An old live hand

[Garbonzo]

Thoughts on the hand:

Preflop - dandy

Flop - what I have noticed about hands between friends, including the one time i played with you guys, is that UTG raises do not mean as much as they do playing against al strangers. People TEND to screw around more. What does this mean? It means slightly less fear of a monster in Brads hands....

The button is "generally" passive. This leads me to believe you put him on a flush draw.....this time. Though I would not charachterize "passive" as raising flush draws. If you do not, it seems the flop call almost CAN'T be correct. So you do, you have top pair, medium kicker, you may be good now, as Brads flop lead means virtually nothing. He could have a wide range of hands that hate the A on the flop, and probably down to KQs or perhaps lower....I think the flop call is "ok", I wouold be suprised if you were giving up much if you folded, but if it's wrong, I don't think it's by much. However, if your reads are on, it can be clearly +EV

Turn - When you call the flop, your turn lead is almost mandatory, Brad is likely done without improvement, he likely would have 3 bet the flop with many holdings you fear most. With a raiser and caller on the flop, he is not likely to bet again on the turn....if button is on the flush draw, then he will likely take his free card....so bet. Brad folds. Button calls, further confirming our read, as the hands he MAY have crushing uswith almost always raise (yes, some sneaky pants dudes will wait and try to raise the river)...

River - hero loses, we had a read of flush, it came home, "generally" passive bet again. We did not hit our straight, or even better 2 pair hand, there is almost nothing that he can have that we beat....fold is clear.

I think the only questionable play on the hand is the flop. This depends hugely on your reads at the table. If you read Brad for no big A after no flop 3 bet, which may be a bit too precise probably...and feel that Buttons play is consistent with a flush draw, than I believe it is +EV, and obviosuly, if your reads are all wrong than the flop call is horrendous.

I'm sorry if this was all repeated above, I read the first few posts but wanted to post my thoughts before finishing the thread.

[Nick Royale]

Nice post, I think given the read F>R. I won't start counting combos and estimating what hands Button will raise, but that's my feeling.

I would be interested in some thoughts about the risk of giving the 4th player in this pot a freecard. There's also a risk of him having our hand beat. Will this effect your calcs our do you consider his presence negligible as well?

[sfer]

Nick Royale plays g00t.

[W. Deranged]

[ QUOTE ]
Nice post, I think given the read F>R. I won't start counting combos and estimating what hands Button will raise, but that's my feeling.

I would be interested in some thoughts about the risk of giving the 4th player in this pot a freecard. There's also a risk of him having our hand beat. Will this effect your calcs our do you consider his presence negligible as well?

[/ QUOTE ]

Basically, in some sense we have to discount the presence of the two intermediate players at least partially or else the problem becomes so difficult that we can't really create any reasonable model like this to understand it.
We have no reason to believe that the cold-caller has us beat anyway; he's at least somewhat likely to dump on the turn, and, if he has a draw, it may well be the same draw as villain anyway and in that sense giving him a free card is the same as giving villain a free card anyway. We should not that, since betting may have some extra value behind it since that player may call with a worse hand, betting becomes more appealing. I think it is pretty hard to speculate how big that effect will be, though.

Casting the problem in terms of a heads-up problem with villain does help to clarify the issue. If we think it's close between checking and calling on the turn, with the third player also in there, probably holding a hand we can beat, and maybe having outs against us, I think that would certainly help to "break the tie" so to speak and push us toward betting.

I'm really, really interested by this question of how the "check the turn with outs" and the "don't give free cards" principles work in coordination with each other on the turn in situations like this. I'm thinking all probably write up something pretty lengthy about it along the lines of my response to this post and post it here in a little bit. I've played a couple of hands that got me thinking of similar principles and I think they'd be worthy to see compared.

[bdk3clash]

[ QUOTE ]
bdk3clash raises...folds

[/ QUOTE ]
Shocking.

[vmacosta]

Since the read was very general regarding the button, its hard to say whether or not you played the river properly. Lots of players will cold call with any ace, raise the flop when they make a pair of aces, and bet when checked to on the end...even some passive ones. I'd need specific information on how he plays the bigbet streets before I make this check/fold (my default is a bet/fold for obvious reasons). But that's not the street that I dislike the most.

I'd have bet/called 1 on the flop. Given that you checked, and its 2 back to you, I'd fold since:

1) Passive button raised
2) Brad (don't know him) is presumably a solid player who raised pf and then bet into 5 players including 3 coldcallers on an A-hi flop.
3) Not only Brad but a coldcaller as well are still to act and this thing could easily be 4-bets when it gets back to you.
4) you're oop for the rest of the hand (we don't know whether you have good relative position yet cuz we don't know what pfr will do).

Given that you did call, I don't hate the turn donk since the passive button is not likely to have 2pair+. However, anyone who says fold the turn to a raise is on crack so if you think there's a good chance Brad will pop it, I'd c/c.

[sfer]

Nick and others have pretty much nailed this hand. The preflop call is routine, on the flop I pause for a second to see if Brad was telegraphing his action, which he never does, and then quickly counted the pot, gave myself the best hand like 25-35% of the time and 4-6 outs when I'm behind, and called. When Brad just calls my plan for the rest of the hand is clear. The turn bet is to force a bet in and ensure I get value out of a flush draw. On the river, I'll just say that against this button the fold is easy and standard. I've played with her a lot and she's never value betting a worse hand nor is she bluffing. There are a couple others I will fold as well, and I think the important thing to take away from the river action is figuring out who those players are.