Thanks to everyone who participated in the inaugural Rate Our Play. I’ll take the blame for the low attendance, as I haven’t been actively blogging lately. That should change once WCOOP gets underway.
DP1: Uncontroversial.
DP2: Uncontroversial at this stack depth. With deeper stacks, this is a reasonable BB vs BN 3-betting candidate, but with 100BB a 3-bet will just isolate the stronger part of Villain’s range without the opportunity to put pressure on him with draws.
DP3: I don’t see a case for a leading range. This is a really static board, which means protection isn’t much of a concern, and that’s even more true if Villain is going to c-bet too often. Hero probably has more equity on this flop, especially if Villain’s pre-flop range is too wide, but when the pot gets really large, Villain will have a slight range advantage. So, I’m really not looking to force big pots from out of position. I just rarely mind this flop checking through, so I don’t have incentive to develop a leading range.
DP4: Villain’s bet size is large for such a static board. That’s not a big deal in and of itself, but it becomes a problem if he’s also c-betting at a high frequency. For instance, this particular hand probably isn’t a +EV bet if the bet is going to be this large, as he’ll too often be drawing dead against my calling range.
DP5: I don’t think this is close. It’s similar to the question of whether to donk the flop: I don’t have many hands that want to build the pot here. Even with like A8 I can’t really check-raise for value. If I’m going to turn the hand into a bluff, there will be opportunities to do that later. Also, if I check-raise and then turn a flush, I’m not sure that I get to play it like the nuts. Finally, I have showdown value against a too-frequent c-better!
DP6: This seems to be the spot that surprised the most people. At this point I have a really significant equity advantage, especially against someone who c-bets too often. Most of my flop check-call range is going to be flush draws, trips, and pairs. All of those can value/protection bet this turn for a small size and most won’t fold to a bet. The few unpaired hands in my range love having the opportunity to bluff, and even for small sizing, it’s not that easy for Villain to peel here with, say, an underpair to the board. We should not expect him to bluff this card often. Sometimes he’ll value bet worse on the turn and then check back river, which isn’t great for us, and if he bets twice, Hero’s hand is just a bluff-catcher, albeit a profitable one. Forcing him to fold or put money into the pot on this turn card is good for Hero.
As for sizing, my range is quite strong, so as I said, even at this size underpairs or hands like the one he has have a tough decision. Bare flush draws aren’t going to be a big part of his range, and even when they are, it’s not trivial to peel with them, as he’s rarely drawing to nine clean outs.
DP7: I think this is the sort of hand that should be close to indifferent against my bet. The problem is that he’s drawing slim or dead against my value range and my bluffing range has outs. Betting larger would only help make his decisions easy with hands like this.
DP8: This is a tough card to value bet, given how strong my range is and the fact that I block second-best flush draws. There’s more of a case for betting Qs 8s, though even then check-calling could be best. Better to let my blockers work for me, by playing my hand as a bluff-catcher, rather than against me, by playing it as a thin value bet.
Dp9: This may be the result of an Ed Miller pyramid error. In other words, if Villain peels too wide on the turn, then he simply has too many weak hands in his range on the river. Yes, this is the bottom of his range and he’ll rarely win by checking, but if his bottom is too wide, then trying to bluff with all of it will make my bluff-catches very profitable.
DP10: Trivial.
Thanks for playing!
So you drag him along so wide with tiny sizing that he’s induced to spazz?
Interesting. I don’t think most of my opps are very size aware.
Late to the comments but when Villain cbets that big on that board, I think he is full of air or he very rarely happens to have a random Ax so on this is a board I will check raise small with draws, Ax, boats and expect villain to fold his air, call with his Ax, and possibly call with Jx or TT/99 if he’s stubborn or best case scenario a dominated flush draw. I’m totally ok with picking up the pot with QTss here because we have very good equity even if called, and if villain wants to blast off I think this board is incredibly hard to shove air on vs our check raising range. I want to ignore the fact villain has air only because vs. most opponents even when we check call these flops we have weak A’s and J’s often and they simply aren’t boards where I expect villain to have a high bluffing frequency on the turn and River so having him fold to the XR isn’t such a big deal with generally not a lot of hope for future value. Especially when the flush comes in I think a lot of villains are only peeling with Ks or very weak Ax. So his betting range on the river seems like it should be the nuts when the four flush hits or pure air making it a somewhat easy call and a good reason to keep the pot smaller with the small turn lead and XC on river.
As played, XC makes our range seem pretty wide, we can easily be XCalling with Tx or QQ or have Flush draws in our range. So exploitively if you think he is the kind of guy to have a high bluffing frequency then I love the XC, lead small, and XC the big bet, seems perfect to me. Another reason I like XRaising the flop with your draw is because villain has already seen you fold to aggression 4-5 times and this hand seems like a great candidate to finally play back at him. If he ships the flop folding is fine, but I don’t think there’s anything bad about check raising
Going back to check raising though, outside of this perfect candidate I think I much prefer XR this particular flop, villain is going to narrow us down to exactly trip A’s, a flopped boat and semi-bluffs in general. So against a villain who has shown himself to be quite aggressive the most profitable lines seem to be ones where we underrep our hand at showdown or overrep a draw before showdown and give villain a chance to try to bluff us off our weak made hand on the river, or likely draw before the river. As played I think a similar result may have happened and got stacks in if you did XR flop and he called, then you checked the turn when the flush hit giving him a nice length of rope. He probably would have bet turn because at that point if he is bet calling the flop and you check when the flush comes in what else can he possibly rep? At that point in the hand he is far down the funnel and really has no choice but to make a play.