Caw! Caw! /\( ' ^ ' *)/\

33/66 and knowing how bad you play pre-flop, a whole lot of Jx/worse pairs and 45s. I actually think saying ''he is capped to a mediocre one pair or worse hand a vast majority of the time'' is pretty accurate.

Not sure what you're so upset about.

Agreed.

You do understand that the whole point of posting hands is to get critiques, both good and bad, yes? Yet you seem to dismiss and take offense to the negative ones.

Do you just want us all to say well played every single time you post a new hand?

FWIW, I think I was just breaking balls, but looking back, I'm not sure whose balls I was breaking. Probably not your balls, since my initial reaction was that you might be making a good point.

I dunno about the game theory which may apply to this situation. My approach to low stakes is to mix theory and population reads when we know little to nothing about any specific opponent, and replace population reads with individual reads as we gain confidence in how reliable our individual reads are. If a solver says we should call here, I'd say the solver shouldn't play low stakes, because the low stakes population isn't taking this line with worse than QJ.

The things is - it's a Banana thread. The reads are often at odds with the reveals. Case in point - "Competent for profit LAG...He's a great hand reader. That said, he doesn't like playing over 1/3 or 2/5 and isn't so creative and mainly beats up the fish being ABC."

Yeah, most of us had hero making an easy fold on the turn (if not the flop), for good reason, if that's our read. If we're supposed to learn something, or start by debating something, I'd think the debate should start with how much our (Banana's) reads are worth when trying to decide what V is doing and what the highest EV response is going to be.

I'd think it's either:

Option A - ignore all individual reads, and go with population reads instead, or

Option B - ignore all reads entirely, and go with whatever a solver would do, because human thought has no place in today's game, even at the low stakes.

I hate saying it, but unlike some of Banana's other threads, I don't think there's much to learn here. This hand would seem to belong under the heading of "V's range/line is random nonsense".

FWIW, for those who see preflop as an absolute must-raise and anything else is lol, even without the further read that there could be a LRR in the mix, how do we think QJs is doing equity-wise against 4 limpers? Heck, I don't even play QJs in EP cuz i doubt it's profitable for me. But there's a lot here making it out like we're passing on this massive equity spot when in reality our advantage is at best likely fairly slim (and at worse we're actually doing a lot more poorly than we think). No?

Against one limper where we only have to beat one guy postflop, I could certainly understand why'd we more want to attempt an iso. But as the number of limpers increases, the quality of our hand has to increase before we should be slam dunk raising (very similar to how the frequency of our cbet depends greatly on the number of players in the hand). I won't go so far as saying raising is horrible (it isn't), but overlimping is most definitely not horrible, imo.

Gcluelessundervalueing/overvalueingnoobG

Gobbledygeek makes a regular and consistent argument that you shouldn't play situations that make you uncomfortable. The obvious counter to that is to study those spots until you are comfortable with them, but in a spot where two lines are comparable in EV then I do agree that you should take the route that is more natural to you. We all have weaknesses in our game and we shouldn't go down paths where we are likely to make mistakes (although we should try and fight against our own weaknesses, but there'll always be weaknesses).

This feels like one of those preflop spots. I can't imagine there's much in it EVwise between a late position overlimp and a raise. Most of the time the button has nothing and folds and we have position. No that didn't happen here and we look foolish, but we got in there with a hand which is sort of in between and can be thought of as a good suited connector or a mediocre Broadway hand or something in the middle. A raise we may end up with a hand which often makes second pair, top-pair-mediocre-kicker or a non-nut flush draw a lot of the time which isn't a great spot at any time but certainly not in a multiway low-SPR situation. And yes we have limited capacity to engage our brains and sometimes (in a low stakes game especially) it can be fine to "take a break" with the easy overlimp/fit-or-fold line, with a hand like this in a low stakes game you aren't going to give up much. But as always we get sucked in to preflop discussions which are far less interesting than what follows.

Much of this comes down to whether V is likely to take this line with AJ or KJ. Lots of people are far more likely to do this with a bluff than with thin value.

FWIW, I quickly stoved QJs against 4 limpers all limping in quite a wide 40% of hands, and we're sucking up all of about 3% more than our fair share of equity (i.e. for all intents and purposes we're ~pretty much in a 5way dead heat). When you start adding in the fact that that there could be some LRR in the mix, or those first limpers in EP likely aren't playing nearly as wide as 40%, things start getting a lot worse for us real quick. Course that's just comparing equities and not really taking into account anything else (our position, the benefit of initiative, playability of hand, etc.) but at least from an equity perspective it's not as if we're a massive fave with this hand against a world of limpers.

Not hating on a raise, but saying overlimping is horrible is pretty lol, imo.

GcluelessoverlimpingnoobG

i think pre plays better as an overlimp than a raise and you'd want to be more polar here. post i not really sure what range looks like to get to the turn. probably a3ss / a6ss / some amount of jx / sets. would not be looking to peel 77 or something here otf when he bets into so many and would not be looking to limp / overcall suited connectors or whatever.

i do believe we end up with some limp jams here given the pre configuration and honestly i dont hate trying to trap button into doing this with the middle part of value range (Aqo, AKo, 99-jj stuff). would probably not jam this particular hand though when it gets back to you although its an interesting idea

Caw