Dealing With Players Who Just Have to See a Flop

Replay Poker Poker Strategy
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There’s a series of off-color (pun intended) jokes that go as follows:

Why are elephants red?
So they can hide in cherry trees.

Why do giraffes have long necks?
So they can eat cherries out of trees.

What’s the loudest noise in the world?
Giraffes eating cherries out of trees.

I bring this up because there have been plenty of times I’ve wanted to trumpet my complete frustration when I’ve camouflaged a monster hand and managed to get an opponent to stick their neck out a long, long way for a nibble, only for them to take a huge bite out of my ba–, I mean stack, by hitting their rags on the flop.

I just engaged in a thread elsewhere about tracking my hands because I seem to be losing an awful lot of the high-percentage variety. Perhaps I didn’t effectively communicate in that thread my awareness of the difference between feeling and believing.

Often, you can’t help feeling something is up with Replay’s random number generator. Believing is another thing entirely. Even though I tracked my hands on a spreadsheet to reassure myself, I’ve never believed Replay manipulates hands. It requires too much effort for a very minimal, if any, return.

No, the exercise was always more about battling my irrationality. Sadly, that battle is ongoing with no end in sight.

I’ve also been in separate discussions about bluffing and mucking hands, and I’m beginning to believe the three interconnect.

If you’re selective in your hands, not playing garbage, paying attention to your position, picking your spots to bluff, and your betting is aggressive albeit considered, usually in line with the blind level and pot, and designed to get you into sizable pots with the best of it, I think it’s fair to say you are a rational player.

The question is, how do opponents view you, especially if you invite a lot of folds and never show? If you typically win showdowns when they occur, some will step lightly around you, giving you a further advantage through increased bluffing opportunities. Others, though, will ramp up their irrational play to counter your rationality. Naturally, their nine-fours and jack-deuces will all too often suck out against your more coordinated and powerful hands.

Those loose opponents want you to tilt. They want you to bet even higher when they’re holding 7-2 on a 9-7-2 flop after you’ve pot-raised your monster pair.

I think the only way to fight this is proactively. Once they’ve hit the flop, there’s no point in trying to intimidate them. Instead, overbet top hands pre-flop, going eight to ten big blinds, or more if necessary, especially in the early rounds, and be happy with taking the blinds and limpers.

The disadvantage is that you’re narrowing your range and limiting your profit on those hands. The advantage is you’re making the donkeys think twice, discouraging their misbehavior, and, most importantly, preserving your sanity.

Thoughts?

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Padded walls are often used in psychiatric facilities and starting to be more common in poker rooms across America,

The soft padding helps prevent injuries from self-harm or accidental collisions with AA’s over KK’s.

These walls create a safer environment for individuals experiencing Severe Poker Distress (SPD) or agitation.

While the image of padded rooms has been sensationalized in popular culture, in reality, they are part of broader efforts to ensure patient/player safety.

For Entertainment Purposes Only!!

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I’ve heard they are also available in clubhouses at private golf clubs.

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How about opening a good range to a normal size? You don’t need to camouflage monsters or megaphone your strong hands and bet people out of the pot pre, just don’t get married to how good or bad your hand was pre and play it on it’s merits post flop.

Why would you bet pot with an overpair here? That’s not necessarily a bad size, but are KTo and pockets 3’s calling pot, or are we just folding out a lot of hands we want to call and just leaving their hands with decent equity?

That sounds like a bad thing to me.

Forget about winning pots and focus on winning chips and you can find victory in defeat (eg by losing less chips than you should when the board runs out against you)

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To answer all your questions in one go, I’m talking about dealing with a bad run in which people are seeing you get run down and blown up more than Wile E Coyote. But even before that becomes evident, your preflop pot bet raise is often going to attract multiple callers on Replay and probably other free poker sites, which is marginally acceptable (though not desirable) if you’re betting the lesser broadway hands, numbered pocket pairs, or suited connectors, but never when you want to isolate your monster against one opponent. The purpose of a preflop raise is to clear out the garbage hands. The purpose of a pot bet on the flop is to price out the players on draws. Both are also designed to reduce your opponent’s possible range. So, yes, discourage the call all the time mentality, because no one is going to survive long when they’re up against two, three, or four opponents every hand.

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All of these are bad outcomes.

If surviving a long time was the goal, just fold every hand.

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You know I meant routinely playing against multiple opponents is a recipe to bust out. You have to isolate your opponent.

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And after all that stress, I just won a tournament by sucking out a set of sixes on the river against an ace with a middle kicker that hit the flop for top pair.

In my defence, when I have a large chip advantage H2H, of course I’m going to call an all-in bet on the flop with a pair (and to be fair, I had the best hand, as you should, when the money went in).

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If a play is bad, doing it routinely doesn’t make it better - although really it’s the though process here that is flawed, not the actions taken.

Firstly, who said you have to isolate your opponent? That’s often just wrong. There are times you want to try and isolate a specific opponent, but there are also times when you want to invite many people into the pot. Until you develop a more logical thought process you should ignore all of that.

It’s also generally futile anyway. Unless you know that specific opponents are very tight preflop and others are very loose, there won’t be a size that consistently gets one caller. Usually multiple people will call or no-one will.

Ironically, using large size pre and on the flop is probably ok here, but it’s because people will call with hands there not supposed to, not because they’re folding significant equity. The problem is that if you get here via faulty reasoning, then your likely to be way off with how you range your opponents.

Congrats on the win though!

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Thank you, but what? The only time you want to invite many people into the pot is when you’ve flopped the stone-cold nuts. Otherwise, you’re vulnerable to all sorts of outs from all sorts of players. There are times I’m happy to join (or even start) the parade when I have a hand with solid straight and flush opportunites, but if I hit the board in a big way by flopping a made hand or a straight/flush draw with 15 outs, I’m not encouraging people to stick around. If they want to call me down, fine, but I won’t be happy until they miss the turn and river.

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hi all… pocket A-A or pocket K-K … is a good hand to slow play early in a game w/ small blinds… but dont slow play it late in a game w/ big blinds…

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You’ll lose the hand more often, but the pot is bigger, and you only have the same amount invested. Your odds of winning don’t drop anywhere near as fast as the pot grows (as long as your not just limping in, betting too small, etc).

If you have a very strong hand, your primary concern should be figuring out how to get the chips that hand is worth into the pot.

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We never have a very strong hand pre. The best that we have pre is a pair. So we don’t get it all in pre, we get it all in post when we hit hard.

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Actually it’s the opposite. Play those strong when deep and trap when Villains are short.

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Sure we do. It’s always relative hand strength that matters. Aces preflop is the nuts and we should want to get all the money in.
You don’t get bonus points for winning a hand with boat compared to winning with a pair, and there are plenty of situations where a pair is definitely good enough to play for stacks.

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No. And all of the low stakes poker coaches agree with what I say. Pre-flop we need to thin the herd. AA is not nuts. It loses to tons of stuff. It’s just a pair. If we end up 4 handed or 5 handed or more on the flop, odds are actually against us having the best hand at showdown. The number 1 reason BY FAR that we lose with AA is because we’re letting too many Villains see the flop with us. ALL of the low stakes coaches preach this. Raise pre to thin the herd.

If we flop an A, THEN we get it in. But if we whiff, 3-way odds are in our favor that no one has 2-pair or better by the river, 4-way odds are dicey, slightly against us, 5-way odds are very much against us holding up, and AA has poor equity (2 outs and the most blocked card).

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AA is the nuts pre, if it’s not, what hand is better?
If you follow your logic through, why would you get it in on the flop with just top set? Someone can always make a flush or quads.

EV of open raising AA and getting one caller: ~10bb
EV of going all in (100bb) with AA and getting 5 callers: 188bb

Of course that doesn’t mean we should open shove aces, but if we thought everyone would call then we should.
In practice, betting a larger size and getting one or two callers will often be higher EV than betting small and having most people call - but it’s the EV that matters. The blinkered focus on thinning the heard is prioritizing the least important part of that equation.

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There are no nuts pre. A set on the flop is MUCH tougher to beat with only 2 cards to come than top pair pre with 5 cards to come. I shouldn’t have to tell you that. On the vast majority of hands the flop changes the hand more than any other street, so my logic is just fine. ; )

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Your comparing the wrong thing. You have to compare the equity against hands willing to stack off pre to those willing to stack off on the flop. On the flop, it’s mostly going to be flush and oesd draws, which have more equity against top set than any hand has against aces pre.

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Then why do we lose more often than win and more chips (ev) when we stack off pre 4-way and 5-way than we do 3-way and heads-up? Stats prove this. This is what you advocate, 8 callers all-in to our AA is best. No, this is bad for EV.