dmorris68
Legend
Loyaler
Reading BelgoSuisse's topic in the ring game hand analysis forum about playing 64s and drawing the straight in 25NL reminded me of last night's 25NL session.
I'm loathe to even play such hands at 25NL, primarily because I rarely hit the draw and people typically won't fold any made hand (hell, many won't fold high card) no matter how much you throw at them. To make matters worse, I also run into a lot who slowplay good hands (intentionally or not) with checks and min-bets, so I get a bad read on them. They don't extract maximum value, but they give me reason to stay in the pot and pay them off, bleeding my stack.
Last night, for instance, I'm playing 6-way 25NL and there's some stations calling with anything, so I'm loosening up a bit (I'm normally quite TAG). Once I was holding something like TT in LP and did my standard 3x or 4x PFR after it was called around to me. The flop hits something like 8 A 6, they check to me and I c-bet, thinking surely they would bet if they had an ace. The turn hits another ace and they again check to me, and now for some reason a little voice is telling me to beware of a trap (even though I don't think these players were that sophisticated), so I check behind thinking they'll surely bet the river if they hold trip aces. River comes up T giving me trips, so I make a pot sized bet and they call. Showdown comes and sure enough, this guy has ace trips. He never bet for value, he simple check-called the whole hand.
At first I thought he played me with a trap, but I saw this pattern of checking and min-betting with all sorts of hands several more times through the session, and not just from him but from others as well. I became convinced that either they just had no clue how to properly bet a hand, or had recently learned about trapping and were overplaying it but not cashing in on it. It really screwed up my game and caused me to tighten up a lot more than I probably should -- and even though I left the session ~$12 up, for the length of time I played that wasn't much of a profit.
Thoughts and strategies for recognizing and countering this are welcome and appreciated!
I'm loathe to even play such hands at 25NL, primarily because I rarely hit the draw and people typically won't fold any made hand (hell, many won't fold high card) no matter how much you throw at them. To make matters worse, I also run into a lot who slowplay good hands (intentionally or not) with checks and min-bets, so I get a bad read on them. They don't extract maximum value, but they give me reason to stay in the pot and pay them off, bleeding my stack.
Last night, for instance, I'm playing 6-way 25NL and there's some stations calling with anything, so I'm loosening up a bit (I'm normally quite TAG). Once I was holding something like TT in LP and did my standard 3x or 4x PFR after it was called around to me. The flop hits something like 8 A 6, they check to me and I c-bet, thinking surely they would bet if they had an ace. The turn hits another ace and they again check to me, and now for some reason a little voice is telling me to beware of a trap (even though I don't think these players were that sophisticated), so I check behind thinking they'll surely bet the river if they hold trip aces. River comes up T giving me trips, so I make a pot sized bet and they call. Showdown comes and sure enough, this guy has ace trips. He never bet for value, he simple check-called the whole hand.
At first I thought he played me with a trap, but I saw this pattern of checking and min-betting with all sorts of hands several more times through the session, and not just from him but from others as well. I became convinced that either they just had no clue how to properly bet a hand, or had recently learned about trapping and were overplaying it but not cashing in on it. It really screwed up my game and caused me to tighten up a lot more than I probably should -- and even though I left the session ~$12 up, for the length of time I played that wasn't much of a profit.
Thoughts and strategies for recognizing and countering this are welcome and appreciated!