In this hand two players limped to me in the big blind when I had 94o and after checking I flopped a two pair and after the flop checked through the turn completed some gutshots and villain donked for about 7x pot and I relucrantly folded my 2 pair Log In · Get into our Poker Games - Replay Poker
Was checking the flop a mistake and what would you have done?
There is never a mistake in folding or checking regardless if you fold the winning hand at least you live for another hand. You have to go on your gut feeling and not playing the same table and seeing several hands and how everyone is playing it is tough to say what I would have done.
Hi. There is a problem with the links to hands. They are routing people to the lobby instead. I can tell you that two pair on a tight board tends to be a death knell. Someone usually has the straight, although it’s a bit less likely when you have 9-4.
I will give 2 answers.
My standard answer for that spot is to value bet that flop. Not too large. 20-25% 33% absolute max depending on your feel of the table/Villains. This is a limp pot and your stacks are crazy deep. Any limp pot needs to hit to win, because anyone could have anything on that board. You have 2-pair so in this case YOU are the one who hit it and you hit it HARD (yess!!!). If you bet large anyone who whiffed is folding and not paying you, so keep the bet small. Look at all the hands that pay you here. 9x, 7x, hearts draw, T8 etc, maybe even 4x. 74 is absolutely paying you! T8 and 86 are also open-ended and will pay you a reasonable price. There is very little that beats you here, say 44, 77. 99 is borderline because it probably bets pre not limp. 97 also beats you, but you also block 99 44 97 so there is very little to worry about. If you get called, bet the turn bigger at least 1/3rd, probably half-pot maybe more to make the draws (hearts, T8, 86 etc) pay pay pay. As played though, folding is an option because he might have one of those hands that beats you, but calling or raising is still okay because a bet that large does scream bluff. The thing is that you are in a difficult spot because you didn’t bet. If you had bet, the chances that he bluffs this go waaay down and then you have an easy fold if he raises. So, yes the mistake here is that you should have value bet 2-pair flop on a limp pot 100%. Live and learn. Myself, I would continue here and going by stacks (26k to 6k) I’d just stack off because I’m probably ahead.
Now I will answer for this particular Villain. Ohh, this is a FUN one! I know him quite well and see him often. He is very aggressive and his favorite thing to do is bluff very large when people check. I can tell you that he is 95% bluffing the absolute hell out of this!! So in this case, knowing that Villain, my play would be to check-call or check-raise him on this flop. We have 2-pair and his bluff frequency is super duper crazy high. Check-call check-raise him 100% and take his money, Cha-ching! Muhahaha!! ; ) This player is probably the most trappable regular player on all of Replay. If you want him to put money in (and with 2-pair on a limp pot we 100% want him to put money in!) is to check it to him. He loooves attacking weakness so show him weakness when you have the goods. There is only one way to play against him and it is quite profitable - tighten up and check-call/check-raise with top-top or better. That flop against that Villain would make me sooooo happy!! I am 100% stacking off with him here.
Log In · Get into our Poker Games - Replay Poker I think this one should work
Thx for the analysis, this was my first time against this villain and the first time I saw this specific play, Looking back checking the flop was a mistake
How?
Either the turn fold was the mistake, or the flop check saved you money. Sure you can probably lead that board, but checking range is fine too, and I can’t see how betting changes the outcome of that hand.
I think on the turn your looking at worse 2 pair trying to protect against the straight often enough that you can call, especially with 4 outs against the nuts and a decent amount of money behind. It will be nuts quite often too though, so it’s close.
I wouldn’t waste any time thinking about the flop either way.
Because it’s a limp pot. Limp pot = capped ranges and everything on that flop hits the capped ranges. If we value bet our super sneaky 2-pair there is potentially quite a bit here that will pay us.
Also, by leading the flop we show strength, and showing strength keeps the bluffs away. Now we might want bluffs in this situation, but Hero was in a tricky spot because of the huge bet. If he leads the flop, Villain isn’t making that crazy huge bet and we avoid the tricky spot.
Now in this case, Hero outstacks Villain 4 to 1, so we can stack off with 2-pair. If Villain is bluffing, he folds, and if he isn’t we have a very fair fight and still have a nice stack if we lose, but most of the time this spot will have comparable stacks and that huge turn bet makes things really sticky. Leading the flop with value keeps that crazy bet away.
Capped is not relevant here. Everyone has the same range, and we’re not really concerned about over pairs anyway. I’m going to assume you mean there’s plenty we can get called by here because everyone has extremely wide ranges. Sure, but a lot of those hands will bet, so XR is always an option.
Stopping the huge bet is basically never a good outcome either. If we know they’re super aggro we should welcome them bluffing, and if they would have only done this with a really strong hand, well now they’re not because we’ve told them we’re going to be putting more money in for them.
Also, if the villain is as aggro as you say, the other problem with leading is that you basically give them a green light to bluff every time you don’t lead.
Sorry, there’s just no way that checking the flop here is a mistake. There’s merit to leading too, but only if you have an extremely well developed leading range that also protects your checking range. There’s just not that much EV in that line though, so isn’t something worth focusing on.
Finally, avoiding tricky spots almost always leads to bad decisions. Tricky spots are fine - it means we can’t actually make big mistakes.
That’s why in my second answer, specific to that player it is 100% check-call or check-raise.
But against normal or unknown player I value bet. We will get lots of worse hands to call.
Yes they are very wide here but also capped, so all that 974 junk even becomes a bit bigger portion of their range, increasing the calls. That is what I meant.
Against that guy that is not much of a problem since I will be playing tight enough that I will see few flops with him, I might get bet off my hand a large percentage of the time, but very few actual amount of times.
Fair enough. I do like it as an exploit against most players. Mostly I was pushing back against the implication - mostly from the OP - that because they lost the pot they should have done something differently on the flop. That I don’t agree with, but if your main motivation is to get more money in against people who will call down with all kinds of speculative hands, I approve of that 100%.