Daily Hand Quiz

Call and reevaluate the turn. There’s no way I’m folding to a single bet. I can’t give him credit for an ace quite yet. I will probably fold the turn to another bet but there’s a good chance it’ll go check/check. Or I might make a sucky calldown if the history with this player warrants it.

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remember that if he doesnt have an A its just as much of a scare card to him as it is to us. if he has 99-KK our action has been killed. its almost impossible to play big pots against hands we are crushing at this point. we obviously have to call. but in this case against a tricky player id say get to showdown. he isnt gonna fold a 3 bet worthy ace and any non ace isnt going to play a big pot. so we may as well just take the safe route. it sucks when we have a huge value hand but this is typical with ace magnets. i dont see myself re raising or betting here it would be beyond atrocious play to do anything where the response forces us to fold regardless if villain is doing it for value or bluff.

take cheapest route to showdown. whatever that is. tricky player. action killer flop. either crushing ahead or virtually drawing dead. no need to get stupid here reraising. ill order the vanilla flavor please.

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We are WA/WB. If we raise, we may fold out a few weak aces, but also all the hands that we want more streets of value from. Not many hands that we beat will call, most hands that do beat us will.
If we fold we obviously lose that value too.
“He knows you are a good, aggressive player who likes to open-raise when folded to you.”
So he has us on a rather wide range, ergo his range is rather wide too and includes all kinds of broadway hands that make a perfectly reasonable c-bet with air here.

I call, and call a turn bet. If v triple-barrels I’ll start thinking about folding.

I probably 4-bet shove pre, btw.

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Pirate21 Reply:
December 20th, 2010 at 8:53 am

“I probably 4-bet shove pre, btw.”

Exactly!

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fold and save yourself the $180. he is an aggressive winning player, that means he’s definitely going to barrel the turn. what happens at that point? unless the turn was a king, nothing changed and now youre in the same spot, just $180 poorer. if you call the turn, youre basically committing to the $680 he has in his stack and im not really interested in doing that just because my preflop starting hand was really really pretty. this is a cash game. kings? cool. 44? sure. 67 suited? awesome. its about what looks good postflop, not what looks good preflop.

as a side note, if we were deeper i might raise to find out if he’s got it or not. but with these stacks, a raise puts us in for the rest of his money. not good.

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I agree to try to get to showdown as cheap as possible. Would I be likely to check/call all the way with all my chips if warranted?…I don’t know. But I’m with T’s comment above – I would have probably 4-bet preflop. But something really annoying like a min-raise, that he would have to call or come over the top with a 5-bet, which I would call of course. I’d probably 4-bet his raise of $120 to to $240 or maybe $300 even or something.

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There are definitely a lot of aces in V’s range, but I think there are a bunch of non-aces as well.
We really have two lines to play here – either we call and evaluate the next 2 streets or we raise and find out where we stand. Neither is ideal.
Raising *might* take down the pot right now and in that case it would save us from some tough decisions later – but V could also reraise us in which case we’re clearly beat and out another few hundred bucks to boot (ugly).
Calling is really just an attempt to get to the river on the cheap. We’re hoping to hit our miracle king and/or induce a check on the turn. Problem is that calling here is not a show of strength and therefore we can almost certainly expect a turn bet.
I can’t see folding here – I don’t like the idea of assuming a crafty player has one of only three cards in the deck we’re afraid of… he’ll eat us alive if we do that. Also, 180 into a 245 pot isn’t usually a bet that wants to be called by made hands.
I say we use our position and call here – if he checks the turn, I’d fire at almost anything. If he leads again on the turn, we have another tough decision to make…

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John Kugelman Reply:
December 20th, 2010 at 10:30 am

“…if he checks the turn, I’d fire at almost anything.”

Why? Would that be a value bet or a bluff?

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Pirate21 Reply:
December 20th, 2010 at 1:50 pm

Neither – if he check the turn, I think he’s ready to surrender. I’m betting to take down the pot right now.

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general johnson jameson Reply:
December 20th, 2010 at 3:52 pm

Well that doesn’t make sense to me. Roughly 95% of the time in my playbook, if I want something to end “now”, it is because there are a lot of cards I do not want to see come out. In this hand we’ve already had the ultimate scare card come out right here on the flop, so there should be no other cards that come out that scare us, besides perhaps the spade K (which would be interesting for river discussion). And the decisions to make on the turn and river will be no easier or worse than the ones we’re making right now. We are either an 8%, or roughly a ~%90. Playing this aggressively to end the hand has no benefit. If the flop A isn’t enough to make you fold its awfully silly to think any other card will.

There’s really only 2 options, either we believe he has it, and we fold now like CB choice, or we get to showdown as cheap as possible. Like he said, if you call here, you have no reason to not go all the way, as no decisions are going to get harder or easier. This really should be an easy choice, but its made complicated by the fact that we’re only losing to 3 cards, the only bad thing is that the 3 bet along with an Ace showing up isn’t good. If we had 66 or 77 this would be a lot easier, but its tough to not be stubborn with KK when a single A shows up. Either way, neither of these routes involve voluntarily putting more money in than we have to, thus playing aggressively at any street is really quite poor.

Pretty much all discussion on this page has ignored the fact that he was getting tricky with 33 or 44, or possibly making a move with KQs. In the first 2 we are drawing dead, and the latter we are just a little better than a coin flip. Hitting the A is the most common denominator here, so it makes sense to talk about that the most.

Thanks DHQ staff for the cash game refresher.

I’m not good enough to fold here – turn perhaps but not OTF. We are up against a perfunctory c-bet (miss) on an A-flop with 2 suited cards, or the V indeed has an A. 6-handed agg play, with V capable of making moves leads me to call here and eval the turn. I can’t give them credit yet. We too are a solid player and V knows that.

Raise – I like this option if the stacks were bigger, but if we put them AI, at ~2-1 the price is still attractive.

Fold – prudent maybe, but I think the potential loss of $180 indicates that a min 2-barrels will be needed to bluff from now on.

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A quick call very well may freeze a lot of non-ace hands on the turn which is perfect. If he checks the turn, we’re checking back everytime. What hands can we get value out of on the turn? V has tons of non-ace hands here, but not many that could pay us on the turn. I’m for sure calling the $180, evaluating any other clues, how long he might take to act on the turn etcetera and also seeing of the turn changes the board texture at all. I think we’re getting to showdown over 80% of the time. If he has an ace, nice hand, rebuy.

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For a “good, aggressive player” – that’s some pretty weak PF play if you ask me. Okay, you’re UTG+1 so you don’t want to waste the hand just taking the blinds. But V has you pegged as a solid TAG so if we come over the top of him again we really narrow down the range of hands we are facing… as it is we could be facing anything. Ax, any PP (44 and 33 included) or any two broadway cards.

I think the only thing you can do here is call. Folding what could easily be the best hand is not something I find palatable. Raising will almost certainly mean that all the money is going in – unless he doesn’t have anything in which case you gain the minimum.

Call. The pot will be bigger than his remaining stack so if he fires again I expect it to be for everything he’s got left on the table.

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