Intersting NL Hold'em Hand, Comments on it Appreciated

[theBruiser500]

I had a very interesting hand at NL hold'em today (live game). Most people bought in for $50 to start but we were hours into the game and the stacks had grown huge, I had about $250 and my opponent had $400 or something. We've played every day the last week and my foe from the hand below started the week playing very tight but has been loosening up as the week went along. I'm not sure if I'm viewed as tight or loose, I think different people have different opinions on that.

Anyway, to the hand:

He's in the big blind, I limp in, he raises to $5 (a standard raise) and I call with 10d 7d in the hopes of outplaying him, it's heads up now. Flop comes 3 6 9 with two diamonds. He bets $6, at this point I think he has two overcards so I raise him to $15. He thinks for a second and raises me another $20 or $30. Now I adjust my read to an overpair, although in retrospect his physical mannerisms indicated he was weaker than an overpair. The last few days he had been playing a weak brand of poker so I think that if he has an overpair I can push him off it, even if I can't, I have outs. This might be where my mistake was, the way he played this could have been faulty, but it wasn't passive or weak - as I said, he had been gradually loosening up all week. I raise $50 on top of his bet and then he moves all in. Now whether I call is math... there was about $240 in the pot, and I had $140 left, so I put up $140 to win $380, and that seemed to be good enough odds for me to call. He had Ace 8, no diamonds or anything, just an ace high, a couple of rags feel and he took down the pot.

A friend suggested that I should have just called his reraise on the flop, and then raised him on the turn. I thought about this during the hand but was afraid that if I did that, he'd be pot committed and have to call. Another thing I could have done was go all in instead of raising just $50, but it seems silly to me raising $200 to win a $40 pot or whatever it was. Maybe the right move here was just to call his bet on the flop since he was going to make a play at it, then I can call if I make my hand and fold if I don't. And if he checks and I don't hit my flop, and I read him for weakness I can take the pot from him then too.

Any help with this hand would be very appreciated,
danny

[tpir90036]

actually you are calling $140 to win $240, not $380. which is slightly better than 3:2. however you are around a 2:1 favorite assuming he has non-diamond overcards and a little worse than a coin flip if he has an overpair.

i probably would have folded this pre-flop...but you know your opponent way better than i. that was also a lot of back and forth on the flop....seemed like you were both being indecisive. i would either hit him with a big ol' pot-sized raise on the flop and get ready to go all-in or call on the flop and then blast him with a pot-sized bet on the turn. the see-saw betting just made it easier for him to get committed to the pot....which i suppose was fine in this case since you had a ton of outs. just seems like you could have gotten him to lay down on the turn with one nice big bet.

i am by no means any sort of expert though. just MHO.... hopefully one of the heavy hitters around here will weigh in with some juicy knowledge.

-tpir

[crockpot]

what were the sizes of the blinds?

call with 10d 7d in the hopes of outplaying him

uh oh. this is a bad start. you may be different, but most players i know who use this logic to justify a call did so because they know the call was bad. also, it is a lot easier to outplay your opponents postflop when it was you who raised.

on the flop, i like your raise. this is enough to move him off of overcards if he respects you, and you don't want to commit a ton of money with a ten high. i think i would have flat called his reraise, though. on this sequence, the probability that he will move you all in if you raise again is quite high, and that is a lot of money to commit with a hand that can't beat a bluff. i'd prefer to call, see what comes on the turn, and make my decision then.

i don't know the player, but a lot of guys will slow down on the turn once you call their flop aggression. so it is possible that if he is on a pure bluff you would get him to slow down anyway.

[theBruiser500]

There was $240 in the pot after he called my $50 raise, once he went all in he put another $140 in the pot since I had $140 left in my stack, so the total pot size was $240 + $140 = $380.

danny

[sam h]

Hi bruiser,

I would almost always fold this hand before the flop.

On the flop, you have a huge draw. Your objective should be either to trap or to try and see the turn cheaply or to win the pot uncontested. I think you might have taken the middle route. His initial bet is weak, roughly half the pot depending on what the size of the blinds were. Why not pop him like it matters? Make it a pot sized raise to 30 or something (a little drunk right now, can't bother to do the math). If he came over the top then, it would really mean something. Anyway, when he does reraise you, you've got another decision. At this point you want to call and see what the turn brings or really move on him. Since a pot sized raise is fairly committing (at that point you'll have put in almost half your stack total), just go all in. There are not that many hands you're a big dog against.

[thetman]

The game sounds weak. Why not just wait for a hand where you ARE a big favorite to risk your stack?

[Lexander]

I don't claim to be an expert on NL, but my thought is basically that calling a raise with T7s is the real source of the problem.

I probably fold after his reraise. I do this primarily because I don't claim to be an expert (I play low buy-in online NL at Party, hardly a game for experts) and I don't want to endanger 5X the buy-in on a hand that I consider marginal to begin with. If he is putting a bluff on me he is likely doing so with a better hand than mine (it is not unlikely he thinks I am playing a draw).

Those are my thoughts, but please keep in mind I also play a fairly simple game of NL right now. I almost always fold this hand to a raise pre-flop, and I don't usually try to get fancy if I am playing a draw headsup. I am particularly cautious when playing such a large stack in comparison to the buy-in.

- Lex

[Greg (FossilMan)]

It seems you're getting a little too cute with your raises.

He bets like half the pot on the flop, and you raise 2.5X his bet. He's got to call $9 to win $33, which means he shouldn't lay down overcards unless there is some meaningful chance you have more than one pair.

He reraises by $20 or $30. I'll assume $25 for the purpose of this reply. If you call the $25, there will be over $90 in the pot, and you raise back only $50. This leaves you with about $160 in your stack. This is a bad amount. It gives him room to believe he can bluff you off your hand. So, unless you're not unhappy about him going all-in, you can't make that $50 raise. Even worse here would've been him flat-calling and betting you all-in when a brick hit the turn, giving you no pot odds to call.

Raise more, or call, or fold.

If you had also had $400, or if you both had stacks even bigger, then the $50 raise might've been a good one.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

[tpir90036]

oops, my bad. it was 4am when i responded and i read it wrong /images/graemlins/smile.gif.

-tpir

[theBruiser500]

Thanks for your comments, they are very instructive.

danny

[theBruiser500]

One more thing, I also posted my question on recpoker.com and so far have gotten one sucky response. I used to just use recpoker.com, that was clearly a mistake. TwoPlusTwo.com is much better.

danny