31 replies to this topic

[DanielNegreanu]

Was just giving a quick lesson to a friend. 6 handed $30-$60 game you have As 2s UTG and raise. Button calls and Big Blind calls. You have zero info on either player. Flop is A-9-5 rainbow with one spade. You bet and the button calls. The turn is the 9s.... what would you do?BetCheck/CallCheck/Raise

[Mills]

don't play a ton of LHE, but I think this is a check call...(?) getting raised readless here puts you in a really akward spot. This way if he has a 9 we get to peel the river as cheap as possible, and if he has air we allow him to bluff if hes floating. I dont really see any hand we beat paying us if we bet.. 77+ would have reraised the button imo and he he peeled a turn so its not unresonable to put him on a 9 here. "Am I anywhere close?" He said hopefully

[FCP Bob]

Check raising would be horrible.Without any information about our opponent I like check calling best. It's a hand where your opponent is going to bet with pretty much his entire range a large percentage of the time and anybody who you're ahead of has few outs. If you're behind there's a good chance you're going to get raised on the turn and you want to draw to your flush for one bet since you're never folding this hand.Checking calling this hand also is good for balance in the future since it may get you some cheap showdowns on hands where your opponent has you beat but doesn't bet when you check to them if they remember this hand. Against some bad players in the future it also might allow you to bluff them off hands if they have it in their minds that you only check call aces with a flush draw since they might not understand the reasons behind the play but only remember you not betting what to them is a strong hand so when you are betting they might assume you have what you're representing.

[DinkDonk]

I think it's a pretty perfect hand in our range (if we agree that we should be raising pre-flop) to check/call with. I think it's probably a lot more important to be thinking about this spot in terms of what we're doing with all the different parts of our range by the time we're playing 30/60, though.Btw Daniel, I'm trying to get into the 500/1k game you're playing right now but Stars support won't lift my table restrictions. You can thank them when you still have all your money at the end of this night. :)Also, we have a (ragingly popular) 6-max forum, noob.

[KingJames]

o my

[MaxStPolish]

 FCP Bob, on Friday, December 24th, 2010, 12:07 AM, said:

Check raising would be horrible.Without any information about our opponent I like check calling best. It's a hand where your opponent is going to bet with pretty much his entire range a large percentage of the time and anybody who you're ahead of has few outs. If you're behind there's a good chance you're going to get raised on the turn and you want to draw to your flush for one bet since you're never folding this hand.Checking calling this hand also is good for balance in the future since it may get you some cheap showdowns on hands where your opponent has you beat but doesn't bet when you check to them if they remember this hand. Against some bad players in the future it also might allow you to bluff them off hands if they have it in their minds that you only check call aces with a flush draw since they might not understand the reasons behind the play but only remember you not betting what to them is a strong hand so when you are betting they might assume you have what you're representing.

This. To take it a step further tho, let's assume the probable line happens, we check, button bets, we call. What happens if/when a non-pairing spade hits the river. We lead out for value, right?If we get raised, we are probably losing two big bets.....but if we check, there's a chance it gets checked behind and we miss a big bet.

[custom36]

I much prefer bet/calling here. I imagine Daniel's been pretty agressive all game, so he's getting raised by many hands he beats and he redraws to a flush. If we get raised on the turn we should be check/calling a blank river. While it's possible the villain turned trips, what's more likely is that he has A8-A2, in which case any 9-K guarantees us at least a split pot and we still have the flush draw that our opponent doesn't.

[DinkDonk]

 custom36, on Friday, December 24th, 2010, 1:14 PM, said:

I much prefer bet/calling here. I imagine Daniel's been pretty agressive all game, so he's getting raised by many hands he beats and he redraws to a flush. If we get raised on the turn we should be check/calling a blank river. While it's possible the villain turned trips, what's more likely is that he has A8-A2, in which case any 9-K guarantees us at least a split pot and we still have the flush draw that our opponent doesn't.

I disagree with the bolded a bit, but other than that, this all sounds reasonable in a vacuum. But if we're betting this hand, do we have a check/calling range? Which hands? How about a check/folding or check/raising range?

[Mills]

 custom36, on Friday, December 24th, 2010, 10:14 AM, said:

I much prefer bet/calling here. I imagine Daniel's been pretty agressive all game, so he's getting raised by many hands he beats and he redraws to a flush. If we get raised on the turn we should be check/calling a blank river. While it's possible the villain turned trips, what's more likely is that he has A8-A2, in which case any 9-K guarantees us at least a split pot and we still have the flush draw that our opponent doesn't.

Interesting perspective. My only problem is that even in this scenario (which is perfectly plausible) we're still behind quite a bit going to the river putting the extra money in.

[BaseJester]

 custom36, on Friday, December 24th, 2010, 1:14 PM, said:

I much prefer bet/calling here. I imagine Daniel's been pretty agressive all game, so he's getting raised by many hands he beats and he redraws to a flush.

Like what?

[custom36]

 DinkDonk, on Friday, December 24th, 2010, 12:18 PM, said:

I disagree with the bolded a bit, but other than that, this all sounds reasonable in a vacuum. But if we're betting this hand, do we have a check/calling range? Which hands? How about a check/folding or check/raising range?

What do you mean? What range is the villain calling with? Will answer, just confused by your words.

 Mills, on Friday, December 24th, 2010, 12:32 PM, said:

Interesting perspective. My only problem is that even in this scenario (which is perfectly plausible) we're still behind quite a bit going to the river putting the extra money in.

We're behind more often than we're ahead if he has an ace, but we also need to take into account smaller flush draws and pocket pairs that we're already ahead of. Admittedly, I'm not so good at these hypothetical calculations, but given that we don't have any info, I think bet/calling is the most +EV.

[DinkDonk]

 custom36, on Friday, December 24th, 2010, 1:55 PM, said:

What do you mean? What range is the villain calling with? Will answer, just confused by your words.

What I mean is- If we aren't going to check/call with this hand here, are there any hands in our range for this spot (of all of the hands we raise pre-flop) that you would check/call with? Which ones?In other words, can you think of a hand you can have where it is correct to check/call in this spot? How about check/raising or check/folding?

[looshle]

Pretty easy check call IMO. We should only be called on the flop by Ax, 9x, like 56, 78, and other pairs.We can only hope to tie Ax, have to put in 2 bets vs 9x, fold out his guthots that now only have 3 outs and will likely bluff if checked to, as well as the same for like his pairs 22-66 which might also bet turn for us.Betting really accomplishes nothing since we have almost 0 to protect against and only a flush draw vs his value range.

[custom36]

 DinkDonk, on Friday, December 24th, 2010, 1:23 PM, said:

What I mean is- If we aren't going to check/call with this hand here, are there any hands in our range for this spot (of all of the hands we raise pre-flop) that you would check/call with? Which ones?In other words, can you think of a hand you can have where it is correct to check/call in this spot? How about check/raising or check/folding?

I can't think of anything I'm check/calling with here. And I've thought about it for a good 5-10 minutes. Maybe a smaller flush draw...but probably not. I'm only check/raising with a 9 or a boat. Check/raising with anything else is spewy.Edit - I ran this through pokerstove giving him credit for any A, TT-KK, suited connectors 56+ and we have 73.9% equity. Making it even stricter, we're still never below 62%.

[rrumsey]

check call imo. keep more options open for the river imo. bet call begins to overplay out hand and make it hard to play the river.

[looshle]

 custom36, on Friday, December 24th, 2010, 3:29 PM, said:

I can't think of anything I'm check/calling with here. And I've thought about it for a good 5-10 minutes. Maybe a smaller flush draw...but probably not. I'm only check/raising with a 9 or a boat. Check/raising with anything else is spewy.Edit - I ran this through pokerstove giving him credit for any A, TT-KK, suited connectors 56+ and we have 73.9% equity. Making it even stricter, we're still never below 62%.

We're usually putting in 2 bets when we're behind and only 1 when ahead. Not only that but when we are ahead we are rarely getting called so your math isn't really too accurate. If we knew he was calling with 100% of his range, then our immediate equity is all that matters.Most of his pairs are more likely to call river after we check turn, rather than call turn. His gutshots will fold if we bet, and might bluff if we check. We're really just overrepping our hand by betting. Also, its infinitely better to bet a small flush draw rather than Ax with flush draw.

[DinkDonk]

 custom36, on Friday, December 24th, 2010, 5:29 PM, said:

I can't think of anything I'm check/calling with here. And I've thought about it for a good 5-10 minutes. Maybe a smaller flush draw...but probably not. I'm only check/raising with a 9 or a boat. Check/raising with anything else is spewy.Edit - I ran this through pokerstove giving him credit for any A, TT-KK, suited connectors 56+ and we have 73.9% equity. Making it even stricter, we're still never below 62%.

Well, I could write a long tirade on balance, but I'll keep it simple. If you have a value range in a spot, you should have a bluff range, or else it makes no sense for someone to call you down. The only times you should have no bluff range are when you know that your opponent is folding 0% of the time and you beat 0% of his range. So in this spot, for example, if you're only c/raising with a 9+ here, it's pretty easy to just fold the turn once c/raised. Also, I think that it's imperative to c/r with less than a 9 here with a decently high frequency because of the amount of times I'm c/calling and c/folding. I c/r with like most of my AK combos, AQss, and some smaller 9's and flush draws. I'd bet/3bet all the stuff better than that, bet/call some of the stuff worse than that, and bet/fold with a lot of my hands that had little room to improve.Another also, I think that just for the reasons Looshle said and irregardless of balance, this hand plays best in a vacuum by c/calling. Your math isn't wrong or bad, it's just incomplete. You need to think about the next few steps in the hand and how that affects his range and our equity against it.

[BaseJester]

 custom36, on Friday, December 24th, 2010, 5:29 PM, said:

Edit - I ran this through pokerstove giving him credit for any A, TT-KK, suited connectors 56+ and we have 73.9% equity. Making it even stricter, we're still never below 62%.

His calling range isn't nearly that wide. You have to expect a 3-bet preflop from QQ+. Most of those connectors folded on the flop.

[BaseJester]

 DinkDonk, on Friday, December 24th, 2010, 8:41 PM, said:

If you have a value range in a spot, you should have a bluff range, or else it makes no sense for someone to call you down.

The villain can be calling for pot odds even if he knows he's always behind.

[looshle]

 BaseJester, on Friday, December 24th, 2010, 7:15 PM, said:

The villain can be calling for pot odds even if he knows he's always behind.

At this level though, theres not many hands he's going to have to call down for "pot odds" since the board is really dry. Like if he has TT, he doesnt have any odds vs anything we are value betting.