Daily Hand Quiz

4bet/calls (esp. OOP) always confuse me, since I don’t see the point in doing so with any holding. However in my experience it’s most ofen a scared AK, QQ; or an overplayed AQ, sometimes 99-JJ or a wannabe tricky AA. Since we have QQ our opponent’s most likely holdings are AK, AQ with a slight chance of having something we beat (TT, JJ).
We can never push AK-AQ off the hand. We cannot make TT-JJ call. No draws out there. That makes it a clear check to me.
The real question is what to do when he starts betting the turn or checks turn bets river. This might sound weak, but I think we’ll have to c/f turn. We might call a smallish bet on the river since if we both check two streets it’s pretty likely none of us has an ace.
SB reps a pretty narrow range that’s 80% to have a strong ace in it. No need to put any more money into that pot.

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This is one of those situations where we are either dead to two outs, or opponent is dead to 2 or 3 outs. There is no reason to bet here. Because if we’re winning the hand, we aren’t scared of anything. And if we aren’t ahead, we are so far behind its outrageous to put in another dime. If we bet, and he raises, we have to fold, and this is beyond horrible play considering we could have seen a free turn card. Also by checking there’s no reason we should worry about giving a free card. It’s almost impossible this guy 3 bet called us with any 2 possible diamonds, considering the A is out and we have the Q, and we have no reason to suspect this guy of just making a move with 89d and then getting too stubborn to fold after resistance. Plus if he had 89d, it would be more likely he’d just call out of the blind and see a flop.

This is actually a pretty auto-pilot hand. If he bets the turn, and we get about 3:1 on a call, we have to call. If he bets more like the pot, I’d consider just giving it up. If the turn is a diamond, I’d be willing to call more around 2:1 if he bets that. If river bricks and he fires strong, we have to fold. If he gives us something like 4:1, maybe 3:1, we should call. Any price less than that, lets toss it. My reasoning says that if we check behind, he may feel that his JJ/TT is good because we would have c-bet an Ace. This may give him the green light to bet the turn, and that is why we call it and not fold. Now if we call the turn bet, and he fires again on the river, this is a much more grave concern, because our call should stop him dead in his tracks. So a river shot should be pretty strong, and again depending on our price, we should fold to it. If he gives us the finger lickin’ 4:1 suck bet or something, then for sure call. But a strong bet again on the river after we called is gonna be the goods I’d say 95% of the time here, so I’m folding then. In my opinion we still more than likely have the best hand here, but there is no reason to bloat a pot that we’re already winning or significantly losing. I see no reason to re-raise any of his bets, if we are ahead now, we more than probably will be at showdown, and if we’re behind now, we will have lost the minimum. This seems like pretty easy standard strategy to me. The pot is already too bloated for the circumstances, small is best here.

The truth is, if we’ve been running over a passive table, there is absolutely no reason we need to fight resistance with resistance if we just happen to get it just because we have QQ. Just dump this, and go back to milking them with less holdings like we’ve been doing. The ATMs at the table can have a hand once in a while, and its important that we acknowledge it and let them have a few. If we fail to say hey nice hand every so often, we’re just going to end up giving a lot of it back by our own blindness. I don’t think our answer changes regardless if its KK or JJ. Maybe JJ I’d put in a little bet here to see what he does, but other than that I wouldn’t do anything else different.

Check. Proceed with the plan, and don’t put in any more than we have to, and only for a price of no less than 2.5 or 3:1. Nothing new here really. Remember despite running over the table for a nice pay day, being able to fold hands like this in these circumstances is a huge discipline test. It is very easy to have escalating feelings of greed and grandeur when you are crushing a table (because we can’t lose right?), and they end up losing their ass because of being blind to it. Don’t get stupid here, why ruin a good streak?

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“Plus if he had 89d, it would be more likely he’d just call out of the blind and see a flop.”

If he has 89d, I am calling shenanigans as there are two nine of diamonds in the deck

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I agree with the sentiments already put forward. Betting doesn’t really achieve anything – we are not folding out an ace and there’s nothing we need to protect against. The only hand that beats us we could potentially scare away is KK and that is a miniscule part of his range.

Check behind and keep the pot down, analyse the turn.

Here is another question. What is our plan on the turn if he checks again? I’d be interested to hear what people would do in this scenario if he checks any of these cards on the turn:

- another ace
- a king, ten or jack
- a diamond
- a complete brick

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Morat Reply:
November 23rd, 2010 at 10:23 am

Check all of them.
Only a diamond improves your hand, but remember, semi-bluff is still a bluff: it needs FE to work (which is small to zero in our case). Accept the free card.
If we were deeper we might try bet/folding a second Ace, but considering pot commitment it’s still a big NO-NO.
Checking behind on the turn might force V to bluff river, which is OK because we’re ready to play the role of the bluff-catcher at that point.

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It looks like the consensus is; we fold to an $88 turn bet. At the same time, we cannot discern a reason to bet the flop. Whether a flop bet is correct or not (I’d bet $88 myself) it has the merit of not giving V a green light to claim the pot with a turn bet. Why is that not a reason?

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i voted check for three reasons. the main idea being that we’re not beating an ace which is his most likely holding. if he has kk this is the wrong approach (though i think hed jam that pf), and if hes playing tt/jj this hard, hes a brave man and might be able to win here based solely on courage. but not yet. here’s my thoughts on checking:

1) if he has a big ace, hes drooling over this check raise all in opportunity. first order of business is making that not happen.

2) if he doesnt have the ace, or if he has the ace and a diamond comes, or if he has a/q, there are at least a couple of ways that he can become scared, slow this pot down, and maybe somehow it ends up going my way.

3) a check behind here looks strange coming from a very aggressive player who 4 bet preflop…im hoping that might set off alarm bells like maybe we’re doing something tricky here with a set, or ak.

if he checks the turn im taking a stab at it, selling a story like i tried to trap, didnt work, now i have to get value for my hand. if he bets, its a gut instinct thing. could fold, but if it looks fishy and is small enough, maybe i float.

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I’d probably check my entire range here, both pocket pairs and Ax. With the ace on the board being suited there’s very little chance the villain has a flush draw, so there’s no need to bet and price out draws.

With that in mind I have two goals: (a) when I have QQ don’t stack off vs. Ax and fold out JJ, and (b) when I have Ax don’t fold out JJ-KK. Both of these goals lead me to check back all of my value hands. Stacks are so shallow now that we can get it in on any street. It needn’t be the flop. Preferably it’s later when the villain’s hand range is wider.

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Do you know what an idiot you just made of yourself? You think you’re mnkaig people admire you but every poker player commenting on this video is laughing at you? for calling this an awful fold .Seriously. Stick to playing $1 sit n gos and wondering why you finish 9th.

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