Nl 10 A8o

What's the point of opening 2.5x on the CO at NL10? Imho it's a huge mistake since you're loosing tons of potential value on later streets. Even though you may say that players on the blinds are tight, still you have no real reson for raising smaller than 3x since they're probably bad TAPs.

On the flop I agree with the check back. You have a 2nd pair type hand, if you bet your transforming your hand in a bluff, so checking is of course the best choice. You may look a bit FU against some regs, but that's not the case.

The turn is a very good card for you and opponent decide to lead. Given your flop action, calling is the correct choice.

On the river ofcourse you're rapping the 8, but I don't think that your opponent knows this. There's of course value to get by raising since there are some Qx in his range that are likely to call. Imho he can't have worst 8s, K8 is rarely in its range, it's blockered and he shouldn't be playing it in this way on the turn. On the opposite side, it's hard to see which hand is 3betting 4value here, since only 22 and 77 are the only ones.

The only thing that concerns me is the size. His 3betting really large, with a smaller size it was much easier to call (also your raising size on the turn is too big).

It's close, I think I'm crying-calling. Wait for opinions of better players than me

We don't have to check behind the flop, because:
(1) we can fold out 9x, Tx, Jx, Kx, which have outs against us: so we're betting to get the dead money, and we have a lot of FE on this flop
(2) occasionally, we can also get called by 7x, small pockets, and draws, just because it's such a common spot for a bluff cbet

So a cbet wouldn't be a mistake, in my opinion. I even like it more, because checking back gives us no information: if the turn comes another overcard, which isn't particularly unlikely, what are we gonna do? Fold to a bluff that we induced ourselves? Or call with a 3rd pair? We had both position and initiative, and we basically just gave it all away with our passive line.

On the river, I'm not sure if there's a lot of value in raising. What Qx is he gonna call with? He bets river big, and we raise big as well. I wouldn't be calling AQ here myself if I was the villain. Plus, there shouldn't be any strong Qx in his range, because AQ and KQ are 3betting preflop. So it's just QJ, which doesn't call our raise. We're just isolating ourselves against stronger, I think.

PS: I don't think it's a huge mistake to open 2.5bb at CO. People open all sorts these days at SH tables, and I don't think there's one mathematically backed-up correct way of opening (not that I know of).

@ #2: Opening 2,5x is fine.

@ Topic:

Bet the flop, you still have 2nd pair and there can be many bad cards OTT. And you do have decent amount of nice cards to come, in case he has AQ type of hands, which you can 2nd barrel.

OTR: Tough spot, not because the world is unfair, but because you didnt figure out how much villain wants to invest on earlier streets. If he raises you big OTF, you can fold earlier

PF: 2.5X is fine, especially if you steal >30% here

R: Hmm this is close to the top of your range and with this sort of analysis we cannot fold here. I guess you might sometimes slowplay QQ and 22 (by not betting Flop, or not raising the Turn)

If we thought about this spot exploitatively, does he ever
1. Rebluff here? Not likely at this limit
2. Raise worse? I think he would sometimes jam a weaker 8. This makes folding really bad if your opponent is capable of reraising a worse hand for value.

Pot odds = 3.85/13.55 = 28.4%

He reps 6 combos of boats (77/22)
He would need at least 2.3 combos of worse hands to justify a call here.

I think it's pretty easy for him to reraise 2 combos of 8X. So folding would be way too weak.

Originally posted by Th334
We don't have to check behind the flop, because:
(1) we can fold out 9x, Tx, Jx, Kx, which have outs against us: so we're betting to get the dead money, and we have a lot of FE on this flop
(2) occasionally, we can also get called by 7x, small pockets, and draws, just because it's such a common spot for a bluff cbet

So a cbet wouldn't be a mistake, in my opinion. I even like it more, because checking back gives us no information: if the turn comes another overcard, which isn't particularly unlikely, what are we gonna do? Fold to a bluff that we induced ourselves? Or call with a 3rd pair? We had both position and initiative, and we basically just gave it all away with our passive line.

On the river, I'm not sure if there's a lot of value in raising. What Qx is he gonna call with? He bets river big, and we raise big as well. I wouldn't be calling AQ here myself if I was the villain. Plus, there shouldn't be any strong Qx in his range, because AQ and KQ are 3betting preflop. So it's just QJ, which doesn't call our raise. We're just isolating ourselves against stronger, I think.

PS: I don't think it's a huge mistake to open 2.5bb at CO. People open all sorts these days at SH tables, and I don't think there's one mathematically backed-up correct way of opening (not that I know of).

I think we clearly have value in a River raise. He has plenty of QX which can value bet twice (QJ/AQ/KQ etc) against our Ace highs, weak pairs, and JJ/TT type of hands.

Originally posted by KingKas
@ #2: Opening 2,5x is fine.

@ Topic:

Bet the flop, you still have 2nd pair and there can be many bad cards OTT. And you do have decent amount of nice cards to come, in case he has AQ type of hands, which you can 2nd barrel.

OTR: Tough spot, not because the world is unfair, but because you didnt figure out how much villain wants to invest on earlier streets. If he raises you big OTF, you can fold earlier

I think he might be able to bet Flop for thin value in BU vs BB and esp if he makes a minraise and opponent defends a wide range in the blinds. But in CO vs BB I think it might be a little too thin. Villain shouldn't have too many 8Xo type of hands but he should have a ton of Q9o+ combos.

So I think checking back the Flop is the right play.

Originally posted by mbml
I think he might be able to bet Flop for thin value in BU vs BB and esp if he makes a minraise and opponent defends a wide range in the blinds. But in CO vs BB I think it might be a little too thin. Villain shouldn't have too many 8Xo type of hands but he should have a ton of Q9o+ combos.

So I think checking back the Flop is the right play.

Thanks, mbml. Can I just ask you a quick and very fishy question please: from your Q9o+ comment I assume that good players are supposed to call loose steals with most broadway for value? I just never did it myself, but now that you said it I don't really know why Probably because we would be playing OOP with a potentially dominated hand and all.

About the preflop 2,5x

Imho, the reason for which we choose a smaller preflop raising size is that we're trying to make our steals mathematically more profitable, so we need a smaller FE to make the steak profitable.

But that's valid when people on the blinds are likely to be defending their blinds with teeth. Here we have 3 random people on the blinds, we have less than 100 hands for each, stats are very inaccurate and we should assume their not better then us.

When we're playing against weaker players, it is much better to play bigger pots since we're more likely to be winning it in some way, it's the same reason for which we should be opening 4/5x with a lot of hands on full fish tables.

Originally posted by Th334

Originally posted by mbml
I think he might be able to bet Flop for thin value in BU vs BB and esp if he makes a minraise and opponent defends a wide range in the blinds. But in CO vs BB I think it might be a little too thin. Villain shouldn't have too many 8Xo type of hands but he should have a ton of Q9o+ combos.

So I think checking back the Flop is the right play.

Thanks, mbml. Can I just ask you a quick and very fishy question please: from your Q9o+ comment I assume that good players are supposed to call loose steals with most broadway for value? I just never did it myself, but now that you said it I don't really know why Probably because we would be playing OOP with a potentially dominated hand and all.

Well its just risk vs reward. Pot odds are just way too good here and we just need to lose less than 1bb on average (ev of folding)

Originally posted by 92Niko
About the preflop 2,5x

Imho, the reason for which we choose a smaller preflop raising size is that we're trying to make our steals mathematically more profitable, so we need a smaller FE to make the steak profitable.

But that's valid when people on the blinds are likely to be defending their blinds with teeth. Here we have 3 random people on the blinds, we have less than 100 hands for each, stats are very inaccurate and we should assume their not better then us.

When we're playing against weaker players, it is much better to play bigger pots since we're more likely to be winning it in some way, it's the same reason for which we should be opening 4/5x with a lot of hands on full fish tables.

Yes i have to agree with u here. If opponents are extremely passive and weak, then 3x makes more sense. But making it any larger is probably not too good if u are doing it with too wide of a range (bloating up the pot too much with weak hands)