Game is 9-handed $5/$10 NLHE with deep stacks.
UTG is a typical splashy recreational player, with lots of limping and calling pre-flop followed by lots of checking and folding post-flop. He has about $800 in his stack.
HJ is the best of the competition by a long shot. He definitely knows how to take advantage of different types of players by isolating, barreling, floating, squeezing, etc., and he’s definitely made some plays like these against me in good spots. I don’t have enough experience with him to say whether he’s actually balancing against me or whether he’s playing more of a Level 2, “This guy opens a lot so I’m just going to three-bet him with any two” sort of strategy. He’s definitely unbalanced, in a good way, against the less tough competition. I’m playing about $2500, and he covers.
UTG limps for $10. Three players fold, then HJ raises to $40. Action folds to Hero in the BB with KJo.
What’s your play and why? Comment below with your thoughts and preferred play, and I’ll be back on Friday with my own thoughts and action.
So a marginal at best, $1/$2 player wades into a What’s Your Play? and it goes something like this:
I fold. :<)
Actually, this is a playable hand and we want to play with UTG. The toughest player is in the hand too, and he has position on us. UTG only has 80bb but tough villain has us covered, so our implied odds are tough odds. I don't think folding is ever too bad when you are out of position to a tough player, but I think hero should call here. It appears UTG is likely to call, not raise, so hero gets to see a flop. Raising risks both the UTG folding and the Hero playing a big pot OOP with tough villain.
Educate me people.
Even though I’d call too, I actually don’t think folding is that bad piefarmer mostly due to bad position. And if the HJ was a more balanced TAG playing generally tighter ranges, then I’d probably fold too because he has KJo in rough shape more often.
HJ can have a pretty wide range here, so while I can see raising for value and initiative in the hand, or to take it down right there as all being positive things, I think I prefer the flat call. KJo is not crazy great but it figures to be ahead of both UTG and HJ ranges, and you expect UTG to call here, building the pot nicely also.
Even though you are playing the hand OOP, you have quite a few interesting options given their ranges. Under-repping your hand for starters creates interesting opportunities and deception which could be useful, and beyond that you can float, c/raise, lead – all sorts of fun stuff 😉
It’s generically a good thing to keep a weak player in the pot, but I wonder a bit how much value we can actually derive from him given that we’re out of position with a marginal hand, the fish doesn’t have much money in front of him, and we need to exercise some caution to avoid getting into bad spots with a tough, deep villain. Plus, the big hole in the fish’s game is folding a lot, which will be hard to exploit with the tough player in the pot.
That line of reasoning makes me think we should view this hand as a standard blind defense with an extra $10 of dead money contributed by the fish. I would 3-bet to $160 here, expecting to be ahead of the button’s range and wanting to charge the button to play a pot in position against us.
I like an absurd raise here, something like 200-240+. This is of course if you’re reads are correct on the hj. While it folds out both players a lot, which is not a terrible result, the utg being very fish will sometimes find the call button here which is great for us. I believe we dominate his range here and we can put him all in on most flops and it won’t look bad because he’ll only have a little over a pot sized bet. To the hj this is gonna look very strong from you and I doubt he peels a flop because of the utg stack so he knows you’re bombing most flops, making it unprofitable for him to set mine and peel with connectors. If he does call you can still bet around 500 setting the utg all in and he can only continue if he flops big. I also don’t mind a fold but I think that’s too weak because to me KJ in this spot, if reads are correct, is like AK and I wouldn’t be looking to fold AK here. Basically my plan is to make my hand look like a monster to both players here and exploit the fact that utg will call anyways because that’s what fish do, they wanna out flop, and hj will fold because he’s range is too wide here and there is no need for him to play, even with position, against what looks like a very strong range and good player, which I assume is what he think about you.
Love the show and the web site, have listened to all the episodes. Thank you guys.
I think I just call. Folding seems bad since our hand in particular and our range in general is going to be in good shape against both players’ ranges and, assuming a utg call (which it sounds like is a safe assumption), we’re getting 3:1. I think the only way we fold out the btn with a 3-bet is if we bet pretty big, like along the lines of Cromi’s $200-240 range. But that folds out utg almost always (and if he calls, then I think bad hands for us are in his range – AJ, KQ, maybe AK), and even then, I think stacks are deep enough for HJ to call wide and put us in some very tricky positions postflop on a lot of boards. I’m not looking to play a big pot, but with our good relative position to HJ, think we can probably play pot control pretty effectively on flops that hit us reasonably well.
I actually think I like folding more than raising. Raising knocks out the bad player and puts us at the mercy of the HJ for the rest of the hand in a bloated pot with deep enough stacks remaining.
Given that I moved up to $5/10 as a regular stake not long ago, I’m very curious to see what Andrew thinks is the best play here given that this a spot that will come up fairly often against the stronger players in the games I play in.
Despite the relatively weak UTG limper, I think calling is the worst option here, out of position against a skilled opponent with a hand that plays worse as the stacks get deeper. Even with $10 in the pot already and a limper who is quite likely to come along, I don’t feel very good about turning a profit by calling in this situation.
This leaves 3betting and folding. This certainly seems like a good light 3 betting candidate, as it’s a hand that’s not quite good enough to call with, and a 3bet would shorten the effective stacks and make the hand somewhat easier to play. My concern with this, however, is that we may not be 3betting quite as many hands for pure value from out of position, meaning that we don’t need as many light 3betting hands to balance appropriately, meaning this hand maybe isn’t the best candidate for us. And, given that there will still be plenty of play (say we 3bet to $160 and get called, there’s still 7 pot sized bets in the stacks), I think this hand makes too few hands that I want to play a 500 BB pot with. I’d rather use Axs type hands and perhaps some suited connectors to fill out my light 3 betting range.
Ultimately I’m finding the fold button here. Against an opponent who is willing to fold a decent amount to 3 bets, or someone who might call but won’t give me trouble post flop, I might submit a 3 bet here, but I think the combination of the opponent, our position, and the stack depth works against us enough that this is a close fold.
I don’t like flatting because playing out of position against a thinking player with a good, but not great hand, is generally -EV. I think folding is probably the best option, but I don’t mind 3betting small ($90) to take control of the hand and maybe even set up a big 5-bet to win the hand pre.
I fold. I can see myself 3-betting a less capable player in a tournament with much shorter stacks. In this spot exact spot though, I would just get myself into trouble.
I assume we do 3-bet here otherwise this post wouldn’t exist, right?
Merits of the 3-bet line: If villain just flats, his range is capped and somewhat wide (unless he folds the vast majority of the hands he isos with). This sets him up to get bluffed off of whatever he has on later streets. Our exact hand probably serves us better for it’s blocker value than anything else since it’s hot and cold equity is probably close to par with villain’s flatting range.
Generally, I feel like our plan should be to bet until we hit a pair at which point we can switch to a check / bluff catch line.
Things could get interesting on run outs where we hit a pair but feel like we need to turn it into a bluff on later streets. My guess is that this is where the post is going.
After reading the comments, I want to address the one thing that I am kinda sure of.
The goal in this hand is not to go after the fish. It is to go after the shark who is going after the fish.
He has made himself vulnerable by opening up his range in an unbalanced way to attack UTG. This is the biggest rationale for the 3-bet.
Ed Miller would say that the base of his pyramid is too wide. Let’s see how he plans to get rid of the extra hands.
This is a case of prey being eaten by predator being eaten by apex predator. Those who 3-bet reside at the top of the food chain.
I respectfully disagree with you Carlos, on who we should be targeting here. The utg player is the weakest of the two and has shown a tendency to call raises and then fold. I am not looking to play a pot with a good player this deep and with a positional disadvantage. I think a lot of us play the game to make money and three betting a good player this deep out of position simply can’t be profitable in the long term, if he is truly a good player. While out hand probably crushes both villains ranges, I would much rather attack the fish here and try to get him heads up then a player who can make my life living hell after we both miss flops, mos of the time.
I am a 2/5 player so my line of thinking may very well be way off here and would love to hear some constructive criticism. I’m trying to think outside of the box here. I just can’t see a scenario where we want to three bet here for value against the hj’s range. While I think his range is pretty wide here and our hand does fair well against it, we are simply too deep and out of position to get any real value post flop because he’ll be playing too good against us.
I think the problem with 3-betting here is that with this specific hand we’re not going to want to play for stacks very often. I know that Andrew always talks about light 3-betting with hands that aren’t good enough to call, but a) I think this may actually be good enough to call, and b) I’d much rather do that here with something like A3s that has a chance to flop a draw to the nuts rather than something that usually just flops a bare pair when it flops anything.
Carlos, It is easy to say 3 bet, I come in with the same concept however I struggle on sizing. Normally I would hit this around 150 with the same sizing in a 1-2 game. In this situation I am closer to thinking that anywhere from 100-160 is appropriate. My fluctuation is weather or not the good player will respect 120 more than 160. Also I would need a more nuanced read on him to decide which amount would be the sweetspot between getting him to fold while also concealing our holdings when we do go to the flop.
Thanks for the discussion guys.
Personally, I’d fold because I am not that good. Just calling does not allow us to target the fish in my opinion. It gives the shark 2 targets instead of just one.
Also, the 3-bet would be more of a merge leaning towards the bluff end more so than the value end. I would snap 3-bet this with A3s though. I feel like this is an exploitive line where we are adding an extra hand to our 3-bet range because we think this guy is too far out of line and unbalanced. If we think he is balanced and accounting for the possibility that we may pull some shit like this, then we should just fold pre.
The options seem to be.
A. Call and play a wide, capped range OOP against a fish and a shark with a wide, uncapped range. This feels too much like fit or fold to me. I don’t want to do this with a hand that will not make many strong fits against an opponent who will likely barrel well.
OR
B. 3-bet and play a perceived narrow, uncapped range against a fish (that is if he doesnt fold) and a shark with a wide, capped range (that is if he just calls). This feels too spewy to me and the thought of playing a 500bb pot OOP with a weak hand against a good player makes me queasy, so I’d just take the third option…
C. fold pre and save this kind of stuff for animals like Andrew Brokos and Vanessa Selbts until the day I too graduate from Cray Cray University.
It just occurred to me that a calling strategy could work if you were willing to call 3 streets very wide. For example, you’d have to call flop with any back door draw and an over or better like on 9 through K high flops. Maybe even with just a three flush with your K on a lower flop. The plan would be to use whatever equity we flop and turn as a reason to float twice hoping to hit a pair or better and then never fold it when we do hit. Hell, we may even have to call river with K high on some paired boards.
I don’t really like this because of how passive it is and because it only gives us one way to win. I especially don’t like just calling preflop if we dont plan to float aggressively like this. We are not getting a good enough price to just play old school “fit or fold” vs an aggressively bluffer, but there may be some merit to playing new school “float, fit, or fold” if that’s even a thing.
Seems like I’m hedging a bit here so again, let me summarize. I’d personally fold pre, but I think the best line is to 3-bet if you feel capable post flop. I can see some merit to just calling as long as you don’t play fit or fold. If you’re gonna be passive pre, you have to be aggressively passive post.
Yeah this kind of calling strategy was what I was getting at with my original post Carlos, in terms of using our relative range against HJ to float, value or bluff raise, and generally confound under the right circumstances/board texture.
Certainly not simply fit or fold, as I agree, that’s pretty -EV in this spot. Beyond this, I’m a bit perplexed as to the optimal play (and look fwd to Andrew’s take on it) because there seems to be pretty good arguments to fold, call or 3bet. Even more so there’s differences in opinion as to whether this is a 3bet for value or 3bet light!
Agreed. He picked an excellent hand. As long as we don’t play fit or fold, I can see merits to all 3 lines. I cannot wait for the big reveal.
As a rule of thumb, against any decent player I fold off suit kings out of position. (including KQo) I don’t think this hand plays well multi way (assuming the limpers will call) and being out of position it makes it even less EV. That being said I prefer raising to calling. If called (which I expect to this deep), I would usually double barrel most of the time, unless I flop draws in which case going for a c/r might be a decent line too?
I would 3b to $125. We have blockers, a hand that can flop draws to the nuts and keep initiative. The isolater should be wide enough for this to be profitable and will peel a good % of the time , which is obv good for us because our range is very strong and we can barrel almost all flops. 3b this spot creates a positive ev spot for us. I would tend to be 3b a depolarized here with the very bottom of my trash range and lots of value hands, KJo being one of them in this exact spot…..
Hi Greg, thanks for participating! What makes you say we can barrel almost all flops?
Hey Andrew –
I think we should be betting most flops because I feel our line pre is super strong and wouldnt we be betting our super strong hands on most flops? We created this spot hoping for V to either fold or call obv not for him to raise. When I’m playing this spot I tend to be very happy when he calls. When he just calls, we force him to make a hand on the flop. Since I expect this type of villain you described ( decent enough but most likely not level 3+) to play fairly honest/face up in the sense he won’t be going out of his way to do anything crazy vs us, then clearly we should be betting most flops. He will miss the flop a ton which in itself is enough of a reason to bet. We have initiative, a strong range, and quite a bit of dead money that we need to capitalize on. I feel like for all these reasons we should be betting almost 100% of flops. Just my 2cents !
Greg
I’m tempted to call because I’d like to play a hand against utg, but I think this is probably a fold. Our hand does worse as the stacks get deeper, and we’re going to have to play oop against the hj, a strong, aggressive player who has already made some moves against us. We also have poor relative position. If hj bets the flop, we have to act before utg, which will make it more difficult to extract value.
I’m not a fan of 3 betting because we rarely flop a hand that I’m happy to play for stacks. As others have said, I’d rather 3 bet something like Axs where I can flop a draw and have better equity when the money goes in post flop.
But I don’t play these stakes and have very limited experience playing deep, so I’m looking forward to Andrew’s response, and have enjoyed the discussion so far.
i’m not calling. (you’re only making a pair 1/3 of the time, and 2 pair+ an additional ~3%, so you’ll end up check-folding flop ~60%, and even when you have a pair you’re often dominated and OOP).
i agree with carlos that i’m primarily targeting the good player here, not the bad player UTG, because i (potentially) believe hijack is exploiting so widely that he’s susceptible to re-exploitation.
i’m basing whether to 3-bet or fold on just how wide i think hijack is. if he’s like 15% wide i think it’s a pretty easy fold. if he’s like 20% wide it’s closer imo, (66+, A8o+, Axs, 78s+, JTo+) but i still fold i think. as he starts getting any looser than that i want to tangle, even OOP. if he’s playing 25%+ it would be bad-nitty to fold imo. as for sizing i make it $110.
I’d fold here. We are out of position with a reverse implied odds hand against a strong player deep, to me, outweighs the fact that we might be ahead of his (her?) range. I also wonder if a light 3B will look exactly like what it is and induce a 4B bluff (which is something I only read about, ’cause I don’t see it at $1-$2).
I think there are way better spots to start messing with the skilled player.
p.s. Andrew, when you finish your trip report series (which is great, btw), you should write a book called LOOKIG FOR TROUBLE FOR FUN AND PROFIT.
That should had been LOOKING FOR TROUBLE FOR FUN AND PROFIT.
I think calling is the best play here, because the cardinal rule of live poker is play a lot of pots with the fish. 3 betting would not be awful, but I don’t really think that it accomplishes much except to make the guy who’s the reason for the season fold. It’s not like the tough player is going to fold and give us the pot when stacks are this deep and he has position unless he has a hand that we want him in the pot with like KTo or K9s. 3 betting does not make it easier to play against the tough player, since it doesn’t cap his range (he could easily flat with aces or kings), and it makes it a lot easier for him to leverage stacks. I also disagree that flatting in the blinds caps our range. I would flat here with AA a lot of the time because I know that the fish will come along and see the flop, and once he flops top pair, he’s not going to fold, and I can stack him, but if I reraise, he might dump his QJo preflop.
Three bet or fold. KJ plays poorly OOP without initiative vs a skilled opener with a wide range in a three way pot. It is somewhat dependent on the dynamic between you and the opener and your tolerance for variance. This is not a terrific spot to play vs the only other high functioning player OOP in a three bet pot. I think it also depends on the UTG’s frequency calling three bets. KJ will be tricky OOP vs two players and the wide ranges associated with the UTG call and subsequent likely call by the HIGH JACK if UTG calls. If UTG folds the weak player is out of the hand which is also not great.
That said, while you did not mention the HIGH JACK’s opening tendencies, you are significantly ahead of his opening range and further so his isolation range. So three betting to ~$125 is an option. To me it comes down to whether I feel i have a skill edge sufficient to want to play vs the opener in this scenario. I wouldn’t be surprised if the spot is near neutral eV to three bet and you already paid the BB. But this is live poker vs a described weaker field, fold and move on to situations where you opponents are likely to make larger errors.
Plus the usual — you can safely fold to a 4-bet and you have good blockers and might fold out hands that are ahead of your actual hand.
Fold – I don’t want to play this hand oop vs the best player at the table. Of the alternatives I like raising better than calling – if you call you’ll have the worst relative position.