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NL20, Two-Pair: 4-Bet Or Flat Flop?
BorinLoner
Member Posts: 3,863
The table is all about the lolz and we're not exactly "respecting" each others' raises. The villain is a well known forum reg. It was a lot of fun but I am posting for serious thoughts.
Anyway, I pick up a big hand on the button and flat pre-flop to trap. My hand only gets bigger on the flop.
Confident I'm ahead on the flop, obviously, and I'm pretty sure I have to raise four-handed. What do we make of the raise size?
As everyone is playing a tad loose, the 3-bet doesn't need to be a big value hand so I decide to flat and see if he'll barrel the turn. No need to go 4-betting and let him get away when I have position and with the SPR so small. Thoughts on that?
We get a horrific turn card and a check from villain. If I bet, I'm pretty sure I'm not value betting. Does anyone want to bluff here?
The river is interesting. All pocket pairs crush me but is he really going to bet KK for value here? Looks like an Ace or a bluff. At the time it seemed an easy fold but now I wish I'd made the call. Even with the table being a bit aggressive, the fold requires me to believe he 3-bets the flop with more Ax hands than overpairs or random overcards. If he's betting his overpairs here, he's definitely turning them into a bluff, though I suppose that shouldn't be ruled out.
| Player | Action | Cards | Amount | Pot | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GELDY | Small blind | £0.10 | £0.10 | £46.50 | |
| Hadjinik | Big blind | £0.20 | £0.30 | £33.30 | |
| Your hole cards |
| ||||
| MyMateDave | Raise | £0.60 | £0.90 | £34.60 | |
| Lambert180 | Fold | ||||
| MissFowler | Fold | ||||
| BorinLoner | Call | £0.60 | £1.50 | £40.03 | |
| GELDY | Call | £0.50 | £2.00 | £46.00 | |
| Hadjinik | Call | £0.40 | £2.40 | £32.90 | |
| Flop | |||||
| |||||
| GELDY | Check | ||||
| Hadjinik | Check | ||||
| MyMateDave | Bet | £1.60 | £4.00 | £33.00 | |
| BorinLoner | Raise | £4.80 | £8.80 | £35.23 | |
| GELDY | Fold | ||||
| Hadjinik | Fold | ||||
| MyMateDave | Raise | £8.00 | £16.80 | £25.00 | |
| BorinLoner | Call | £4.80 | £21.60 | £30.43 | |
| Turn | |||||
| |||||
| MyMateDave | Check | ||||
| BorinLoner | Check | ||||
| River | |||||
| |||||
| MyMateDave | Bet | £10.20 | £31.80 | £14.80 | |
| BorinLoner | Fold | ||||
| MyMateDave | Muck | ||||
| MyMateDave | Win | £20.52 | £35.32 | ||
| MyMateDave | Return | £10.20 | £1.08 | £45.52 | |
Comments
Thoughts on the flop and turn are still being sought.
I've had another idea about the river, though. What about a shove? Can we bluff here?
Heaps of money in the middle, and I'd be giving him 3:1 on the call, but I'd also be doing a pretty good job of repping a full house or better. If he has an overpair or a bluff, he must fold and he may even fold a Ax hand. He's definitely a capable opponent, so I know he can find a fold. At best, he'd be calling hoping for a chop, but it's so tough for me to have an Ax hand having raise-called that flop and superficially it would appear to him that I have no fold equity... so maybe I do?
Can we bluff the river?
Whats a SPR seen it a few times in the couple of days
EDIT is it stack to pot ratio that would kind of make sense?
So shoving the river looks pretty heroic to me... unless the villain is just going to station me.
Got to call with the suited 53 on the button 200BB deep, surely? If the villain was in the cut-off I may be less likely to call because I'd know that a squeeze is more likely vs a c/o raise and button call than against an UTG raise.
EDIT: SPR is indeed Stack to Pot Ratio.
I think the fold is probably right given I know your hand. On this occasion I did actually have air, J8 spades, Harry is very good!
). Also, J8suited is really pretty!
I'll give you the hand from my point of view. Bear with me on this, i'm rubbish at explaining my thought processes( prolly because they're usually flawed). I don't really do the jargon thing either.
Pre, I'm happy raising this utg. I know we say utg but it is six-max so a little different. I feel i'm quite likely to end up playing the hand in position. Lamberts playing about 20 tables and so is not going to be playing too wildly. Anna is playing well but I think she will prolly fold marginal hands here and I think your range will be pretty tight( i'm good with reads
You call and i'm thinking suited broadway cards, pocket pairs 9's and lower. On the flop when you raise i'm now ruling out the broadways and want to see if you have a set, hence the reraise. (I hate my sizing now) By reraising I think I look pretty strong and i'm getting folds from a lot of pairs. I think you're going to look to get it in with a set there and then and was pretty confused with the flat. I'm just giving up there but then you check back the turn. Now i'm fairly sure you DO have the pocket pair. The river at the time made me think I had a really good spot to win the hand. I think I can rep an ace and still big pairs.
I think in hindsight that to have given you a range of only 3 hands at this stage 7's. 8's and 9's is a little too ambitious. Obviously any lower pairs are either a set or the straight and I think you prolly sighcall with the sets. 10's and higher you most likely raise pre.
You had mentioned that you were playing a little higher than you normally would and this was also in my consideration
....
I guess calling with 52 in position is okayish this deep. But, I think if I decided to play the hand I would 3 bet it. Taking the initiative and in position you win the hand 100% of the time regardless of your cards. Although 3 betting in position doesn't necessarily mean strength these days, I still think I would be giving you more credit for a bigger hand
Admittedly that's eleven cards but, as I say, only seven of them are actually bad for my hand.
Anyway, as you say, you're only going to give me credit for a set if I shove over the top of your 3-bet. That makes it a really bad idea to shove with just two-pair because I can never be called by worse. Flatting keeps in all your bluffs to possibly let you take another shot at it and obviously may gain me more value from your big overpairs. So I'm happy with my flat there.
It's a horrible run-out for me with two of those seven bad cards hitting. I can't see how I could play the turn differently, really. I said in my OP that I felt I could potentially hero the river. I was convinced in a discussion elsewhere that it likely won't be profitable since, even though all your Ax hands apart from AA were bluffs on the flop, there are still too many of those, combined with pairs you're turning into bluffs, to make the call good. That really depends on how wide I make your opening range pre-flop, though. I knew you could be fairly wide but if I'd known you might be holding hands like J8 I'd have snapped the river.
I'm going to see about sending this into one of the clinic shows to let them discuss the idea of shoving the river.
I can understand why you'd think that the level might have altered my play. I'm not a typical forum reg, though, and BRM isn't really something I bother with. If I couldn't forget about the stakes and just play 200BB I wouldn't sit at the table. The only impact that the stakes had on me was that I wasn't going to top-up.
Your range pre-flop I was thinking would be something along the lines of the obvious pairs and all broadway hands, as well as suited connectors, probably 67+ as you were UTG. Not a massively wide range but not a tight one either. Your range on the flop doesn't change that much, I'm just able to separate it into a bluffing range and a value range. I didn't want to make that bluffing range disappear by 4-betting and I knew it might also allow you to fold some of your value hands. To be fair your bluffing range is more pronounced than your value range here because, if you're 3-betting your overpairs, you're putting yourself in a tricky spot if I come over the top as well as forcing out any bluffs in my range. If anything, your 3-betting range should be weaker than your potential flatting range.
The thing about there being a lot of awkward run-outs isn't something I see, really. If a King hits the turn, what does that change for me? I go behind to KK but that's part of the game: Sometimes your opponent gets there. I don't see many cards that can bring a better two-pair so, if I'm ahead on the flop, I'm very likely to be ahead on any turn that isn't a 3 or 4. It's not as though I want you to fold your overpairs on the flop, anyway, so if I go behind to a set on the turn, c'est la vie.
Raising pre-flop or folding?
Well I might 3-bet here sometimes but you can't always do that. Sometimes you've got to flat and sometimes you've got to 3-bet to keep your range balanced for all the occasions you want to 3-bet AK, AA, etc. or flat 88, JT. On the button your main advantage is the ability to assess your opponent's actions post-flop so you should flat a higher proportion of the time from the button than from the blinds. That's not just stating the obvious that you can play a wider range on the button. I mean that you should 3-bet 9Ts, for example, more often in the blinds than you would from the button against a villain playing a wide range. Otherwise you sacrifice a lot of the post-flop advantage of your position.
I don't think I'd want to fold this spot due to the reasons mentioned; being deep, in position and unlikely to be squeezed light from the blinds. My 52 also has the bottom end of the deck working for it, so no real reverse implied odds against your likely range: I only lose my stack to you if I flop two-pair or better and you also hit two-pair or better. That doesn't happen very often so I don't need to worry about getting in a sticky spot.
If we were playing 100BB this is less of a call if your range isn't super-wide. With 100BB, I'd have to think your range is very wide because there is less room for multiple raises or betting on multiple streets. For example if I want to flat or raise a wet flop and bet or raise a turn, you're likely to have an easy decision of whether you want to call all-in or not.
With 200BB (well, 175BB here) I can make that raise on the turn and still leave you with a problem on the river. I'll be leveraging my stack without putting it all-in and therefore without it being so expensive when I'm bluffing (relative to my value bets). I put pressure on all your one-pair type hands and can decide whether or not to bet the river. So with my value hands I can possibly win a full stack or I can give up on a bluff without putting the rest in, depending on the texture of the river.
It leaves you in the position of holding a bluff-catcher with most of your hands. When we're 100BB deep, your AA beats my bluffing range and is likely to beat a lot of my value range for getting it in. When we're playing 200BB, your AA doesn't beat much of my value range for getting it in, so you're only hoping that I'm bluffing when calling the turn. Some of the time I can still bluff you off the best hand on the river, or get you to put it in with the worst hand.
There are so many more options when you're deep, in position, that you really need to play a wider range. You also want to keep the SPR higher, so that those options are open to you. Keeping the SPR high requires us not to bloat the pot pre-flop. Obviously we still want to 3-bet when we have AA, KK and the like, and that's why we want to 3-bet some other hands occasionally, to keep our range balanced. Though we shouldn't make -EV plays just to keep our balance, we should just bear in mind the dynamic we have with our opponents.
I don't think you need to worry about your play being ridiculed. I think you played it perfectly well.
Might have been interesting if they had read my post, but never mind.
When Jac 3-bets the flop I don't think he's repping anything other than a bluff or a set/straight. So I don't want to 4-bet the flop and fold out all the hands that beat me. Jac wouldn't be 3-betting here with just an overpair, so whether I'm repping a set or not, I'm only going to get it in behind or lose value from his bluffs.