ATs in the small blind (earlier in the night)

[bentax1978]

Ok, so this particular hand preceeded the "AJs in the small blind" hand by about an hour. I found this to be a very interesting hand because I ended up making a move that was solely based on what I felt the Villain was holding, with pretty much no regard for my hand (other than using that info to calculate the odds of what he was holding).

So here's the hand. Hero is once again the small blind and is dealt Similar to the other hand I posted, it was also limped around to Hero and he decided to raise to $11. Just to save time, I'll acknowledge that raising with ATs out of position isn't a great idea. BB is the same (typically passive calling station) described in the previous post, but there's no questions he's making an effort to open up his game over the past few weeks. I don't personally think he's going about it in a good way, but that's a topic for another discussion.

Anyway, after Hero (SB) raises to $11, the BB raised to $26 total ($15 on top). This time there are two callers before it gets back to the Hero in the SB. The whole thing seems odds as two people who limped only had $1 committed to the pot choose to throw $25 more in against this guy's reraise. However, at that point I only had to call $15 into a pot of about $90, so I did.

Flop comes

I have no idea where I stand (which is obviously the problem with being OOP with a marginal hand like AT). So I check, realizing that I am most likely going to fold to any action. Villain (BB) bets out $50 into the $105 pot. Other two plays fold quickly and it's back to the Hero.

So here's where it gets interesting. Based on the Villain's preflop raise, I actually had his range narrowed down to AA/KK/QQ/JJ/AK. Obviously he could have other hands, but I felt that given his reraise and the fact that he seldom raises (let alone reraises) preflop made those hands the most likely. Given this, I quickly thought about the likelihood he was holding AA/KK/AK vs QQ/JJ. I figured there were 20 combos that gave him AA/KK/AK (because of the AK on the board and A in my hand) and 24 combos that gave him QQ/JJ. So I felt that there was only less than a 50% chance he was holding a "strong" hand and the $50 bet was a value bet, perhaps hoping to induce a raise. Conversely I felt there was better than 50% chance he was holding a weaker hand and the $50 bet was more of a probe.

So I decided to raise him to $150 total ($100 more on top). My thought was that if he had QQ/JJ he would fold and I'd win $155. If he had AA/KK/AK he would either flat call or raise, but either way I'd lose $150. I knew this wasn't a very high EV move, but I felt (based on my 3-4 seconds of calculating) that it was slightly positive and was worth a shot.

Villain thought for a good minute, and finally said something like "I just don't see you raising me like that if you didn't have a better hand". To be honest, that made me think perhaps my assessment of his range was wrong since I felt he'd have an easy fold or easy call/raise situation to deal with. He then folded AJ (don't recall if it was suited or not).

So in the end, my quick analysis during the hand was flawed as I didn't really think he would reraise to $26 with AJ from the BB. It worked out as I took the pot down (with the inferior hand). That said, had I known he might be holding AQ/AJ, I might have done the exact same in an effort to steal the pot

Thoughts?

[pltrgyst]

How about sending the two guys who called the $25 down to my game?

I have to question your counts: e.g., "...24 combos that gave him QQ/JJ..." -- more like 12, no? Order is independent and immaterial.

[bentax1978]

Originally Posted by pltrgyst

How about sending the two guys who called the $25 down to my game?

Not sure I can lend them out, but you're welcome to come up here and play any time

Originally Posted by pltrgyst

I have to question your counts: e.g., "...24 combos that gave him QQ/JJ..." -- more like 12, no? Order is independent and immaterial.

You're correct, there are only 12 independent combos to make QQ/JJ. The 24 does take into account order. The 20 combos of AA/AK/KK also take into account order, so the relative comparison should still be valid. I had to do the calcs really quickly as I didn't want to hesitate on the raise, so in my head It was 5x4 vs 4x3x2.

[DrStrange]

GIven the known cards - there are a few more QQ/JJ holdings than AA/KK/AK holdings. However, Hero missed a critical dependancy in his analysis. How often does this villain c-bet QQ or JJ into a board like that with 4-way action? I bet not very often. If Hero discounts the chances of QQ/JJ by half, it changes the decision.

Also, Hero needs to know that the villain doesn't think things through carefully (or thinks it through but lacks the courage to take action.) Here's why:

What holding could Hero raise from the SB, flat a 3-bet from a villain like BB and then check raise the 3-bettor on a AK3r flop? My radar would go off on that betting pattern - Hero may be telling a big fat lie. The trick is figuring did Hero flat with AK in the SB? AA or KK? Did he somehow play 33 this way? Is Hero bluffing a missed set mining hand or some speculative hand? It looks fishy but that only matters if the villain thinks things through. We do know that villain thinks a little by his speach at the end of this hand.

Hero needs to adjust his villain read on this guy. At least for a while. These two hands show a different side to villain and he bet a sigificant amount of money doing it. It's time to make an adjustment.

One bit of excellent news is the villain is getting a bad taste in his mouth from his experiments. Maybe he will decide loose passive was better.

DrStrange

[bentax1978]

Dr. Strange, all good point above. I probably didn't explain things well enough and also took for granted the fact that I've play with this Villain almost weekly for the better part of 7 years. We're also co-workers and discuss hands quite often, so have pretty good insight into how he thinks and plays. My descrption as "loose passive" was likely too general, especially in light of his recent attempts to open his game.

In terms of weighting the likelihood of him c-betting with QQ/JJ vs AA/KK/AK, I actually did take that into account. In this case, I strongly felt the $50 bet was actually more likely a probe/cbet than a set or top two. With two players acting after him, he's more likely to check a hand as strong as top set or top two. I'm not saying that he should, but he's obsessed with "trapping" people, usually at the expense of building a nice sized pot.

As for telling a plausible story with my check raise, I don't think my story would raise a flag with him. I could easily do that with AK (raise to 11 then call the reraise). But the truth is, it didn't matter much in this case because I knew he'd take the raise seriously under the circumstances and without a huge hand, he wasn't going to call.

Cliff notes: against a stranger I would not have even thought about attempting this play