Raising Overcards on the Flop.

[hobbsmann]

I've been thinking about this topic a fair amount the last couple of days so I'll present a fairly common situation and would like to get peoples opinions.

The general situations goes like this (say limit is party 5/10)...

Thinking TAG in the HJ/CO openraises and you 3-bet on the button with AQ/AK, blinds fold and TAG calls. You put the TAG on any pair, any ace, broadway cards, etc.

Say the flop comes something like J62r and the TAG check raises you, is it ever correct to 3-bet here? Why?

[cwsiggy]

I'm just learning how to deal with these, but you just have a weak draw, no backdoor flush and could be reverse dominated. But, the pot is - well - kinda big?? lol Why did he check raise you? doe she do this alot to bluff or did he hit the J most likely. I say call and see a turn. Thoughts.

[brazilio]

A good TAG checkraising the flop means he's got a J, a 6, or any pocket pair. 3-bets for free cards get expensive, they usually don't work, and even if they do you're not always drawing to 6. There are other instances if he's on a draw and he thinks a flop c/r can make you release on the turn, but I don't see that a huge ton.

[hobbsmann]

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A good TAG checkraising the flop means he's got a J, a 6, or any pocket pair. 3-bets for free cards get expensive, they usually don't work, and even if they do you're not always drawing to 6. There are other instances if he's on a draw and he thinks a flop c/r can make you release on the turn, but I don't see that a huge ton.

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I completely agree with you that a c/r on a flop like this means that villian has a J or any pair. Now what I'm most interested in is trying to quantify fold equity in situations like this. By 3-betting the flop you will often get a TAG to fold small pairs on the turn for a bet.

So, what percentage of the villian's range does he need to fold come the turn to make a 3-bet profitable here (of course we also need to factor in our chance to improve as well as the discount for the free card we will get on the turn when checked to)?

[brazilio]

I don't often see a fold ever from a flop checkraise unless it's from a donk. I've tried the overaggression tactic before for an entire night, and I don't remember more than one instance where I got a fold out of it, and I'm not sure that the guy wasn't just making a play at me.

[AdamL]

Could work.

[Jake (The Snake)]

Why don't you put some math down and figure it out? Obviously it will work sometimes, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Edit: I don't want to come off as being less than helpful but this is the kind of problem where you will help yourself quite a bit by doing the math yourself, imo.

[W. Deranged]

I'll give a shot a the question asked by my meteorologically-inclined friend Hobbs...

I tend to think that this sort of three-bet is quite dangerous. I'll offer a few considerations:

1. If the board is as you described, it's really quite innocuous. Basically, this means that there is very little on the board for your opponent to be afraid of. Given the general inclination of small stakes hold'em players to "put people on AK," it will be difficult to encourage folds here because the only hand you can plausibly be representing is an overpair.

2. One of the frustrating things about this hand is that your desire to gain fold equity and your desire to take off a free card basically run counter to each other. If you are planning on taking off a free card, you basically give up your chance to earn a fold. If you plan on gaining maximum fold equity you will need to bet the turn. This obviously has its own complications, as you will sometimes get check-raised and other ugly things, and sometimes may even be forced into paying two turn bets if you pick up extra outs.



To look at it mathematically, you basically have to figure out whether the fold equity gained will overcome the value of the extra third-bet. Note that if you plan on also betting the turn, the expected cost of this bet will actually be a little higher than just 1 small bet, as sometimes you'll be check-raised on the turn, and that has a cost regardless of whether you decide to call it (if you fold to the turn check-raise, you are conceivably forfeiting a certain amount of pot equity). Let's say the cost of the bet is like 1.2 SB or something. Given that the pot has will have gotten to be a little over 11 SB at this point, you're bet will need to increase your overall pot equity by something like 10-12% in order to overcome the value of the extra bet. If we project that our opponent's equity is like usually in the 70-80% range on average here, this basically means that you're going to need to get your opponent to fold the best hand like 15% of the time or something. (These are all very vague numbers, obviously, but I'm just trying to get an estimate).

This is a pretty high number, but certainly not unachieavable if your opponent is tight. One thing to consider is the fact that a good portion of the time your opponent will have a J, and in those cases you will have a very, very hard time getting your opponent to fold. To get to that magical 15% number, that may mean you have to get your opponent to fold smaller pairs like 40-50% of the time or something like that, which is perhaps pretty ambitious against most opponents.

[ThomasPHoolery]

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One of the frustrating things about this hand is that your desire to gain fold equity and your desire to take off a free card basically run counter to each other.

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I think this is at the heart of why capping w/ draws on the flop (or w/ overs) is often a very bad play.

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my meteorologically-inclined friend Hobbs...


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you're so douchey sometimes

[hobbsmann]

"2. One of the frustrating things about this hand is that your desire to gain fold equity and your desire to take off a free card basically run counter to each other. If you are planning on taking off a free card, you basically give up your chance to earn a fold. If you plan on gaining maximum fold equity you will need to bet the turn. This obviously has its own complications, as you will sometimes get check-raised and other ugly things, and sometimes may even be forced into paying two turn bets if you pick up extra outs."

I realized I misspoke while I was thinking more about this situation driving back from Commerce tonight. You're correct, in this case the point of 3-betting is to gain fold equity and thus betting the turn is imparative.

This may be a leak in my game, but I seem to find myself in villian's shoes a fair amount and folding a lot of turns to 3-bets by the button in the above hand. So basically this idea came from the fact that this play would be profitable against me because I will fold a fair portion of my hand range against a sane TAG who 3-bets flops like this.

Also Willy, my intial intuition on this seems to fit with your idea that this play needs to work a decent amount to be profitable, but tomorrow I'll revisit this and write a more detailed calculation out.

[Wacken]

I play micro limits and have problems with the same issue. Very often i tried to do riases with overpairs, but i get the feeling it is not doing so good.

Is it correct that at 1/2 this play is much less viable than at 5/10 ?