Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Input Needed: Was I correct in making this call?

So the villain in the hand below is a nice fellow. We've been chatting it up about the weather, my dog pictured as my avatar, and general banter. However, this guy's play was pretty terrible. I raised preflop with AXs and flop comes 666. I make my standard cbet, he flat calls. Turn brings a jack, I check; he makes a large overbet and I fold. I compliment him on his play and he says he had trip Js (actually would be a FH). Anyways, I didn't really believe nor did I care.

Then I stacked him on the hand below. Good read or lucky I didn't get stacked? Villain's stats: 73/0/2.75 over 30 hands. After he made the large overbet, I asked in the girly why such a large overbet? After letting my time clock drop down to 10secs, he responded "in or out." To me that seemed like he didn't want the call. I'm still not sure why.

I decided to call. A turn overbet to me means bluff in this situation. An Ah or Kh would want a weaker heart to tag along to the river and then an "OBFV" (OverBet for Value) would be appropriate. What's your opinion?




Direct Link to HandReplay

6 comments:

  1. Thanks for playing The Mookie Dubs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you've got a read that he's weak, go for it. At that level it's probably more likely to be a bluff than an OBFV.

    Preflop should have been a bigger raise, imo. Pocket 10s lose a lot of value post-flop, so I'd rather make people pay to stick around, raise it up to $0.20 or $0.25.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mookie - much like you, the Mookie tourney is the only blogger tourney i get time for due to fam/life issues. Thanks for hosting it!

    Mike - thanks for the input. One area my game has improved is reading these type of bluffs. If the villian would have waited until the river to make the big overbet, I fold instantly. Another way to look at it is that by betting huge on the turn, it appears he is trying to push me out of the hand. Another signal of weakness.

    As far as preflop bet size, I bet the same everytime regardless of my cards. 15c is my standard raise because, well, at this level if they're going to call, they're going to call. An extra nickel or dime doesn't matter to these microfish.

    So by betting my 15c with 10s or AA or 73o, my opponents have no idea what I have. When I hit my set, I stack them. If a King high dry flop comes, I can make a cbet or CR and easily take down the pot. There are so many advantages to keeping consistent sized bets that its ridiculous. I think I've got an article idea now. Thanks Mike!

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's not so much keeping bet-sizes consistent as it is adjusting your bet-sizes when there are limpers in front of you. For example, if four people limp in front of you, and you're holding aces, are you just going to raise it 3xBB? Of course not, because everyone is going to come along for the ride. So you raise more, to weed out the marginal hands and get your post flop percentages more favorable.

    That's what I meant in this situation. There is $0.12 in the pot, you raise it up to $0.15. First of all, the initial limper is pretty much always calling your raise, because they're getting 2.7:1 on their money to call and they already had enough of a hand to limp, so they certainly have enough of a hand to call your raise. Second, you're inviting people who have position on you to call your raise because it's $0.15 to call into a $0.27 pot, so they're getting 1.8:1 to call (Really they can anticipate getting 2.46:1 because the EP limper is definitely sticking around, bringing the pot up to $0.37).

    So now you've increased the risk of people who are going to play after you joining the hand, which really hurts your ability to play a hand like TT postflop.

    Now, let's say your raise it up to $0.25. Anyone waiting to act is only getting 1.5:1 on their money. You've also put pressure on the limper to define his hand. If he's just limping with some junk hand, he's most likely going to let it go. If he calls, based on his image, you can narrow his range and play postflop accordingly. If he's calling an extra $0.10 after limping for $0.05, that doesn't tell you much about what he might have, since he has the odds to make the call with a much larger range.

    So like I said, I'm all for bet consistency, it is very important to maintain, but it's also important to adjust your bet sizing when there are already other limpers in the pot before you.

    ReplyDelete
  5. And I understand that due to the size of the limits your opponents might be more likely to call a bigger raise anyways, but it's still a mistake on their part, and you can help form your image of this person based on a mistake like that.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks for the clarification Mike. Makes a lot more sense now. I agree completely with your statements and it is something I'm working into my game depending on the table I'm sitting at.

    There will be some limpers(typically VPIP of between 20-40) that will correctly fold to the extra BB raise, but then the superfish (VPIP 50%+) that won't. These superfish will also call down with second pair and won't fold on dry flops where you are attempting to represent the Q, K, or A high flop. Additionally, they are more likely to be holding Q,K, or A rag as well.

    In this case, with a VPIP of 70+, I knew the limper would call a higher raise, and seeing as my hand doesn't have much post-flop value against this type of super-fish, I didn't want to charge myself more in case the flop came something that would be difficult to play against this type of superfish.

    With that said, your final add-on comment is absolutely correct and I need to think about it more. Trying to determine whether at these microstakes and against players where they don't know what they're doing if increased charge on marginal starting hands would be +EV over the long term at these levels. An interesting argument indeed.

    ReplyDelete