[ggbman]

Heys guys, thanks for the input so far and please keep it coming. Here are some of my thoughts...

I think situation one is a fold. I don't 3 betting a HUGE mistake, but i think it's definitley an error here. 2 years ago i don't think anyone would 3 bet UTG raises with 44, and IMO since then the game conditions have shifted considerabley in a manner that makes it much worse to do so. Specifically, i think the fact that

1.) Blinds cold call 2 more now often nowaways and generally looser and more aggressive weak draws
2.) Players generally showodwn more and peel lighter, making it harder for you to know when to stop ( I think a great indicator of this is my buddy wanting to fire the turn in the 33 hand after we are called on a AK9 flop)
3.) The fact that on average we lose more postflop with that hand than we win with it
3.) The fact that on average ($$$-wise)i think we are going lose money postflop due to being semibluffed and having to make marginal-bad calldown to often

So on average here i feel this is a losing play, but what really set me off with my buddy was his insistance that postflop we can extract value from bad A high call downs with a higher frequyency than we ourselfs have to make a baddish calldown on a drawy board or get semibluffed off the worst hand. (Which i think can happen fairly often and is VERY costly) I mean we don't think that shittiness of AK/AQ capping us and leading T92 baords, or QK, JQ, KJ type hands checkraising us with their gutters on the flop and us being in tough spots, OR the possibility that the blinds will CC with mediocore hands that kill our equity, OR the chance that the blinds actually have a real hand to cap us with, OR the fact that UTG could have an overpair already makes this a pretty clear fold? Do we really think that even with expert play, flopping a set 13.5% of the time, sometimes extracting valiue from A high, and getting 1.5 small bets of dead money in the pot SOME of the time will compensate us for all the aforementioned factors? I mean purley from the amount of times we can c/r by draws on bad boards for our hand (which is basically most flops)you can make such a larger mistake by folding the best hand in a 9-10 Small bet flop that even the inferior play of marginal player probably won't make up for it.

As for hand 2, i think we should fold preflop for most of the same reasons. 44 is usually my cutoff when i think the CO isn't too tricky and the blinds are a bit tighter, and if the CO is aggros postflop and the blinds are looser, i might want 55. As the fact that my friend, who i feel has a good conceptual understanding of the game, think the turn should be bet with 33 seems INSANE to me. It's a good bet against specifically JT, QT, and QJ, which is obviously just a small part of his range. Yes sometimes he decided to suck and peel some other non-pair hand, but on this board, here you usually just have 2 outs and he is rarely folding. A bet seems absolutley terrible to someone who will just check call 3 barrels with a weak ace or k7o or whatever he has. The fact that

A.) My friend doesnt see that as the case in what a percieve to be a cut and sry situation and

B.) This is exactly the kind of logical flaw that will cost you money if you want to 3 bet 44 from the button against an UTG open

Is disturbing me a great deal because i feel like despite a good overall grasp of the game, he has talked himself into rationalizing certain situations that i would consider medum-type errors into being standard for his game and this is contributing to frustrations he is having with the game. I want to hear some responses to my opinions here and know if I am just over-reacting to his play/thoughts here... and if i am by all means tear into me.