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Old 11-20-2007, 03:24 AM
Unknown Soldier Unknown Soldier is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2006
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Default Re: Ugly comments in hand histories.

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first of all, I want to say awesome post.

Especially:

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<font color="blue">Call and play poker on the turn/river.</font>

Wow, great suggestion! Here I thought we were playing hearts....

"Call and play poker" roughly translates as "call, but I have no idea what to do on the next street." You should NEVER call and "see what happens." You should look ahead, see what MIGHT happen, and plan your responses accordingly, and you should do that before you call. If you've got QQ and your OOP opponent donkbets into you for half-pot on a flop of AJ7r, you don't "call and play poker on the turn." You decide NOW what you're going to do on the turn. If your opponent frequently donkbets as a bluff and then gives up on the turn, you should call now and check behind on the turn, intending to call any river bet. If your opponent never donkbets without TPNK or better you should either fold now or raise now (if you have oodles of folding equity because your opponent is extremely weak-tight). If your opponent could have any pair you might call down to the river or you might raise now and fold to a three-bet or you might call intending to raise the turn or river. But you never just "play it by ear" -- you act with a plan or you don't act at all. Much of our postflop poker profit comes from knowing in advance what we're going to do on later streets. Because your opponents are too shortsighted to bother looking ahead they'll make FTOP mistakes postflop that you won't make because you've got a plan and they don't. Since this planning is a major source of your profits you should never give it away by "playing poker."

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someone finally said it.

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great post, but disagree with the call and play poker part, sometimes it's ok to say that. Usually the poster does not give nearly enough information on our opponent to make some decisions. If there's a standard spot where raising and folding are both bad, but it puts us in a marginal spot on the next street then we should "call and play poker". In the sense that various subtleties about the player, the dynamics leading up to the point and how he views us could easily change our marginal decision on the next street. Plus, internet poker is fast. Obviously it would be great to draw out a plan for the entire hand, but it's not always possible.
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