$5/$5 Nut Flush Bet Sizing River Decision on Paired Board
I won a decent pot against a fish tonight who said I missed out on max value and that I played it bad when I hit my Ace flush vs his supposed King flush. He said if I had gone all in on the river, he would've called. Normally, I would just ignore him or play along cause he's a fish and I didn't solicit any advice as I was raking in the pot but right before I went to the casino, I was watching a HungryHorse video "4 Mistakes Keeping You Trapped" which 1 of them is not overbetting/jamming rivers. https://youtu.be/jIBT924pZs0?si=dJ7Ams3P...
I've been out of the poker loop for 5+ years but my department got annihilated so I started playing full time live poker this month and I am trying to get a better feel of what HH says is right or not (I've seen mixed thoughts on Reddit about him).
UTG is an old reg who is very friendly with me and is closer to OMC range. I've been 3betting most players and UTG knows me as a winning aggressive player since he saw me cash out with a lot of chips consecutively and told me he thinks I am good. BTN is fishy but has shown up with decent hands but has been stacked twice.
BTN $900 (Villain)
UTG $800
MP $1,400 (Hero) A♥7♥
UTG raises to $15, Hero and Villain calls.
Flop $45 9♥6♥9♠
UTG checks, Hero checks, BTN bets $20, Hero calls
Turn $85 8♥
Hero checks, BTN bets $30, Hero raises to $130, BTN calls.
River $345 A♣
Hero tanks and bets $275, BTN tanks and calls.
I said I was thinking about the range of hands he could have and that could call a near sized pot bet on the river and I was thinking 9x type of hands and baby flushes. Didn't put him on any overpairs but he could rarely show up here with TT-JJ. I thought about how bad the turn and river cards are since many of the 9x combos would boat up but I also have an Ace in my hand so less combos of him having A9.
I had stacked him before when he was 45bbs deep with A9s on 952r where he donked into PFR and I min-raised him forcing him to ship a blank turn with 56s with no FD, gutshot+pair with 0 FE. He did check raise me in a 4-way pot a few hands prior where I was the PFR and it folded around.
As far as river bet sizing, anytime I pot or overbet pot, I don't think I've ever been called in the 100 hours or so since my return to live poker. It has been quite rare to see anyone overbet shove river and even rarer to see it called. I know HH is playing an exploitative style but I feel like a shove here on the river is so thin. I go home thinking, could I have made an additional $400 by just jamming? Against most players, probably not but he was a stickier for fun player. I'm divided as people sometimes just say **** just to get under other people's skin.
9 Replies
Seems fine to me. Could you have made 400 more shoving this specific hand when a fishy player who is stuck two buyins has the king high flush? Yeah probably true but that doesn't mean it's the best play.
Going to get a lot of folds in general if you go to big. Against a better player than this guy you may end up folding out almost all worse hands with a big overbet/shove.
Plus you are getting beat by a not insignificant range of hands, 98, 66, 88, A9, 99, 96 suited
Well played, imo.
Overbetting river in this case seems like an overplay to me, especially because, given stack sizes, if you overbet you'd have to shove from more than 2x pot.
Played fine. He happened to have one hand he "might" have called with that you beat (he says he would have called, but who knows?). I think you got as much value as you were going to get.
Calling the raise is fine if V is straightforward OMC and not a good TAG.
When an OMC raises utg we exploit him by folding pre unless we have a delicious set mine.
Grunch:
PRE - seems fine to flat call the UTG raise with ace-rag suited. Occasionally might raise if UTG is aggro, or fold if he's nitty. If you're saying he's bordering on OMC, definitely not raising.
FLOP - check-calling the BTN's 1/2 pot stab seems pretty standard, but I might raise now, once UTG folds. The reasoning is that a late position field caller's stab when action checks to them is often BS, and I'd think he'd bet larger with trips.
TURN - if we're going to raise, I'd want to raise larger, at least $150, if not $180.
It's an interesting spot. Yes, he could be boated up with 98, but there are only two combos of 98s, and we have an OESD, so we wouldn't be drawing dead. Regardless, his bet sizing on flop and turn looks weak, and I'd want to get more money into the pot before an action-killing river card.
RIVER - your 80% pot size isn't terrible. But I think we can do different things here, depending on our read of V and how we're ranging him.
If we think he's got a strong hand, and we think he's aggro, we could check or bet really small to induce him to raise. If we think he's strong but passive, we could over-bet. This 80% pot size is good if we think he's capped, at some sort of top pair or 2P combo, or maybe a straight, but it's hard to put him on those sorts of hands, given the action.
Based on the action, I'd be giving V a range mostly made up of trips and worse flushes, with some slivers of straights or boats, and some 8x or 6x that won't call any bet. I think we can size up and over-bet more often than not. If we've seen V make good folds facing large bets, but bet or raise facing checks or small bets, I'd check or bet small to induce.
Don't worry about his table talk. It's likely just tilt setting in.
When an OMC raises utg we exploit him by folding pre unless we have a delicious set mine.
Exactly...The solver folds 80% (and raises 20%) with A7s in MP after an UTG x3 raise at 150BB effective.
Before someone says, "Hurr durr, the solver doesn't know anything about low limit, live poker, " ask yourself if an "almost OMC" is going to have a looser or tighter raising range UTG compared to a bot?
Probably a fold pre, especially in MP. UTG OMC has strong range and you are setting up a squeeze. If you are planning to make some moves post and think it's a really soft game I guess you can call though.
Flop. OMC is probably not checking an overpair here. A case can be made for doing so, but he is not deep enough to worry about being put in some crazy spot later. Most people are going to just think "unless someone has a 9 I'm good and there are a lot of draws" and bet. So I think we should really take the lead here with a bet. Going back to pre, if we are calling just to make a flush we aren't getting good odds and should fold pre.
When BTN stabs, I would consider a CR. It sort of doesn't make sense to CR but is this guy calling with a 6? It would be very player-dependent. Also, he could have a worse draw which is pretty good. It makes a lot of sense that he would have something like a 6 or 88 and it's OK to just fold that out now.
Turn: OK. Could bet or check raise. 8H is not our favorite heart. Sizing seems OK. I think I lean slightly to a bet because I don't trust a 9 to keep betting.
River is fine. You lose to 2 of the most common 9s now, but maybe you can still get called by one at this size and it is a good size to get value from a worse flush. You can easily fold to jam.
I don't mind the preflop call at all I think it's fine, this is a small raise size in a 5/5 game also the OMC type is well known in these games so we shouldn't really be expecting to get squeezed light here.
What I don't really like is that we have an aggressive image and we decide to play trappy here. After UTG checks I'm just going to go bet bet shove on this runout. In general I don't like playing a trappy line in a small pot when we already have an aggressive image. Let's just use our image to build a pot and get paid off.
He probably did have Kx hearts since he tanked. He's not tanking thinking about folding he's tanking thinking about raising.
FWIW I've played with Marc Goone a few times he's a good player, I don't really watch his channel but it's probably good info. I wouldn't take advice from Reddit on absolutely anything ever I don't think you can find a bigger collection of dumb and miserable people anywhere else on the planet.
