a discussion of when and why to ISO

In this exact setup, I would likely settle on a similar raise with every hand I want to play. Not calling with any hand.

Calling with premiums seems worse in EP vs. BTN on a passive table and better on an aggressive one. You'd know the conditions better than me.

I could see an argument for flatting AA if you think either V is super likely to squeeze too wide, but in general I don't think people are, I think hands like 88-JJ or AQ are flatting. I don't think there's much benefit to letting those middling pps and random Ax/Kx see a cheap flop and try to outdraw you.

I'm not saying you're wrong. In fact, what you're saying is the conventional wisdom and why I chose to ISO in the actual hand. But I'm trying to figure out how that logic became conventional. Where am I losing the logic?

scenario 1. I call, they shove, I call their shove. If they had KK or AA, they were calling me if I shoved, so my action didn't matter. If they have PPs of JJ or less, I win $125, or maybe more, about 90% of the time. When I lose 10% of the time, assuming worst case, it only hurts me up to their stack of $600 or $1000, so I'm still +EV. If they shoved suited connected unders, I'm still +EV for their money being in the pot but I will double them up on occasion.

Scenario 2. I call, they shove, I call and they have AK, AX, or KX, I win more often than I lose. +EV but not by a lot if they have AK.

Scenario 3. I call, they call with AK, AX, or KX. If the flop gives them TPTK, I can probably get away from that hand without doubling them so my losses are smaller than scenario 2. But I win more often than I lose, so +EV to a greater amount than Scenario 2.

What am I missing? What is the -EV situation I'm trying to avoid? If this was a tournament, I could see an argument that I can't just add on if I lose. But in cash, assuming I don't become tilted, I top up and expect that next time the probabilities will work in my favor.

Usually when I get stuck in these sorts of situations, there's some incredibly obvious hurtful scenario that I'm too brain locked to see. Help!

What you’re missing is that if you call and they call, you are the one likely to make more mistakes or under-realize your equity later.

When they call, you will not know if they have Ax, or Kx, or something else. So let’s say you let them see a flop and it comes Axx. Well are you going to bet or check behind? If you bet, you can be value-cut by Ax. If you check, you are giving a free card to either a lower pocket pair, or some other junk you let them in with.

Also, if they call you with a smaller pocket pair and flop a set while you flop an overpair, they get value from you.

And the backdrop of this is that when you do lose the pot to them, you aren’t just costing yourself money from your stack. You’re also costing yourself the pot that you would have won by isolating the short stack, which is nothing to sneeze at. The drop from positive to negative is more substantial with the one player already all in.

Uhm...it depends?

If the players left to act are thinking, they shouldn't get involved with marginal hands, and they shouldn't bet into a dry side pot without a very strong hand post. If there's a player left to act who is on the wild side, I suppose we might flat call hoping to induce a light squeeze. So, if we think they're reasonably solid, or fairly wild, maybe an argument can be made for flatting.

I suppose stack depth also plays a part. We don't want to ISO and then find ourselves pot-committed in a spot where we're probably beat when all the money goes in.

The problems start when they come along with a wide range that can connect on a lot of boards, and / or when they over-rep their hand because we've under-repped ours, and we end up in the blender post flop.

I wouldn't think of our ISO raise as being fear-based or motivated by a desire to make our future decisions easier. I'd think of it as equity denial and stack protection.

Also, I believe that we gain some long term EV by keeping the short stacks short or knocking them out of the game. It sucks if we flat, someone else comes along, she somehow triples up, and then leaves with $250 we can't win back, or decides to lock up the win, but stay at the table and wait for premiums.

I think it's better if we limit the potential outcomes to A) adding her $125 to our stack, or B) doubling her up, so that if she leaves she's taking less money off the table, or has less money to lock up if she stays.

OK, Vernon and Doc, if the Villain had shoved $20 would you ISO? I think you would say I'm wasting QQ and should be inviting action from another player with a worse hand.

If V had shoved $1000, I would absolutely shove with QQ. agreed?

How do we know how small her shove has to be such that we should ISO or call behind?

With a hand like QQ I’m probably reraising any size, unless I have a specific reason to call and try to backraise.

If you don’t see why, ask yourself why you would 3bet with QQ if someone raised to $20 but was not all in.

At 2/5 I'd probably treat the $20 all in as a $20 raise and 3B as normal, hoping someone behind will 4B or cold call. I'd somewhat expect to get some loose action because it may look like I'm trying to free-roll.

If the jam is for $1k, I'd probably think about folding QQ.

Quick example, real hand:

My first hand after moving to a different 1/3 table, I open 86cc to $15 UTG off $500. TAG-fish reg in +2 calls off about $450. Someone else calls off about $500. Action folds to a legit nit-reg OMC, complete with hunchback, and he 3B jams for a $100 short stack on the BTN.

Reggy looking fellow in the SB goes into the tank. Finally he 4B-clicks it to $200. Now BB is in the tank, before finally folding. I snap fold. +2 snap folds. Other player snap folds, and it's heads up to the flop, but BTN and SB both roll their hands over.

OMC of course turns over AA. SB has KK.

Flop comes out Ts9c7c. BB practically jumps out of his seat. "I had it! I folded pocket tens!"

Me, just as the 5c hits the turn: "I would have gotten it in with you on the flop, and stacked you with the stone nuts on the turn."

+2: "I folded queens."

Other guy: "Queen-jack of spades. I'd have been in there on that flop."

The river bricked. OMC scooped $245, then immediately picked up and left.

Why would +2 flat call with QQ? Was he hoping someone would squeeze behind him? He got his wish. But then he folded. Was he wrong for flatting, or wrong for folding?

Why would SB click it to $200 rather than let me or anyone else with more than $100 on the table come along? When he has KK, shouldn't he want action from TT, QQ, QJs, or 86s?

That last question is the one that gets me.

The rest of us folded fully expecting the OMC to have AA. It was pretty obvious. If SB thinks his opponent always has AA, he should totally want someone else, anyone else to come along, so he can win a side pot worth more than the $245 main pot that is probably getting pushed to the OMC.

He should have just flat called, not raised. He shut everyone else out. Of course, if he didn't 4B, he would have lost to TT (I was never calling the $100 with 86s). But that $245 would have stayed on the table.

I don't know what to tell you. Sometimes it makes more sense to flat call and risk a bad result. Sometimes it makes more sense to re-raise and risk winning the minimum.

This deserves more discussion…
_

When I have value and am pretty sure that villain will fold to a bet, I can call and try to coax more money out of them on the next street.

However, I tend to be more aggressive with QQ, KK, & AA. I’m still hoping to find a size that will get called, but I’m never just calling.

I’m all about value, value, value but I don’t dick around with these hands. I visualize Patrik Antonius mucking aces after everyone folds to his raise - no big deal. Don’t show, nobody needs to know.

More times than not, however, I find that players come along at low stakes and lose more than they should. If they are folding too much, we bet more hands.

Are they folding to Antonius because no one had a hand, because he's nitty, or because it's impossible to get money out of him?

It doesn't sound like the V in our OP is always nutted when she shoves for 25BB. If hero wants to flat call with QQ, it wouldn't seem like many other opponents are likely to come along without a real hand, and hero could be in trouble if he re-raises and anyone behind does come along.

To me, it doesn't seem that much different than the the decision to flat or x-raise 2P or a set on a wet and connected flop. A raise looks exactly like 2P or a set, and gets a lot of folds. But calling risks the turn completing any number of draws.

That's poker.

agreed. With V1 shoving $20, I'm probably raising smallish to $50 hoping for action from the sometimes wild SB.

well you caught me talking out of my ass on that one. I was just trying to explore the extremes of the problem. Putting more thought into it, she's never doing that nor is most anyone else. I can see this V shoving up to $200 with non premiums once she hits her tilt level, but I've seen her play $300 (on 2/5) in a far more standard way for hours.

was this the hand that prompted your QQ thread? Maybe that's just a very risk averse V who doesn't understand how his flat is actually creating MORE risk.

assuming he knows the OMC sufficiently to believe the shove has to be AA, yeah, fold or call in the hopes of a side pot. But there is a difference between yours and my OP hand. Your guy with KK has almost the whole table left to act behind. I had only 2 actors behind, one of which I know well and is capable of getting out of line if he smells weakness and one who is still something of a mystery.

exactly. I was hoping someone had some math based rule, but maybe there are too many variables to consider. Competing HU for 25 BBs as a 70/30 fave can never be a terrible play, so maybe I'm over thinking this spot. Maybe my greed has gotten in the way of my brain.

last thing I want to question on your hand...

you sit first hand and raise UTG with 86s?!? I love it. I do that too. 86s is one of my fave bluff openers. But I'm probably not going to do it first hand or orbit. I like to let people assume I'm another OMC that won't give action and first impressions are huge. Once they believe anything I open has to be premium, my post flop bluffs get lots of respect.

Based on your posts you've made all over this strategy sub, I imagined you much tighter.

You're assuming they always fold worse - I don't think that's true. You raise, you're getting called by JJ/TT - hands that are probably never shoving from the $1k stack. And on a good low flop you can get stacks in versus JJ/TT, that's better than flatting and winning the min. It isn't so much about getting those hands to fold, its about setting up a sidepot. Because without a sidepot, V can just fold a lot, it's really hard to get more money into a dry sidepot, whereas if the flop comes 8 high and they have JJ are they folding? Probably not. Heck AK might YOLO it even after a whiff with a backdoor draw because there's so much money out there.

And imagine that $600 stack goes all-in, now BB is in the blender with any strong hand that isn't AA/KK.

So in my mind, it isn't so much about avoiding being hurt - if you get it in and lose with QQ, whatever poker sucks. But you want to get more money in preflop where you're ahead of anything but AA/KK, rather than post-flop where you could be drawing near dead and V gets to set mine cheap. At $125 and $875 behind with dead money in the pot, BB is getting a decent price to set-mine, especially if he believes you could have AK and would play passively with a dry sidepot. At $300, BB is getting a bad price to setmine, but that doesn't mean people won't do it. If he convinces himself that you have AK, KQs, AQ, and a spunky A5s, maybe he calls 88-JJ, I see people make worse blunders routinely.

You want them to call, you just want to make them pay with their weak part of the range.

Doubtful you're the first person here to do that.

Prior to my last session, I'd have agreed. But in my last 1/3 session, I opened to $15 from EP, and the spew-fish lady to my immediate left snap-jammed for piles. Like, she had just dragged in a huge pot worth over $2k, and was still piling up chips. She didn't have any idea what anyone else at the table had in front of them.

So...it happens. Maybe not often, but they don't drive all the way to the casino to NOT gamble, apparently.

The bigger point you're making is well taken. But if you're going to explore the outer boundaries of the hypothetical, which is fine, I think more often than not my answer is going to be "it depends". It depends on stack depth, reads, etc.

I once found myself in a 1/3 game that degenerated into 1/3/6 (live straddle) with blind raises of 12 & 24. We were mostly playing short-handed, 5 of us were super-deep (for what was officially just a 1/3 game), so it wasn't at all uncommon to see people jamming for piles pre.

It was actually a pretty fun time. Guys were coming to the table with short stacks, getting felted in their first hand, then literally (not figuratively) running to the cage to get more chips, then running back to the table. I think at one point I was up over $3k in that game, and only went home when the game broke around 3am.

I think the hand I described in my last post is a more reasonable and not stupidly uncommon example of what you're more likely to see in a low stakes game.

I think what you're describing points to a difference between the OMC who's waiting for AA/KK to jam pre, and the tilted player or degen who will jam for 33-75BB's because they're tilted, or because it's fun, or because they just want to double up or go home.

Which goes back to my "it depends". I'm willing to give action to the tilted degen a little more readily than the nitty old bastard who's been killing the vibe the entire time he's been sitting at the table.

No. That hand I described above was from 2-3 years ago. It's one of those that got stamped on my memory because of how insane it was, on multiple levels.

I didn't give reads in the description of that hand, but the guy who flatted QQ from +2 was a reg who I'd played with before. I don't know if I'd describe him as "nitty", but definitely on the mis-reg / nit-reg end of the reg spectrum. He's a guy who might be able to beat a table full of fish for 5-10 BB's / hour but will never destroy any normal game at any stakes, due to a complete lack of creativity and no ability to exploit opponents' obvious leaks.

If he paid *ANY* attention at all to how I play, he'd know my opening range from every position is too wide, and QQ is a mandatory 3B any time I open from anywhere.

All that's fair. The point I was trying to make (and failed, because I'm a better story-teller than I am a point-maker) is that your main question in this thread might be boiled down to answering a different question.

That question is, "Who's likely to make more mistakes post-flop, me, or my opponents?"

Just look at all the mistakes that were made in the hand I described. I was way OOL opening 86s from UTG. +2 was out of his mind flatting QQ. The MP guy who over-called with QJs probably thought he was making a reasonable call, but he obviously didn't think about how $hltty a spot he'll be in if any of the players left to act come along, and he'll be sandwiched between the EP PFR and the LP callers post-flop. The OMC was insanely face-up jamming AA.

Forget the OMC. Just look at the first three players to VPIP. If you were SB, holding KK, and you knew that UTG was a borderline maniac, +2 was a TAG-fish, and MP was a bad rec, how worried would you be, playing a multi-way pot vs those three opponents, even OOP?

A lot of people, including many on this forum, are scared to play a big PP multi-way. They're scared to smooth-call a flop c-bet with 2P or a set on a super-wet board. So they fast-play, and call it equity denial, but really it's just fear-based decision-making that hurts their win rate.

The SB with KK didn't need to know the OMC at all. That was literally the first hand I'd ever been dealt at the same table with the OMC. But I'd seen him in the room before, so I knew he was a nitty mis-reg, and instantly knew as soon as he jammed that he had AA.

Consider that +2 with QQ snap folded, after flat-calling, presumably because he thought he was trapping. The whole time SB and BB were tanking, I was wondering how long it would take them to fold their big PP's, because it was so insanely obvious the old man had AA.

In the SB's spot, it might take me 3 seconds to release KK. But there's no world in which I wouldn't release.

However, consider what might happen if he calls. Assume BB just folds. The pot will be $245 when action gets back to me UTG, the initial raiser, and I'd have to call another $85. That's almost 3:1. Even though the OMC is all-in for $100, BB had me covered with over $500. I'd have been getting reasonable IO to call and see a flop if I was opening UTG with a reasonable range. I wasn't, but he didn't know that.

If I call, the pot would be $345. Maybe +2 or MP comes along. Maybe they both do. Yeah, SB will have to play multi-way and OOP, first to act, but there'd be $445-$545 in the combined main and side pot. How hard could it be to navigate most flops with KK, when +2 and MP are double-flatting, and UTG is pretty capped?

Suppose he just flats, and the UTG raiser (that's me) gets a wild hair up his a$$, and decides to try an ISO. So I 4B-jam for $500 from UTG, +2 and MP fold, and now SB can snap me off with KK. Yeah, he loses the $100 to the OMC, but odds are he's getting $400 from me.

Not a bad deal, no? But instead, he shut everyone else out, effectively locking in a $80 loss of EV.

The point is - most low stakes players, even the "good" ones, are still pretty bad. If you don't trust yourself to make good decisions post, then ISO pre. If you think you're making better post-flop decisions than your opponents, don't ISO. Invite them to come along.

Just don't come here and b1tch about it if you take a bad beat. No one cares about your bad beat, pal.

Math-based rules and heuristics are good tools to use when we don't have any better ideas, which is often enough going to be the case.

You might be over-thinking it. You might not be. I'm not spending a lot of time pondering what to do in this or that make-believe spot. In your specific spot, I might ISO more with 77-JJ and ISO less with QQ+.

I'd love the doofus in SB to "make a move" because I didn't ISO, and I don't mind if BB decides to fold. I'd rather not have to 3B-fold if BB suddenly wakes up with AA/KK and decides to put in his first-ever 4B. I'd rather 3B-fold 77-JJ than QQ+.

Like, we're on the BTN. How bad could it be to see a flop multi-way with a doofus and a guy who apparently never saw a hand he wanted to 3B?

Uh-oh. Here we go...

So...first off, opening 86s UTG is just bad. Full stop. I shouldn't have done it. This isn't a good reason / excuse, but I was "riding a high" after winning a big pot from a player I despised at the table I'd just left. He was the reason I wanted to change tables. So I took $300 off him, then picked up and changed tables.

This was at Parx Philly. You're not allowed to sit down at 1/3 with more than $500 unless you're coming from a broken table, so I had $300 in profit buried in my pocket when I sat down, and was feeling frisky.

I looked around and saw that A) there were 2-3 regs I knew at the table, and B) there were some deep stacks at the table. The regs who know me know I can get OOL, but it's not uncommon for me to get OOL soon after sitting down, to cultivate a maniacal table image. The long-term EV of making people think you're nuts is huge.

All that said - I do play too many hands. Full stop. I get away with it because I'm much better than average at quickly developing reads and exploiting opponents' observed leaks, and I can find VERY disciplined folds.

In a recent session, I wanted to test a theory about how little bluffing the 1/3 pool does. I made a concentrated effort to over-fold to check-raises, big donks on turns or rivers, and any big bet when my hand wasn't super-under-repped. Every time my opponents folded to a value bet, I'd show them my hand, so that they knew they made a good fold, and to make it clear that I wasn't always getting OOL. Every time I made a hero fold, I'd muck face up, and ask / dare my opponent to show me a bluff.

What I noticed was that suddenly I was noticing it more when my opponents were taking face-up lines. Some doofus would donk into me for a huge size on the river when the flush draw came in, and I'd just muck the 2nd nuts face up. I'd muck over-pairs on paired boards that were "better for my range" when they donked into me on the turn.

Not one opponent in 8 hours showed me a bluff when I made a face-up hero fold. The one bluff I was shown was an OESD, and my opponent showed it when I did NOT show what I was folding. I just had bottom pair, top kicker, with the NFB on a two-flush board. I was in the tank before I folded, thinking about whether or not I could get my opponent to fold if another flush card came out. Completely unsolicited, he showed me a bluff.

Meanwhile, when I had value, I'd bet HUGE. Amazingly, even though I was showing opponents that I had it, even when they folded, I was still getting called, a lot. I'd 3B ginormous out of the UTG straddle with QQ+, and some wing-nut who opened from EP would 4B-jam on me with AQo, or KJo, or whatever.

Like, no one was paying any attention at all. I'd muck the 2nd nuts face up, and show opponents I always had it when I bet huge, and yet not one opponent showed me a bluff, and from what I could tell, they rarely believed that I had it unless I showed them. I left that game up $1k.

I know it grinds people's gears when I say this, but your cards don't matter that much if you can read people and adjust on the fly. If you just pay attention, opponents will tell you what they have, so you can flat call this lady's jam with QQ and not worry about what SB and BB are doing behind you.