RE: Steem Powered Poker Lessons With JokerPravis
Yup, you have a strong analysis I think, and I think a lot of people would agree. Flatting pre-flop is definietly non-standard but I do feel that I can outplay these types of players post-flop. If your plan is only to hit a set and play fit or fold on the flop then we definitely need to be deeper. But if we are going to win the pot other ways then sometimes we can sneak into pots like this. Its definitely the most controversial part of the hand, but I thought it would be good for discussion. I would always tell my students to fold here, and sometimes I fold as well. But I still like the line.
The thing about the turn is we have made a very strong hand, and although any made hands villain has will call, we would still like them to see a river with all the hands that haven't hit anything yet. This is CRUCIAL. And this is where range becomes important!
You see the difference between how me and you play is that on the river your villains will ALWAYS have a made hand, but they also will tend to usually fold all their AIR on the turn!
So something you won't notice between me and you is that when I play, OFTEN, my villains call turn bets with weak hands and have many many weak hands on the river.
So I am getting hidden value that you can't otherwise see.
And this is why we play the river different. You are playing your rivers fine given your play, but if we take the lines I took, then we can see our villain often has a lot of bad hands by the river....
I left out the results here purposefully, but I will let you know that this villain jammed over top of my river lead with A2o (no flush draw even) ;p
Replying to both @jokerpravis and @btc-dialog:
I think preflop is as standard as possible. The BB should peel along almost always, you are getting 4:1 immediate, will get nearly 5:1 after BB peels, and have relative position on the preflop raiser. I don't think 3betting is an option 30bb deep OOP with another player who likely has a very strong range in position (it's tough to flat an EP shortstack raiser)
I have mixed feelings on the flop lead. On one hand, you do cheaply manage to fold out initial raiser having broadway cards occasionally since he is sandwiched and can't really shove or peel those hands profitably, but on the other hand, I think one of the players has you beat a high % of the time. For one, I think IP flatter 3bets a range along the lines of 88-QQ AQ AK and mostly flats hands like KK/AA, and other strong suited broadway type hands like AJs KQs QJs JTs. So any time the initial raiser has Tx or JJ+ I think he rips it, may even rip some underpairs to the T, and the player in position has some Tx, some mid pairs, and some big pairs.
Additionally, I think you are checking Tx because the preflop raiser will probably just open rip AQ AK and maybe some overcards with backdoor flush draws, so there's no reason to try to fold those hands out by betting, so your leading range here is actually incredibly weak IMO. You are basically just betting and hoping people fold when you really have a very weak range, and the player in position may pick up on this and float a lot of his QJ KQ KJ AJ type hands. So to sum it up, you check your Tx, lead weak hands, players in position probably have strong ranges (shortstack EP raise, flat against that shortstack EP range), and they could pick up on you leading weak. From a GTO perspective, you should probably check range on the flop. But on the other hand....if it works often enough it works haha. Exploitable plays are tough to analyze without knowing the opponents stats/tendencies.
River I think is a clear all in. If villain reached this point in the hand he likely has a hand he will call off with and is probably too undisciplined to fold. Him showing up with A2o is a complete aberration and you shouldn't consider that a likely scenario. He is way more likely to stubbornly call off QTs than to show up with a hand he should have folded on every single street including preflop.
We are not expecting a player at this level to pick up on this and adjust imo. Furthermore we won't get many hands vs these players in an mtt. Also a spot like this is relatively (but super) rare.
I think it's a mistake, but please let me be clear, this is about micro stakes play. At higher levels of course we would play this hand dramatically differently without reads. But vs weak players we should not make the mistake of tightening their perceived/expected ranges too much. I urge you to consider the point I have made here. We NEED to concentrate on how to exploit the weaker players better than the other players.
I have over 100k games at micro to midstakes play and I can tell you for certain that A2o or some random junk is absolutely standard for our villain to show up with here.
It's not always about trying to outplay as many players as possible. We should also be trying to outplay opponents better than the other players do. And so I think that letting our weaker opponents show up with weak hands and inducing them to make mistakes like this river here, is an invaluable tool that far too many players overlook because of the non-standard lines.
I think my play is always up for debate, especially hands like this, but when I teach I make specific points, and I hope you see what I have done here in order to make this specific one.
Cheers and thanks for the analysis/response!