[astroglide]

i don't understand why everybody was so excited about 1 pair here. i think the actual pair doesn't matter as long as it's over 88, and the kicker isn't very important.

if you think "i'm not going to play his game by calling, i'm going to RAISE THAT MOTHERFUCKER!!" that means you are infact playing his game. people often bet the turn to get a response out of you, it's why the bet/reraise line works so well. the kind of people who bet the turn with a picked up flush draw are those who don't consider their opponents' hands at all, they're only thinking about their own. this doesn't really sound like that type of guy. getting reraised gives you 2 choices, both of them suck, and both of them make you an idiot for having taken the bait.

a set, 2 pair, maybe really rarely a straight are all possibilities here in addition to flushes or snow. i like calling against all of those just fine, and i'm really not going to feel bad if i missed a bet if i happened to be ahead. it's not "value" to me compared to what i have to deal with if it's not. the worst-case scenario is WAY more bad than the best-case scenario is good. let's say you raise the turn and call down. you're eating 2 extra bets. if you raise and he calls with a worse hand and doesn't improve, you're gaining 1 bet. if he folds a bluff you're losing bets. i don't know the math but it seems like you'd need the "good outcome" a good amount of the time to make up for the bad ones, and i would have no idea how to assess those likelihood with this little information.

the people who see no choice other than raising somewhere and occasionally collect a bet might think YEAH I [censored] OWNED YOU MOTHERFUCKER, and if they lose they might write it off as OH WELL LOOK AT THE CARDS THIS IDIOT IS PLAYING. there are more balanced ways to approach poker. i think the people who really consider calling but still want to raise might have let their emotions get the best of them. at least i know if i raised that's what it would have meant because it's not a worthwhile value proposition to me.

who does the betting sure bothers people. if he checked the turn and i bet i wouldn't wish that he would checkraise me. i think getting checkraised is a fair deal compared to me raising his donkbet too, because at least in the former situation i don't open the action back up to him. how many of you that are bent on raising would love to bet and get checkraised? a checkraise is a more "standard" way of indicating defeat, i know they're not exactly the same. but a donkbet here can indicate defeat or maybe nothing. and calling against either of those is a pretty cool move.

it's shorthanded or heads up, and you've got position. dude raises and you call. flop is big-little-little, dude bets and you autocall with nothing planning on blowing him off something on the turn. turn is little, but this time he checks and you know he's calling. it's pretty humbling to have to check it down and have your cards shown in the hand history because you know his nines aren't going anywhere, isn't it? it's humbling to call donkbets too, but just like the guy with nines checking the turn or some guy in NL going all in before you can bluff, your opponent's action has chopped the value out of you doing something kinetic. this AK hand is not worth folding so you get value out of calling and all sorts of ancillary metagame benefits.

and yeah GoT, raising an ace on the river sucks [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]