Limit hold'em 8/16 (1 Viewer)

[DrStrange]

It has been a long, long time since I played casino limit poker. And never at a 8/16 table. even so . . .

The two questions I have are: 1) what hands that hero beats will call a single $16? 2) does hero fold to a raise?

We started with ~$185 in the pot. Three way action, Hero acts second.

My line is bet $16 and call a single raise. Casino villains are often amazing calling stations. The odds for calling a bet are huge - call $16 to win $217. I can imagine some villains calling with top pair.

If Hero gets raised, it certainly is a bad omen. But the risk of being bluffed is and order of magnitude worse than the risk of paying off a value bet. Hero is getting something like 15-1 I can't fold that to an unknown.

I expect the chance of Hero getting a call on his value bet is somewhat better than losing at showdown plus the extra cost of getting raised. This is no slam dunk, but I think it is marginally profitable. And in a limit game, marginally profitable decisions are basically Hero's entire win rate.

 

[Gobbs]

Nothing new to add. Good cases made for betting and check-calling. I’m leaning towards a bet here but I have a feeling you’re beat (call it the quiz factor).

 

[RainmanTrail]

You guys are way overthinking this river spot. Limit players are going to pay hero off with a pretty wide range on this river. The hand that some are worried about, 78dd, is one of the least likely hands for any opponent to be holding at this point. Anyone with 78dd is going to war on the turn in LHE. They're not just calling a raise, they're 3betting and often capping with that. Hero should also have a fairly wide range of holdings here as played. So many combo draws and top pair holdings could have (and should have) played the hand this way. A good limit player is a semi bluff betting machine. He's for sure getting called by any top pair, any two pair, any set, any smaller straight, and will even get looked up here by the occasional busted heart draw looking to pick off a bluff with something like A9hh if the action folds around to them. This isn't NL Holdem. Hell, you're even likely to get looked up by a weak player that called with 77 or 88 on the turn after picking up a gutshot.

 

[RainmanTrail]

If you guys want to improve your limit Holdem skills, the best book I've ever read on the subject is from a guy named Nick "stoxtrader" Grudzien titled "winning in tough limit Holdem games". He was one of the best limit players in the world in the 2000s. He destroyed mid and high stakes LHE online and live. He won a few million in the toughest LHE games online. He also got very greedy and started cheating later in his career by playing two seats at once on the same tables online, but that's just a distraction from his skill. Don't let that fool you (remember Justin Bonomo did the same, and he's the all time winningest player in history). The Amazon reviews are mixed for his book, but that's because the players reading them weren't good enough to appreciate what they were reading. It might be the best poker book I've ever read.

 

[JustinInMN]

you usually want to pay them off with a hand this strong unless it's maybe it's OMC and you know he never raises without it. Bet this river 100% of the time though. Anything else is a major leak.

What about in this spot? It's actually terrible luck for the hero, but this is a hand that he could be going up against. I would never expect someone to stay in for a runner runner flush draw

So unfortunately, this is the reason I decided to share this hand. On with the story.

Hero checks, Button checks.

Big blind shows
Hero Tables the straight
Button mucks.

After thinking about it, I immediately had doubts as to whether this caution was really weakness. (Yes, I am hero in this case.) But I wasn't sure whether or not I was being results oriented by doubting the check.

So my short analysis in the moment went like this. What on earth is button calling two cold with that isn't a flush draw? And recalling the flop action I felt that the backdoor is more likely than it would be had the button called a bet on the flop. (So I also wanted to reassess that decision to check as well.)

But I think that was one of my errors, after the fact and considering the pf action, the question became, how many diamond combinations can I really give the button? The and are accounted for and it's unlikely he holds the considering he checked the flop with the green light in position. started making sense for the sickness @shorticus brought up. But I think button would have probably 3-bet that on the turn to try and get full payment from the heart draw or take full advantage of a freeroll from most all the other KJ combos (though the one combo of is essentially the same draw if I had that from button's perspective.) So I think I am really down to assuming button is not 3-betting that pre, , , , maybe , maybe , and maybe . But even those smaller combos are tough to call two cold without drawing to the nuts, but if he can have those, he can have many more of those type of combos in hearts involving the and as I said before those ranks are accounted for in the diamonds. So my rush calculation so assume heart and diamond draws are about as likely appears flawed. In my opinon (after the fact of course) the error was more because I didn't consider the texture of the board, not as much about which flush draw is the backdoor one.

Given the button villain mucked without saying much, I assume I didn't crack any hand of great value, I think chances are it was missed hearts.

The other obvious mistake is that the big blind almost never has a flush unless he somehow checked a combo draw on the flop, or decided to just donk a bare flush draw into six players on the turn. I was a little surprised to see a queen in his hand, but sometimes I make a similar play with suspect top pair hands in bad position. Check planning to call the flop unless the action goes nuts (then take the cheap escape) and lead on safeish turns (if he was making this play he'd probably consider anything not a heart and not an ace or king a safer turn bet). This is a hand this villian might fold, but probably has to call because of the price if button folds. Bottom line, he most likely has a one- or two-pair type of hand (maybe even three sixes), and is a prisoner of the pot size. He probably has to call with most everything @BGinGA listed above.

If I had bet the river I am surely calling button if he raises. I would probably assess I can take this line with a hand as weak as T9s, if I have a bet-fold on this river at this pot size that's probably the hand to do it with. The k-hi straight is no where near the bottom of my range here. (On an aside, the K-hi straight would not be the top either because I can surely have at least the myself as flushes go, maybe I can get here with some of the -xd hands I could give button as well.)

So I really wanted to assess river better. I think I let myself get too tunneled by button's cold call on the turn. Assuming it's a flush draw is probably correct, but I should have thought harder about how many diamonds there really are, even with the free turn card. And I know enough that I am going to get heroed so wide by the big blind unless button springs into action, so I think I probably left a call on the table, sadly.

But those are my final thoughts from the story. But I am glad to continue to the discussion if there is more to say from anyone else .

 

[BGinGA]

A good limit player is a semi bluff betting machine.

shhhhhh......