hi jason,

first some sunshine - your vids are great!

your Q9 vs K9 hand. When your opp insta pot OOP, you never mentioned you thought he might have had a big hand and wanted to get you off the flush draw. you thought 3bet preflop, and your read was he was too tight to trap or play you tricky? seems like aces/kings in BB would flat preflop. your image at the table I would think it to be a possibility for him to make that play.

in general vs a tight opp, do you think a play with prem pair in BB vs BTN is to 3 bet due to the raising range of the BTN fearing what, flop/str draws or simple smaller PP? - except for set mining, you'd hope they'd have a lower pair IMO

something like this happens to me at times. I start to think my hand is the winning hand and it is almost as if my reads then get distorted - did that happen to you in this hand by chance?

just curious and hoping to discuss it - I liked that hand.

it seems as though everyone plays sawmill (K9) - I hate that hand i am shocked at how many love it. i rarely defend with it, unless I get raised by you now, i'm allin!

Well, I thought if he had a huge hand - a set, most likely - he'd be more likely to ch/r than donkbet out pot. It's a weird bet to make with any hand, but weirdest to me would be a set. By far, the default is for people to checkraise sets on a fairly dry 932cc board, not bet out - def not insta, and def not pot - esp into an aggro opponent like me. It just seemed like by far the most unlikely thing for him to have. AA/KK makes sense to flat preflop occasionally, but why slowplay preflop only to blast out on the flop, especially for pot? It's a weird hand that didn't make much sense to me and I was really sure he had a flush draw or a nine, even though some the nines beat me, I was willing to get it in.

I think your middle question is about optimal play from the BB vs BTN in terms of 3bing big pairs. If I'm wrong, please correct me. In general, if you NEVER 3b preflop, you should rarely be 3bing preflop with your huge hands, except in situations the pot is likely to become multiway. To "balance your range", ie disguise your hand strength, good players mix a wider range of hands into all of their actions, so for example, their 3b's here could mean AA or air, not just a huge hand. HU, btn vs bb, it's definitely a good play to just smoothcall most of the time out of the blind - this effectively masks your strength and makes your AA or KK look like any other hand in your fairly wide smoothcall range. But, if you've been 3b'ing a lot, then by all means, 3b away with your good hands too.

Ignoring information as you proceed deeper into the hand, or the session, is a good way to lose money. I used to do that a lot - just grab onto a read ("he's terrible and a fish!!") and never develop it further, and refuse to refine or adjust it. I don't do it too often any more, and here I was mostly just really confused by his line and still felt pretty sure he wasn't massively strong and most likely was marginal or drawing. Like I've said in other posts recently, I've spent a lot of time over the years honing my reads, and they're usually right - but not always. I thought awhile about what I was going to say in this response to you because in my head this hand is summarized as "I just didn't believe him to be that strong" and it's tough to break that down, but I hope I did a better job than I did in the video.

Ask away if you need more clarification.

Jason

thanks Jason. okay so you did put him on a possible flush draw and thought he was just over betting it.

you explained it well this time and in the video. it was not, to me, labeled as you said "I just didn't believe him to be that strong", but more of "i'm confused or play makes not sense - so i'm calling" questioning his insta pot bet play... and this is probably a level thing - I see this too often. meaning, at my level which is currently lower than yours, I see this play where the opponent fears the flush draw and bets the pot or overbets it.

Again your reads were correct(ish), and mine were (while watching the vid) wrong - but I would have folded and you didnt'. Yet your top 10 on FTP tournaments and I'm uh getting there

That's actually a good point to make in that at fairly different stake levels, some actions tend to have different meanings - or are developed off different logic. In 1k's, 5ks, etc, esp online, I assume/do a lot of things I wouldn't do at a $5 fo, and considering most of our members are playing lower limits, I'm going to make my next 2-3 videos in the $5-$50 range before returning to a HSMTT.