Official Full TIlt Regulars Thread: Part II

[anjichpa]

how exactly does one plan a hand?

there is way too much undisclosed information to "plan" a hand in advance unless one of you is shortstacked and poker is way too dynamic to plan anything, imo

leverage isn't the same thing, however, as being able to plan your hand
all you can do is try to make the best decision you can with the information you have at each point in time

jamming pf would've made absolutely no sense, as i would've been raising $40 on top of the $2 3bet.

because of the level of aggression i'd exhibited in the hands prior to this, i felt there was a decent chance he'd be 3betting light for him (he'd been playing solid TAG)

as far as your rationale for not 4-betting, here are my thoughts

1. if i call OOP, i'm left playing an unmade hand in a pot with very little definition of my opponent's hand. i'm not donk betting into him in this situation, and if i check, he'll c-bet 99% of the time and i fold. if an A flops, he shuts down unless he has AK or a weaker A, and my implied odds against him weren't that great if he had a weaker A. if the K flops, i still have no definition of his hand, and i might lose a big pot to AA, an underset, or even 2 pair

2. being OOP is an argument for 4betting here, IMO. i've an unmade hand and want to shut him out. you'll have to understand my thoughts of his range more to understand why i think this was the correct play so i'll address that first

3. my initial range of the button 3-bet is as follows: 66-AA, A-9 or higher, maybe suited connectors or high cards

with that initial range, i feel i can get him to fold 66-TT, A9-AJ (probably AQ,too). If he has JJ or QQ, he has to make a very difficult decision (jam and maybe be dominated, fold what looks like the best hand, or smooth-call and ? post-flop especially if he ends up with an OP). i doubt he smooth calls with JJ or QQ. even KK runs the risk of the A flopping.

thus, if he 5bets, i can almost certainly fold. if he calls, i tighten his range up to AK, AQ, or 88-AA with a very heavy skew towards AK, AA and to a lesser extent- KK or AQ.

This is why i'm not sure if leading into him post-flop was the correct play.

if i had AK, there are 6 ways for him to make another AK, 5 of those AKs fold (AK hearts obvious goes in). The same is true of AQ even if its less likely). assuming i had AK, there are 3 ways to make AA or KK. if he's slowplaying AA or KK, he shoves all in on the flop regardless.

if we restrict his post-flop range to AA, KK, and AK, there are a total of 7 hands he shoves on the flop, and 5 that he folds. if this is indeed his range, my ~pot sized bet was a -ev play.

however, i think that if we include AQ in his range, it becomes a nice +ev bet. even without AQ in his range, i think leading the flop is at least a break even play, because he's less likely to have KK than AA or AK (KK is more likely to jam pf)

IMO, the only reason not to 4bet pre is that if i lose the hand, i don't have as much implied odds in subsequent hands.

i'd argue that meta-game makes up for this, as after the hand, i look like a total lunatic, and am further able to get people to commit money with marginal hands