$50 NLHE 6-max: Flop nut OESD OOP, cbet or c/c vs LAG(tard)

[Stu_Ungar]

Also I would question your open of JTs UTG with this guy in MP.

JTs is behind a range of 41%

You are going to be OOP, if this guy was in the blinds then its OK but he isnt.

This guy often puts preasure on you postflop.

So you are OOP with less equity than your target and he is going to put pressure on you postflop, which bit of that was your reason for opening JTs?

 

[Cafeman]

Thanks for your lengthy analysis Stu, appreciated.

Also I would question your open of JTs UTG with this guy in MP.

JTs is behind a range of 41%

You are going to be OOP, if this guy was in the blinds then its OK but he isnt.

This guy often puts preasure on you postflop.

So you are OOP with less equity than your target and he is going to put pressure on you postflop, which bit of that was your reason for opening JTs?

It was my last hand at that table, and it looked pretty so I fancied playing it - I guess I'm just a fickle little girl sometimes.

 

[orangepeeleo]

I think you have to think about the alternative line he could have taken here.

Lets assume villian raises or cr about 30% overall, so TPGK+ Draws, GS, Sets 2pair. Basically lots of strong things and lots of draws and a few bluffs with air, but the air is always going to be negligible compared to the amount of other stuff he naturally raises here.

Against that range we have to fold down to the near nuts to continue.

The temptation is to think "well he does this a lot so I should be able to exploit it"

His range is strong so you exploit that by folding.

If he also has a calling range, then what exactly is in it? No sets, No 2pair, No TPTK No Draws, No GS.

So we are betting here, planning to fold to a raise but also planning on 3 barrelling if he calls. If we hit, great, if not our last bet will put us all in. We barrell 2 streets with equity and the final street we make a pure bluff due to all of the dead money in the pot.

If this guy is raising so much that its making you want to play back at him knowing that his range is probably still quite strong, then the thing to bear in mind is when he calls he almost has nothing he can call 3 streets of betting with.

Also I would question your open of JTs UTG with this guy in MP.

JTs is behind a range of 41%

You are going to be OOP, if this guy was in the blinds then its OK but he isnt.

This guy often puts preasure on you postflop.

So you are OOP with less equity than your target and he is going to put pressure on you postflop, which bit of that was your reason for opening JTs?

You explain things very well

 

[bustmethods]

You explain things very well

Agreed! Thanks for walking us through your thought process Stu. I really need to get better at hand reading and thinking in depth like this every hand.

And 3 barrels against a tough player OOP , thats tough to do..

 

[vanquish]

Also I would question your open of JTs UTG with this guy in MP.

JTs is behind a range of 41%

You are going to be OOP, if this guy was in the blinds then its OK but he isnt.

This guy often puts preasure on you postflop.

So you are OOP with less equity than your target and he is going to put pressure on you postflop, which bit of that was your reason for opening JTs?

fwiw a good reason to open JTs in this case is if you think he will put more pressure on you on boards that you hit than ones you don't (so he will bluffraise Txx or 98x boards and fold to cbets on Kxx boards). if he just puts tons of pressure you on no matter what the board is you can definitely fold pre.


this particular board isn't great against a guy that's likely to raise you for reasons already stated, but you should definitely be making tons of money on boards that seem like they don't hit you but actually do (so you can b/3b 98x, Q8xss etc boards and b/c Jxx, Txx etc boards).


so, i think its not the end of the world to open JTs UTG here (though arguments can be made for simply playing an extremely tight range UTG)

 

[Stu_Ungar]

fwiw a good reason to open JTs in this case is if you think he will put more pressure on you on boards that you hit than ones you don't (so he will bluffraise Txx or 98x boards and fold to cbets on Kxx boards). if he just puts tons of pressure you on no matter what the board is you can definitely fold pre.

The more pressure he puts on you postflop, the more equity you need OR the more of a skill advantage you need.

Durrr or Phil Galfond could play this easily.

The difference is this:

The skill in poker is making fewer mistakes than your opponent.

So once your equity drops, you need to play the hand well.

If you get to a spot where you think "hero?????" then thats a spot you dont have a skill advantage in. The more spots like this that come up the less of a skill advantage you have.

Part of the skill is knowing when to fold and being certain its correct.

Things like reads start becoming important. What is this guy raising with? What is he calling with? What does he fold.

So in the case of this hand, you flop a draw against an agressive opponent. He raises over your cbet (he is agressive so this is a likely action) if your not sure what to do then you dont have the skill advantage.

Change the flop to J high. What do you do against a raise here?

What about if you flopped a BD straight and BD FD, do you cbet or CC?

These things are all opponent dependent, but if you cant make up flops in your head and be pretty certain of the correct play, then you have less skill than you think and need to rely more on equity and position.

So its not a case of being tight for the sake of being tight, its more about being realistic about your own skill levels.

 

[vanquish]

your posts are sometimes so goddamn equivocal that it gets tilting. are you seriously suggesting that OP needs to plot some sort of poker skill vs. hot-cold equity graph in order to play spots like this profitably?

you have a read that this guy is going to be bluffraising (or at least semi-bluff-raising) a fair amount of the time. he will be doing this to try to get you to fold a large % of your hands. if you think he will be doing this more often on certain boards, you can construct a range that exploits that (so, again, if you think he's more likely to bluffraise a 98x board, playing JTs may become profitable). considering you don't have a massive database vs. this player (and you will not have one against most players), you can make certain reads or adjustments and then make changes accordingly when they begin to work or not work. this is part of playing poker.

remember the fx19238 debate we had when he kept saying "well what do you do if you have 88 and you call a raise and the flop comes Q76? what if it comes A32? what if it comes 632? do you stack off then? do you? do you?"? well the main consensus there (reputable players like chuck will agree) that its important to develop hand-reading and dynamic-reading abilities, most often through practice. this is why it is often reasonable to generalize about how players will act, even though you don't have a 50k hand database on their stats. you can make reads based on this, and see what works for you and what doesn't.

saying things like "if you're not sure what to do then you don't have the skill advantage" is borderline inane. being "sure what to do" isn't a prerequisite for making a good poker play.

example:
i am playing HU against an unknown, who seems reggish. i add T9s to my standard 3betting range (let's say 88+, Axs, all suited broadways, some broadways) because i have a read that he will be unlikely to fold on Txx, 9xx, 87x, J8x boards, a reasonable play by him in most games. i don't have a massive db of HU vs him that guarantees this, but it is a read i am making in an effort to beat this player.

notice that i have not analyzed T9s' hot-cold equity vs his range of opening/continuing hands and have not thought about some sort of mythical skill comparison between myself and this player. i have simply used current dynamics to introduce a new dynamic that i think will result profitably for me.

if you think its more important to think about durrrr's opinion on underlying poker axioms like "skill vs. opponent wrt mistakes", then i'll smoke some weed with you someday and we'll talk about it, but many excellent poker players (several of whom are HU specialists) will agree with me and take the more practical approach.

 

[vanquish]

and even if i did plot T9s vs. his range of hands and came up with 40%, i wouldn't immediately start thinking about how much "skill advantage" i'd need in order to account for my being short of the "target equity" (not sure what this is, guessing it's 51% or something)

 

[Stu_Ungar]

saying things like "if you're not sure what to do then you don't have the skill advantage" is borderline inane. being "sure what to do" isn't a prerequisite for making a good poker play.

How can you make a good play and at the same time be unsure of what to do? Thats just randomly pushing buttons and hoping for the best and just like a stopped clock, it will sometimes be correct.

 

[vanquish]

there are plenty of times when i make a play and am not "sure" about exactly everything that's happening.

e.g. stacking off for value vs. a fish with TPTK. i'm not "sure" of his range or whether or not i'm making the most +EV play. i'm still making what i believe is the right play for reasons i can outline to myself.

i get into occasional spots where i have to make a judgment call about what to do in a certain spot (hero calling, hero folding, etc) and am not "sure". that happens to almost every player i know. that doesn't mean they're just "randomly pushing buttons", it just means they encountered a scenario which could go either way based on the information/reads they have. doesn't mean they're lacking something substantial in the "skill" department, the nature of the game calls for these spots to happen (esp. in PLO, when you think you're value betting but you're actually bluffing, though this happens in hold em too)

 

[Stu_Ungar]

there are plenty of times when i make a play and am not "sure" about exactly everything that's happening.

Those are the spots you need to improve on, to the point you are sure of whats going on.

By doing so, I think we could agree, that your skill level would improve.

It dosent matter what level you are at, if you get better then your skill level is said to have improved.

 

[vanquish]

if you're playing HU and you're facing a 3-barrel jam on the first hand and you could justify both calling and folding for various reasons and aren't "sure," does that mean you "don't have the skill advantage"? does this mean you should have folded your hand preflop because the equity-to-skill-advantage ratio wasn't good enough?

Spoiler

no. it just means you'll have to make a higher variance decision. it'd be nice to have a lot of hands vs. this guy to justify said decision, but you often don't get the luxury of that in poker

 

[Stu_Ungar]

if you're playing HU and you're facing a 3-barrel jam on the first hand and you could justify both calling and folding for various reasons and aren't "sure," does that mean you "don't have the skill advantage"? does this mean you should have folded your hand preflop because the equity-to-skill-advantage ratio wasn't good enough?

Spoiler

no. it just means you'll have to make a higher variance decision. it'd be nice to have a lot of hands vs. this guy to justify said decision, but you often don't get the luxury of that in poker

So the skill advantage becomes identifying someones range via other clues.

Given these clues you are sure his range is X and you are ahead.

 

[vanquish]

Those are the spots you need to improve on, to the point you are sure of whats going on.

By doing so, I think we could agree, that your skill level would improve.

It dosent matter what level you are at, if you get better then your skill level is said to have improved.

i think you're overstating the importance of "skill" when it comes to being a capable poker player. yeah, you can try to improve your hand-reading abilities to superuser status (against certain players i have played, this would effectively be required), but that shouldn't take away from your ambition to make certain reads and get into certain spots.

if i think a certain read is accurate and dynamics dictate it, i try to take advantage of it. though i may not be of superuser handreading ability, i have the confidence to make these plays. when i look back on them, my reasoning is solid, and i use knowledge of this play to my advantage in the future.

"skill" is such an ambiguous term when applied to poker that it's hardly worth dwelling on imo. if you're beating your stakes and feel your game improving, you don't really need to philosophize as much and can just continue in grind-mode.

leave the "skill" to chess players

 

[vanquish]

Given these clues you are sure his range is X and you are ahead.

how can you be "sure" of his range? (unless you ask him and he tells the truth)

 

[Cafeman]

fwiw a good reason to open JTs in this case is if you think he will put more pressure on you on boards that you hit than ones you don't (so he will bluffraise Txx or 98x boards and fold to cbets on Kxx boards).

Sorry to butt in girls, but just to clarify this point vanq:-

Do you kinda mean that our hand is disguised somewhat, so when he thinks he's attacking my (UTG) range on some boards, he'll actually be betting right into me?

 

[jbbb]

I think you have to think about the alternative line he could have taken here.

Lets assume villian raises or cr about 30% overall, so TPGK+ Draws, GS, Sets 2pair. Basically lots of strong things and lots of draws and a few bluffs with air, but the air is always going to be negligible compared to the amount of other stuff he naturally raises here.

Against that range we have to fold down to the near nuts to continue.

The temptation is to think "well he does this a lot so I should be able to exploit it"

His range is strong so you exploit that by folding.

If he also has a calling range, then what exactly is in it? No sets, No 2pair, No TPTK No Draws, No GS.

So we are betting here, planning to fold to a raise but also planning on 3 barrelling if he calls. If we hit, great, if not our last bet will put us all in. We barrell 2 streets with equity and the final street we make a pure bluff due to all of the dead money in the pot.

If this guy is raising so much that its making you want to play back at him knowing that his range is probably still quite strong, then the thing to bear in mind is when he calls he almost has nothing he can call 3 streets of betting with.

Interesting discussion, but regarding this post:

 

[Stu_Ungar]

how can you be "sure" of his range? (unless you ask him and he tells the truth)

Well if you get it wrong more often than you get it right, you will lose money.

 

[vanquish]

Sorry to butt in girls, but just to clarify this point vanq:-

Do you kinda mean that our hand is disguised somewhat, so when he thinks he's attacking my (UTG) range on some boards, he'll actually be betting right into me?

Basically

 

[vanquish]

Well if you get it wrong more often than you get it right, you will lose money.

You can get someone's range wrong but still make the right play

 

[Stu_Ungar]

You can get someone's range wrong but still make the right play

Thats luck

 

[vanquish]

I've been wrong about people's ranges a ton and have been a winner at small/midstakes for years, I'm one lucky sonbitch!

 

[Stu_Ungar]

I've been wrong about people's ranges a ton and have been a winner at small/midstakes for years, I'm one lucky sonbitch!

TBH vanq I think you are just arguing for the sake of it.

Your failing to make any logical point.

So Im done with this thread.

Well done you killed it.

 

[vanquish]

My point- it is alright to make plays that you aren't sure will work (based on reads/dynamics/instincts). You don't always have to be 100% sure, and don't need to rely on hot cold equity to decide which hands to play esp vs opponents against whom we don't and.won't have tons of hands. Sorry for killing ur precious thread

 

[baudib1]

I think opening JTs here is fine and vs. a tard we should obviously lower our stacking off range. Like we should play J97r as the immortal nuts as well as times we gutter+overs. this isn't one of those times though.