[Galwegian]

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If you've been 3-betting him a lot I'd just 3-bet here and hope he pushes over the top with a weaker hand.

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definitely. This is correct and I don't think there is a good second best option. As played I might vbet the rive for like $60.

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I think a lot of times we tailor our "balancing acts" towards aggression, whereas I think there are a lot of times when we can tailor it towards passiveness. We have deep stacks here, and I can use my position to my advantage here. The larger the pot gets in porportion to the stacks, the less my position means to me. I can really get him thinking in these spots with plays like this which allow me to get free cards and showdowns with other hands and so forth. I'm calling here with a LOT of hands PF. I would be doing so with suited 2 gappers, suited aces, unsuited connectors, pps and so forth.


That's my $.02 anyway.

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It's an interesting point. I think that by cold calling preflop, you are essentially converting your QQ into 99/TT - a hand that can't really take much postflop heat.

I'm not sure that I see how you gain value against his range by coldcalling. OK, you get some extra value from hands like AT/AJ that will pay you off a bit when the kicker hits, but you lose value to weaker aces or kings that will fold preflop to reraise. You say that you can get use your position to get him in difficult spots, but is it not just as likely that you will end up in a tricky spot with an ace or K on the board (as actually happened). Lets not forget that the object of the game is not to get him thinking (he might be a very good thinker, after all), it is to get him to put his money in with the worst of it.

At the end of the day, you have a strong preflop holding, it can't be that wrong to try to get money in when you are definitely ahead.

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I'm not sure I can articulate this, and I may be off some, but this thinking does not seem suited to NL...perhaps in a while I'll think of how to phrase what I'm thinking here.

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I'm really curious to know what you mean by this. If I'm thinking in the wrong way about this hand, I'd really like to know why. Maybe I phrased my original point badly. I suppose what I was trying to say is that I can kind of see your point in just calling, but I'm not sure it has enough value. Presumably by calling, you are trying to create a situation where your opponent will have difficult decisions OOP with relatively deep stacks. However, you did say that the villain is pretty decent - are you sure you can outplay him enough postflop to make up for the value you lose preflop (and with QQ you are giving up a fair amount preflop by not raising)?