Who's the donk?

[jdonn]

Early at 2/4 limit at the M resort, you pick up A-A on the button. I forget the suits but there were no possible flush draws throughout this hand.

 

UTG raises to 4, all call (!!!) to you. You make it 6, both blinds fold, and all others call. 7 to the flop.

 

Flop 4-6-6

 

All check to you. You bet 2, 4 players including the original raiser call. 5 to the turn.

 

Turn 7

 

First two players check, then someone bets 4. Next player folds. You call, UTG calls, next player folds. 3 to the river.

 

River A

 

UTG checks, last round's better bets 4 again. You make it 8. UTG folds. He makes it 12!

 

1 - What do you think is the % chance he has 6-6 and you are beat?

2 - Hopefully we can agree it's obvious folding is unthinkable. Call or raise?

 

Comments about any of my earlier plays being donkification are fine.

[Gerben42]

Raising is not donk, after all he might be 77 for all you know, or 67, or 56, or...

[jjbrr]

raise

[Lobowolf]

I'd conservatively put it at under 10%, probably under 5%. There are just too many other hands a loose player would play there. And he's going to call with most of 'em. I'd re-raise and say "Nice hand" if he shows me 6-6. Just mathematically, 7-7 is much more likely; A-4 and A-6 are possible. 4-4 is possible and mathematically more likely. Heck, 5-3 is possible. If he's got the pure nuts and I give him another bet, so be it.

[jdonn]

The final lesson here is I'm a donk (I called). But hypothetically, unless I'm really full of it, what else can I have but AA the way I have bet? Why would he be 3-betting all these lousy full houses?

[gwnn]

what did he have? :angry:

 

I'm not a poker player but wouldn't 95% of all poker players just forget exactly who raised and who called, especially since there were 7 and 5 players at the first rounds?

[jdonn]

what did he have? :angry:

Worse than a full house. :D

 

Ok ok 8-6. Which only goes to show I should never give anyone credit for anything.

 

I still think a "good" player can't have any hand but 6-6 because I "have" to have A-A. But as usual I'm sure I don't know what I'm talking about.

 

I also found out the UTG raiser had K-K. According to him but he was telling the truth and showing hands etc the whole game.

[aguahombre]

One more 4 bucks into this pot seems slightly below the odds of his quads. His position and previous actions are consistent with 66. I call.

[bid_em_up]

I still think a "good" player can't have any hand but 6-6 because I "have" to have A-A. But as usual I'm sure I don't know what I'm talking about.

Just curious, did you have any reason to believe that this person was a "good" player?

[Lobowolf]

There are a couple of possibilities; that he isn't a good player, or that he thinks that you're not a good player. In conjunction, they have to far outweigh the odds that he has the stone nuts. Maybe a third possibility is he thought you might play a straight the same way, and be willing to lay it down for a re-raise; the pot's big enough that he wouldn't have to be right often. I imagine even an idiot knows he can't raise you off a full house, but maybe he thought he could get you off a straight or trips with a bigger kicker.

[jdonn]

Ok so maybe a harder question. What's the worst hand I could have here where you think I should 4 bet? AA? 77? Worse?

[junyi_zhu]

Ok so maybe a harder question. What's the worst hand I could have here where you think I should 4 bet? AA? 77? Worse?

If you read him as a sucker, you should 4 bets with all types of full houses which beats straights and would likely induce a call to your final raise. Anyway, since it's not pl/nl omaha, it's never a shame for top full house to 4 bets against suckers, since the chance for quads are too low and for limit games, people tend to call a final big bet in a huge pot.

[Jlall]

lol you didn't really call did you?

[jjbrr]

Er... I have a suspicion that the average 2/4 limit player is not a thinking player.

 

Ergo I would probably 4-bet A6 and 67 and the hands you mentioned and live with the consequences.

[Jlall]

What is the cap in live poker? Even if it was hypothetically uncapped and you raised and he reraised, you should reraise it again with AA. You burned so many bets in this pot it hurts.

[jdonn]

It's capped at 4, I burned one bet don't have a hernia! :lol:

 

Why so cruel, do you want me to wear a sign that says I'm bad at poker or is posting it on the forums good enough?

[Jlall]

If the opponents are thinking on such a high level, you should not reraise AA preflop, because it turns your hand completely face up to them post flop. If you in general want to have no reraise range at all except for your very best hands, you should not reraise them at all.

 

For this reason in tough high stakes online games, you will pretty much never see a good player reraise his BB vs say an UTG raise. He will want to call pretty wide, and almost never reraise, so rather than turn his hand face up in the name of getting an extra BB in, he will widen his calling range and simply have no reraise range. This is obviously a better system even though in a vacuum you would rather get more money into the pot with AA/KK.

 

For a while there was a fad to basically never 3 bet even in HU from the BB, because standard practice is to bet every flop, so you get the same amount of money in by 3 betting and betting the flop compared to calling and check/raising the flop, and your call check/raise range is now wider and stronger. Of course people should adjust to this strategy by checking behind flops with hands like bottom pair etc.

 

Anyways, the fact that you reraised pre seems to imply that you do NOT think these people are thinking players who will later put you on AA. In live microstakes this is absolutely correct, you should play an exploitable/exploitive style where you reraise in this spot for value 100 %, and never have a bluff range. Of course your range should be super strong in this spot, but the point is they will never pick up on this.

 

So when you later just call this river bet because you don't think he would put in a mere THIRD bet on the river because you KNOW he KNOWS you have AA, you are being inconsistent. Your whole edge is that they cannot read your hand, and that they are basically playing the strength of their own hand (and poorly at that). Any donk is going to go nuts here with 77/A6/76 here and make it a million bets if they can, because their relative hand strength is so good. That is your edge. Your play was incredibly horrible, sorry.

[Jlall]

It's capped at 4, I burned one bet don't have a hernia! :lol:

 

Why so cruel, do you want me to wear a sign that says I'm bad at poker or is posting it on the forums good enough?

umm a 4 bet cap makes your play infinitely worse than if there was a 5 bet cap. With a 5 bet cap if he is going to only 5 bet you with the nuts, and otherwise call your 4 bet (and you will obviously have to call the 5 bet), you need him to not have the nuts 2/3rds of the time (win 1 bet 2/3rds, lose 2 bets 1/3rd).

 

Without the ability to get 5 bet, you simply need him to not have the nuts here 50 %.

 

It is moot since he probably has 66 here <5 % of the time.

[Jlall]

There are:

 

2 combos of A6

6 combos of 76

3 combos of 77

6 combos of 64

1 combo of 66

 

17 boat combos

1 quad combo.

 

Not to mention that there are really random trip combos in his range also.

 

With a 4 bet cap you are betting that he plays 1/17th of his boat combos this way, and all of his quad combos this way, and no random trip combos this way, just to break even!

 

Think about how wrong you were, he actually had 86 and played this way, and as such you burned almost an entire bet in equity trying to make the most heroic play of all time. You have to be beyond damn sure of your read when youre doing something like this, and your only read was "obv he knows I have AA here"

 

I know it's an experience thing, but you are playing against the worst players ever, and they will cap a boat every single time no matter what has happened.

 

edit: oh and I forgot 44, add another 3 combos. You get my point. You need to think of combinations, not just of possible hands, because basically quads never happens compared to the boats, and it's easily to assign it a higher probability than it is if you are not thinking in terms of combinations. It's kind of like thinking of a specific 6-0 break as being as likely as a specific 3-3 break,

[jdonn]

You are giving me too much credit. I didn't reraise preflop because I was operating under some assumption they won't see what I'm up to. I did it because I had a good hand, or strictly speaking I did it to hopefully reduce the amount of players who saw the flop.

 

So the points here for me are they probably aren't thinking, if they are they are probably thinking badly, and (of course) mathematically 6-6 is very unlikely in any case. Got it thx!

[Jlall]

You are giving me too much credit. I didn't reraise preflop because I was operating under some assumption they won't see what I'm up to. I did it because I had a good hand, or strictly speaking I did it to hopefully reduce the amount of players who saw the flop.

Yeah obv but there are already a million people in the pot for 2 bets, and they won't fold. If you think about certain hands and what you'd do with them in this spot, I think you'd realize you would want to call pretty much every single one if you decided to play because you can't thin the field very much at this point (you can get rid of the blinds, maybe). You would need a really premium hand to want to juice the pot some more, like you had.

 

In that case, you are telegraphing your hand if you raise at this point. You could try to balance by raising some other hands in that spot also like 87s or 66, but then you're basically burning money with those hands. You could also try to balance by never reraising in this spot. Or you could simply always call with your 87s and 66 hands, and always raise with your AA/KK/QQ hands, and hope they don't notice.

 

Obviously the latter is correct against these morons, for the sole reason that they don't notice what you do. It's unlikely they remember by the river that you were the one who made it 3. So I totally agree with that, but just follow through on that by remembering that THEY DO NOT KNOW YOU HAVE AA, even though you have made it really obvious.

[karlson]

2/4 limit players live don't think about what you might have, just like bad bridge players don't think about what anyone else has, they just "bid their own hand".

 

I would have 6-bet if possible.

[Lobowolf]

You are giving me too much credit. I didn't reraise preflop because I was operating under some assumption they won't see what I'm up to. I did it because I had a good hand, or strictly speaking I did it to hopefully reduce the amount of players who saw the flop.

 

So the points here for me are they probably aren't thinking, if they are they are probably thinking badly, and (of course) mathematically 6-6 is very unlikely in any case. Got it thx!

I think you're pretty unlikely to thin the field with a raise after everyone but the blinds is already in for 2 bets (unless you get lucky and a blind or, say, UTG re-pops it). The pot odds are just too big. If the initial raiser acted later or (better still) you acted earlier, could be a different story.

 

Aside from any generalizations about $2-$4 Hold'Em players, after seeing an UTG raise and 6 (or so) cold calls, I wouldn't base any plays on the assumption that someone at the table knows what's going on.

[Jlall]

Anyone know what the rake is for live 2/4 limit hold em? I told jdonn I suspected it was so high that the game was unbeatable by even the best player in the world, and I wonder if that's true. The rake + tip can just completely overwhelm even a huge bigbet/100 winrate if it is too high, which it probably is in order for the games to be worth it for a casino to run.

[jdonn]

I'll find out what it is next time I play. I still think it's beatable. FWIW obviously I'm the worst poker player in the universe, and over the first 4 sessions totalling 6 hours I'm up $157. I have no idea what makes a good sample size though. Including probably 40-50 given away in tips as well.

 

About thinning the field, one thing is the blinds did fold (one of them even saying how she really wanted to see the flop) so to some extent it worked. The other is yes I was hoping UTG would 4 bet it, and that might get some people out. But he didn't with K-K so that part was probably mistaken.