500NL LIVE: KK UTG+1

[Albert Moulton]

I would reraise to $75 if I were going to limp/rr.

When MP1 raises to $300, I'd need some kind of read to get a range of hands for villain in order to make a call on whether to push or fold. I'd be inclined in a live game with no reads to push, but there are plenty of guys who I would be happy to push against and expect TPGK or a draw much of the time. There are others against whom I'd only ever see a set and I'd fold.

If his range for limp/call preflop, followed by the raise post-flop, is as wide as something like QQ,77,44,AhKh,AQs,AhJh,KdQd,9h7h,8h7h,7h6h,74s,6h5 h (or wider) then hero has about 35+% equity and there is so much money already in the pot that a push seems good. But if the guy would have raised with AKs/AQs/AJs/QQ, and if he would only limp/call then push like this with sets and OESFDs, then hero's equity drops vs 77,44,6h5h to 13+% and hero should fold.

[Sunny Mehta]

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I wish I got to play in the types of games that Sunny frequents. Building a pot and then simply getting stacks in with a pair while having the best of it would be great!

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How much live $2-$5 have you actually played? (Note that the title of this thread - and the coinciding book hand's stakes - is "500NL LIVE")


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Unfortunately, on teh internets stacking off every time you have an overpair would be a disaster.

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Doing anything "everytime" is usually suboptimal.


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I seriously (not in a disrespectful way) wonder the extent of Sunny's experience playing in tougher games, or any games on the internet for that matter.

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Vast. Up to $25-$50 but I'm not here to discuss that. You can look at my website's bio page or PM me for more details on my personal history. The point is, if you change the parameters of the game (i.e. - the ranges and tendencies), of course the answer changes. Surely you didn't start this whole thread to simply say, "In certain game situations, the play they're talking about in the book wouldn't be the best line."? Because of course the answer to that is "quite possibly!".

Having said that, I think small 3-betting is an underrated weapon to have in one's arsenal - even in tough and shorthanded games. Particularly when you have opponents who exhibit the tendency (which they often do in many higher stakes games) to open light on the button/CO but fold to a significant 3-bet, yet play very straightforwardly preflop and postflop to a small 3-bet, it can be a great mix-up play. Sometimes opponents will get frisky to different types of 3-bets too, so a lot of metagame stuff gets introduced - fun. And of course the other time it's also valuable is when effective stacks are not very big (which is essentially the case in the OP, since 100bb stacks play much shallower live than online).

[1p0kerboy]

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How much live $2-$5 have you actually played? (Note that the title of this thread - and the coinciding book hand's stakes - is "500NL LIVE")

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One session of 500NL live with various sessions of smaller stakes. Not much live play at all unfortunately.

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Doing anything "everytime" is usually suboptimal.


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That's my point.

You're hitting your target SPR so that you are comfortable stacking off on practically any flop.

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The point is, if you change the parameters of the game (i.e. - the ranges and tendencies), of course the answer changes. Surely you didn't start this whole thread to simply say, "In certain game situations, the play they're talking about in the book wouldn't be the best line."? Because of course the answer to that is "quite possibly!".

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I play close to 2 million hands a year.

All of my play these days is on the internets. So it's quite possible that I went into this book/chapter with the presumption that much of it would be applicable to the games I play in. Maybe that was my fault.

But I would say that my game is much more common than yours for various reasons. First of all, there are many more internet games than live games I believe. And secondly, not all live games have live ones looking to donk off stacks (which is the weakness that SPR really exploits).

[threads13]

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How much live $2-$5 have you actually played? (Note that the title of this thread - and the coinciding book hand's stakes - is "500NL LIVE")

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One session of 500NL live with various sessions of smaller stakes. Not much live play at all unfortunately.

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Doing anything "everytime" is usually suboptimal.


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That's my point.

You're hitting your target SPR so that you are comfortable stacking off on practically any flop.


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I think you are missing the point of it. The book never says, "Hit your target SPR and stack off any flop."

The point is that once you hit your target SPR then you have already predetermined that your play is +EV. Of course, you can still be conditionally committed and decide to back out. There are many variables.

I think you are trying pigeonhole target SPR and commitment concepts.

[threads13]

Another though towards the "we are offering too high implied odds" argument.

If we get the villain to put in 10BB of his 100BB stack with the hopes of set-mining this isn't going to be a very long term profitable thing. On the surface I could see that maybe his last call can be deemed correct, but his play on the whole street ends up being incorrect in a big way.

[1p0kerboy]

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Of course, you can still be conditionally committed and decide to back out.

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Maybe I'm missing the point.

I thought the point of SPR was to make our postflop decisions easy? If we're still identifying situations to not commit, why is it so important to hit a low SPR?

[1p0kerboy]

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If we get the villain to put in 10BB of his 100BB stack with the hopes of set-mining this isn't going to be a very long term profitable thing.

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He didn't put 10BB in hoping to set-mine.

His original raise of the limpers was to either pick up the pot preflop, win the pot pot with a continuation bet, OR flop a strong hand and stack off. He will do each of these a certain % of the time, and his play here should show him profit.

He wasn't hoping to setmine until it got raised and the action came back to him. Now the problem has changed. At this point he's faced with calling 6bb to win a pot that already contains 25bb; not to mention the fact that one of his opponents have indicated that there is a very good chance he's going to flop a top pair/overpair type hand and stack off. So his decision to call with his pair here is definitely +EV.

Looking at all of the different actions as "one play" is a fallacy.

[NT=TOOLBOX]

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I wish I got to play in the types of games that Sunny frequents. Building a pot and then simply getting stacks in with a pair while having the best of it would be great!

Unfortunately, on teh internets stacking off every time you have an overpair would be a disaster.

..............................................I seriously (not in a disrespectful way) wonder the extent of Sunny's experience playing in tougher games, or any games on the internet for that matter............................................ ...............

And CMAR I thought your post was great and very insightful.

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uhhhhh dude what??????

[AceHigh]

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He wasn't hoping to setmine until it got raised and the action came back to him. Now the problem has changed. At this point he's faced with calling 6bb to win a pot that already contains 25bb; not to mention the fact that one of his opponents have indicated that there is a very good chance he's going to flop a top pair/overpair type hand and stack off. So his decision to call with his pair here is definitely +EV.

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It maybe be +EV for the button to call, but most of the equity in the pot is going to the best hand and that is KK.

It's only profitable for callers to call now because the pot is bloated by the mistakes they made earlier in the hand.

Would any of these players called if the limp/reraiser had instead just opened for $50? I guess they would not. Now he has tricked them into doing just that...that can't be bad for the Kings can it?

[Cry Me A River]

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In fact, it IS a big leak to call large pf raises with small PP's trying to "set mine" against good players. Most of the time you end up overestimating your implied odds.

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Fortunately our premise with the hand is that we're not playing against those players here. That's why we're making this move. Because they'll call our 3bet with KQ.

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I don't agree. You could teach a novice to play full ring live NL profitably at low stakes and never even mention "folding overpairs" as a bedrock strategy. Furthermore, there are a whole host of fundamental mistakes that I see players make that are WAY bigger leaks than folding overpairs. Again, it totally depends on game conditions and player types, but in many games it's probably profitable to never fold strong overpairs.

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lol.

I said, "learning to play FRNL well". You don't have to play well to be profitable at live low stakes. You just have to be non-brain damaged. I haven't read your book yet, and I'm not really looking to take shots at you, but, the title is "Professional NLHE". This implies a certain degree of sophistication beyond beating $1/$2 live. Are you saying it's in fact a beginner's book? Then why doesn't the title reflect that?

I have about a zillion hands online between $50NL and $200NL. IMHO, the biggest difference between $50NL and $100NL is that almost nobody at $50NL can fold overpairs. In a way, they're not horribly wrong because there are so many players who will also overplay TP type hands. However, we're talking about otherwise decent seeming players who have never heard of BelugahWhale Theorem and don't consider their opponent or flop texture at all. So you don't need to take any steps to disguise your big hands. This makes set mining incredibly profitable at $50NL. At $100NL and above, many players, particularly better players, can fold overpairs. This makes set mining much more difficult unless you also take advantage of their ability to fold (floating) and/or create some history. Or simply have a kind of image that makes folding overpairs difficult.

So yes, IMHO, the ability to fold overpairs, particularly to obvious set miners (ie: nits with "fold to cbet" stats in the 80% range) is a big step in the development of a poker player. Particularly playing under somewhat nitty conditions, or against a range of players that vary from nits to maniacs.

In the hand cited, MP1 is a obviously a loose, probably passive player who limped then called 10bb 3-bet.

Now on the flop he wants to play for stacks.

Other than the fact that we've come up with an excuse in advance to spew and called it SPR, why would we ever stack off against this guy? Passive players call, they don't raise against players who have 3-bet preflop.

Why have we decided our line for the whole hand, in advance, and in complete disreguard of any information we might obtain later in the hand? This makes no sense unless we're trying to create as simple an algorythm as possible in order to program bots.

Yes, okay, mathematically we have enough of our stack in that we have enough equity to stack off in a wide range of situations. However, the difference between me and the bad players is that "I know when to hold them, know when to fold them". Why would I ignore that?

Unless we have a read that's not presented in the OP that MP1 is a maniac loon post flop the last thing I want to do is play for stacks when he might as well be wearing a badge that reads "Hi! My name is Set Miner".

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Better "immediate" pot odds dictated by his own decision to raise in the first place is not the best way of analyzing global NL expectation. But I do agree that the player in between makes it closer. (Keep in mind that hero had no idea the player in between would limp/coldcall a 3-bet.)

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I wouldn't hate this nearly so much if it was a HU pot and we could be more assured of manipulating our opponent according to our whims, without outside interference.

However, when we make our small re-raise, it's not HU. Unless you've come up with a way to predict how MP1 is going to react to the re-raise I really, really don't like this. If we're going to play big pairs this way, I absolutely want it head's up.

Your point is that bad loose players will call small re-raises but not big ones. Then why would you think MP1 would ever fold?



Let me simplify what I'm saying.

Against decent players, this line is pretty terrible unless you have a very specific reason for playing it this way.

Against bad players, meh, but you don't have to fall victim to fancy play syndrome and put yourself in such vulnerable positions in order to beat them.


And another thing. This hand is a variance magnet. Now theoretically that shouldn't matter. However it does because nobody enjoys 10 buy-in downswings or 30K hand break even stretches. Particularly beginners who are FAR more likely to be adversely affected by big swings than seasoned pros. Also, if this is supposed to be for beginners (?) it strikes me that this kind of play could easily be misapplied a lot. Either making this play against the wrong opponents or doing it too often with too wide a range. At the very least, this is an expert play that's difficult to use properly but apparently we're peddling it to n00bs? Why?