A hand from my first Party session

[GTSamIAm]

Check/call the river. I may have slowed down on the turn. You need reads badly on the player. Against a slightly aggressive player, I wouldn't slow down until the river. Against a passive player I would call down after I was raised on the turn. A passive player probably has A5, maybe he was tricky and had AA.

[Nilbud]

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Check/call the river. I may have slowed down on the turn. You need reads badly on the player.

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Tell me about it! It just goes to show you how important reads can be. Not even having a default read on the typical players in the game, I was completely lost.

[WSOP Bound]

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Check/call the river. I may have slowed down on the turn. You need reads badly on the player. Against a slightly aggressive player, I wouldn't slow down until the river. Against a passive player I would call down after I was raised on the turn. A passive player probably has A5, maybe he was tricky and had AA.

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I agree that reads would be very helpful. Against a maniac I'm capping this all the way, against a rock I'm calling down. I tend to assume that unknowns are LPP until they prove otherwise since a majority of the players that I run into fall into this category. I play stars, not sure what the typical player is on Party. I seem to remember Empire being a bit more aggressive on average.


Okay, now for my thoughts on the hand:


My concern in this hand is that if we are playing an opponent that has better standards than "any two" we COULD be in deep trouble. This doesn't mean that I think that we certainly are, just that we do need to take into account the fact that it is a very real possiblity.


Flop: I assume I'm best and cap this every time, the only hands that beat us are A5 and AA. I expect this action from any strong ace, and feel confident that we are okay a vast majority of the time.

Turn: When villian raises I start to get worried because we led the turn after he capped. We have made it clear that we have a hand, and it should be fairly evident that we have the five. I now have to believe that he has the case 5 or AA a significant % of the time. So AA has us drawing to 1 out, but it is inconsitent with the PF action. In order for villian to have a 5 what hand range can we put him on? I see three reasonable hands that villian could have that contain a 5. These are A5s, 56s and 45s. Having both the A & 6 on the board certainly spells trouble here. Without having a read on villian I can't realy be sure what other hands to put in his range here, but an overplayed A or high PP is unlikely but possible. I can't be convinced that our hand is shot here, just thinking that there could be trouble ahead. I think this is the point where I decide to get to the SD as cheaply as possible. Simply put: I call the raise.

River: I think I check/call this river

[bozlax]

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Flop: I assume I'm best and cap this every time, the only hands that beat us are A5 and AA.

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Don't forget K5...depending on Villan, Kxs is a not-unpopular hand on Party.

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Turn: ...So AA has us drawing to 1 out, but it is inconsitent with the PF action.

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Think back. How many times in the past month have you played against somebody who didn't raise AA/KK preflop? For me, that number is in the tens, easily. Add in the possibility that this player has some mis-conceived notion about position ("don't ever raise anything preflop when you're under the gun," for instance), and when the flop caps I think AA is a strong possibility. In which case, his preflop play worked just the way he wanted it to. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[WSOP Bound]

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Don't forget K5...depending on Villan, Kxs is a not-unpopular hand on Party.

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Good point. I ran a query against my PT database and indeed any king seems to be playable by a suprising number of people. It makes our edge a little thinner, but I think this is still a bet/3bet situation regardless. Especially since a strong ace could certainly cap this and then slow down on the turn/river.


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Think back. How many times in the past month have you played against somebody who didn't raise AA/KK preflop? For me, that number is in the tens, easily. Add in the possibility that this player has some mis-conceived notion about position ("don't ever raise anything preflop when you're under the gun," for instance), and when the flop caps I think AA is a strong possibility. In which case, his preflop play worked just the way he wanted it to. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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Don't get me wrong. Villian could have been attempting the infamous limp-reraise, he could believe the misguided idea that you should wait for the flop to define your hand before betting, or he could simply have misclicked and called while intending to bet. I don't think that AA is impossible, I'm reducing it somewhat because not ALL fish are that stupid. Yes some of them suffer from FPS and some of them are just risk adverse. People limp AA a sickening number of times, so it is certainly a possible holding. I just think that a majority of opponents will raise AA preflop, so this reduces, but certainly does not eliminate, it's possiblity in this hand.

[Nilbud]

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Think back. How many times in the past month have you played against somebody who didn't raise AA/KK preflop? For me, that number is in the tens, easily. Add in the possibility that this player has some mis-conceived notion about position ("don't ever raise anything preflop when you're under the gun," for instance), and when the flop caps I think AA is a strong possibility. In which case, his preflop play worked just the way he wanted it to. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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I don't disagree that there are a small but significant number of people who limp with AA, but I don't think that number is nearly high enough to consider as part of a default read.

[bozlax]

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I don't disagree that there are a small but significant number of people who limp with AA, but I don't think that number is nearly high enough to consider as part of a default read.

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Oh, it's not a default read for an unknown. But, given how aggressive your Villan became, I think this is a case where you have to expand your range of possible hands, rather than reducing it.