Early Overbetting in the 55's

[fnord_too]

I've noticed a lot of overbetting on the flop in the 55's lately. What's up with that? In the early rounds. I've had to end up dumping a lot of good draws/marginal hands because of it. In your oppinion, do these tend to be strong or weak in the following scenarios:

Unraised pre flop, overbetter OOP

Unraised pre flop, overbetter in position (checked to)

Raised pre flop, overbetter is raiser

Raised pre flop, overbetter leads into raiser

Raised pre flop overbetter bets after raiser checks

[J-Lo]

i've been noticing this overbetting in the battle of the blinds with 15-20x BB when SB limps during the middle stages-- like 1/3rd stack tryin to commit villain's stack.

Early on, it's usually some donk with a decent draw, which i usually fold to anyway, 'cuz i don't like my decent draw

However, u seem to play more hands w/ position than me. How big are the overbets, 'cuz i usually see pot +1x BB sized overbets, not the 2x or 3x pot sized bets that i usually associate with an overbet.

I play much lower stakes then you, but I have the same problem. One thing that I know is that it's definitely positive EV to wait for a big hand against an overbettor because the larger the bet relative to the pot the less frequently you have to call it to turn a profit. However, I doubt that this is optimal.

[bluefeet]

VERY generally speaking, I think it can reflect a couple "types" of players:

- The LAG. Willing to fire hard OOP or not, into a pot (particularly in your unraised examples). Or also, overbetting his missed flop having been the PF raiser.
- The Weak. Not passive (obviously), but one scared to death of proceeding past the flop multi-way, when he finally hit a hand (found more in the PF raised...raiser, or raise caller examples)

The difficulty reacting accordingly is having a read on the guy. Unfortunately, this kind of stuff happens early when the pots are small, and the "overbets" aren't cripling in nature.

Don't know what the hard&fast answer is. Without a strong read, it just isn't safe IMO to make these assumption - as a tricky player could falsely represent either of these styles from time to time.

If I had to guess a scenerio that holds true more times than not, it'd be...the overbet OOP into the original PF raiser. I see this quite a bit from a LAG a little torked off about limp/raise-calling PF - firing a missle into the PF raiser on rag flops.