$10-$20 live game, pocket Kings in the BB and your opponent is ... ME

[Student Caine]

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Unless BVT is trying to work some reverse psychology a draw is unlikely since the turn call would be just about as immediate as the flop raise, especially with a flush draw. Moreover putting a fourth bet in on the flop against a 2+2er who will almost certainly not give a free card when he shouldn't with just a flush draw seems unlikely. After he calls the turn I say his range is AT-JT, perhaps with one [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. I would bet/call the river. My guess though is that if BVT does show the winning hand it would be 9T, perhaps waiting for the river to not counterfeit his hand so he could raise someone who will very likely value bet.

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I don't see BVT waiting and giving me a free card to beat him if he thinks that he has the best hand.

[Student Caine]

I would not lay this one down and I don't think it is wise against anyone - whether or not they are a 2+2'er. If I had planned on Bet/Folding I would have simply used that 1BB to check/call.

[setzf]

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Unless BVT is trying to work some reverse psychology a draw is unlikely since the turn call would be just about as immediate as the flop raise, especially with a flush draw. Moreover putting a fourth bet in on the flop against a 2+2er who will almost certainly not give a free card when he shouldn't with just a flush draw seems unlikely. After he calls the turn I say his range is AT-JT, perhaps with one [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. I would bet/call the river. My guess though is that if BVT does show the winning hand it would be 9T, perhaps waiting for the river to not counterfeit his hand so he could raise someone who will very likely value bet.

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I don't see BVT waiting if he thinks he has the best hand...

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of course not, if BVT thought he had the best hand he would almost certainly raise the turn unless hes getting very tricky with two pair or a set. even then in my experience a good tricky opponent usually will have his deception planned out beforehand and again would call the turn without much hesitation. of course BVT could have already thought about all this and hesitated on the turn to throw us off.

[Student Caine]

I meant waiting to bet (i.e., not raising the turn) rather than pausing before his bet. Sorry for not making that clear, I went ahead and editied the post.

I would try not to get too mired down in BVT's acting job as you could run yourself into a tailspin second guessing why he paused.

[shant]

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I would not lay this one down and I don't think it is wise against anyone - whether or not they are a 2+2'er. If I had planned on Bet/Folding I would have simply used that 1BB to check/call.

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This is missing value bets. Against a passive opponent, if you bet and are raised on this river, you can fold pretty easily. If you check and your opponent checks behind a T they were planning on calling with, you've missed a bet.

[Student Caine]

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I would not lay this one down and I don't think it is wise against anyone - whether or not they are a 2+2'er. If I had planned on Bet/Folding I would have simply used that 1BB to check/call.

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This is missing value bets. Against a passive opponent, if you bet and are raised on this river, you can fold pretty easily. If you check and your opponent checks behind a T they were planning on calling with, you've missed a bet.

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Understood. I am not saying that I would not bet this river (I would), but unfortunately for my bankroll I am still not good enough to bet/fold this even against a passive opponent. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] There is just too much in the pot here.

All-in-all though I don't consider BVT to be a passive opponent so I would still bet, but simply call a raise (as opposed to re-raising).

[BarronVangorToth]

In my gear-shifting, sometimes I do revert back to being too passive (LESS than a year ago, before I really REALLY started studying the 2+2 books, I was a winning 1bb/hour player ... but really weak-tight).

Now some have accused me of being too loose (while many online guys are playing 15% of their hands ... even 17% of their hands ... I'm averaging in the low-20's).

As some more backstory, as a few people wanted to know who this person is, it's not someone that, to my knowledge, posts on 2+2, but rather one of the majority of the 2+2 community: the lurker.

At Foxwoods, there are a few of the old-timers that you can lay this down as this raise only means a flush -- but those same guys aren't 4-betting the flop.

I brought this up as I do read people talking about making those laydowns when you know your beat. Barry wrote about this in CardPlayer this month about costly errors.

But I keep going back to the advice that I'm paraphrasing from SSH: throwing out an additional big bet is bad ... but losing a big pot due to not putting out that bet is catastrophic.

I don't think you can make this fold against ANYONE who is capable of making a bluff ... and I've written about bluff hands.

I think this is a horrendous fold that I don't think anyone should make. And I think many people DO make this fold more often then they'd admit as they want to save that bet, because maybe they're having a losing session and they don't want to lose MORE, or maybe they have only a slight win so why dump "good money after bad"...

Barron Vangor Toth
BarronVangorToth.com

[Student Caine]

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I would not lay this one down and I don't think it is wise against anyone - whether or not they are a 2+2'er. If I had planned on Bet/Folding I would have simply used that 1BB to check/call.

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This is missing value bets. Against a passive opponent, if you bet and are raised on this river, you can fold pretty easily. If you check and your opponent checks behind a T they were planning on calling with, you've missed a bet.

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Understood. I am not saying that I would not bet this river (I would), but unfortunately for my bankroll I am still not good enough to bet/fold this even against a passive opponent. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] There is just too much in the pot here.

All-in-all though I don't consider BVT to be a passive opponent so I would still bet, but simply call a raise (as opposed to re-raising).

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I re-read all of this this morning and just wanted to say thanks Shant for pointing out the potential for missed value bets. Right now I have a huge leak in my game because I do not bet the river for value often enough. Thinking seriously about this hand if I were to have played it either live (when I am in the heat of the moment) or online (where I only have 30 seconds to act) there is the potential that I would not have value bet it (obviously when I am sitting here at my pc weighing the options for 15 minutes in a hand which I have no real stake in I can make a much more objective decision).

The concept of bet/folding in this situation is still too foreign to me (another leak in my game). The bad news is it costs me money, the good news is that I recognize it as a leak and realize that I need to overcome these type of leaks to improve my game. [/Student Caine's lame self affirmation]

Thanks again for pointing out the value bet issue and sorry that I just kind of ignored it last night.

[BarronVangorToth]

Just realized that in my post earlier this morning I didn't write the hand I held:

Q [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

Part of the further story of this hand was that he was talking about predictable a lot of 2+2'ers are, especially those that write frequently and/or write for the magazine, as if somehow every aspect of our game is transparent. FAR be it that I don't realize that a ton of people can outplay me ten ways from Sunday ... but I also don't believe that everything I do is 100% textbook and predictable.

And while it would be somewhat predictable to play the flush draw that way -- it's not the only hand ... and losing that bet to say that you can save a bet is, as I said, bad, which is why I brought this all up in the first place, as we all hate the "calling station" moniker but sometimes, when the pot's X size, you have to realize people will take shots.

Even some (especially some!) of our beloved 2+2 brethren.

Barron Vangor Toth
BarronVangorToth.com