GiantBuddha

Oh man. I lived in New Jersey when they first had regulated poker (NJ only) and I'd get kicked off my tables every 50 minutes due to geolocation issues. Took maybe a year for them to get things to run properly. The upside was that the games were amazing. Regional player pools are bad for the game in a global sense, but can be very good for the games locally, imo (at least cash games; MTTs maybe have more issues with small player pools).

The Kh5c hand @ 7:12 was eye opening for me. A weak 1-card flush always feels like a bluff catcher to me, but it makes sense that most flushes would want to use a larger sizing, so the block bet represents mostly non-flushes, thus even a small flush can raise for value.

In practice, how much are people block betting and calling a raise without a flush here? I imagine that's something both very studied players and loose/spewy players would do more than most of the decent players in smaller stakes.

Agreed. If it's a call, it's a call because the line is incoherent and suggests villain may have a tendency to randomly click buttons.

I'm just using 2.25bb as my sizing when I RFI from anywhere except SB. Mostly because:

1) I had charts for 2.25x when I was developing my opening ranges.
2) 2.25x takes one less click than 2.5x on WSOP. (2.87x, 3.0x, and 3.5x would be other simple options. I could also just type the bet sizes instead.)
3) I'd like to have a third reason, but I don't really.

Thanks for getting me to rethink this. The population is definitely 3-betting less than theory would suggest, and the rake is quite high, so a larger sizing (except when circumstances dictate otherwise) makes a lot of sense. I'm gonna try that and see how it works out.

I ended up folding, as I tend to think pot-sized river bets are strong from unknowns until they demonstrate otherwise.

Thanks for the thoughtful answer.

Very odd line from villain. This flop feels like a vaguely reasonable one to donk, as BB might think they have a set advantage, and perhaps some weird two-pairs that I don't have, but I imagine pot-sized donk is probably pretty bad overall.

The population on WSOP seems to be split between donk-and-pot-the-nuts and donk-and-pot-nonsense. I haven't gotten a good handle on what that distribution looks like from unknowns, but you're right that the small number of nutty combos makes a call more attractive. On the other hand, there are two flopped combo draws that turned a straight flush, and if villain has a less polar range and includes Ad7x or some turned nut flushes, calling looks a lot worse.

Great video as always. Do you happen to know any real-life examples of people trying to do too much too fast and lacking long-term consistency? Sounds totally made up. Can't imagine anyone living that way. :p

Nice video. On the Ac7c hand on 7Q2AK (10:51), do you think this spot is overbluffed by all player types, or specifically by thinking players who understand how capped your range is?

Nice video. I particularly enjoyed the recap and the "what if...?" scenarios of slightly changing the position, texture, available sizings, etc.

I've always subscribed to the philosophy of marking hands, but now I play on WSOP.com, which doesn't even have hand histories, so there's no PT4 to mark hands in. I have to write up the interesting hands manually, which is cumbersome, but rewarding.

As far as how you should actually play the hand, in the past I've just folded hands like this. I do think that might be too tight. Calling is a real option here. You have position on the raiser and will still have SPR 2.5 on the turn, so there's plenty of room to play some poker there. 3-betting feels spewy to me. I understand wanting to "charge the draws" or maybe just avoid uncomfortable turn spots (that's literally what my own most recent hand post was about), but I think you're in a decent spot on the turn if you flat this. I still might fold, though, because I'm a nit. :p

These spots are tough and very unpleasant to be on the wrong side of. There's no simple one-size-fits-all approach to handling middle set, but here are a few thoughts on this specific hand:
* This hand is 4-ways to the flop. As such, there are 3 players who can flop top set, and anyone betting or raising is doing so with the knowledge they have to beat 3 opponents. Theoretically, this should make their ranges stronger when they take aggressive action.
* You're over 150bb deep with SB, so the SPR is almost 10 there. This increases the breakeven stack off equity to about 47.5%.
* Against the SB's (presumably) strong c/r range, you suffer from being slightly ahead or way behind.
* You've only got 55% equity against hands like AKQJ and AKQ9
* You're about 50/50 with KQJ9.
* You've have just 11% equity against random JJ

I think with middle set and a double-digit SPR, we want to be really careful with these way behind / slightly ahead spots. If you have AQTT instead of A5TT, your equity against JJ goes up to 23%. Obviously you don't want to get it in with 23% at SPR 10, but that makes your overall equity way better when you get it in against opponent's range.

My line: Hero checks, BTN bets 15bb, Hero raises to 70.5bb, BTN folds (Ac9d3cJd).

My "reasons": I thought my equity was pretty decent against BTN's range, and I was concerned about misplaying the hand on various runouts. I didn't give much consideration to leading good turns, but I like it. Being able to check/fold turns like an A, J, or spade, maybe a Q or a T as well. I liked that I was blocking top (and bottom) set, and thought I'd c/r a good number of strong draws here.

Check/call on flop just felt like I'd be in some very uncomfortable turn situations, but I see how that's better than getting it in slightly ahead/way behind. I think my c/r line was largely due to a lack of confidence in navigating the turh, but it's better to learn how to navigate turns than getting it in bad on flops.

Always happy to share my line and reasons; I'm here for the mental exercise, too. :) I just wanted to leave space for other people's thoughts before I shared my own.

I like this better than the line I actually took. :p

Thanks for the reply.
My first thought was to rip it, which I went ahead and did. On review, I thought maybe there was an opportunity to flat and fold some really bad turn cards, like the Jd or whatever.
I had a flush blocker and a backdoor flush draw, so it sounds like vision wants to rip it here. I think it makes sense as I could potentially benefit a lot from fold equity, and my blocker and BDFD make for better equity when called (than without those).
With a flush draw I guess my equity is so robust that it's really easy to play most turn cards.

I'd fold preflop against this opponent. Sure, they're on the BTN and this hand is fine to 3-bet v. a typical BTN range, but 19/13 over 786 hands is a pretty good sample telling us that this player is raising more of a CO range here (29%). Their range is much more important than their position here.
Having said that, the fact that they play straightforward postflop in 3-bet pots is nice. I don't know what solvers do here (I think others have commented on that already anyway), but without a lot of draws on this flop, I imagine a player like this folds here a lot.
I'm as lost as OP on this turn. With top pair and a gutter and an opponent who might find a fold with KK, I can see just potting it to be mostly all in. Gonna have some awkward river situations, though, with like a 1:6 SPR. Can't see folding a lot there.

I checked out the stream yesterday and heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to watch someone be themselves and grow at PLO, not just thoughtlessly grind. I especially enjoy it as someone doing something similar myself (shameless self-promotion: I stream PLO100 every day as ZenMadman on Twitch). See you at PLO2000 down the road. :)

So nice to watch a Limit Holdem video again! LHE content has become truly scarce.

Also, hooray for a limit holdem hand post!

If you could play a perfectly balanced GTO strategy, then you wouldn't need to know your opponents ranges at all. But assuming you're not Cepheus, you can start by making assumptions/guesses of your opponents' ranges and gradually refine those assumptions as you collect data on your opponents (stats, betting patterns, and showdowns) and ask experienced players what they think likely ranges are in specific situations.

I'd lead out here.

Betting and getting raised by a better hand is maybe slightly bad. It might not even be bad if your other opponents fold significant equity or put in money when they're not ahead.

Checking and seeing it check through is a bit of a disaster, since there are tons of bad cards for you and you're missing value with what's probably the best hand (when it checks through).

Lead out and feel good about it, imo. (I don't even really consider it a donk bet since it's not like you had an option to 5-bet preflop. So your range isn't capped by taking a passive action preflop. But that's not super important.)

I tend to fold A3o on the BTN after a HJ open-limp at live $1/$2 as well, but I always feel like I'm being a wuss. But the looseness of the games combined with the exorbitant rake (especially if there's a Bad Beat $1 pulled out) makes this a pretty bad spot to play a small multi-way pot with a bad multi-way hand. And "iso-raising" to $8 in a $1/$2 game doesn't lead to isolation all that often.

"I'm second guessing it because later in the session villain proved to be a complete maniac who bet his draws heavily and showed down a ridiculous number of bluffs."

Given the above, it sounds like there's a strong chance you folded the best hand here, but that doesn't mean you made a bad decision. You can only evaluate the quality of your decision based on the information you had available at the time of the decision.

That said, I do think it's pretty easy to justify a river call here. Possible value hands include: AT (4), 22 (3), 33 (1), and 54s (4). That's just 12 value combos. You're getting over 3-to-1, so a call is called for against a range with just 4 bluffing combos in it. If we're giving him 54s, he can probably have hands like 6d4d, 6d5d, Kd5d, etc. I think it's pretty easy to come up with 4 bluffing combos. Maybe some A2 and A3 in his range that chops with you now.

Maybe TdXd is also possible (and weird), but the 4 combos of AT need to be discounted as all of them are offsuit. Overall, all of the value hands would be weird-played, but so are the bluffing hands. His line is just weird. Biggest concern to me would be that he'd play a hand like AJ this way because he wasn't sure what else to do. A lot of players bet the river without knowing whether they're bluffing or value betting, especially at $1/$2 live games.

Indeed. Today I learned how to say "excrement" in Swedish.

A tidy, 3-letter answer to the problem:

"...I'm finding it hard to theorize how we can make money when we can't adjust our game to account for leaks or player tendencies."

Intro paragraph says "second hand on the table", so small blind, no? It would be helpful if the hand post explicitly stated that, though.

As LL implies above, this is pretty high up in your flop calling range. So from a balance-perspective you shouldn't fold.

Against an aggressive button with a wide range, your equity looks pretty solid, assuming he'll barrel this turn fairly aggressively. There's so much air in his range and the turn is an overcard to the board. Seems pretty likely that you're better than 50% on this turn. Just for a few numbers:

You're at ~65% equity against a 58% range if he barrels 100% on flop and turn.
You're at ~55% equity if he checks back stuff like 3x, 6x, and ace-high.
You're down to ~48% if he checks back with king-high as well.

Looking at it purely exploitatively, how often do you think he c-bets this flop? This turn?