https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/424AYz8dE

Hi there, poker friends! Today I share this hand with you.

I call 3bet w JJ because is a standard play and in micros there's a lot of bad 3bettors! Then, the V CB 1/3 and I put him in AK-AQ because with QQ+ you want to finish the hand quickly and very expensive for your opponent. But why a 1/3 CB OOP? Also, I re-raise because I wanted to discard a QQ+. I thought: "if he got QQ+ them he should 3bet!" right?

He called, so I discarded QQ+, then he XR in turn. Also, the theory of a AQs-AKs get stronger for the flush draws in the turn. Also because that could be a desperate, aggressive move to win. A fullhouse with 99 or 88 is so unlikely because he was the big 3bettor in Pre-flop and he XR and that would make fold with the nuts, and he could lost the chance to win more money. This kind of play are very frequent in micros, so I discarded 99 and 88, and QQ+, everything outside of this range was very likely to me.

I wasn't pretending to carry the JJ to allin but, I was very confident of my argument.

So... what do you think? I was overconfident with JJ or my logic is a long-term winning logic? thanks in advance, poker wise!

Sometimes this can be tough to get away from when the board comes low so I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself, but I think there are errors in the line and reads that can save you money going forward if corrected.

At 2NL (unless you have a read on the player that he’s a fish / very loose) - the 3bet OOP is going to be value heavy. The range could be wider, including lower pockets as you suggest, but in that case you also need to be cautious when the flop comes low. You can’t discount QQ+ because he calls your raise, continually reraising isn’t how you profit from JJ+ which feed into the leak I flag below. You want to keep villain in the hand with weaker holdings than you, if you keep raising they’ll fold and you don’t get their chips. When they do call they have the 5 and you’re done for...

The key error was the flop raise I feel - what were you trying to achieve? Essentially I see the raise as one of two things: 1) you panic and want to get paid off now before you get drawn out on; or 2) you’re overplaying the hand and trying to make sure you stack off even though the range he calls with has a pretty good chance of beating you by the river.


He’s not calling with worse hands as there’s no real draws on so by raising you’re losing the opportunity to get any more money from worse hands and if he comes along you’re likely already done (overpair or trips).

On the turn (having called on the flop) you could have raised for protection against the flush draw if you wanted but at least when he shoves back you can walk away and the hand cost you $1 rather than $2.

His sizing (1/3 pot) is fine and typical for a 3bet pot, remember that bet sizes should be lower in 3 bet pots as it’s already inflated from the PF action. Betting half pot or more leads to SPR on the turn forcing a stack off as happened here as a result of your flop raise.

The 1/3 cbet is building the pot while not showing too much strength - the pot is already inflated from the PF action so he can go 1/2 pot on the turn, keeping you hooked and stack you on the river.

The post above was a long way of saying don’t think a pocket Broadway means you just keep raising and reraising.

The hand is exposed to being drawn out on, yes, but there are very few draws on the board at the flop so when you’re being so aggressive you’re only getting paid by Trips or higher pockets which have you beat. You’re not getting value from his A,K,Q holding or weaker pockets which will come to the river and pay you 30-40BBs for the privilege but only hit and beat you 20-30% of the time, but when they do you aren’t losing your stack

In micro they are a lot off crazy peaple,but unless you know that he is one you should threat him like a reg. Lets do an exercise i think it can help you.
1-Wath do you thing a regular player 3bets you here?
I thing tham more or less JJ+AQs+AKo,KQs thats it.
2-When you raise in flop(big mistake because you wanth to keep his bluff in play in so dry board)
in 559 he is folding his KQ,AK and AQ, when you raise, you are telling him i have 99, a 5 or an overpair(but your rangue is cappet on top,you donk have AA,KK)
3- lets say that he didn buy your raise flop and called with AKs,Wath you spect he is rasing you on the turn?
Onlly QQ+ he know that you have 99,TT and JJ, and he is way ahead off that rangue.

with jacks, you need a little 3-bet especially in the position. but don't overestimate this hand. and 1/3 of the pot is put on a dry Board.

I don't think your logic is sound. I agree that you will see a lot of that at 2NL but I really like the way V played this hand. I think I play it the same way.

Pre - Why are we opening for 4x UTG with such a strong hand? 3x should be plenty IMO. Also keep in mind position. You didn't give any reads but when we open 4x UTG our range should be really strong and V 3 bets into it. Unless we have a loose aggressive image this should already be a warning sign. I agree your call is standard.

Flop - This board is really dry. In a 3 bet pot there is no flush or straight draw to charge. Sizing down will get him more calls from hands that he beats and can induce some spaz raises as well. Not to say that your raise was spaz but think about what hands can continue against your flop raise in a 3 bet pot then let me know which of those hands you can beat. Probably TT only, and that hand may fold to the raise. I know it's difficult to play JJ because if an overcard hits the turn you may not be able to continue but sometimes poker is difficult. When you try to use the "easy button" and raise you typically get all the hands that you had beat (and you want theses hands to continue to bet) to fold and you get called by hands that have you beat instead. For this reason I don't like the flop raise at all unless this guy is a super fish that is 3 betting super light and stacking off light as well. You seemed to imply that you weren't sure about this particular Vs 3 bet range though so I think a call is standard here. As played after we raise flop and get called we should be trying to get to showdown as cheaply as possible.

Turn - I'd check this back for pot control as most of Vs calling range on the flop should have us beat now and V has less than a pot sized bet left. If we are betting, this sizing seems designed to allow us to bet fold but we still end up calling it off. We bet less than 1/3 pot here on the turn. What was our intent? I think this is indeed overconfident. This bet is sized like we have 99 instead of JJ. When he raises it's still 36 BB and I just don't think V has enough bluffs to call. There are exactly 2 combos of AKhh, AQhh, that may get sticky and not fold to our flop raise but there are 18 combos of overpairs that have us smoked so planning to get stacks in when we win 1 out of maybe 9 times seems bad. Even if we x back he can jam river and put us in a bad spot but I think we set up this stack off when we didn't have to. If we flat flop and turn he may even x river some percentage of the time with this run out.

So yeah, I would suggest re-assessing that logic. QQ+ can absolutely be using 1/3 pot on this flop precisely to get value from hands like ours here and induce spaz on occasion. Why would QQ+ want to 3 bet this flop? We have shown lots of interest in a dry board so chances are we will continue to bet the turn anyway and stacks will go in naturally.

I agree with above post. You made an oversized raise UTG and got 3-bet to a very large size from BB seat. This should already get your alarm bells ringing quite a bit. Unless he is a maniac, his range is realistically something like QQ+, AK and not much else. So even though you flopped an overpair, you are still not in a great spot, and you need to keep his range as wide as possible. As several have said, when you start to raise here and essentially get it in on the turn (as played you should have jammed turn), you are folding out all his bluffs and only getting action, when you are behind.

Originally Posted by OmarRD7

https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/424AYz8dE

Hi there, poker friends! Today I share this hand with you.

I call 3bet w JJ because is a standard play and in micros there's a lot of bad 3bettors! Then, the V CB 1/3 and I put him in AK-AQ because with QQ+ you want to finish the hand quickly and very expensive for your opponent. But why a 1/3 CB OOP? Also, I re-raise because I wanted to discard a QQ+. I thought: "if he got QQ+ them he should 3bet!" right?

He called, so I discarded QQ+, then he XR in turn. Also, the theory of a AQs-AKs get stronger for the flush draws in the turn. Also because that could be a desperate, aggressive move to win. A fullhouse with 99 or 88 is so unlikely because he was the big 3bettor in Pre-flop and he XR and that would make fold with the nuts, and he could lost the chance to win more money. This kind of play are very frequent in micros, so I discarded 99 and 88, and QQ+, everything outside of this range was very likely to me.

I wasn't pretending to carry the JJ to allin but, I was very confident of my argument.

So... what do you think? I was overconfident with JJ or my logic is a long-term winning logic? thanks in advance, poker wise!

Hi mate, thank you very much for posting it.
First, I don't like your opening size very much, specially for a 6-MAX table, because we give information that we are polarizing, and since we are out of position, we do it almost always only with the premium hands.
Okay that players at 2 NLHE are not that kind of philosophers, but consider also the fact that by increasing the size of the pot already preflop, it would be very much harder to leave postflop, specially on scenarios where you get a great equity.

So, we see the effects of our polarization right on BB/Villain's 3-bet: it choose a 3.5x sizing versus your opening of 4x.
Now consider, for example that you raised 3x and BB/Villain 3-bets to 3.5x anyways: the size of the pot would smaller, thus, easier to play.

Well mate, this particular flop is way too dry and we don't have range advantage anymore:
BB should/could be flatting more than 3-betting, because the odds are great most of times, so I don't see many bluffs on BB's ranges.
Versus UTG, OOP, the bluffs we might expect are AK, AQ, AJ, AT, A9 and A5. Perhaps some spaz KQs, but the point is that we can never be raising this flop in this situation, only because it didn't come an overcard such as Qx, Kx, and Ax.
First, we don't have here many KK+ and AKs, those hands are 4-betting almost always.
If we indeed own KK+ and AKs, are we raising this dry flop to get thousands of folds of TT+ and AJ+?
Looking to the other side, Villain has much more QQ+ and AQs+ on its range than us, for all of these reasons I would be calling OTF, never raising.
I never raise on any scenario or under any circumstance for value where I don't have any bluffs. This flop is a classic example, where we are only raising it with almost none 9x on our range, almost no 5x on our range, except maybe A5s that we elected to raise from EP, and we have all the pocket pairs 22-QQ, that are hands that could be raising from UTG and flatting 3-bet preflop.
The turn doesn't change the picture very much and we should ask which hands BB could have called our raise OTF before sending another barrel OTT: BB still has more QQ+ on its range than us on this turn.
Avoid polarization, it works fine when you hit and horrible when you lose, thus inevitably, leading to emotional disaster/tilt.

Regards;

Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa