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Hi guys. I had an interesting spot during my last session this weekend. In this spot, I learned, the hard way, the value of position. I had been in the session for about 3 hours. The player pool at the table had all changed, so I dont know most of my opponents playing style. However, the villain in the hand, was someone I’ve in the past. A younger kid that is fairly tight-straight-forward in my opinion. I’m not sure what his image of me is, but I do know, he does not get out of line.
Hero Hand: JJ ds
Hero Stack: 500
Hero Position: UTG+1Villain Hand: JJ hc
Villain Stack: 400
Villain Postion: MPPreflop:
Hero opens to 15, UTG2 calls, Villain 3bets to $50, folds to hero, hero calls, UTG2 folds. Heads up to a flopFlop: 10 8 4 dds
Hero checks, villian bets 65, hero callsTurn: Kd
Hero checks, Villian bets 100, hero folds, villain shows his hand.The game is generally soft and its rare to see 3 betting in this game. When there is typically a 3 bet, the weaker players generally get out of the way quickly. This villain was one of the younger guys and generally likes to talk in between hands with other players about High stakes poker.
When he 3 bet, I put him on premiums right away: AK, AQ, 1010, QQ, KK, AJ, maybe even 99 and 88. Though I thought he would be more weighted towards the higher hands.
I think my first mistake was preflop. I called, simply to see what the flop would be. I don’t even have the right odds to set mine, if I put the villain on those premium hands for his 3 bet.
When the flop bet, I put villian on AK, QQ, KK. I thought he may have tried to cbet with AK. I nearly folded, but curiousity of what he’ll do on the turn got the better of me.
When the turn came, I was done with the hand. I thought, I had to be beat here. I’m holding two jacks, so it was very unlikely he had any AJ combinations. I know he wouldn’t 3bet with A10. His bet on the turn, to me was screaming pair of Queens or Kings. I mucked as soon as he bet, and he flips over JJ. I’m not sure what he thought I had, but I don’t know how else the hand could’ve played out, given the exact scenario.
To be honest, I was a little embarrassed by the results. But I tell myself, against stronger players, I try not to stack off with just a pair.
Should I have raised him on the flop to see where I was at?
Please let know your thoughts. Thanks
This is a good hand to look at suit distributions. With the K of diamonds, there aren’t many flushes in his 3-bet range. AQ of diamonds is probably it at this level, and maybe not even that. A tight straight-forward player isn’t 3-betting light at 1/3. I don’t see a lot of A9 suited or lower, and since you have the J of diamonds there just aren’t a whole lot of flushes out there for him.
That leaves a few hands that beat you. QQ and AA beat you, but a 50/50 chance they have a diamond. KK can’t have a diamond. AK off-suit can have a diamond and take this line. But there are a lot of hands that don’t have a diamond that you still have a lot of equity against.
I can’t say your fold is wrong. I’m also not a fan of raising to see where you’re at. You should raise for value or a bluff. You can raise the flop or the turn, but it’s of a high variance route.
Not sure how I would play this. I really don’t like any option. I might raise the flop because you can rep AJ/QJ of diamonds, but again, I really don’t see an issue with this fold. That’s a big pot to play with a mediocre hand.
@John. Thank you so much for your insight. I really appreciate it and it helps my confidence when I get back to the table.
I like this hand. It’s a real and easy example to practice my hand reading. I was wrong in this case, but I’m happy with my decision and glad to know a fold was on ok choice. I knew better than to stack off with an overpair. Especially, this hand. Its a leak that I see my weaker opponents make a lot at these stakes, and one that I’m making sure I plug up as well.
Breaking down the hand from the beginning the action is relatively straight forward. If you are raising to $15 just make sure it is that size for all your hands here. One call behind and then villain raises to $50. I think his size is a bit small but a call is fine. I don’t think anyone is going to call a 3 bet all in at this level with worse save for AK suited, maybe AQ suited. Your opponent could easily have worse pairs like 99 or TT, 2 overs or only one over even if we we do block those hands.
We flop an over pair with backdoor diamonds and backdoor straight, pretty good for us. We check to the betting lead and he bets 60% pot. The pot now is ~$180 with an effective stack of $285 to go. A call puts the pot at ~$250, roughly a 1:1 stack to pot ratio. If we assume he isn’t c-betting 100% of his range we can eliminate some of his weaker hands like 99 and most 2 overs without a diamond. I would say he has 88, TT+, and any two overs with a diamond. Personally, I think a shove here should get some consideration. There are a lot of cards on the turn that are bad for us and very few that we are happy with. Any over, any diamond and we feel poorly about our hand. This suggests to me that we need to either fold or raise and the only sizing that works is all in. Because of the 5x open, re-raise pre flop and a 60% bet on the flop there isn’t any room to maneuver.
The reason for shoving is you have a decent amount of equity against hands that would call us like QQ+ and you are still ahead of hands like AK of diamonds or KQ of diamonds. The only hands that have our in bad shape are TT or 88 but we could easily have those hands as well. The all in is turning your JJ into a semi bluff. However since you called I do like the fold. A large percentage of the opponents bluff continuation range just beat us and you now only beat AQ with no or one diamond.
Man! What a terrible fold. Ofcoarse that is just result oriented.
I started plugging this into an equity calculator to see how I was doing.
I agree that his preflop 3bet is pretty small, but I’m noticing a lot of these players are doing the same thing with their 3bet sizing. I’m UTG and there is a caller in-between, I would’ve made it 60. But I think 50 is fine as well.
I plugged in 1010+, AJs+, AQo+, KQs against our hand. I’m a slight favorite preflop. I wonder if 4betting here would be suicidal? A strong range should be 3betting an UTG opener I believe.
I’m going to admit, I completely suck at back-door draws. I personally hate drawing to them, cause they are so difficult.
The pot is 115 on the flop. And David, I really did not see my draws on this board as well. Just shows how much I don’t like them…lol. Villain makes it a little over 1/2 pot size bet, which is cool. I’m getting close to 3-1 on a call, and our equity is still close to 54%, even if we remove 1010, 99, and 88 from his range.
On the turn our equity drops to 40%, facing less than 1/2 pots size bet, laying us close to 3.5 – 1 pot odds. Looking at this now, this looks like a profitable call in the long run.
The nut flush is still possible in his hand. There’s less combos of KK and the two overpairs to beat our hand. If I restrict his range to only “diamond” holdings, we are in bad shape with 28.6%, with pot equity of 22.5%. Very close here.
This is a tough one indeed. I like my fold here. I think the K, is a pivotal card, and it hits his 3bet range a lot as well. We’ll have about a pot size bet left, and I don’t think this villain is bluffing on this street with the bet size either. Too bad I folded the same hand. Meh.
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