$100NL QQ 3bet pot

[btimm]

To satisfy the curiosity, I called and he tabled AA. Pretty sure he was going for a CRAI on the turn, but I did not bet.

[RiverRock55]

Originally Posted by btimm

I don't mind my bet sizing on the flop, it could be a tiny bit more, maybe up to $19, but about 60% of pot seems pretty standard in 3bet pots imo.

I completely disagree. The reason that this is a tough spot to begin with is because your flop bet is way to small. You bet $17 into $29, thats only 58% of the pot!!

For starters this line of though bothers me most "but about 60% of pot seems pretty standard in 3bet pots imo" IMO there is no "standard" bet size for betting the flop in 3bet pots, I think any cbet in a 3bet pot is dependent on several factors. The most important of these is stacksizes vs the size of the pot, a term called SPR for stack to pot ratio. In this situation the size of your flop bet effectivly made your stacks 1.5x the size of the pot, which happpens to be an awkward SPR to play. Persoanlly I like a bet here of 24-27, which does two important things. The first is that this bet puts more pressure on him, looks stronger and makes it way harder for him to float you. The second is that it sets up your next bet to be a shove of just slightly more than the pot, a bet that looks really bluffy and is often looked up surprising lite. However, this does not mean I advocate shoving the turn in this particalar spot. I like the ch behind on the turn here, but if you had bet more on the flop the river would be much easier to play, whether he bets like he did or checks to you making you decide to value bet or not. It's just nice to have the additional weapon of being able to shove the turn when it bricks off basically for value.

When you say "about 60% of pot seems pretty standard in 3bet pots imo" I think you have this concept flawed. The concept applies to situations where you pretty much hold complete air or a hand close to the nuts. Its true that if you hold air here a 60% pot cbet should be enough to make your oponent fold if he missed, so betting more is just a waste. Its also true that its prob the most optimal way to get value out of the nuts if your opponent has some second best hand, that may improve later in the hand but not enough to beat you. If you have some sort of medium strenth hand I think its most important to tailor you bet size in a way lets you to better control the action on later streets.

* I am aware that this ^^ line of thought may be exploited if you play against the same people over time. If thats the case, balancing rather than polorizing your range in your oponents eyes may become more important than sizing your bets to manipulate the stack to pot ratio.

[Fuzzy Logic]

Originally Posted by RiverRock55

* I am aware that this ^^ line of thought may be exploited if you play against the same people over time. If thats the case, balancing rather than polorizing your range in your oponents eyes may become more important than sizing your bets to manipulate the stack to pot ratio.

Just to clarify, do you mean merging as opposed to balancing?

And you advocate betting more with marginal hands than air and nut hands? Making it way harder for him to float? Villain should be somewhat retarded to begin floating against (I assume) a solid player when OOP, so yeah, if he wants to float then please let him, why would we look to discourage that? And those hands he continues with are likely crushing us so we lose more when behind and win the same when ahead?

[RiverRock55]

First, yes I meant merging rather than balancing the range, if you are already playing air and the nuts that way I suppose it would already be balanced.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy Logic

And you advocate betting more with marginal hands than air and nut hands? Making it way harder for him to float?

I don't advocate betting more with marginal hands in 3bet pots as a general rule, what I am adovocating is tailoring you bet sizing in such a way that the stacks arn't such an awkward size in relation to the pot to play on later streets. In some cases this might even mean betting amounts smaller than 1/2 pot. In this paticular case it meant betting closer to 85% pot on the flop. Also, it depends how marginal the hand actually is.. I realize that QQ is very vulernable in this spot and is marginal given the situation, but its still an overpair. I'm not advocating betting near full pot every time you flop 2nd pair in a 3bet pot or anything.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy Logic

Making it way harder for him to float? Villain should be somewhat retarded to begin floating against (I assume) a solid player when OOP, so yeah, if he wants to float then please let him, why would we look to discourage that?

Yes he may be retarded to float us oop here, but people make retarded plays all the time. The reason him floating us in this spot is so bad is because:

-our 55%pot flop cbet doesn't really define our hand in his eyes, he's already put a chunk of cash in the pot and this bet looks weak, since he's somewhat psychologically commited to the pot (not pot comitted $$ wise obv) he may try something crazy. For example he may decide were weak and take a stab by leading into us on the turn. If he does this its clearly a very difficult spot, as we can't really just ship it over his lead and if we call we basically turn our hand face up and may get bluffed on the river. Because of the stack sizes and the medium strenth of our hand were creating a situaion where he can use implied threat against us on the turn, or straight bluff us on the river and we can't do anything about it.

-Also everyone agrees that as played checking behind the turn here is correct. So if he does float with AK here or anything for that matter, he basically gets to see both the turn and river for calling the great price of approx 3 to 1 ( I stoved it and with AK this is actually an even money call) The 55% cbet with the intention of checking the turn behind actually prices AK into the call.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy Logic

so yeah, if he wants to float then please let him, why would we look to discourage that? And those hands he continues with are likely crushing us so we lose more when behind and win the same when ahead?

^^ I think you contradict yourself here, If hes continuing with only hands that beat us he would be trapping us not floating us. I disagree that he only floats with hands that crush us, I think alot of nitty type players at 100NL peel here with AK, or once in a while AJ and TT. I know thats very debatable but if they are bad enough to call a 3 bet oop with those hands they are definitly not folding to a half pot cbet on a J high board.

Also, for arguments sake if most of his continuing range does infact crush us then yes we do lose a few dollars more on the flop by making a larger bet. However, those few dollars let us more clearly define the situaion, which in turn may allow us to make more optimal decisions later in the hand when much more money is at steak.

[Fuzzy Logic]

Originally Posted by RiverRock55

First, yes I meant merging rather than balancing the range, if you are already playing air and the nuts that way I suppose it would already be balanced.

I would not recommend looking to merge our range at these stakes, there is just no need, we are not looking to play optimally as most players at these stakes are not good enough to exploit us to that large an extent. Balancing our air:nuts is more than enough, and I would not get into the habit of bluffing in 3bet pots.

Originally Posted by RiverRock55

I don't advocate betting more with marginal hands in 3bet pots as a general rule, what I am adovocating is tailoring you bet sizing in such a way that the stacks arn't such an awkward size in relation to the pot to play on later streets.

I agree I just wanted to know your reasons were not just because of a marginal hand.

Originally Posted by RiverRock55

^^ I think you contradict yourself here, If hes continuing with only hands that beat us he would be trapping us not floating us. I disagree that he only floats with hands that crush us, I think alot of nitty type players at 100NL peel here with AK, or once in a while AJ and TT. I know thats very debatable but if they are bad enough to call a 3 bet oop with those hands they are definitly not folding to a half pot cbet on a J high board.

Yeah I had meant to say that those hands he is continuing with which are beating us have QQ in bad shape, as nearly all players play very straight forward in 3 bet pots, with the exception of AJ, but I just dont see him calling too often with AJ when he will be OOP with a hugely reverse implied odds hand with this flop. Although again, gameflow and OP's image would play a large part in villains decision in that regard.

Originally Posted by RiverRock55

Also, for arguments sake if most of his continuing range does infact crush us then yes we do lose a few dollars more on the flop by making a larger bet. However, those few dollars let us more clearly define the situaion, which in turn may allow us to make more optimal decisions later in the hand when much more money is at steak.

Is this not tandemount to betting for information? Cos here I think what you are saying is you are betting to make him fold, and if he continues you are giving up on the hand? Would this not be a bluff then?

[btimm]

Question here: What do I care about SPR when I am not willing to stack off here against this villain? If he is willing to get it all in, I am in really bad shape on this board.

[RiverRock55]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy Logic

Is this not tandemount to betting for information?

Is information being gained from betting 85% rather than 55% pot here? Yes it is.. However, gaining information is by no means the purpose of the bet, its more of just a supplementry benifit. My previous responses to this topic outline the real reasons for making a larger flop bet here.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy Logic

Cos here I think what you are saying is you are betting to make him fold, and if he continues you are giving up on the hand? Would this not be a bluff then?

No I'm not necessarly betting to make him fold here.. Im betting to put more pressure back on him and charge him to peel with his specualitve hands as there is already a decent chunk in the pot.

It's true that were not in the best shape if villian continues here, However I am by no means giving up on the hand automatically when he continues. I would muck to alot of valuetype lines he may take, I may look up some oddball line that doesn't add up here, and I may sneak a thin valuebet in on a later street. All of these options are very read dependent, and I believe a larger flop bet makes these very difficult reads a little bit easier.

[RiverRock55]

Originally Posted by btimm

Question here: What do I care about SPR when I am not willing to stack off here against this villain? If he is willing to get it all in, I am in really bad shape on this board.

Yes the most basic application of the SPR concept is creating situations that allow you to jam the pot in the most optimal way given your hand. For instance, say you have a hand where you want to be sure to get the stacks in on the turn, you want to control the SPR so that jamming the turn is a reasonable bet. A common trick for this is the formula: (your stack - potsize)/3= flopbet. So if there is $20 in the pot and your effective stack is $72, you bet $17 on the flop so you can jam with a slightly less than pot sized bet on the turn. If you only bet $14 on the flop, your remaining SPR would be such that getting a commiting bet in on the turn would just look wierd. (it would either be a shove of more than the size of the pot, or a large bet that left you with an inconsequental amount in you stack)

Now to your question..

Why do you still need to care about SPR even though your not willing to stack off here? Just because you know you'll have to concede the hand once your opponent applies pressure you still want to make it difficult for him, and to do this you can use SPR to your advantage. By controlling the SPR you can limit the weapons in you opponents arsonal. For instance as the hand played out, if he donked into you on the turn you would be in a very tough spot. Should you fold what is possibly the best hand for such a cheap price? Raising will only get called by better, and calling just builds the pot while you have no idea where your at. Basically with such a bet he can leverage you whole stack vs the whole pot for a very small amount of his stack.
However if you had tailored you flop bet size to avoid creating such an awkward stack to pot ratio on the turn you could have effectivly removed the turn donk bet from his arsonal, thus not giving him such a good price on a move that leverages your stack and puts you in such a tough spot.

[btimm]

Originally Posted by RiverRock55

By controlling the SPR you can limit the weapons in you opponents arsonal. For instance as the hand played out, if he donked into you on the turn you would be in a very tough spot.

Would it though? Against this type of opponent, if he were to donk the turn, it is a prety easy and standard fold imo.