100/200 A4o on the button

[SA125]

[ QUOTE ]
Of course we should have a plan before acting, but the point to this thread is to come up with the plan.

[/ QUOTE ]

Without sounding like I'm making light of the situation, I think in these steal spots where you have baby A high and a gut shot (I think, I didn't re-check), the best plan is to just mix up your play so as not to be predictable.

If I remember correctly, Schneids made a reference to that when talking about 3 betting from the SB against a steal and getting 4 bet by Lagerborg in the BB. He'd felt he would predictably ch/f the flop when missed and thought it opened the door to be out played.

I don't know if it's working, but I'm trying to make the analogy here.

[Boris]

Damn BK. Pretty unwarranted harshness here. Tommy described one situation where he has move #2 planned before move #1. Now you harsh on him because in the past he has said there are situations where he doesn't have move #2 planned before move #1. Big deal man. There is no inconsistency. If you wanna be harsh why not harsh on the fact that Tommy gave no reason for auto-3 betting?

[ledfoot]

[ QUOTE ]
I hope your just having a really bad day cause that was pretty rude.

[/ QUOTE ]

Speaking of rude. Boris is right.

[andyfox]

There's a difference between knowing how you're going to act on the flop than how you're going to act on a later street when you don't yet know the additional cards that will be on the board or your opponent(s) actions on the later streets. Tommy specified "in the situation you described," which means given the cards Paluka has on the board in question head-up with position against the opponent he described.

We can certainly ask for amplification. Tommy: why is this an almost-always 3-bet situation for you?

[Paluka]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Of course we should have a plan before acting, but the point to this thread is to come up with the plan.

[/ QUOTE ]

Without sounding like I'm making light of the situation, I think in these steal spots where you have baby A high and a gut shot (I think, I didn't re-check), the best plan is to just mix up your play so as not to be predictable.



[/ QUOTE ]

This is basically why I posted the hand. So far in this spot, I've been mixing it up so that I'm not predictable. I did this because I wasn't able to find a particular line that stood out as being better than others. I started this thread because I wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking anything.

[ike]

[ QUOTE ]
"If he has (a), there's no point in raising at all, since you want him to keep firing."

Hero has no pair either; why should he let his opponent catch a pair to beat him cheaply?

[/ QUOTE ]

Think about it in terms of FTOP. If paluka 3bets the flop and bets the turn and his opponent has no pair and not much of a draw then he almost always correctly calls the flop and correctly folds the turn. However, if paluka just calls and plans to call down his opponent will frequently make sigificant FTOP mistakes by continuing to bet. I'm not saying that raising is wrong (though I don't 3bet much with anything when checkraised on this board, preferring to make my raise on the turn if I'm going to raise since almost everyone bets the turn almost every time after check/raising the flop in this sort of spot). But, if you knew your opponent was on air and he didn't know you knew, 3betting the flop would be a clear mistake.

[HiatusOver]

"I would take none of these lines against myself becuz I would not feel a need to showdown against me. The reason this is so is becuz if a good player is still in this hand by the river, I will not bluff even close to the theoretically optimal frequency in this spot becuz I dont think the good player will be folding very often at this point. This is a very dry board, and if the good player is still in the hand on the river I will assume he is showing down very often. So this means no matter which line the hero takes, If I bet the river, the hero can fold knowing he doesnt have a profitable call."

I dont think most high stakes players put the breaks on with nothing OOP on the river as much as it seems like u do. A lot of times players are betting this river because of basic momemtum more than anything else no matter what they hold. Also they only have to fold a better hand 15-20 percent of the time, so even if its wrong most high limit players figure it cant be too wrong.

So I am not saying calling the river is always right, but I dont think calling the river is wrong for the reasons I quoted u.

[HiatusOver]

BK, I love u and all...but answer this question to yourself. Would u rather have Tommy contribute on a semi-regular basis to this board or not?

If the answer is yes, then your post makes no sense to me. The guy hasnt posted in 2 months and u come on and get all nitpicky about it. He gave his line, he says insta-3-bet.

We all know Tommy has a quirky way of posting, but I think we all also realize we are probably better poker players because of Tommy's posts over the years. Just like I know I am a better player because of BK's posts over the years.

Now if Tommy comes back and starts posting every day and jousting again then sure get a little more nitpicky and let him have it, but jeez let the guy ease in...I have a feeling its these kind of responses and being called out that led Tommy away from here in the first place.

[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

[Caldarooni]

Thank you, Tommy. Truly.