I pulled some punches (metagaming considerations)

[DavidC]

This is the wrong forum, but you guys probalby take metagaming a little more seriously than most, so here goes...

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I pulled some punches today in a HU NLHE match vs an opponent who I felt I had an edge over.

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Two hands:

There was one hand in which he straddled to like $12 (on a blind of $2, with stacks of $250+). I re-raised to $40 and he called. I flopped a straight with my A4o.

I bet $65, he called. I open-rolled the river.

He re-raised me once PF, when I had ATs. I called. Flop came up KQT and he checked into me. I checked it through and hit the J (on a three-tone board (started two-tone)). He bet $30 (3/4 pot), and I raised to $80. He called.

River was blank and he checked to me, I checked it through.

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My edge:

He was slowplaying a bit, but not really playing back at me too much. I was free to steal whenever he didn't pair, and he would call me down with bottom pair quite often.

For the most part, it was costing me $0-1 to play my crappy hands, but it was costing him $4-5 to play the same hands.

We were playing about 30 hands per hour with no rake.

The chips were slowly sliding into my stack.

This guy is a somewhat amateur player with unlimited (to myself) financial resources.

He was semi-asleep before and after the match, hero is fresh after only being up for like 7 hours.

I'm winning and feeling comfortable in the match.

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So, given that I have this edge, but that we don't play this game very often (this guy often lags it up at a LHE full game, but doesn't often play NLHE), should I be going for the throat on these two hands or not?

Is it worth it, over the long term, to play a little bit more friendly with this guy?

I'm not looking to get or expecting any checks from him in the future, either.

The board was semi-scary when I rolled the wheel, so I would have had to come out swinging to shut down the action with that hand if I wasn't going to roll it. However, I could have sold my top straight for a decent amount ($80?) on the river.

The two options are checking through the river, or betting just a small amount ($30-$40) instead of betting the amount that makes the guy think for 2 minutes and then call.

--Dave.

The reason for this really weird post is that I felt a bit uneasy about this after the session... it's not the kind of poker that I'm used to, but it's still a +EV game to play this way...

... I don't know... someone please tell me to grow a pair of balls and hammer the guy or something. I'm curious just how badly I played in terms of longterm EV (in short-term I know it was bad).

--Dave.