It’s funny but not really surprising that even many good players succumb to a certain fishiness. Virtually anyone’s natural inclination is against folding. You’re guaranteed to lose- how much fun is that? The first big step that any player has to take to go from losing to winning is acquiring the discipline to fold as often is required.
But the urge to callcallcall never goes away, and eventually sophisticated players come up with sophisticated reasons to make fundamentally fishy calls. “Implied odds”, “position”, “meta-game”, and “outplay him post-flop” are the most common. The bottom line is that people just don’t fold to reraises as often as they should.
Granted the bigger 6-max games, and even the mid-stakes games, are full of light 3-betting these days. But calling more often is not the way to combat that. Light 4-betting has caught on, and that helps some, but really the best defense is to tighten up your open raises in spots where you’re likely to get 3-bet (ie there’s an aggressive player on the button). Raising 40% of your hands from the CO is an exploitive strategy that works against players who will let you get away with it. But it is definitely a deviation from optimal play, and when aggressive players behind you demonstrate a willingness to exploit it, your best and only defense is to stop raising so damn much.
The thing about calling light is that, at least with 100 BB stacks, you’re going to be too shallow for implied odds, position, or even skill to play nearly large enough role. And you lose sooooooooo much equity when you 13 BBs pre-flop with two undercards to a pocket pair.
Here’s an example of a hand againt a guy who likes to make tricky (read: bad) calls of reraises. I have him some tope to “outplay” me, and he took it:
Doesnt it feel great to CALL with the nuts?
hi mate,
enjoying your blog as always (except for the occasional downtime which isn’t your fault). Don’t be down if 2+2 honcho’s don’t rate your reviews, I like your honesty and careful evaluation. Interesting hand though, seems like a lot of levels going on! Always wonder in spots like this if you’d fold if he fired on turn, or if you’d raise.
@Fuel55:
I think the nuts would be 3d4d
Fuel,
Yes.
Ashwin,
I can’t imagine raising is better than calling on the turn. He’s not bet-folding any hand better than ours, and if he’s behind, he probably has very few outs. I’d probably have to assume I had 11 outs at best and fold (unless I got immediate odds), though.
You’re right that it’s a puke-in-your-mouth spot. The thing is that I don’t think it’s going to happen all that often, especially not as a bluff. I can protect hands like KKd by playing AKd in the same fashion. With TPTK and the nut flush draw I wouldn’t be going anywhere, obviously.
Geoff,
Yes, but I don’t think he ever checks that on the turn. Of course I realize you weren’t saying it was likely, just pointing out that I didn’t actually have the nuts.