General question: Overpair on a drawy board

[Noir_Desir]

I had a theoretical discussion on another board and would like your to hear your opinion on a pretty basic noob question:

Full ring game: Hero raises AA from middle position. BB calls. 100BB stacks. We get a flop where straight and flush draws are very possible (say T93 2 hearts). We make a standard c-bet of say 6BB in an 8BB pot. Villain checkraises potsize (26BB). What do we do here?

Chen's "Mathematics of Poker" mentions it would be better not to committ all the money on the flop if he has a draw, but wait for a blank turn. So my gut feeling would be to call and committ with a big bet on a blank turn. Or is shoving the flop standard? Or would it be better to fold?

Assume no reads. What changes if we raise from EP / LP?

[jstill]

yay i love general questions, others dont like mine tho i think :P... no reads make this near impossible to give a good answer to tho...

I think what this will all come down to is the assumptions u make about ur opponents and what his cr'ing range can include here.

I wont have a great response to tell u which players exactly to take which line with... Im hoping someone with a bit more NL and PT experience will chime and a say what is correct based on a players PT stats and flop cr'ing % ect ( Im pretty much brand new to PT despite playing limit online for 2 years seriously)... but think of it this way...

there are definitely different players who we should do different things against. I think there are plenty of players who play super nitty postflop and who its right to fold against here (maybe more true in full ring I most play six max tbh). But really some villains just dont cr enough worse hands to continue. If u have a read that makes things way easier, against an unknown or general player stat I'm not postiive hopefully someone else will step in and expand upon this aspect of it a bit...

really nitty players who are never cr'ing the flop like ever are cr'ing with big hands as u ll notice. If uve consistently seen a villain ck call fds and oesds as well as TPTK u can muck the flop, esp if uve seen them not cr a combo draw.. something like 76 or even QJhh here... those guys u cant continue against super passives.

Against someones whose range is just combo draws and sets I thinkw e should still fold, the pot wasnt 3bet pre and the overlay from the pot just isnt enough to justify continuing with our equity vs his range.

Meanwhile other players cr frequently enough with worse hands here JJ Tx air any draw... against many of them the best course of action is to call and play poker... if they make a large turn bet u can get away from the hand vs many of them without a set when they cr the flop and fire the turn for half their stack... many of these players u ll see cr crap then give up on the turn, and also even with big draws or bet smallish with their draws and weaker made hands. Vs those guys u call and play poker.. Its usually pretty easy to read their betting pattern to be honest.

Others will have too wide of a range even with a large turn bet to fold, lags or players u have history with or who u know can play AT Tx or air with a big turn bet becuz theyre retarded or whatever (esp true if they play a made hand that way, theyre just too dumb to fold to), against them the best course of action is to call the flop cr and stack off later in the hand if u feel compelled to stack off. Ive always felt this way although Ive heard plenty of posters advocate shoving AA KK here which I have no idea why that would be better than calling to shove the turn over his turn bet?

I think with no reads I err on the side of conservatism in my early NL carreer, I assume they play nitty postflop until I have a reason to suspect otherwise so I ll usually call the flop cr and play poker or vs someone with real nitty stats so far who I have seen ck call draws and TP i ll just fold to the flop raise for full stacks.

I think the answer to ur question about position is pretty simple/ intuitive, but really very hard to quantify or say exactly when it would change in ur mind about whether u would take a different course of action or line becuz of a change in postion.

When we raise in EP our range will be stronger so he should cr us far less with air, weak draws and weaker made hands for value or to "see where hes at" when hes a donk. In LP our range is much wider so they should cr with worse hands either for value or fold equity far more often. Whether that is true of the play of any particular villain (they play differently against people when they open in differnet positions) will come down to ur read/assumptions. For many players there may be no difference in their cr'ing range when ur utg or otb (almost) so theyre cr'ing range is the same and we should do the same thing, otherwise it will be quite different so we should stack off or call and play poker far more in late position or at six max tables than full ring when u open in EP (though we ll still have to stack off vs some villains even then).

[Guruman]

Haven't read jstill's response yet, though I'm sure its gold.

FWIW, I don't cont bet on medium drawy flops with overpairs. Its just asking for trouble. Ideally we'd like to price draws out with a nice 2/3 to pot sized cont bet. the problem is that we're not repping anything and draws will push back regardless. When people dont have draws they fold. when they do they tend to checkraise or make other moves that generally make life difficult for us (the other bad spot is when villain has a draw and check/calls planning to shove any turn with a 1-2 pot sized stack)

given this draw/no draw dichotomy of lines that forms, a better plan is usually to check behind the flop and then try to price a way to showdown. By skipping the cont bet in this kind of spot, we reduce the implied size of the final pot, induce bluffs from air and draws, and may induce calls from weak one-pair hands that put us on AK and check again.

This flip-flops back to cont bet land when we have redraws though.

If we have a hand like Q[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]Q[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] on a T[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]9[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]8[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] board then we should be cont betting because we can re-suck if we're behind, peel when villains checkraise, and generally be happier building bigger pots with an overpair, position, and extra equity.

to answer the original question I fold with no reads, then ask villain in chat what he had.

[jstill]

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Haven't read jstill's response yet, though I'm sure its gold.



[/ QUOTE ]

hah i dont know about that exactly.. whatd u think after u read it if u did?

Even in the limit forums I hate coming across as an authority since Im never totally sure my answer is 100% the correct one (or atleast rarely), which is even more true in NL since I have less experience in it obviously though I feel I have a pretty solid grasp already just from a theory perspective and since in play everyone is terrible so that makes me think I'm good [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[00Snitch]

Gruman, I've been trying to get my thoughts togeather in another thread that jstill started regarding c-bets vs. checking behind, and I still can't get my head around how it can be right to give a free card to a draw, or even single pair, when the pot is nearly 10 bets. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

What are we saying here? If (as in OPs example hand) we wait for a safe turn, and the turn comes J[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], do we just check behind again? How about an off-suit Jack, or an off-suit 8? What are we deeming a safe turn? A King, Queen, Jack,8,7 or 6, or a heart completes are darw. Do we check all of them? Even if you take out the unlikely 7, that means we will be checking the turn more than half the time.

My school of though here is that we make our pot-sized bet on the flop and check behind a dangerous turn then re-evaluate the river.

I am very newb, so please tell me if I am way off the mark

[Guruman]

snitch, this is my understanding of the situation:

-we're not repping anything here so its easy for villains to make moves on us
-if villain is unwilling to make a move on us then he was likely to fold to the cont bet anyway
-if villain was going to flat call a cont bet then we'll likely still get that call on the turn.
-if villain is going to make a move on us then we'd much prefer it be a bet and a situation that we can showdown against.

I'm not arguing against cont betting low uncoordinated boards. I'm arguing against cont betting medium coordinated ones when the stacks are deep enough that we can be forced to lay a made hand down.

If we never cont bet there except for the times that we have extra equity or a draw then it will still be very difficult for a villain to exploit it. It also won't really lower our cont bet percentage much because those type of flops only occur so often.

He'd essentially have to forgoe semibluffs in favor of valuebets that have to stay small or else they don't get paid off. Either that or he'd have to start bluffing out of tempo which is exploitable and dangerous. In the end its cheaper for villain to just not exploit this specific tendancy and look for other edges.