100/200 A4o on the button

[Tommy Angelo]

“Tommy: why is this an almost-always 3-bet situation for you?”


Hi Andy,

Remember the dork who sat next to you in third grade? The kid who hardly ever has an answer to anything the teacher asks, but when he does have an answer to share, he jumps up and knocks his books and pencils on the floor and then he babbles out an incoherent answer?

I was doing an impression of him when I replied to Paluka’s post.

I miss posting. I still lurk though now and then. It’s just that I so rarely have anything to say. I have not played a single hand of online poker in over three years, since a few months after they invented sit-and-go’s. It got to where I was mainlining $20 S&G at Stars all day. It was great fun, but my mind went all mushy inside the addiction, so I quit online altogether and I was immediately much happier and I’ve been fortunate enough to not need to make money from online poker, so I haven’t gone back.

So it’s hard for me to get involved in a thread about an online hand because it’s hard to project myself into the described situation and ask, “What would I really do and think here?”

As to posting hands I’ve played, there too, things have changed. It used to be locally I played maybe one hour out of a hundred with one 2+2er at my table. Over the last year, the 2+2 communityism in the games I play in has been such that I decided that the best play for now was to stop posting hands.

So here I am lurking around and ready to type and I see Paluka’s hand that starts by saying the opponent is unknown. Well at table poker, there’s no such thing. Even if it’s the guy’s very first hand, I know some things. I know what he looks like, what he’s wearing, what he’s saying, what he’s not saying. It is impossible for me to not draw some conclusions and to make some assumptions, even if wrong. There is no such thing as an unknown player when I play poker. But I pretended there was before I started typing.

Next in the hand came openraising on the button with A-x and getting called by the big blind. Very familiar turf here!

Next came a rag flop, a check by the opponent, a bet by hero, which I would always do in that spot with those cards, so we’re still on very common ground, and a checkraise by the opponent. RERAISE! That’s me inside my head while reading Paluka’s post. RERAISE!

I read the replies. Hardly anyone reraising.

TEACHER! TEACHER! CALL ON ME! CALL ON ME!

::: sound of books crashing and pencils rolling :::

And this babbled out:

ME: “I don't know how much of this applies to online but at brick-and-mortar high-stakes I almost never bet the flop when I'm last to act headsup without already knowing if I am going to fold, call, or raise if my opponent checkraises.”

What I was doing there was explaining why I even felt I had anything to say in the first place. Because my decision to fold, call, or reraise is usually made before I bet the flop, this is a betting pattern that is relatively non player-dependent compared to most, which is why I feel I can talk about it at all!

ME: “In the situation you [Paluka] described, if I bet the flop and I get checkraised, I three-bet pretty much every time,”

There are two groups of reasons why I reraise here. One has to do with cards. The other with patterns and metagame.

Cards:

1) I already have my hand. Ace-high. I’d be happy to put in 2 or 3 bets on the flop and turn ‘em over and run it out and see who wins. So I’m definitely not folding to the checkraise, which leaves calling or raising. I am not able to determine the EV of those options, and I have to base the decision on something, so I base it on establishing some patterns and avoiding others, and on metagame matters.

2) I love having a straight draw compared to not having a straight draw. I hugely love it. It’s the difference between life and death. It’s the difference between drawing dead-ish to 22, 55, 88, 25, 28, 58, A5 and A8, and not.

Patterns and metagame:

Paluka’s hand invites a pattern that I have pretty much sworn off:

I openraise, one caller, pot is headsup with me last. On the flop, he checks, I bet, he checkraises, I call. On the turn, he bets, I fold.

Gack.

This and many other patterns make me gack. And I trust my gack reflex. So I contort the betting elsewhere to decrease the likelihood of gack. For example, if I were to never call a checkraise on the flop, it would permanently eliminate this gack pattern. (Other contortions related to the avoidance of this particular pattern are checking behind on the flop and folding to the checkraise.)


ME: “I three-bet pretty much every time, usually before the other guy's chips stop moving.”

But the real reason I reraise in that spot against a freshly met opponent is just to slap him.


Tommy