[Closed] [coaching-feedback] NL SSS Gold with xarry2 - wednesdays at 7pm CET

Hi xarry,

What platform do u will choose for nl600 ? I play on FTP for now, but there is only 3-4 tables.

Second,

What to do with this kind of situation ?

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $4(BB) Full Tilt
SB ($48)
BB ($432)
UTG ($461)
UTG+1 ($76)
UTG+2 ($80)
MP1 ($383)
MP2 ($106)
Hero ($98)
BTN ($83.50)

Dealt to Hero T♦ A♠

fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $14, BTN raises to $83.50 (AI), fold, fold, fold

BTN wins $34

BTN sss player 10/10

BB VS steal 18 %

SB vs steal 16%

3bet total 7%

I don`t have in HM statistic BTN vs steal, so what to do ? Just look on 3 bet ?

hi!

I think if its important to you to have many tables you should give pokerstars a try. it has most players. party poker doesn't have NL 600 tables btw

concerning your hand, if you don't have many stats you should make a first evaluation of your opponent by using VPIP and PFR. pretty often you can already categorize him then, e.g. if he has 12/10 stats ATo is much more a fold than for example against a 17/13 player.
if you already have enough stats to say something about 3bet% in the BU then take this value. just taking a look at his 3bet% overall is also okay, but be aware that this is also just an orientation. the BU 3bet percentages often vary so much from the overall%. e.g. a 3% 3bet overall player can easily 3bet 10% in the BU (especially in BU vs CO).

in general you have to ask yourself about which pot odds you get for an all-in and how much equity you need in order to call profitable. you can do this with the pot odds equity calculator from my chart collection for example. then try to find out a 3betting range for BU where you have ~the breakeven equity. if this range seems plausible to you (considering the information you have, like VPIP/PFR/3bet%, reads ect...) then you should call. if you however can'T say much at all about the hands he can be reraising here I would rather fold this hand.

with the stats you mention I tend to fold this hand. am I right reading the BB vs steal as "3bet vs steal in the BB"? this already shows he 3bets more aggressive but imo not aggressive enough in order to assume a BU 3betting range which is loose enough to provide a profitable call for us.

I can just recommend: do a pot odds equity calculation and play with the equilator to find out more about how his range has to be made up in order to give you a good call. only by doing so you'll gather experience in judging these spots.

best regards,
xarry

Thx for helpful advices ;-)

Adv SSS Coaching - 09/16

In between learning and sleeping I finally have time to make this review. Since I have an important exam on thursday I currently have hardly time to do anything than learning

Known players: (for a description of vp$ip, pfr, ats, folded bb, af, wts, wsd or hands click here)      
[tg]Position_Stack:hands/vp$ip/pfr/af/wts/ats/foldbb/w$sd;Hero$55,00:///////;BU$201,75:///////;[/tg]
1,00/2,00 No-Limit Hold'em (8 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: Texas Grabem 1.9 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is SB with 2♣, 2♠
5 folds, BU raises to $8,00, Hero raises to $55,00 (All-In), 2 folds.

Final Pot: $65,00

This hand is an example for a speculative resteal. My opponent plays 11/5, however steals on the BU with 29%. Whats giving me romm for a looer resteal is his fold to 3bet%: 73% overall, on the BU he has 72%. What I now want to do is compare different EVs resulting from different foldequities:

BU openraising range is 29%: ~22+,A2s+,K9s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T9s,98s,A2o+,KTo+,QTo+,JTo

EV (calculated with the EV calculator):

Pot: 11$
eff. Stack: 55$
deadmoney: -1$
equity is changing with the callingrange
foldequity is given
blind/bet: 1$

EV = Pot*Foldequity + (1-Foldequity)[(eff.Stack+Deadmoney)*Equity – ((eff.Stack-Blind)*(1-Equity))]

EV = 11*Foldequity + (1-Foldequity)[(55$-1$)*Equity – ((55$-1$)*(1-Equity))]

1) 80% FE:
resulting callingrange: 0.2*29%= 5.8% => ~TT+,AJs+,AJo+
22s equity: 38.75%

=> EV = 6.37$

2) 70% FE:
resulting callingrange: 0.3*29%= 8.7% => ~88+,A8s+,ATo+
22s equity: 39.11%

=> EV = 4.17$

3) 60% FE:
resulting callingrange: 0.4*29%= 11.6% => ~66+,A5s+,KQs,A9o+
22s equity: 39.67%

=> EV = 2.14$

4) 50% FE:
resulting callingrange: 0.5*29%= 14.5% => ~66+,A4s+,KQs,A7o+,KQo
22s equity: 42.18%

=> EV = 1.28$

5) 40% FE:
resulting callingrange: 0.5*29%= 17.4% => ~33+,A2s+,KQs,A6o+,KQo
22s equity: 41.25%

=> EV = -1.27$

As you can see we can easily achive profitable EVs wuth high foldquity. in the first scenario for example you could theoretically bluff resteal any 2. were break even with 9.25% equity, well no hand runs that bad against a whole callingrange. nevertheless its important that your hand has a good equity in case it gets called. since most of the time you don't have such high foldequities. further its important to know your image and the history with your opponent. is there no history we maybe achive 80% FE with this opponent. he doesn't know us and gets bad odds for a call which will even increase the average BU foldequity for this spot. on the other hand if he has seen us pushing in this spot with T9s the he will probably call much looser than the average value suggests. maybe we only have 50% folequity left. if the history is even worse and we have a somehow crazy image (we've shown 94o as a resteal here, which we could do :)) we will end up with even lower foldequities which will make such loose resteals unprofitable. Thus keeping an eye on your image in order to evaluate your foldequity is even more important than hand selection. Whats btw nice in this hand is his 4BB openraise. The bigger the openraisesize the more profit we have when he folds - and it is this profit who has to compensate for the loss we make if we get called. with a speculative resteal you have by my definition less than 50% equity and thus the winnings result from foldquity.

regards,
xarry

Originally posted by xarry2
Adv SSS Coaching - 05/14

This is the reworked version of my Chart Collection:

http://www.file-upload.net/download-1611537/SSS-Chart-Collection-reworked-by-xarry2.xls.html

Hand 1:

Known players: (for a description of vp$ip, pfr, ats, folded bb, af, wts, wsd or hands click here)      
[tg]Position_Stack:hands/vp$ip/pfr/af/wts/ats/foldbb/w$sd;BB$619:205/16/13/0.0/25/46/19/60;CO$1410:716/19/4/2.4/25/39/14/36;Hero$362:///////;[/tg]
5/10 No-Limit Hold'em (9 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: Texas Grabem 1.9 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is SB with A♠, 3♠
5 folds, CO calls $10.00, BU folds, Hero calls $5.00, BB checks.

Flop: ($30.00) K♠, J♠, T♣ (3 players)
Hero bets $23, BB folds, CO raises to $99.00, Hero raises to $352.00 (All-In), CO calls $253.00.

Turn: ($734.00) T♦
River: ($734.00) K♦

Final Pot: $734.00

To fully understand this hand you should read this article in the gold section: http://www.pokerstrategy.com/strategy/no-limit/14/1/

I doubled up some hands before when I became A3s in the SB. Usually I don't like to complete here. In particular since BB is aggressive and will raise often if CO and I show weakness. Nevertheless I have more implied odds with a bigger stack if I hit a nice flop as I did here.
Flushdraw plus gutshot is a strong hand which has 12 Outs (sometimes we can count the A out too, but in this hand I think the A is not clean)
Before we make an action here we should consider the different lines we can apply here. This would be bet/push, check/raise or check call. The latter is definetely the worst one. Simply because we don't create fold equity. Check/call is maybe possible accoring to odds and implied odds but if we don't hit on the turn and face another big bet another call is often not profitable anymore because its now even more likely that we don't get a good payout if we hit on the river (especially on such a scary board).
Now we should think of either bet/push or check/raise. if you have read the big draws article you should now know that we make most profit if we create most fold equity. This is always the case if we make the final reraise.
That's why check/raise is not appropriate. CO bets 25, checkraise to 90 and then he can still push over us. As played however we have way more foldequity.
CO shows strenght with his reraise. He is not over-aggressive but I still think aggressive enough to justify the push. If he raises a draw here or a top pair sometimes we will have enough FE for this move.

Why are you playing with 35BB ?

Hi FWKanobi!

well, in this hand I doubled up recently. Since I probably just paid the BB instantly leaving the table would be throwing away money. And don't bother, even though the basic SSS strategy tells you to leave with 25BB this doesn't mean its getting unprofitable to play. You just have to consider that some things are changing. since your stack gets bigger pot odds will get much more important for your decisions. as long as you keep an eye on them there's not a problem playing "bigstacked".
nevertheless you should click the blind-out button after paying the SB

btw, if you're more interested in this topic then scroll through this thread. you will find many posts and questions about "deep-stacked" SSS.

best regards,
xarry

Adv SSS Coaching - 09/22

Known players: (for a description of vp$ip, pfr, ats, folded bb, af, wts, wsd or hands click here)       
[tg]Position_Stack:hands/vp$ip/pfr/af/wts/ats/foldbb/w$sd;Hero$124,80:///////;UTG+2$200,00:///////;[/tg]
3,00/6,00 No-Limit Hold'em (9 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: Texas Grabem 1.9 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is BB with K♠, J♣. UTG+2 posts a blind of $6,00.
UTG+1 folds, UTG+2 checks, 6 folds, Hero raises to $21,00, UTG+2 calls $15,00.

Flop: ($45,00) T♦, 8♣, T♥ (2 players)
Hero bets $24,75, UTG+2 folds.

Final Pot: $69,75

Our opponent is unknown. All we know is: he just posted in EP. This is a strong sign of weakness. Every good player would wait until the blinds reach him or at least only post in LP.
he checks his posts thus we can assume he doesn't have a strong hand - anyway we can give a poster 100% range at first since he has a random hand. But since he didn't raise his post we can even assume he now has like 80-90% range - 80-90% starting from the weakest hands not from the top hands! KJ therefore has a big equity edge against his range. If you're not feeling comfortable with raising OOP then you can of course check and make your money HU in an unraised pot. However our winnings will be much bigger if we play the hand aggressively. First villain will often fold preflop and if not we have initiative and a big equity edge. Thats why I raises here.
The flop is okay for a cbet. First paired boards will be a hit for him less often and second we've got some remaining outs if he calls. K/J for Top Pair, Q/9 for an OESD and A/7 for a gutshot. Additionally our stack at the turn in case villain calls would be >3/4 Pot and thats why we can achive much foldequity with a 2nd barrel. This 2nd cbet will of course be most profitable with an (over)card which also gives some additional outs. Thus the A, the Q and the 9 would be perfect.

Known players: (for a description of vp$ip, pfr, ats, folded bb, af, wts, wsd or hands click here)   
[tg]Position_Stack:hands/vp$ip/pfr/af/wts/ats/foldbb/w$sd;Hero$120,00:///////;BU$850,00:///////;BU$570,56:///////;[/tg]
3,00/6,00 No-Limit Hold'em (6 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: Texas Grabem 1.9 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is BB with 5♣, 4♣
4 folds, BU raises to $12,00, Hero calls $6,00.

Flop: ($24,00) 6♠, J♠, 9♠ (2 players)
BU checks, Hero checks.

Turn: ($24,00) J♦ (2 players)
BU checks, Hero checks.

River: ($24,00) 3♠ (2 players)
BU checks, Hero bets $15,80, BU folds.

Final Pot: $39,80

When you face a minsteal in the BB you should not only 3bet or fold. Since you get extremely good pot odds and have position to the raises you should often think of just calling. Of course without experience in those spots its problematic to call with 54s. But against players who steal more than 30% in the SB you just have to throw in calls with hands like QJ or 44. If you sometimes balance those rather weak hands in your calling range with AK or AA and other strong hands your opponent will have a hard time putting you on a correct range if you defend passively.
This hand is interesting so far, that we can think much about the lines from villain and me - and conclude to hands which would suit to the played line.
After SB (who is a 14/11 TAG btw) checks the flop its most likely he doesn't have flushdraw. Most of the time he will play bet call with his onecard flushdraws. If he is on a higher level of thinking he could throw in a checkraise with A/K/Q hi flushdraws as well as with a made strong flush. But overall the check on the onesuit board mostly means that he gives up his hand because he is too afraid to cbet. Consequently the line I chose is wrong. I should simply bet the flop in order to use the foldequity. checking behind would make more sense if we assume a checkraise often or have a hand which could develop on further streets. with our hand we are 100% dead on this board however. Thus checking behind will mostly lead to a bet from villain on the turn and we have to fold. And even if we wanted to bluff then we couldn't represent much. If we had a J or a 9 we would definetely bet the flop in order to protect. thats why betting the turn would only make sense against a non-thinking opponent. a good player could rebluff us since we don't have the J on 99% of the time after the line checkbehind flop, bet turn. since I gave villain enough credit to think this far I checked behind again. whats interesting now is that he doesn't bet the river. why? at this river I'd like to state villain never has a good flush. he has to bet at least with a T-hi flushdraw+ on the turn. just checking such a good draw twice would be very uncommon. the remaining options are now: he plans to c/c with a pretty weak flush in order to catch some bluffs or he is on a trash hand. with everything else than a flush its very hard to call on the river. and because the flushs which could play c/c on the river are not many (8,7,5,4,(2) hi) the biggest part of his range must be trash. what's also nice for a bluff for us: we don't have to bet big, what we are representing is exactly a weak flush like the listed 8,7,5 hi flushs. if we had them we want worse hands to call us and thus we don't want to bet too much. therfore the betsize should be 50-60% potsize. as you see I could still bet less than as played.

Known players: (for a description of vp$ip, pfr, ats, folded bb, af, wts, wsd or hands click here)    
[tg]Position_Stack:hands/vp$ip/pfr/af/wts/ats/foldbb/w$sd;Hero$151,80:///////;UTG+2$102,00:///////;MP2$806,98:///////;BU$561,56:///////;[/tg]
3,00/6,00 No-Limit Hold'em (8 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: Texas Grabem 1.9 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is BB with 6♥, 6♦
UTG+2 raises to $15,00, MP1 folds, MP2 calls $15,00, 2 folds, BU calls $15,00, SB folds, Hero calls $9,00.

Flop: ($63,00) J♦, A♦, Q♣ (4 players)
Hero checks, UTG+2 checks, MP2 checks, BU checks.

Turn: ($63,00) Q♠ (4 players)
Hero checks, UTG+2 checks, MP2 checks, BU checks.

River: ($63,00) J♠ (4 players)
Hero checks, UTG+2 checks, MP2 bets $30,00, 3 folds.

Final Pot: $93,00

In the last hand I decided to call my pocket pair on setvalue. Whats deciding here are the pot odds. The pot is 54$ and I have to call 9$. This makes 6:1 already. maybe you remember the hit-odds for a set: 7.5:1. (If you want to know more about probabilities take a look at this article: http://www.pokerstrategy.com/strategy/others/1549/ ) The pot odds are not much smaller than the hit-odds. As always the difference has to be compensated by future winnings. This means we have to win at least (7.5-6)*9$=13.5$ if we hit the set. In a 60$ pot with 4 players this will be more than easy - especially since we have 136$ left on the flop. In numbers this would mean its enough if we stack someone with our set once in 136$/13.5$=10 times. Of course we will stack someone in at least every 4th time and win bets almost every time we hit the set. In conclusion our implied odds are way better than they have to be. The only thing you should consider is: no set no bet!. If you start investing money postflop without a set this can easily ruin your winnings. There will be some spots like if I hit a good OESD where I maybe continue without a set but in 90% I'll fold. Against a UTG raise an overpair 66 is usually not worth much.

best regards,
xarry

Don't forget, the next 3 coachings will be on Tuesday 19:00!

xarry,

What u think about this hand:

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $10(BB) Full Tilt
SB ($1,752)
Hero ($321)
UTG ($1,015)
UTG+1 ($1,150)
CO ($1,737)
BTN ($1,000)

Dealt to Hero A♠ T♥

fold, fold, fold, fold, SB raises to $25, Hero raises to $70, SB raises to $450, fold

SB wins $140

SB 93 k hands 16/13 Sb steal 35 %

4bet 11 %

4bet range 1.3%

imo you should not 3bet/fold with AT. your hand has a very good equity against his SB stealing range. thus first calling is a very nice option. you've got a big stack and position plus an equity edge!
folding is out of question. and since he steals quite aggressive you can of course think of 3betting, too. however, if you 3bet this value hand you usually shouldn't fold it to the push (this depends pretty much on your stacksize). you throw away your equity edge and turn your hand into a bluff so to say.
the pot odds you get for calling the all in are 391$:251$ = 1.56:1 => you need 39% equity to call his push.
hmm, playing 3bet/call is possible if he goes broke with like 88+,A8s+,KJs+,ATo+,KQo. well, its close, probably he does not push loose enough that ATo has the needed equity.
whats however possible is to 3bet pretty small, I would say to like 55-60$. this gives your opponent the possibility to call with many worse hands. with AT thats not a problem for you, you are not dominated. consequently the pot odds you get for an all in are worse thus you have an easier fold.
in the long run you should however consider the possible adaptation of your opponent. if he sees you playing 3bet/fold in this spot he will probably give your deepstacked 3bets less credit and consequently he will loosen up his pushing range. maybe he even starts semibluffpushing.
another thought which comes to my mind is that if you include 3bet/fold bluffraises sometimes your 3betting range in this spot will get bigger and thus SB will maybe start rebluffing => if his pushing range loosens up then you could maybe play 3bet/call.

to sum up: the best play without history is calling the steal. without history playing 3bet/call is too loose. with history giving you an extremely aggressive 3betting range (best, if you had to show a trash bluffraise to like 60$) or history prooving that he is able to semibluffpush against you with suited connectors or pockets you can think of playing 3bet/call.

but this is a play which pretty much depends on the table flow/current image/history => thus the answer wether its possible to 3bet/fold or not lies in the poker metagame
therfore, since I don't know your opponent and have never played against him I can't give a final answer to this question.

Adv SSS Coaching - 09/29

Hi folks! I'm currently learning for my last exam this year: food process engineering. it deals with what happens to raw milk before we can buy it in the supermarket for example. thats also the reason why my posts are a bit delayed currently but its over soon ♦
This week I'll deal with some unraised pots and interesting postflop spots.

Known players: (for a description of vp$ip, pfr, ats, folded bb, af, wts, wsd or hands click here)       
[tg]Position_Stack:hands/vp$ip/pfr/af/wts/ats/foldbb/w$sd;Hero$48,60:///////;CO$125,79:///////;[/tg]
2,00/4,00 No-Limit Hold'em (9 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: Texas Grabem 1.9 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is BB with K♣, 7♣
5 folds, CO calls $4,00, 2 folds, Hero checks.

Flop: ($10,00) 7♦, 9♣, 6♦ (2 players)
Hero bets $9,00, CO folds.

Final Pot: $19,00

villain was unknown at that point

In coachings I often give recommendations when to play an unraised pot. Important are the following points:

- the strenght of our current hand
- the potential of our hand to improve on further streets (also negative potential! => if there are many ugly turncards for example)
- our opponents probable range an thus the foldequity we have with a bet
- our opponents tendencies in unraised pots

As always you will find more important aspects. But those are the most important ones. Especially if we play against unknown history and image is not important.
Well, let's apply the points to our hand. We are HU, and pick up a midpair, good kicker on a drawy flop. Most of the time we will be ahead of our opponent. Besides 9x and two pairs/straights there shouldn't be too many stronger hands. we can for example expect that overpairs aren't likely since our opponent limps in the CO where the average player usually raises like 77+. What I like about my hand except that there aren't too many hands beating us on the flop is our potential to improve. With every clubs we improve to a flushdraw and the K is also often a clean out. The other side is of course that every 5/8/T and every diamond will force us to give up our hand on the turn. In addition we have a valuebet against many draws. But you can definetely argue if its a good play to bet this spot against unknown. Without stats we will often have very hard turn decisions and thats what I usually want to avoid in freeplays. Depending on your own preferences you can chose to play this hand or not. But if you bet then you should bet hard - for value and protection.

Known players: (for a description of vp$ip, pfr, ats, folded bb, af, wts, wsd or hands click here)       
[tg]Position_Stack:hands/vp$ip/pfr/af/wts/ats/foldbb/w$sd;Hero$49,00:///////;CO$42,97:///////;[/tg]
1,00/2,00 No-Limit Hold'em (9 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: Texas Grabem 1.9 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is BB with 4♥, 3♠
5 folds, CO calls $2,00, 2 folds, Hero checks.

Flop: ($5,00) Q♦, 6♣, 4♦ (2 players)
Hero checks, CO checks.

Turn: ($5,00) 3♥ (2 players)
Hero bets $4,75, CO calls $4,75.

River: ($14,50) 5♦ (2 players)
Hero bets $7,78, CO folds.

Final Pot: $22,28

CO:
VPIP 23$, PFR 6%, ATS CO 14%, WTS 27%, AF 1.8

If you apply the key points from above to this flop whats your line? Mine is no bet :). The big difference is that our hand has far less potential. Also theres no way to make a Qx hand fold usually (in the hand above its possible that a 9 gives up to multiple bets). What we also know know is our opponents tendency to see the showdown: with 27% he's already on the loose side. Another interesting stat is fold to flop bet. He had a 59% value which is not too loose however. But considering our weak hand I still vore for a check.
The turn improves our hand to the best one usually. Since CO checks behind the flop we can say he mostly isn't on a strong hand. Maybe he checks behind with a 6, a 4 or some gutshots/runner runner draws. Since many of them could have improved now its very important to protect: again a hard bet. In unraised pots you should never bet less than 75% on the flop btw. Here this applies to the turn as well. The rivercard is probably the one we dislike most.
Whats our line then??? The line I chose is bet/fold. I decided for it since villain has loose/passive tendencies. Thats why I think he'll checkbehind a pair of 6s,5,4s for sure. On the other hand he'll bet with anything beating us. Thus check calling the river is usually not a good option against this player type. Another important point is that I don't expect CO have a flush often. Even though he's on the passive side I think that he'll bet most flushdraws on the flop. Given this, the number of hands beating us is pretty small. Finally if we get a raise, we have an easy fold but we placed a thin valuebet!

best regards,
xarry

Originally posted by xarry2
...
only if our opponents fold much more than they should it could be profitable.

=> all those things just showed me again: aspiring many sklansky pushes in your strategy isn't very profitable. most of the time you're much better off with rebuying after your stack decreases below 12BB.

thx for your help!

What do you mean? Why would it be a bad thing to use Sklansky Pushes? It has many advantages, one of which is that it makes you look 'crazy' to people who don't really know how Short Stack is played nor SC Pushes (which is probably 90%+ of opponents at the low stakes at least), hence it makes them payout on us with the really good hands because of the looser image, and on top of that the move by itself is $EV+

By the way, I rebuy below 10BB.

Hi DevilChess,
sorry for answering late. I finally have finished this years exams and have got time to play poker again.

I see your point. how big the advantage of a "crazier" image is depends only on how many players know what you're doing. imo SC-pushs are well known in the poker community these days. maybe you will surprise some low limit players with this move but starting with the low-mid limits most of your opponents are familiar with this play.
my point is, the EV you have with a correctly applied normal steal is much higher than the one of a SC-push. so now you have to ask yourself: is the image advantage a SC push gives you big enough to compensate for the EV difference to a normal steal. important is of course your experience with normal steals and the use of stats. without stats the easy SC push is of course more often appropriate as well without experience you will get yourself into many ugly spots while stealing normally.
consequently, from the advanced players point of view its best using SC pushes only in spots where there is no alternative. from the beginners and lower limit players point of view SC pushes however are more interesting.

best regards,
xarry

Adv SSS Coaching - 10/06

Known players: (for a description of vp$ip, pfr, ats, folded bb, af, wts, wsd or hands click here)       
[tg]Hero$392,00:///////;CO$798,55:///////;[/tg]
5,00/10,00 No-Limit Hold'em (9 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: Texas Grabem 1.9 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is UTG+2 with A♣, K♠
UTG+1 folds, Hero raises to $30,00, 3 folds, CO calls $30,00, 3 folds.

Flop: ($75,00) 5♠, K♦, 4♣ (2 players)
Hero bets $38,00, CO folds.

Final Pot: $113,00

I chose this hand since we were "deepstacked" with 39BB. often players start deviating from their usual lines in such spots. most of the time there is however no reason to do so.

Our opponent:
VPIP 17%, PFR 9%, 78 Hands

From these first hands we can tell CO is probably on the semi-tight, semi aggressive side. But with such a small samplesize we should not try interpreting more. What we can say however: he seems to be playing some sort of midstack strategy or at least he's not automatically rebuying to 100BB. for a bigstack this is always a sign of weakness. every player who trusts in his abilities will always buy in with 100BB and rebuy instantly. Thus he can always win the maximum. But since its also possible to loose the maximum some weak, scared players try playing midstacked. Consequently, due to the stats and the stacksize read we probably face a weak/semi-tight/semi-aggressive player.
Thus usually no need to worry on this flop. except 55 or 44 we don't have to fear better hands. Even though AA or KK may be possible they are mostly pretty unlikely in this spot.
What we can say however is that CO can easily call preflop with all sorts of pockets, broadways and maybe some lower suited connectors. Since he seems to be a bit weak/scared he could also just coldcall AK preflop.
With top pair top kicker we have a very nice valuebet then against: AK, KQ, KJ (KT), 66-JJ(QQ). Thus cbetting is the best play here. Espcially since not cbetting looks pretty suspicious on this board. On such a dry, King-hi board we will use every opportunity to cbet all our trash hands. Thus, if we don'T cbet a thinking opponent will easily put us on a medium stong hand, which however can't stand much action on this board e.g: TT-QQ. If we give up initiatice by playing check/call we will have a hard time calling the turn again and especially calling a riverbet will be pretty ugly. Our opponent then has full control of the hand and will put maximum pressure on us with value hands and bluffs, however get cheap to the showdown with his weaker hands.
The other alternative: check/raising is also sub-optimal. By first conveying weakness and then checkraising the pot we show maximum strenght. This will lead to an isolation against equally good or better hands. In the end we will split against AK and loose all our money against the sets...

Due to this we should simply make the cbet. it balances our range best, keeps initiative, and extracts value.
If we get a call alternative lines to a 2nd barrel get more interesting though. Now the 2nd barrel isolates us and scares away most weaker hands (against this type of opponent). Given our general evaluation of CO its mostly best to check the turn, call in case he bets and calling the river again. This means we switch to way ahead/ way behind on the turn which is possible on this dry board.
If CO does checkbehind the turn we can put him on a medium strong King and medium pocket pairs. Consequently we have to place another valuebet on the river which should be like 60-65% potsize - a good compromiss between keeping worse hands in the pot and extractin most value.

To sum up its much more important in "deepstacked" pots to accurately evaluate your opponent and his possible range. In the second step you then simply have to find out the best line against this range. This may seem hard but with some practice you'll soon be good giving your opponents ranges.
The first step is however: stop focusing only on your holding - focus on your opponents actions and find out the most about his holding in order to exploit him maximally.

best regards,
xarry

Thanks for the reply.

By the way I've learnt a lot from this thread, keep posting, you can be sure you'll always have readers. More than just a few, many of us readers may not post answers to your questions, but still we read it and learn from it.

Originally posted by xarry2
Adv SSS Coaching - 10/06

What a wonderful explanation
I would also like to know, how to continue playing, if CO raises us on the flop, which is also possible
I'm looking forward to your coachings, as my golden status is very close

thx for your feedback!

I'll soon answer your question Since I've just arrived back home from holiday this may take on or two days.

cu then,
xarry

@ Kokaroc:

I'm sorry for taking so much time to answer your question. But today is actually the first day since 2 weeks where I'm a) at home b) and don't have to pack my backs again

well, if we get a raise we face a more difficult spot. the problem is the dry board where draws/semibluffs are unlikely and our bigger stack.
as always pot odds can help finding the right play: our stack is 362$ on the flop and the flop post 72$ (raked). we also place a bet of 38$. if we assume CO raises us all-in the pot odds would be: (72$+38$+362$)/362$-38$ = 1.46:1 which equals 40.7% breakeven equity.
Now we have to ask us which hands could make the raise. hands we beat or split are KQ and AK. hands beating us are 55 and 44. Other however unlikely hands are AA or KJ.
against 55-44,AKs,KQs,AKo,KQo we have 50.7% equity and should continue against a raise.
however if we take KQ out of CO's range we only have 26.7% equity left and should fold.
unfortunately we don't have enough information to say more about his ranges. we can just guess according to the few reads we have.
with more hands and reads prooving he is really a tight and semi-passive player we could find a fold here. but even though our stack is bigger than usual I won't laydown this hand here. as in the range from above there are worse hands possible AK and we can't totally ignore bluffs/semibluffs. once in a while he also may show a hand like 65.
the only question is our line. should we cbet/push or cbet/call? I think this depends on his raisesize. if he raises small to like 100-120$ I prefer calling and check/raising All-In on the turn in order to give him the possibility to bluff again. if he checks behind I would push the river.
against a bigger raise like 150$+ we can consider pushing the flop. such a raise commits him pretty much to the pot and we don't run the risk of scaring away the weaker hands/draws.

so to sum up: due to the lack of information folding would be a weak play - despite the bigger stack. I can easily imagine opponents where we can fold this hand. but without more reads I don't laydown top of my range.

hey folks!

since I just arrived back home today and have much things to handle here I won't find the time to do last weeks coaching review.
Starting from wednesday I'll however be making reviews again!

Best regards,
xarry

Hi again xarry,
I have question about preflop raising on nl1000-nl2000.

I observer that many players sss small raising preflop, usuall this is 2bb from every position. I don`t change this raise preflop and its still is 3.5 bb, what line is better?