villain is a very strong, somewhat tricky player. i sat there for about 2 full minutes and decided that he knows my line is SO STRONG (i just had stacked someone with the same line with a238 on an a8847 board for 3 buyins each) that he can't possibly be worse than chopping with me here, so i folded like a little bitch. thoughts?


converter isn't working, sorry guys. suits don't matter, so it's not a big deal:


Full Tilt Poker Game #4124544540: Table Coleman - $1/$2 - No Limit Omaha H/L - 23:09:42 ET - 2007/11/09
Seat 1: Hypnotist1 ($216.35)
Seat 2: pokercoq ($190.60), is sitting out
Seat 3: sangaman ($243)
Seat 4: checkymcfold ($1,049.95)
Seat 5: Luck Reaper ($98.30)
Seat 6: Anvemada ($193)
Seat 7: Racer36 ($0), is sitting out
Seat 8: shoe44 ($76.55)
Seat 9: mick the hoon ($205.55)
Luck Reaper posts the small blind of $1
Anvemada posts the big blind of $2
The button is in seat #4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to checkymcfold [9h 8d Kh Ac]
shoe44 folds
mick the hoon calls $2
Hypnotist1 folds
sangaman calls $2
checkymcfold calls $2
Luck Reaper folds
Anvemada checks
*** FLOP *** [9c Js 9s]
Anvemada checks
mick the hoon checks
sangaman bets $6
checkymcfold calls $6
Anvemada folds
mick the hoon folds
*** TURN *** [9c Js 9s] [Ah]
sangaman checks
checkymcfold checks
*** RIVER *** [9c Js 9s Ah] [Qd]
sangaman bets $15
checkymcfold raises to $66
sangaman raises to $235, and is all in
checkymcfold has 15 seconds left to act
checkymcfold: wow srsly?
checkymcfold has requested TIME
checkymcfold: that's so sick i have a9
checkymcfold: u win nh
checkymcfold folds
Uncalled bet of $169 returned to sangaman
sangaman mucks
sangaman wins the pot ($150)
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $153 | Rake $3
Board: [9c Js 9s Ah Qd]
Seat 1: Hypnotist1 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 2: pokercoq is sitting out
Seat 3: sangaman collected ($150), mucked
Seat 4: checkymcfold (button) folded on the River
Seat 5: Luck Reaper (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 6: Anvemada (big blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 7: Racer36 is sitting out
Seat 8: shoe44 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 9: mick the hoon folded on the Flop



i'm really curious about what you guys have to say about this one. i've never really folded in a spot like this before, but this guy INSTAshoved when i raised the river and he's a really, really strong player. he can't possibly be shoving here thinking that he has fold equity, right? i know he pays attention to the way i play (we've logged thousands of hands together), and he knows i'm not making this raise on the end as a bluff if there's been a pot bet up to this point.

on the surface it seems like a good fold, but i have a few nagging doubts about it.

how aggressive is he preflop, would he almost always raise with aces after a limper (or that limper in particular, maybe that guy sucks)?

i don't put him on aces here--JJ or QQ (he would take this line with the former, i'm sure, and he would do this with an overpair then shut down on the turn, boat up on river and bet/shove). he would raise aces in this spot, possibly not if they had no good low OR it was like AA23 or AA24 to trap. it's more that i can't figure out what he could have that i beat that would do this.

well, i guess if he would never do this with j9 or q9, and he isn't doing this as a bluff becouse he knows you well enough to know you are only raising for value here like this, then its a good fold.


i can't imagine ever making a fold like that and feeling 100% comfortable with it.

i suppose it's POSSIBLE that he could do it with j9 or q9 if he's tilting, but he's a good player and wouldn't normally put in a 3rd bet on the river against a strong line with one of those, no way.

of course i'm not completely comfortable with it. just about 98%. how often do you see me post hands?

your value raise range is limited to full houses, and he cant possibly expect a call from the lowest of them, so for him to value shove even Q9 is kind of asinine.
he's obv going to be ****ed any time you call. shoving with A9, Q9 or J9 serves more as a way of getting chopping hands to fold than it does of getting worse hands to call.


but looking further back, what hands in his range do you expect him to call your river raise with, if you said that he knows you never bluff raise in this spot?

your value raise range is limited almost exclusively full houses. if that is what you meant (that he knows you dont bluff raise the pot here), putting the pieces together, he should find a fold with anything that you beat except maybe Q9. I do not see him calling with J9 if he thinks that you're never bluffing, because that is near the cutoff of what you would raise for value and he can hope for a chop at best.

if his call range is that narrow though (which would only be the case if he was pretty damn sure that you never bluff raise), the you need to start bluff raising damnit.

What troubles me most in this hand is *your* image. Were you looking people up? Were you caught floating on multiple occasions? Could he actually be making a move here?

I agree he's not value shoving Q9 or J9 here, but in a HU pot he can't automatically put you on a 9, or if he's got a high hand like AKJT, he may even talk himself into his straight being good and you are floating.

I confess I play PL & FL, so NL isn't exactly my forte. If you can't call a river raise, you might as well call behind. I have no clue how often we're catching him with his pants down here. We are getting exactly 2-1 odds on his shove, so the question is: are we good 1/2 of the time? Are we splitting/good 1/2 of the time?

In NL hold 'em, one of the golden rules is you *have* to call a raise on the river if you have dramatically under-repped your hand. You, sir, have definitely under-repped your hand. But it's costing you 165 to win 330.

Really rough spot.. Is he bad enough to have missed spades (on a paired board, I've seen it happen) and "only be able to win by betting"? Could he think Top Pair becoming a straight made him good here?

==================================================

edit: I need to learn to read better. If we know he's the only other solid at the table, then we certainly want to call the original pot-bet on river and not let him test us with a raise. If we got him, he can't "call" a raise, but he can certainly make a play. I'm not sure I understand how calling flop and checking behind on turn is considered "playing strong"...

In his shoes, I would think you took a free card on the turn and "hit" the second nuts on the river. Playing like you had, I think he may actually be value shoving a J9/Q9 type of boat. How is he supposed to give you full credit for nines full?

i wasn't bluff raising on this day, cuz the table was really, really soft except for us two. this game is usually really good, and the two of us generally avoid each other, which is why i'm so scared of the 3bet on the river. i'll bluff raise the river fairly often if the table dynamic requires me to do that for action, but on this day, the action was coming anyway, and i'm sure he knew this as well.

with the table playing the way it was, he has to figure me for at least Q9 here, or POSSIBLY J9. this is why i'm fairly certain that he has to at least be chopping with me here, unless he puts me on a bluff (which i hadn't been making this session, though i would have against him occasionally in HU pots, just doubt he's thinking on that many levels). he's definitely not on busted spades here--i've never seen anyone at these limits make a 3bet bluff on the river--but he conceivably could be acting on some "read" and valueshoving J9, Q9, or A9.

here is how my thinking went:

on the flop, he's either got a nine, boat, or overpair. he sometimes bets at pots like this to just take it down, but the game was so loose that day that i doubt he'd be doing that (3-4 known ultradonks were sitting). so on the flop, i'm thinking his range is JJ, a nine, or QQ+, or (less likely) some sort of wrap. i generally float with a lot of crap in position, but i wasn't that day, so unless he's spacey, or tilting cuz of a hand on another table, he is putting me on a similar range.

on the turn, he checks. he's tricky and would do this with a boat. i have him drawing dead or am drawing to 2 outs, so i check behind to make him bet the end. he probably knows that i'd do this with a monster or a hand that hates that ace.

on the river, he bets as he should. i raise about the pot, which means he has to know i have a boat. i wouldn't do this with a straight. i wouldn't do this with K9. not today. he 3bets. WHOA, DANGER WILL ROBINSON! he has to know i have a boat, and he's still shoving? he could POSSIBLY be trying to fold me off J9 or Q9, but he can't think i'm folding a boat getting those odds very often. i think all this through, and figure he's got to be valueshoving against what he knows is a strong hand. i thus conclude i'm chopping at best, and muck like a little girl. i hate folding, and he knows it, but i think this one was goot.


fwiw, i asked him at the end of the session what he had and he said "i can't tell you." he's a bit egotistical, and i think he would have told me if he bluffed me, but that's not necessarily true, i suppose.

Regarding my original posed question involving your image: have you played with him before? If he has, he could have note-boxed you as a "wildman" and been going off of previous reads.

I still don't assume that in a HU pot villain *has* to put you on a boat the way that hand was played. I think this can still be a fold, but the possibility of him finally "catching you" stepping out of line makes this cloooooooose.

I edited my orginal post at the bottom, in case you didn't see it.

by this thinking you should not have raised his river bet in the first place. whats he going to call with that you beat?

bingo, this is what i thought i might have ****ed up. just wanted someone else to say it out of the blue based on my thought process. i didn't think i anticipated the river action properly before raising so much, and although i am very nearly 100% sure it was a good fold, my big gripe with my play was that i set myself up for a bad decision by approaching the whole river action poorly.

so yeah, i think i agree with you. it's odd that something like top underboat could be in this type of spot, but i think this may have been one of those times.

These limits are a little out of my playing range, so my thinking may be completely off here (I say that because on the smaller limits that I play $0.25/0.50 and $0.50/$1.00 there are max buy-ins which are fairly small (ie. $50/$100), so the play MAY be different).

IMO, if you are playing that hand from the button, its an automatic raise pre-flop. If the ace was suited, then perhaps I would limp to try to get more people in the pot chasing non-nut flushes (but again, at the smaller limits, they call the raise anyhow from the blinds most of the time, and the limpers would more often than not call as well, so you may as well raise).
On the flop, I dont mind the call (as opposed to raising). You are controlling the size of the pot, with a strong but not even close to unbeatable hand.
On the turn, checking to perhaps induce a bluff out of your opponent on the river (I assume that is what you are doing there) is fine (again, your also maintaining control over the size of the pot) , but if the river is a scare card (say another J, a queen, or a king, or a spade from 7s through to Ks), you have to decide there on the turn what your plan will be.
On the river, what can you beat that will call your raise? You kept the size of the pot small throughout, so it doesnt make sense to raise the river there, as I can't see anything calling your raise that you are beating. Plus, you are making it a lot harder to call a re-raise (such as what happened), as the river was indeed a scare card.

I think you donked this one up real good at the end.

this is probably worth talking about, and speaks to a big difference between o8 in NL and PL forms. in PL, this is a MUST RAISE preflop (as would be the case for most high-type hands OTB) because building the pot with a strong hand is the only way to stack someone, and you'll need to be able to push people off low draws on the flop. in NL, however, most of your money is going to come from people calling gigantic overbets improperly or folding half pots because they don't want to call those sorts of bets. from table to table, which one of these in NLO8 is going to make you the most money varies a lot. normally at 1/2-2/4, it's going to be the latter--you make a lot of money by pushing people off their half of the pot when you're sure you're not getting scooped. at these kinds of tables, building the pot is a good thing because those half pot steals are thus going to be bigger. but as i mentioned, this table had a few notable uberdonks who were bad enough that the size of pots didn't matter to them, and if they were calling all in, they were calling all in no matter what. to this end, raising preflop with virtually any hand would be a mistake in that it would increase variance significantly without really helping my winrate at all. i think i raised not-all in (which i would do with AA hands OOP or very multiway) a total of about 4 times in over 500 hands for this session, in fact.

as for the river, that's what i wanted to get at all along--i did think that i acted too quickly and didn't properly think through the possible river action. it's worth saying, though, that i would expect a call of my raise fairly often (though not every time) from this villain if he held J9 or Q9 on this river. i just think that my raise opens the door up too much for him being able to valueshove an overboat far too often (and concurrently, that he holds an overboat far too often based on the earlier streets' action) to be the correct play.

I missed that it was NL instead of PL (it wasnt a "proper" hand history, so I just glanced at the amounts and thought they were pot-sized bets/raises).

i just think that my raise opens the door up too much for him being able to valueshove an overboat far too often (and concurrently, that he holds an overboat far too often based on the earlier streets' action) to be the correct play.

If it was PL, he could only push the size of the pot, and since you controlled the size of the pot throughout, you could probably call any re-raise most players made there (possibly including this villain) and feel confident that you would be making the "correct" play. Since it is NL, he could raise any amount (larger than your raise amount) and you wouldnt be able to call nearly as often. Your right - there is a huge difference there IMO between the two.

Therefore, good fold, but bad river raise.

A pot re-raise is only $19 less than his all in. I don't think that $19 matters in this instance.

So your saying that the $19 will do nothing to the pot odds based on the range we put an opponent on here? I think your wrong in that statement, but change the stack sizes to twice as much at the start of the hand, and tell me there wont be a difference.

xzanos is correct about the 19 bucks. doesn't matter at all relative to how much strength is shown by 3betting a line as strong as mine on this hand. and since 4betting isn't an option for me, either, him having 200 or 2000 dollars in front isn't a big deal, either.

...

cocktease.