Paulsson

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We don't want fold equity, we want to be putting money in while ahead (or close to it), and giving ourselves odds to draw to the next card. Minraising also makes villain hate the spot he is in, which benefits us more than most realize. Play like this will deceive villain away from playing optimally against our hand. Beyond this, reopening betting is a good play because it allows villain to 3-bet us, which we can either shove over, or fold to (preferably shove over). Basically, villain is in a tough spot whenever he has to play OOP, and minraising makes his decisions even tougher.

Let's say villain has AK (or whatever a decent part of his range is). He can flatcall our minraise, in which case we've still given ourselves odds to draw to a better hand, and he also has to decide what to do relative to what the turn card brings. Is he really going to stop-n-go a blank turn?
He can 3bet us pretty big, in which case he will be putting in a ton of money with TPTK, where what we're repping most likely has him crushed.
He can't really fold, because he has such great odds, but the spot is so annoying for him, because he basically has to check turn and hope we checkback (and get to SD).

Thus, our minraise either defines villains hand and puts us to a decision of "should we ship with combo draw against this villain (with reads, this is not tough to do), or should we fold because his range is so narrow?" or puts us in a spot where we can play a decent pot with plenty of equity and see an extra street for free. Our decision there is much easier to make than him deciding how to react to our minraise.

I don't understand what you're getting at here. Explain what you do in the following scenarios:

1. You min-raise and villain shoves.
2. You min-raise and villain calls, then checks turn.

Our decision on what to do if villain shoves is not easy at all, since our equity will often be in the range of 40-45% when that happens. In fact, getting shoved on is probably the worst outcome in this pot and I'm not sure why you'd want to invite that.
 
vanquish

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I don't understand what you're getting at here. Explain what you do in the following scenarios:

1. You min-raise and villain shoves.
2. You min-raise and villain calls, then checks turn.

Our decision on what to do if villain shoves is not easy at all, since our equity will often be in the range of 40-45% when that happens. In fact, getting shoved on is probably the worst outcome in this pot and I'm not sure why you'd want to invite that.

1. crunch the numbers and call if i'm getting odds to draw to 45% equity (although a shove is a pretty gross overbet). if he just 3bets a pot-sized-ish amount, i shove if i would have gotten odds to draw to 45% equity had he shoved. i fail to see how our decision is harder than a simple pot odds/range problem.

2. depends what the turn card is imo. if we hit, i bet an amount i think he will call, if we don't, we take the free card
 
F Paulsson

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if he just 3bets a pot-sized-ish amount, i shove if i would have gotten odds to draw to 45% equity had he shoved.
This doesn't make any sense. You're smarter than this, Vanq. Why would you push with 45% showdown equity and no fold equity?

Also, this:
crunch the numbers and call if i'm getting odds to draw to 45% equity
The numbers are all here; crunch away.
 
Jagsti

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FP - if we rewind the hand back to the 1st action on the flop, you suggest to just call villains donk bet. What's our line on the turn if we miss?'
 
F Paulsson

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FP - if we rewind the hand back to the 1st action on the flop, you suggest to just call villains donk bet. What's our line on the turn if we miss?'
If he bets the pot or less, I'm inclined to just call. Then when I hit my flush on the river and he makes another small bet, I'll be sad about the pot size, but probably just push anyway and watch him go "lol" and then almost time out before he calls and then leaves the table.

If he checks, I bet the turn. Half pot or so. Betting flop/check-raising the turn is a very unusual line, but if that should happen, I'm reduced to looking at the odds (including implied odds, of course, given the amount of strength he's shown). I don't like taking a free card on the turn if he checks since there's so much value in being able to get him to fold, and we can still plausibly represent a top-pair hand.
 
vanquish

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asjdhfkjasdhf bleh forget this i'm on tilt
 
zachvac

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hmm, well it looks like 0 FE, but with the money invested and our equity we can't fold this. We also don't want another card coming and killing our action or making us a bigger dog. I'd stick it in here on this flop.
 
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