ShiestyShamus

Nice video as usual Tom. One suggestion I have though is giving a little background info on specific reads you have on the villain before you get into the action of the hand. I think it helps develop a deeper understanding of the game if we're discussing optimal strategies against a specific style of player rather than just a generic 50nl villain.

On the hand where you have 55T6 and you bet for value into two people on a 5KJ6A board, what do you think about bet/folding for about $10 instead of shoving. Against weaker players playing with medium stacks I think we can actually take advantage of the small stack sizes and use it against them to bet small for thin value without the risk of getting bluff raised. Because there would only be about $10 behind in a $55 pot, I would assume that 99+% of medium stacked opponent's at 50nl aren't going to think they have any sort of fold equity when they reraise all-in against us, and we can fold with damn near certainty that they have us beat with the nuts when they reraise us.

Aside from saving a little money against the nuts,  I think we can expect to get more value on average against  2pair type hand against weaker opponents by giving them such great odds to call whereas I think they can find easy folds with some of their weaker two pair hands after we check/raise the turn and shove the river.

 

I guess I just thought he would be bet/folding here often with his junk like 789T, but possibly two barreling or trying to represent a flush if one comes on the board. I guess if I though his range consisted only Axxx hands, I would be jamming the flop, but I thought he would be two barrelling with hands that have very little equity against me as well so I elected to call.

The reason I didn't 3bet the limper preflop is because I was expecting a 3bet from the blinds often just because of table dynamics. I figured it would be much better to have him 3bet and call just a 3bet with the fish in the pot rather than get 4bet, have the fish fold, and then have to call the 4bet by myself against him.

I always try to think of what would make our hand much harder to play against if we were in the villain's shoes. And I'm being a little unconventional here, but why not bet/call the flop and do a min reraise on the turn and force him to basically flip his hand right the hell over then instead of playing the guessing game on the river where it'll cost more to make a call.

A) We gain more value from his draws when he misses.

B) We make it much less likely that he'll try to donk some bullshit type overcard hand he hits like the jack for thin value when we show aggression on the turn making him much easier to play against.

C) It's much cheaper to reraise/fold the turn when he's already got us beat than it is to call/muck the river.

D) I really wouldn't worry about getting rebluffed at all here. The villain's range is very draw heavy since he didn't 3bet on the river and didn't check/raise large enough OOP to try to blow us off anything but air, and made hands probably won't be doing that with a 2 tone flop OOP. We however have all of the solid made hands like Top notch pairs and sets in our range, so if villain starts to try to rebluff us on the turn in spots like this, our range's equity absolutely steamroll's his with the hands we can continue with, and we'll make lots of money in the long run getting our stacks in with about 80% equity against a draw. Not to mention that with the board being paired, it almost looks like we're inviting him to get great odds to call for a spade that's actually drawing dead.

I think a lot of what goes into this decision is how well the small blind plays actually. He check/called a pot size bet out of position in a three way pot with a monotone board, so his range is probably a lot stronger than the aggressor's actually. The only thing I can see him showing up with here is either a lower set, a made flush, or possibly just the nut flush draw with immediate 3:1 pot odds. Now in this spot, I would assume that the better the small blind is, the less likely he is to have called with Ax offsuit from the small blind preflop, and his range shifts more toward made flushes for calling the flop bet. If this was heads up, I'd call all day, but because the small blind's range actually looks way stronger than the aggresser's, and the fact that there's a decent chance the aggresser already has a lower flush himself that he's just trying to protect, I would say it's actually a fold. If however you think the nit is actually fairly likely to be showing up here with only the Ax off suit, then I could lean a little more toward calling. I'd definitely want a solid read on that to justify the call though. Most nits aren't going to be calling oop with offsuit aces in a multipot too often.

Then again, rethinking this and doing the math, I'm liking the call more actually. Even if you were pretty sure that one of them was holding the flush, you're going to end up paying about 40 for 100 once the small blind gets it in too, giving you about 40% pot odds to make the call. Given that neither of the villain's are likely to have paired the board when you're behind, you can actually take 4 more cards out of the deck giving you a 10/42 chance or about 24% to suck out on them, so it's not horrendous paying 40% pot odds for 24% equity in the likely worst case scenario.

So, the pot should be about 700 on the turn given the action with about 1700 effectively behind and he shoves? In this spot, I would assume that he was confident that either card you chose would lead you to believe you're possibly behind. You're not going to find any non-7 lower than a Jack. Since he iso raised preflop and a 7 was shown, I would be pretty confident in being able to narrow his range down to A7s or 77 exactly with a high degree of accuracy. 4 combos of A7s vs 3 combos of 77. Regardless of what his hand actually is, shoving 2.5x the pot on the turn is a terrible play, and just as a gut instinct I think a player making a terrible play would be more inclined to tell you that you can see a card when he has two 7s than when he has A7, and I would therefore fold. In such a tight spot you also have to consider the fact that when you're behind you're drawing to 2 outs, but when he's behind he's actually drawing to 5, giving you slightly more of a reason to fold.