Botched 6/12 hand

[wall_st]

A bit of background on me, I mainly play 100NL 6 max on party. I have quite a few hands at the following limits for limit poker, .5/1, 1/2, 2/4 and have positive win rates at all of them. In my stats post most have pointed out that I am not aggressive enough. I came into this game with almost a NL mentality because for the first time playing live the money seemed meaningful. I had been running well playing 3/6 and wanted to play this game and take a shot.

I botched this hand pretty badly playing 6/12 live (Harvey's, Tahoe) for the first time. I had never played this high (although I am adaquetly rolled for it) and had been playing somewhat weak tight up to that point. This was near the end of the session I think I misplayed every street. I have been on the table for a while and have reasonable reads they are as follows:

UTG seems ok but very passive and very readable because of this. SB is very aggro and for some reason rather intimidating in this hand, he likes to play a lot of garbage from the blinds and seems to play well postflop. SB is going cap QQ, KK and AA here.

Im dealt J /images/graemlins/club.gif J /images/graemlins/diamond.gif in MP1

UTG raise, folded to me I three bet from MP1, SB calls and UTG calls

FLOP (pot, $60)

5 /images/graemlins/club.gif 5 /images/graemlins/diamond.gif 4 /images/graemlins/diamond.gif

Check to me, I raise, SB check raises, UTG folds, I call -

Should I be three betting this given what I know about SB, and how aggro he can be ?

Turn (pot $84)

7 /images/graemlins/diamond.gif

SB bets, I call

again seems like I misplayed this but Im not really sure what to do here.

River (pot $108)

A /images/graemlins/spade.gif

SB bets, I fold (This seems like one of the worst plays I made considering the pot was offering me 10:1 on a call)

I was so lost in this hand, mostly due to my weakness throughtout the hand that never allowed me to find out where I was at. Tear me apart as to what I did wrong, like I said I felt pretty lost here.

[einbert]

I think you played the whole hand great except for the river.

I don't really like three-betting the flop as you might very well get capped by an aggressive player with a flush draw and then you are in a tricky spot on a nondiamond turn. In addition, SB will probably get away from a lower overpair to the board on the turn if you three-bet the flop. So I like just calling the flop and seeing what the turn has to bring.

When the diamond comes on the turn, calling SB's bet is pretty much the only option you have. Raising and folding obviously suck here.

The river almost certainly didn't beat you unless SB has 32 (which seems plausible if he is very loose PF). It's a must-call getting 10 to 1.

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mostly due to my weakness throughtout the hand that never allowed me to find out where I was at

[/ QUOTE ]
It's very often correct in LHE to play a strong hand passively against a good, aggressive player. Finding out "where you're at" in these kinds of hands isn't the greatest thing that could happen, because it will also help SB find out where he is at.

SB's most likely hand through this whole ordeal (assuming he is not unreasonably loose preflop) is a lower overpair, therefore when you are ahead he is drawing nearly dead but will probably be able to get away from his hand if you play very aggressively. But if you play the hand as you did, he is pretty much forced to continue betting or at least calling you to get to a showdown. In addition, you lose the least this way if SB happens to have hit the flop very hard or something (77, 55 or maybe some SC hand with a 7).

Your flop and turn play is certainly spot-on IMO.

[pandared]

If you were going to fold, you should have folded way before the river when you had to call with the 10:1 odds

The flop play seemed ok, calling is fine when you are not sure if he has the 5, why waste bets by raising? You save if he has the 5 and if he's bluffing you are getting his money because he's doing the betting for you.

Wish we saw what he did in a similar situation before deciding what to do with this flop. If he bluffed in this spot before I'd definitely call, but with an unknown you have to presume that he's playing straightforward

To be honest if you don't have a good read on the villain and know that he plays rags, there is a strong possibility with the checkraise that he has a 5 you are drawing to 2 outs, you might consider folding the flop getting just 23:1 odds

[einbert]

Considering that SB is very loose preflop from the blinds, sure a 5 is possible. But folding the flop is absolutely not an option.

A) SB is a somewhat reasonable player before the flop-
SB's most likely hand is a lower overpair to the board
B) SB plays a lot of garbage hands before the flop-
SB will still have a lower overpair to the board quite frequently, or some kind of flush or straight draw.

The key on the flop is that the pot is already very large, and our hand and the SB's hand are not very well defined (we could easily have something like AQ, AK that SB could move us off of). Whether SB is loose or tight, folding the flop given the pot size and the board texture would be a disaster overall. When your hand isn't very well-defined (which means an aggressive opponent will consider himself to have some or maybe a lot of bluff equity and semibluff equity) and the pot is large in situations like this, folding is almost always a bad option.

[pandared]

Wow, sorry you are right Einbert, didn't read the post carefully enough, yea, the pot was way too large at that point at 13:1 and then 8:1, hero played fine until the fold

[wall_st]

[ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
mostly due to my weakness throughtout the hand that never allowed me to find out where I was at

[/ QUOTE ]
It's very often correct in LHE to play a strong hand passively against a good, aggressive player. Finding out "where you're at" in these kinds of hands isn't the greatest thing that could happen, because it will also help SB find out where he is at.

SB's most likely hand through this whole ordeal (assuming he is not unreasonably loose preflop) is a lower overpair, therefore when you are ahead he is drawing nearly dead but will probably be able to get away from his hand if you play very aggressively. But if you play the hand as you did, he is pretty much forced to continue betting or at least calling you to get to a showdown. In addition, you lose the least this way if SB happens to have hit the flop very hard or something (77, 55 or maybe some SC hand with a 7).


[/ QUOTE ]

I think the best range of hands to put SB on here best fits something along the lines of 33 - 1010. It was definetly his style to ram and jam in a spot like this and he would almost certainly call with most of these hands pre flop.

River fold is defintely horrible, but like I said I am mainly a NL player and when someone fires a third on the river I am used to folding here without a second thought. I think some of this mentality showed through here.

A note about the hand, when we got to the river I didn't want to call, but really wanted to know what he had. I asked the guy if he would show if I showed he quickly responded with no. For some reason this gave me a reason to fold. I showed anyways (probably out of frustration) he gave a quick look down someone asked him what he had he responded with "I won". Even I laughed at my own stupidity.

[Brunger]

On the flop I think you need to 3-bet or call with the intention of raising the turn. You are ahead of his range the great majority of the time. He did semi-coldcall 3bets so his hand is more likely a pckt pair or a big diamond draw than a bare five or pocket 4s. I don't mind just calling down after the third diamond hits but yeah you have to call the river.

[Chris Daddy Cool]

what about sb's play made you think you only had a hand worth calling down (let alone folding) ?

[W. Deranged]

I think that you played this hand fairly weak-tight.

1. Get aggressive. You hit a very good flop for your hand. SB did have to pay 2.5 cold here to see the flop, so a five is not that likely. If he is very aggro he might well be playing a draw, a combo hand, or a weaker overpair in this same way. The fact he'd cap AA-QQ pre-flop is helpful to you here as it eliminates an important class of hands we could be behind.


2. You have a vulnerable hand here. Don't be giving away free cards easily. A flush draw with overcards (e.g. K /images/graemlins/diamond.gifQ /images/graemlins/diamond.gif) is the type of hand your opponent could be getting very aggressive with.

3. Your opponent is aggro. This can translate to intimidating but it does not translate necessarily into hand quality, in fact the opposite often. Be much more wary of backing down to this opponent then to others, even though he might be more likely to have a 5.

4. You really need to call the river here. Many have mentioned that straight draws and weaker overpairs are possibilites for villain's hand. You are still ahead of all of these hands. The fraction of villain's range that will be made up of hands you are beating (against an aggro opponent) will be well over 10% here.


My preferred flop line is probably just to go ahead and three-bet the flop. Waiting until the turn is problematic because I think a diamond turn would be pretty difficult to play and might end up being more costly to get away from (I'd rather be faced with folding to a turn check-raise than to a turn three-bet, e.g.)

[einbert]

[ QUOTE ]
what about sb's play made you think you only had a hand worth calling down (let alone folding) ?

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Well it definitely seems that we have quite a bit of an equity edge over SB's range of hands when he checkraises the flop. But I'm not sure that three-betting the flop is productive enough when we are ahead to offset what it costs us when we're behind plus what it may save SB if he correctly puts on a bigger overpair than his (if he is decent postflop he should think that's our most likely hand when we threebet the flop) and allow him to get away from his hand. Once the turn and river cards come down like they did I can't see raising there either.

But I would definitely be interested in hearing arguments for three-betting the flop.

I definitely think it becomes a stronger option if we are OOP, but in position i'm not unhappy with the ability to just "make sure every street gets bet" unless I improve.