20/40 thief (quick, before this gets demoted to SS)

[piggity]

Seat 1 is a solid, thinking player.
Seat 2 is me.
Seat 3 is a rock.
Seats 4&5 are both passive & weak.

Two out of the last three rounds, Seat 1 has open-raised from the HJ and won vs the blinds without a showdown.

Round 4. Seat 1 is in the HJ again. He open-raises.

I have T4o. What should I do?

[Jeffage]

[ QUOTE ]
Seat 1 is a solid, thinking player.

[/ QUOTE ]

You answered your own question (even though you were pretty unclear about your position). Muck this trash even if you put him on a steal...his hand is likely much better than yours. That and the fact that he plays well is a pretty strong reason to fold. Actually, I don't believe I ever would call here unless it's one chip in 2-3 structure. Is this a serious question?

Jeff

[MNpoker]

Muck

And this is a rare case where I don't think it matters what type of player the Villian is.

[piggity]

[ QUOTE ]
Actually, I don't believe I ever would call here unless it's one chip in 2-3 structure. Is this a serious question?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm in the CO, not SB. So I have position. I'm being quite serious. For example, I would probably consider 3-betting with something like T8o..

[Jeffage]

Why would you want to mix it up with a solid player with garbage cards? I don't care if you have position or not. I'm mucking the 10-8 in two seconds flat also. 10-4 is a no brainer muck and it's not close.

[MNpoker]

[ QUOTE ]
Why would you want to mix it up with a solid player with garbage cards? I don't care if you have position or not. I'm mucking the 10-8 in two seconds flat also. 10-4 is a no brainer muck and it's not close.

[/ QUOTE ]

The only thing I disagree with is it shouldn't take 2 seconds. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Overplaying your opponents is a great way to spew chips.

[ QUOTE ]
Why would you want to mix it up with a solid player with garbage cards? I don't care if you have position or not. I'm mucking the 10-8 in two seconds flat also. 10-4 is a no brainer muck and it's not close.

[/ QUOTE ]

[stigmata]

Yeah, nobody ever got dealt three half-decent hands in a row, ever. 3-bet him and punish his dominated T3o.

[piggity]

[ QUOTE ]
Why would you want to mix it up with a solid player with garbage cards? I don't care if you have position or not. I'm mucking the 10-8 in two seconds flat also. 10-4 is a no brainer muck and it's not close.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey Jeff - Thanks for the candid input.

But at what point do you stop letting him have the button every time he's in the HJ? After his 4th consecutive open-raise from the HJ? 5th? 6th?

Am I just playing mind games with myself?

/images/graemlins/frown.gif

[sfer]

[ QUOTE ]
But at what point do you stop letting him have the button every time he's in the HJ? After his 4th consecutive open-raise from the HJ? 5th? 6th?


[/ QUOTE ]

Making a stand for the sake of making a stand isn't such a hot idea. Get a hand with showdown value first.

[Jeffage]

I agree with Daver's post completely...

Jeff

[ErrantNight]

let him take the blinds again and raise him next time around when your hand isn't ungodly terrible.

[ErrantNight]

He's taking other people's money... it's not like he's stealing your blinds... and it's not like you'd try stealing if it was folded to you with T4o... so I'm not sure why you're feeling such pressure to show this guy what's up.

Sounds like you're frustrated and card dead. Either stop being the former and wait for the latter to change, leave the table and find another, or just take a moment off and get a coffee. Or a beer. Or a blow job. Whatever you're feeling.

[DeeJ]

[ QUOTE ]
What should I do?

[/ QUOTE ]

drop down to 15/30 ?

[piggity]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What should I do?

[/ QUOTE ]

drop down to 15/30 ?

[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly, if you don't have anything constructive to add, you shouldn't be posting.

Thanks to the rest of you for making good points. I realize I'm likely matching a pattern that doesn't exist. I have, however, seen players who repeatedly take advantage of specific blind/late pos lineups to raise any 2 every round. I guess the point is to wait for a good hand even if this is the case. I do think I can lower my standards, though not all the way down to T4o.

[sweetjazz]

You can't tell from such a small sample what seat 1's range is for open-raising in the HJ. It appears he has correctly loosened his requirements significantly, so you should adjust to that appropriately.

However, three-betting with T4o is still a bad idea because (1) after just a few orbits, I doubt you have built up a lot of fold equity at this point, which is what you need to make this a playable hand and (2) there are still three players left to act and while they may be tight and passive, having one of them enter the pot (which will happen about 10 - 20% of the time, say) puts you in a bad spot where you will have to fold most flops and proceed carefully when you do actually get a piece of it.

The table conditions you describe make 3-betting with T4o much better than it ordinarily would be. Unfortunately, it would ordinarily be a very -EV move and now I believe it would simply be a slightly -EV move.

Even T8o would be pushing it and a hand like T9s is probably marginally profitable to 3-bet here. Of course, you are doing this largely for metagame reasons. You are trying to induce your thinking opponent to tighten up his open-raising standards in the HJ and CO, to induce into making bad calldowns later because he saw you 3-bet T9s before, and to generally have him think that you a LAGgy fish. So this is basically a play that you should stop making once you have shown it down once. And just because you got away with it the first time (say winning a pot without a showdown) does not mean you should continue to make such plays. Each time you make such a play, it generally lessens the EV of future plays (because you raise the suspicion level of your thinking opponent that you are 3-betting light).

So I am not willing to completely dismiss this type of play in specific game situations, but I don't think T4o is the kind of hand to make a stand with in limit poker, where your cards always do matter to a certain extent because you are limited in how much pressure you can put on someone to fold. And I have seen many players who try to make such plays overdo it to the point that they become the LAGgy fish that you are supposed to appear like. (Of course, most of them simply are LAGgy fish.)

So keep exploring metagame plays like these, but realize that it's possible to both underuse and overuse them.

[piggity]

Great post, sweetjazz. I think you hit the nail on the head.

[jason_t]

[ QUOTE ]
I have T4o. What should I do?

[/ QUOTE ]

Pick a better spot. Don't get in his way for the sake of doing so without something behind the effort.

[James282]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What should I do?

[/ QUOTE ]

drop down to 15/30 ?

[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly, if you don't have anything constructive to add, you shouldn't be posting.

Thanks to the rest of you for making good points. I realize I'm likely matching a pattern that doesn't exist. I have, however, seen players who repeatedly take advantage of specific blind/late pos lineups to raise any 2 every round. I guess the point is to wait for a good hand even if this is the case. I do think I can lower my standards, though not all the way down to T4o.

[/ QUOTE ]

I understand you are playing live and are thus extremely bored, but if you are so desperate to prove that you can outplay this guy, you can probably wait for a king or something suited first.
-James

[Mike Cuneo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What should I do?

[/ QUOTE ]

drop down to play money ?

[/ QUOTE ]

[sweetjazz]

I think that the people who are mocking the poster for even considering raising T4o here (and thus implicitly suggesting such a move is very -EV) are farther off the mark than the OP is in suggesting a 3-bet here. Maybe that is just my inner LAG coming out of the closet, but the 3-bet here wouldn't be horrible. It would be overall -EV in my opinion, but not by a whole lot.

In fact, I would venture to say that if the villain had open-raised in the HJ in four out of the first five orbits (winning all hands without a showdown), and now on the sixth orbit open-raised and you found yourself looking at T7o, that 3-betting here is certainly a viable option. (I am assuming however, that villain is known to be a decent player and in particular does not go to show down with weak hands.) So just change the game conditions a little bit and add a few pips to his meager T4o and now I don't dislike the play.

[piggity]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What should I do?

[/ QUOTE ]

drop down to play money ?

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

If you're going to try to be funny and fail, at least show some originality.

[DeeJ]

yeah quit fixing my original post /images/graemlins/grin.gif

My implied point, which you clearly totally missed in your sense-of-humor-failure moment, was that if you need to ask whether to play T4o against a pf raiser I would think you're playing too high. Why? Because T4o is a bad hand, it has far less value than a random hand. Oh yes, you will say, but read the post, see what he did 2 of the 3 previous rounds.... erm, how unlikely is it that he gets 3 half decent hands out of 4 times? Not particularly unlikely. Other posters have said "wait for a decent hand".

I agree, and it's not close.

2nd edit: you're playing live. It's still not close!

[piggity]

[ QUOTE ]
My implied point, which you clearly totally missed in your sense-of-humor-failure moment, was that if you need to ask whether to play T4o against a pf raiser I would think you're playing too high. Why? Because T4o is a bad hand, it has far less value than a random hand. Oh yes, you will say, but read the post, see what he did 2 of the 3 previous rounds.... erm, how unlikely is it that he gets 3 half decent hands out of 4 times? Not particularly unlikely. Other posters have said "wait for a decent hand".


[/ QUOTE ]

My point was that trite, disparaging one-liners are not constructive (nor was yours funny). Moreover, your now clarified point seems to be a parroting of what others have already said, but that's okay.

In any case thanks for the feedback. I think the problem is that I indeed took too small of a sample and mentally created a phantom crisis/opportunity. Maybe I do this too much and will look out for it in the future. However I maintain that outright dismissing these metagame (hate to use that word, so overloaded) situations is no good.