Poker Hands and Strategy

First, 11 handed poker is an abomination against god.

Ok First hand seems ok. Second one I agree it’s a for sure turn bet. You said villain was not good and passive. What are you checking for? Hoping he will bet? Just go for value imo.

he’s not good in that he now in a phase where he tries tons of stuff. BTN is for sure done with the hand without a T if I bet. He’s also never raising

And yeah, I just don’t think I’m getting value when I look that strong unless they have a T in which case they are betting it themselves.

Will he still chase a good draw on the turn bet? But yeah if you think he’ll see through that bet, then a check is fine

Is he even paying attention to your range? Few bad players do.

i think he’s not folding a combo but he is folding K5ss or whatever.

@clovis8 yeah he’s def paying attention. After the hand he even mentioned that I checked the same flop with the Kings earlier. These aren’t your Alberta fish. He tries to play well, he just mixes too many things and uses them in the wrong time.

fwiw I’m defending my line here but it’s very possible i should bet there because I can continue with FD/Combos too and check overpairs and naked straight draws

What about river? I think once i checked turn I should check river too and I kinda hated my bet. BTN might even fold a baby flush there.

I do think it’s a pretty fine spot to go for a river c/r

It is but its a charge game and not a raked game. Which in the world of underground poker where rake is crazy high its almost unheard of. I offered the couple running the game to pay 50% more to keep it 9 handed but no luck so far.

What are you betting on the turn in hand #2? Seems turn is a great spot for a polarized bet range - FHs and some draws. Probably best to bet small if you think he’s folding everything other than a T or a strong combo draw.

Unless you’re checking 100% of the time on that turn, seems your bet range needs to have some FHs in it.

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Hand 1 is nice hand bad luck on run out

Hand 2 I bet small(maybe 450) and encourage something stupid, which might be drawing to a dead gutshot or raising a dead flush draw. I think that size allows them to raise Tx as opposed to just calling down.

As played I think I’d go for the check raise in game speed and feel stupid when it goes check check behind with 99 and 67o lol.

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At the time i thought im checking 100% there. But i agree i can probably continue with combo draws (i dont think i ever have air there)

one more sizing question. Game is 5 handed now, about to end. 50 straddle on. I open 34dd otb to 200, straddle calls.

Flop 643ssd. He check, I bet 200 he calls. Turn Td he checks I bet 600 he calls. River 3x. He checks I bet 2500. He tanks for a long time cuts out chips and ends up folding.

Do you think it’s a good board to go for a overbet river? I thought he probably can only beat a bluff so might as well go really big and make it more likely i have a missed fd. Not sure.

I think it’s a mistake to change up your sizing pattern in a spot where he has K hi or something a lot of the time.

Just signals to him something is off instead of letting him get creative.

Yes, it is good to overbet river when your opponent very rarely has a strong hand and you have many strong hands (even something like AT is really strong here) and many air hands.

Math Dissertation Justifying This (spoilered to not burn people’s eyes):

I “knew” the above from received wisdom, but I wanted to work out the math for myself with simplified assumptions. First, assume three types of hands only: air, bluff catchers, and nuts. Also assume we always have air or nuts, and Villain always has a bluff catcher (I know he can have a busted draw in this particular spot, but I don’t think it changes the analysis much).

Now let’s say we use a bet sizing of X into a pot of size P with our Y combos of nuts. Then we need to balance with Z combos of air to make Villain indifferent to folding vs calling. If you set the EV of his call equal to 0, you will find that Z = XY/(P+X). For example, if you use a pot sized bet, then X = P and you get Z = PY/(P+P) = Y/2, meaning you should bluff half as often as you value bet with this sizing.

We can now calculate how much money we make from our range collectively.

  • Of course we make 0 from all the air hands we check back.
  • We make P+X from each of the Y combos of nuts that Villain calls off against.
  • We make P whenever Villain folds to our bet.
  • We lose X from each of the Z combos of bluffs that Villain snaps off.

In total, we make a Total of Y(P+X)(%VCall) + (Y+Z)P(%VFold) - ZX(%VCall). Substituting in the equation we got for Z above and simplifying gives us YP(1+X/(P+X)). Notice that %VFold and %VCall disappear in the simplified Total. This is precisely because we have the correct number Z of bluff combos to balance our range for this sizing, so we’re indifferent to what Villain decides.

Anyway, now we can see the correct bet size. P is a constant, Y is a constant, and so the only variable in the Total is X. But it’s pretty easy to see (through graphing or derivatives if you know them) that YP(1+X/(P+X)) is a strictly increasing function of X. In other words, the larger you bet, the more money you make, so the best size is all-in.

LDO Caveat #1: To emphasize, the analysis is predicated on the overbetting range having a balanced proportion of bluffs to value bets (the right Z for your Y). It’s not a good strategy to blast off huge river bluffs every single time you put Villain on medium strength or conversely only nut peddle this size.

LDO Caveat #2: There were simplifying assumptions here, so it’s important to be mindful of things like Villains usually having some traps, so probably going all-in for 15x pot is still a bad play lol. But like 2 and 3x pot river bets can be much more profitable than “normal” size, and this hand is a good example of that.

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1/2 PLO at Rivers Des Plaines

Straddle on the button. Hero makes a lose call with 9765ss in the SB. After straddle checks, we end up with a 6 way pot.

Flop is 9 :spades: 4 :clubs: 3 :clubs: Hero, with no flush draw, leads for 50. BB calls. CO calls.

Turn is 4 :hearts: Hero bets 100.

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I’m still at the table but had to post this one.

I am not in hand.

It’s 1/3 effective $900

Preflop raise to $15 reraise 50. Call. Hu

Flop A69dd. Bet 60 call

Turn Kc

Bet 40. Raise to 120. Allin and guy says he will run it twice.

Other villain tanks for like 2 min finally shows kk and tanks for 5 more min and folds.

Lolololol

Add to the wtf-ness. There is a $117k bad beat so in the one in a million it’s set over set he has one out to bad beat.

Yeah but the thing is you don’t need to or want to have a balanced overbet range in most of live poker, unless you’re playing in very very competitive games. Maybe this game is, I dunno. We didn’t get a read on villain, but I’m guessing villain massively overfolds to an overbet here. Overbets in live poker work best against weak passives as bluffs, and fish when you have it, plus stronger players who think you’re full of it. You literally do not need balance is the vast majority of games, well at least the ones I play.

Poker is so weird.

I just played the worst session in forever and none of it was bad beats. I played so poorly. It was like I was looking outside my body and being like “wtf dude why are you making this play” over and over !

Lol poker. Lol me.

I think this is a spot where you need to forget about what you’re betting range is and think about what their calling range is. Everyone love balance etc but these exact spots where you have a set and the top card pairs you just need to keep barrelling and hope they’ve got a ten. Losing out on some tiny amount of equity when they pair up on the river or decide to bluff (does anyone ever do this in this spot?) Is nothing compared to the utter world ending disaster if you don’t stack a ten here. No one is calling with a ten on the flop and folding it on the turn. So just keep betting imo.

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but no one is checking a Ten there. I’m out of position.