Hand to Talk About

[James282]

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The fact that this post got so many replies(and the nature of them) is a pretty good indicator of the direction that the forum is heading....

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When a great player does something I don't understand, I think about it because I know it has a lot of potential to help my game. When joe blow newbie makes it, I assume he's making a mistake and spending more time thinking is a waste of time. If I post, I'm probably doing it to try to help him, not help myself, and I don't feel the need to think too deeply. This is totally reasonable. A more complicated analysis would hurt a newbie more than help anyways. You think a 2/4 player needs me to add, when viewing this hand, "but if you were in a tough, slightly loose and aggressive 80/160 game, you might just call the river"? No way.

There are a million poker posts on the internet. It's only natural to start, when trying to improve your own game, with the ones where players you respect do something you don't expect or understand. That's not being a snob, it's just good common sense.

-Eric

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By the very nature of what you're saying it's snobbish. Also, it's possible that a lot of very good players have leaks. By trying to emulate their worst hands, you just create leaks for yourself. All of a sudden you aren't raising your overpair at any point in the hand because Tommy Angelo didn't, or raising the river with trips, top kicker against a loose-aggressive and tricky opponent because Mason did it. Why? Because you can reason 1 or 2 scenarios where this might be the correct play. Ask yourself how you would play a suited ace in this hand, besides probably mucking preflop. Frankly I would play it exactly like the BB, and so would a number of posters on this board. Check-raising the flop would be juvenile and I doubt that most if any good players would do this with pretty much ANY ace in the BB, since it would be terrible. Also, I would rarely go for a bet-three-bet against Mason because I know how rarely he puts in extra bets postflop. Note that against more aggressive players I would probably do this, but against Mason, no thanks. I know he is checking behind KK and QQ on the turn. Anyways, you can respond to whomever you wish, of course. I don't have a problem with the posters of this board per se, just a problem with the general direction the board is taking(or has already taken).
-James