Playing with guns at NL50
Having a good flop is nice and all but you should never forget about safety precautions. After all, poker can be a pretty dangerous game...
Back at NL50, we decide to protect our Big Blind aggressively against a small steal raise from the Cut-Off position. It's a questionable line but we still have something to work with in terms of value.
Our Hero's Preflop 3-bet is intended as a re-steal against a 35% range from the CO. The sample size though is not really big, and hands like A9-AT work better in WA/WB situations after calling Preflop. By re-stealing we turn our pretty good hand into a bluff. 3-betting with weaker aces is totally fine. In our case any top pair, with either an ace or a nine, has good chances against the Villain's barreling Postflop range.
If we choose to re-steal regardless, our betsizing should be bigger as well. Our 3x re-raise gives the Villain only 4 bb to call, thus our 3-bet lacks fold equity – so why bluff in the first place? But enough with the criticism. We have something more interesting to discuss.
The Flop actually looks good at the second sight. The Villain is unlikely to simply call our weak re-steal with AK and QQ+ hands, and he can only have one combo of 99 since we block the rest. So we can safely assume the Flop is ours. But, just like in actual combat, you can't just ask your opponent to play along.
Our Hero value bets the Flop but, again, the sizing could've been better. After all, no ace and no club draw would fold even to a heftier bet, like 3/4 of the pot. The Turn card is one of the safest in the deck, so we can proceed with value betting. At least 2/3 of the pot should be enough to make it a -EV call for draws and Ax hands.
The River is also a blank. Our opponent has a quadruple stack but no particular history to it. Considering our small sample size and no particular reads, another value bet is a must. Let's suppose the Villain has an AJ hand. How much would be able to pay us? Most likely he would call 1/2 of the pot but fold to a shove. So our Hero makes a sure bet the Villain may call but something weird happens next...
Now we face a raise equal to a shove. Did we miss something? What should we do now? This time we also have only two options to choose from, but it doesn't make our decision any less painful. Time to check your aim in our poll!
Previous poll's results
Last time we were trying to apply critical thinking on the River with our lower straight.
Most of you chose a safer approach and called, but the victory wasn't decisive as this option gained from 53% to 63% of the votes.
By his previous play, our opponent capped his range on the Flop and the Turn in a way that there's not enough hands to justify our shove on the River. It may be considered a nitty play but calling in this situation against a relatively unknown opponent is the most preferable option.
