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Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Poker Quiz Question #46

Q#46: You’re in $5/$10NL 7-handed cash game. Everyone has $1000 stacks. You’re in LP with As-4s. The action folds to you, and you raise to $40. The BB calls. The flop is Ad-Jc-2c. The BB checks, you bet $60, and the BB check-raises you to $180. You have no reads on the BB. What should you do?
  1. Call and fold to a strong turn bet
  2. Call and raise turn bet
  3. Call and call strong turn bet
  4. Fold
  5. Raise
  6. Shove All-in

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A#46: Okay, let's start where this Bug usually starts: REDi.

Reads: We don't know anything about this player, so we need to assume he's an average decent reg until we learn differently. This means he's playing his hands straightforwardly and not particularly tricky. He's in the big blind and he calls what looks like a LP steal attempt from us. Therefore, his calling range is going to be something like 22-JJ, A9-AJ, and maybe some big suited connectors, like JTs, QJs, and the like.

The flop is moderately wet, with flush and straight draws, plus two big cards. Our cbet is very standard, but the villain's X/R isn't. In other words he's projecting strength here. This strength could either be real (two pair or better), semi-real (TPGK), or could represent a flush or straight draw (or combo). I would lean toward the latter two, because if he flopped a monster he would probably try to wait to hook us on the turn when/if we fired a second barrel. On the other hand, however, the board is wettish, so if he did flop a big one- or two-pair type hand, he might be betting to protect his equity and keep us from seeing cheap turn cards.

Let's narrow his range to hands like A9-AJ, 22, JJ, and combo draws like KcQc.

Estimate: against this range, our hand is in serious trouble at something like 15:85. Even if we add in some tricky pseudo-bluff hands into his range, like 88-TT, we're still a 45:55 dog.

We're not pot committed at this point, but our opponent seems to be willing to get himself close to committed here on the flop.

Decide: A good rule of thumb in cash games is don't go broke with one pair, especially if it's TPWK. Our current hand strength equity stinks, our kicker is very weak, and we really don't have any backdoor equity. Also, our fold equity is poor, as our opponent is approaching a pot commitment threshold. Ergo, I think we're pretty obviously on a fold line.

Implement: Fold

Answer: Fold

All-in for now...
-Bug

2 comments:

  1. This is bad. Jeez did people really used to defend that tightly against a lp steal?

    We block an A, so we make a draw slightly more likely. I mean our hand is a slight favorite against all combo draws. If a club comes we probably have to let our hand go, but until that I think that it's a call down to the river. I also think he is going to have more draws. Maybe this was different back in the day but everyone defends their BB super wide now. Also JJ isn't a definite and I actually say pretty unlikely.

    Also this is a good board to just flat with with your made hands. Sure hero may have a flush draw but you bet everyone on this flop, a flush draw really isn't THAT big of a concern. You also rarely have the nuts here as LP has AA and way more Kx of clubs that is just going to be shipped over this.

    Also, because you're betting such a large portion of your range here it's so exploitable to fold really any A. I think that there are definitely enough flush draws in the BB range to make this a call/call w/out a sick read.

    Also you're getting like 4:1 odds and against a complete nit you're almost getting that.

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    Replies
    1. Level 1 thinking (I gots an Ace) What are you going to do when he keeps applying pressure? Call and 're-evaluate?' Hitting a 4 or A might cost you your stack. Raise 5%, call 5%, but fold 90% of the time and look for easier spot with less variance.

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