$20 NLHE 6-max: exploit went wrong, how would you play this?

[Haze of Spade]

game was 16nl at pokerstars
https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/624Dw5L2m

i opened 4x because on the button was a huge fish but i usually open small so my hand was pretty much face up. unfortunately the fish didnt fall for it and i ended heads-up against a TAG.
flop is standard i think. i dont have a big advantage as he could have bottom and middle set and TPTK.
on the turn im not sure whats the best approach. JTs shouldn't be in my range but i thought there are only 4 combos that beat me if he wasn't trapping with KK+ (which would make sense) and i get called by bottom set and AK, AQ so i decided to continue. maybe a check would be better because my range is so face-up?
at river i'd love to call but i just couldn't find any bluffs in his range but some random stuff that he was brave enough to raise on the turn and i don't think he would play AK or a lower set like this.

 

[quant1986]

I would agree turn is a check-call given HJ preflop calling range should be very tight.

As played, I would be more inclined to 3bet all in turn and hope villain would play AK this way. River it is fairly tricky, I believe some villains at higher stakes are capable of bluffing JJ/TT on this run out (raising turn and jam river) but the river bet size looks exactly like an unbalanced value bet to get crying calls from 2pairs and lower sets

 

[freddydr87]

I dont see bluffes in his hand,but that is ok because his bluffes get there on river,i see he is more tend to have value hands and u are beating a big part off his value hands Like AK,Aq(less liklly but possivle as well as KQ) iff u thingh he his just calling with AA or KK pre flop because off your sizing the fold is very thin but iff he raises u at leats 50% off time with thouse hands u should have either 3bet shove T or call R.

 

[Edu1]

idk, maybe that guy really had AA or KK, I think you saved $4.29.
this play/hand looks like a 6+ hold'em. only high cards. the BTN player can be a huge fish, but is 2020, so much information nowadays.
I think the standard 2.5x or 3x open pre-flop would be better, afterall, you wanna he on the hand too

 

[Haze of Spade]

u are beating a big part off his value hands Like AK,Aq(less liklly but possivle as well as KQ)

I just wonder what worse hands he thinks i call with. Ok i don't know if he really is aware how tight my range is here but it's QQ+ and AK so on this board i only have sets, top 2 and the nuts flush with AcKc.
We had 187 hands history so i think he should recognize that i rarely open that big.
It was also a bit confusing that he almost snap-called my preflop raise. Not sure how to read this but snap-calling with a JTs kinda hand to crack my monster would make sense i think. Like he can't wait to stack me. Same with AA.

His stats btw where 22/18/4/8 (vp/pfr/af/3bet)

Maybe he had the A or the K of clubs and turned it into a bluff or JJ, TT like quant1986 said. I'm not that experienced with that level of play but if someone at this stake does that, this player might be a good candidate by his stats.

 

[Haze of Spade]

I think the standard 2.5x or 3x open pre-flop would be better, afterall, you wanna he on the hand too

I had some good results with the bigger size. First i didn't do it because it's so easy to exploit, i mean when i don't raise big everyone knows i'm not that strong..
But when u think about it, when there is a huge station at the table, people won't 3bet that light anyway when he is still in the hand..
And the main reason i do it is because i want to isolate the station and not have the whole table in the hand as everyone wanna see a flop with him.

 

[komar125]

in 90% of cases I would rather play a flow bet 70% pot than check and see what he does then possibly check the dependencies on his sizing or fold

 

[Aballinamion]

game was 16nl at pokerstars
https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/624Dw5L2m

i opened 4x because on the button was a huge fish but i usually open small so my hand was pretty much face up. unfortunately the fish didnt fall for it and i ended heads-up against a TAG.
flop is standard i think. i dont have a big advantage as he could have bottom and middle set and TPTK.
on the turn im not sure whats the best approach. JTs shouldn't be in my range but i thought there are only 4 combos that beat me if he wasn't trapping with KK+ (which would make sense) and i get called by bottom set and AK, AQ so i decided to continue. maybe a check would be better because my range is so face-up?
at river i'd love to call but i just couldn't find any bluffs in his range but some random stuff that he was brave enough to raise on the turn and i don't think he would play AK or a lower set like this.

So, you opened 4 blinds, out of position, because there was a fish in the Button?
It seems very strange to me, because out goal is try to play in position versus fishes, not out of position against them.

Second, you are playing a more advanced level, 16 NLHE has a lot of decent regulars, that are going to observe when you raise 4x because there is a fish either IP or in the blinds, and the regular is going to call more, because it knows that you have interesting bluffs on your range when you go for fish exploitation.
Are we going to exploit a calling machine fish using a weak 'ish' range to approach and try to extract value?

Before raising 4x, out of position, try to think that there are other players at the table, observing your behavior and trying to take advantage of it.
Personally, I don't like these exploitatives lines, out of position never and in position, I like to preserve my perceived/unread/uncollected range.

It doesn't matter to me that there is a potential fish ahead, because I know that fish is going to pay me anyway with hands like Kx, Ax, and when it hits it will never leave postflop, etc, plus the poker variance takes no sides, fishes also have hot streaks and hit monsters.

The postflop

It was well played, the flop was very default, but OTT we shouldn't be calling when Villain raises, we should be jamming quite a fair chunk of hands here depending on Villain's perceived range/tendencies:

For example, we are pushing here OTT, all of our Two Pair Types(KQ, AQ, AK, etc), plus with hands like AJ and AT that must cointain the combo draw of spades and clubs, most of times, and against players that we already know that it can fold a second best hand OTT we can be jamming, for example, AcJd, AsJh, etc.

Another hands we are jamming are the sets, QQ, KK, AA and 66 in a lower frequency, and some part of our range is going to fold here, whether we like it or not, hands like 77, 88, 99, TT, JJ, lost a lot of value in the face of a raise coming from position and unless we are leveling we are going to fold some of these pocket pairs.

So, I believe that when we do call OTT, we give a free chance for Villain to hit either a straight or a flush OTR for a very friendly price:
Player in position try to bluff its draws and Hero calls, which is awesome because now if Villain/IP hits the draws it can push versus Hero and gain value, Hero will have a real hard time folding, or Villain/IP can miss the draw and even so push, and Hero could only call with hands like QQ, KK, AA, AK, AQ, just a tiny part of UTG's opening range, so we are giving rope for opponents to bluff us out of the pot or beat us.

I really don't understand when MP/Villain bets that little OTR, when almost all of tis bluffs completed. I don't know if we should be folding OTR as well.

Regards;

Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa

 

[Haze of Spade]

So, you opened 4 blinds, out of position, because there was a fish in the Button?
It seems very strange to me, because out goal is try to play in position versus fishes, not out of position against them.
...
It doesn't matter to me that there is a potential fish ahead, because I know that fish is going to pay me anyway with hands like Kx, Ax, and when it hits it will never leave postflop, etc, plus the poker variance takes no sides, fishes also have hot streaks and hit monsters.

i don't really understand what you mean. yes i don't want to play oop that's why i raise big..
the other option is to make a standard raise and play oop against the whole table. i'm happy if he folds Ax and Kx and i pick up the pot right now with my queens. think i described that pretty well in my previous post

regards

 

[hackmeplz]

Preflop raise size is whatever. I typically just stick with 3x everywhere but the button but it's not a big deal. There's no way the average 16nl reg is actually picking up what it means when individual people vary their open size though. Here's a good test to prove I'm right. Pick a regular you've played with some, maybe just pick one from that table. Now try to remember what hands you've seen them show down when they 3x vs 4x. Think about whether they ever do 4x, whether they 2x, whether they 3x. Is it position-based, based on fish at the table, hand-based? Can you remember all that stuff about them? I didn't think so, neither can they about you.

Flop/turn are obviously standard, turn could be a ch/r but I prefer betting as a default. Others were saying raise I think it can go either way. My standard is definitely to call, especially since his range is actually kinda narrow utg vs hj and we definitely want to keep his bluffs in.

River fold is literally burning money. Like I'm not trying to be mean but this is ridiculously attrocious. You beat some of his value range and despite what people think yes this can be a cheap bluff too. And how often do you have to be right? You have to call $4.29 to win $17.91, so you have to be right 19.3% of the time. This is almost definitely the case. Let's be super generous to his range being strong. Personally I think smaller bets are almost never flushes, because if he has a flush (and it's usually the nut flush) he knows you opened 4x utg and on this flop there's a very good chance you have a set or 2p so he's going to jam, it's only 2/3 pot. But let's say that's not true and he bets this size with all his flushes and has no bluffs:

Hands you lose to: JTs (4 combos), AT-AJcc (2 combos), A2-A5cc (4 combos), 87cc, 54cc. So being super generous (most people fold A2-A5s or 54s or 87s some of the time when they're hj vs an utg open), we're giving him 12 combos that beat you. In order for you to be good, we need to find 3 combos you beat. Is this even a question? Even if the only hand you beat that he plays this way is 66, you STILL have odds to call. But in reality he probably has some AQ and KQ, could have A9 occasionally (turn he turned it into a bluff then awkwardly tried to value river, not saying it's a good play but it's one I can see a 16nl reg making). And if he ever bluffs even 1% of the time the fold starts to get even worse.

 

[Haze of Spade]

Preflop raise size is whatever. I typically just stick with 3x everywhere but the button but it's not a big deal. There's no way the average 16nl reg is actually picking up what it means when individual people vary their open size though. Here's a good test to prove I'm right. Pick a regular you've played with some, maybe just pick one from that table. Now try to remember what hands you've seen them show down when they 3x vs 4x. Think about whether they ever do 4x, whether they 2x, whether they 3x. Is it position-based, based on fish at the table, hand-based? Can you remember all that stuff about them? I didn't think so, neither can they about you.

Flop/turn are obviously standard, turn could be a ch/r but I prefer betting as a default. Others were saying raise I think it can go either way. My standard is definitely to call, especially since his range is actually kinda narrow utg vs hj and we definitely want to keep his bluffs in.

River fold is literally burning money. Like I'm not trying to be mean but this is ridiculously attrocious. You beat some of his value range and despite what people think yes this can be a cheap bluff too. And how often do you have to be right? You have to call $4.29 to win $17.91, so you have to be right 19.3% of the time. This is almost definitely the case. Let's be super generous to his range being strong. Personally I think smaller bets are almost never flushes, because if he has a flush (and it's usually the nut flush) he knows you opened 4x utg and on this flop there's a very good chance you have a set or 2p so he's going to jam, it's only 2/3 pot. But let's say that's not true and he bets this size with all his flushes and has no bluffs:

Hands you lose to: JTs (4 combos), AT-AJcc (2 combos), A2-A5cc (4 combos), 87cc, 54cc. So being super generous (most people fold A2-A5s or 54s or 87s some of the time when they're hj vs an utg open), we're giving him 12 combos that beat you. In order for you to be good, we need to find 3 combos you beat. Is this even a question? Even if the only hand you beat that he plays this way is 66, you STILL have odds to call. But in reality he probably has some AQ and KQ, could have A9 occasionally (turn he turned it into a bluff then awkwardly tried to value river, not saying it's a good play but it's one I can see a 16nl reg making). And if he ever bluffs even 1% of the time the fold starts to get even worse.

Thanks for the replie but i disagree here.
1st i'm 100% sure that the average micro reg will understand why i vary my size. I mean i pay attention to it myself and whatch very closely what their range is. And when i size it up even some stations suddenly start folding. Got to say my standard size is 2.5x so 4x is pretty obvious.

About the river i think V's small sizing is standard. Why should he jam here? I could have the nuts flush and it's unlikely he got it. why should he raise his draw on the turn when he got very little fold equity? He would just call i think. So he is representing the straight and smaller flushes which i think he can have a lot. He could call with all kinda speculative hands preflop if he thinks he got implied odds.
You might be right that the fold was bad but i think it's close. Without more information i lean towards a fold because his range is so narrow and he must turn his pair into a bluff to even have 1% bluffs in his range which i just don't see people doing at the micros.

 

[Aballinamion]

i don't really understand what you mean. yes i don't want to play oop that's why i raise big..
the other option is to make a standard raise and play oop against the whole table. i'm happy if he folds Ax and Kx and i pick up the pot right now with my queens. think i described that pretty well in my previous post

regards

Lol, what do you mean mate?

If you don't want to play out of position and you raise big, you really don't want to play your hands, i.e:

A) Because we increase the sizing, we are going to have more fold equity, and lost potential value with the Top of our range when this happens.

B) Even recreational players are going to level more against polarized sizings, and everyone is going to use a more capped calling range for situations like this.

C) We cannot get rid of the hand when we begin the increase the size preflop,because of the SPR. We do own a certain kind of commitment when we raise 3x and another level of commitment when we do raise 4x and so on.
What I am trying to say is that we are going to be jamming much more often postflop when we elect to polarize our bets/raises, pre or postflop.

D) I am not happy at all when I do elect to raise JJ+ and AJs+ and get a lot of folds. What is the point of playing poker if they fold versus the top of our range?

IMO, we can only be polarizing with certain hands, which makes the reading of our moves pretty much "faced-up", we become easy preys at the cash tables.

Regards;

Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa

 

[hackmeplz]

About the river i think V's small sizing is standard. Why should he jam here? I could have the nuts flush and it's unlikely he got it. why should he raise his draw on the turn when he got very little fold equity? He would just call i think. So he is representing the straight and smaller flushes which i think he can have a lot. He could call with all kinda speculative hands preflop if he thinks he got implied odds.
You might be right that the fold was bad but i think it's close. Without more information i lean towards a fold because his range is so narrow and he must turn his pair into a bluff to even have 1% bluffs in his range which i just don't see people doing at the micros.

I literally listed all his flushes he can have. Do you disagree? There are exactly 2 small flushes he can have, and that's assuming he flats 54s and 87s from hj to an utg 4x, which is definitely not standard. The texture of this board blocks a lot of non-nut flushes, so if he has a flush it's actually likely to be the nut flush.

Also I think you're missing the concept of why we bet and what sizings to use. We don't bet smaller because we're scared they have a better hand, that's a reason not to bet in the first place. Generally we want to bet larger when our opponent's range is strong and smaller when our opponent's range is weak. Your range after 4x pre, bet flop, bet/call turn, and one of the flush draws gets there is actually very strong, so he should probably be shoving most of his bets. You being able to have strong hands is a reason for him to not bet his weak hands as much, but not really for him to bet tiny.

Also I literally did the math on how often you have to be right and listed out exact combos, and your response is it's close without addressing any of the actual math. I showed that even under the most generous assumptions (he never bluffs, he bets his nut flushes small, and he flats 45s/87s/A2-A5s from hj to an utg 4x) it's still a bad fold. Again I'm trying to help here, but you need to start thinking these situations as a range/math problem rather than "does he have it?" This fold is objectively terrible, there's not a single good winning player who will say otherwise, and if your response to the math being laid out is that you still think it's close, that exposes a pretty large issue with the way you're approaching this game.

 

[Haze of Spade]

I literally listed all his flushes he can have. Do you disagree? There are exactly 2 small flushes he can have, and that's assuming he flats 54s and 87s from hj to an utg 4x, which is definitely not standard. The texture of this board blocks a lot of non-nut flushes, so if he has a flush it's actually likely to be the nut flush.

Also I think you're missing the concept of why we bet and what sizings to use. We don't bet smaller because we're scared they have a better hand, that's a reason not to bet in the first place. Generally we want to bet larger when our opponent's range is strong and smaller when our opponent's range is weak. Your range after 4x pre, bet flop, bet/call turn, and one of the flush draws gets there is actually very strong, so he should probably be shoving most of his bets. You being able to have strong hands is a reason for him to not bet his weak hands as much, but not really for him to bet tiny.

Also I literally did the math on how often you have to be right and listed out exact combos, and your response is it's close without addressing any of the actual math. I showed that even under the most generous assumptions (he never bluffs, he bets his nut flushes small, and he flats 45s/87s/A2-A5s from hj to an utg 4x) it's still a bad fold. Again I'm trying to help here, but you need to start thinking these situations as a range/math problem rather than "does he have it?" This fold is objectively terrible, there's not a single good winning player who will say otherwise, and if your response to the math being laid out is that you still think it's close, that exposes a pretty large issue with the way you're approaching this game.

All i'm saying is that i think he can have more flushes. Not because it is in his calling range vs an utg open but because he thinks he got the implied odds to call, lets say with 75s pre. If he asumes that the station also calls and that i pay him off with my overpair when he hits, that's a possibility i think.
That's why i even posted that hand. Usually i would play the hand totally different but i adjusted to the fact that i gave away some information preflop and was wondering what other people think about it.
So i think on the river there are about 20 combos that beat me and i beat 2 combos. I might be wrong with the asumptions i made but i'm always open to learn new stuff.

Not really sure how your bet-sizing strategy works but i usually bet big when i have a range-advantage (on the river) and small when my range is capped and i cant have the nuts but my opponent can. Why should i call a shove with less than a flush here??
So i would use exact the same size he uses and he knows there are a lot of 2pair+ in my range so i think it's really not bad to asume he really got it and not to think about the math too much.

 

[Haze of Spade]

Lol, what do you mean mate?

If you don't want to play out of position and you raise big, you really don't want to play your hands, i.e:

A) Because we increase the sizing, we are going to have more fold equity, and lost potential value with the Top of our range when this happens.

B) Even recreational players are going to level more against polarized sizings, and everyone is going to use a more capped calling range for situations like this.

C) We cannot get rid of the hand when we begin the increase the size preflop,because of the SPR. We do own a certain kind of commitment when we raise 3x and another level of commitment when we do raise 4x and so on.
What I am trying to say is that we are going to be jamming much more often postflop when we elect to polarize our bets/raises, pre or postflop.

D) I am not happy at all when I do elect to raise JJ+ and AJs+ and get a lot of folds. What is the point of playing poker if they fold versus the top of our range?

IMO, we can only be polarizing with certain hands, which makes the reading of our moves pretty much "faced-up", we become easy preys at the cash tables.

Regards;

Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa

I know you are not into these exploitative lines carlos but maybe just try it and see for yourself. That's all i can say.
here an example where it worked out: https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/124DuvprC

 

[bmoney]

Do you really think he's flat calling with KK or AA preFlop? +he's a giant fish.

The RR- indicates 2pair or a straight. You're up against JT+ JQ+ AT+ . Im calling that river if its vs fish...

game was 16nl at pokerstars
https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/624Dw5L2m

i opened 4x because on the button was a huge fish but i usually open small so my hand was pretty much face up. unfortunately the fish didnt fall for it and i ended heads-up against a TAG.
flop is standard i think. i dont have a big advantage as he could have bottom and middle set and TPTK.
on the turn im not sure whats the best approach. JTs shouldn't be in my range but i thought there are only 4 combos that beat me if he wasn't trapping with KK+ (which would make sense) and i get called by bottom set and AK, AQ so i decided to continue. maybe a check would be better because my range is so face-up?
at river i'd love to call but i just couldn't find any bluffs in his range but some random stuff that he was brave enough to raise on the turn and i don't think he would play AK or a lower set like this.