Party 5/10, flopped mini-boat against aggressive player

[ElSapo]

Party 5/10. Four seats to my left is an aggressive player. He's open-raising maybe 20% of the time and he tried to isolate a weaker player with K5s.

To set up the hand in question ... An orbit ago he open-raised and I tried to isolate him with JQs. He called, check-called the flop when I missed and bet with nothing, and check-raised when a king hit on the turn. I got frustrated and three-bet, he called. Another king on the river, he bet, I folded. So my image if that of, eh... a moron.

Anyways, I'm tilting and stuck and quitting after the BB gets to me. Last hand and I get 77. I raise, aggro-man calls, two more callers, the four of us take a flop.

Flop is JJ7 ...

I bet, he calls, one other caller.

Turn is a Q, I bet, he raises and then action is back on me. Assuming he never does, when do you slow down - or would you?

ElSapo

[sfer]

If he caps the turn after I 3-bet I am checkraising the river every time. If he 3-bets the river I slow down.

[ElSapo]

Interesting line, not sure I understand the river check-raise except that you can limit the number of bets at three rather than a cap?

He capped the turn, I bet the river and he raised. Given that, three-bet or call?

[sfer]

Yeah, capping the river is exactly what I want to avoid, so I'd just call the river raise.

[Bluffoon]

I dont see any reason to slow down here unless another jack falls on the river.

[J.R.]

An orbit ago he open-raised and I tried to isolate him with JQs.

I hate this as you are creating a big pot with a hand of little showdown value versus an opponent against whom you don't have much bluffing equity. In other words, you aren't going to blow him off a better hand very much (it may be more likely he blows you off something as you hand is very weak unimproved) and you can't be happy getting to a showdown regardless of the board, which wouldn't be the case with a big ace or big pair. Wait for a better spot, especially as you are still getting accustomed to this game and limit and don't need to frustrate yourself by pushing what at best is a very thin, marginal edge (QJs suited isn't that great against the better 20% of possible hands, and even more so if this guy is raising most Aces and Kings) and misplaying/tilting away a few hours of profits in a hand or 2.

In the 77 hand in question I go to war on the turn, and if the turn is capped, bet the river and call a raise. I think most very aggressive/maniacal preflop players tend to play well postflop (not sure if its the case here) because they have lots of postflop experience in lots of thin and varied spots, so if I get raised 3 times on the BB streets I would think I was behind unless the opponent is postflop crazy (even including any image problems posed by the prior QJ hand), which is a few orders of magnitude greater than an aggressive player. And I don't consider open raising 20% of the time that crazy or manaical a preflop startegy. So without a read that he gets nutty with very little postflop, I'd bet river and call a raise after a capped turn.

[ElSapo]

Thanks JR...

I agree the JQs isolation was bad. I've done something like that similar, in a similar spot against a similar opponent, and had similar results. JQs and hands like it don't have enough value to show down against a player like this.

I'm curious about your 20% comment -- the guy wasn't a maniac. I'm pretty sure he's a 5/10 regular and he may well be a strong player. It seems like when you see very aggressive players start picking up a lot of pots they're raising thin up front but somehow everyone folds the river to them or the like. Not sure what I'm trying to say here, beyond, yeah, it seems like my play was a bad idea against a player I needed to give more credit to.

Maybe my confusion is this -- when you play Party 2/4, I think the majority of your edge comes in making better pre-flop situations. Going up against dominated opponents seems to account for much of your profit. Seems like a slightly different skill set each time you move up.

As for the 77 hand, everyone seems to say call a river raise. In retrospect, this was probably the right play though I think it's close, given the image I probably set up with him before. I went off for one more raise and he capped it with JKo for nut-no-boat and my hand is good.

In retrospect I think I should have given the player more respect, however.

Thanks everyone for their comments...

[J.R.]

There are 1326 possible starting hands, so the top 20% accounts for 264 of them. I know you may have made the 20% comment as a general feel, but assuming he does raise preflop 20% of the time (a figure you can obtain with a high degree of reliability from a pokertracker export), you might be up against something like AA-66 (60 hands), AKs-A6s (36 hands), KQs-KTs (12 hands), QJs-QTs (7 hands), AKo-A9o (80 hands), KQo-KTo (48 hands), and QJo (16 hands)- 263 hands.

Sure the his actual makeup of hands minght include more suited connectors or small pairs and fewer aces, but I think this range of hands is fairly representative. So in addition to not having any showdown value and being an aggresisve opponent who is also unlikely to incorrectly fold that often, your hands is a big dog to your opponent's range of hands.

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre> </pre><hr /> equity (%) win (%) / tie (%)

Hand 1: 39.4145 % [ 00.37 00.03 ] { QJs }
Hand 2: 60.5855 % [ 00.58 00.03 ] { AA-66, AKs-A6s, KQs-KTs, QJs-QTs, AKo-A9o, KQo-KTo, QJo }


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[joker122]

[ QUOTE ]
If he caps the turn after I 3-bet I am checkraising the river every time. If he 3-bets the river I slow down.


[/ QUOTE ]

I like.