KNOW YOUR IMAGE

:joy:

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You are correct @puggywug, you would be better off if you didn’t play 63s or 54o.

Hahaha, zing!

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I thought you said he was tight. Might have to reread that, but I wouldn’t consider anyone who plays 8-3 a tight player.

I understood that you were talking about your opponent’s shove, and how terrible it was, because of his only getting called by a better hand here. I think that went over everyone else’s heads, so thought I’d mention it here. In that light, it’s not really a bad example of table image and how it impacts play. Other examples can be made where hero doesn’t have it so easy, but still, this works as an example of what not to do.

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I said he was TAG tight aggressive, he’s not horrible and he isn’t folding 54o in the bb when it’s 200 bb’s deep and he has to call 150 to win 400. I wouldn’t do it, but I’m not tight aggressive, I’d be mostly folding but sometimes 3! in his spot but by tight aggressive I mean he 3!’s a more leaner range. Suited broadways and big pairs mostly.
And he plays super aggressive when he has the lead but will play along with spec hands until gets there if deep enough with implied odds and such.

image

There’s a few possibilities when someone says they don’t understand:

  1. They’re not understanding because they lack sufficient intelligence, experience, or whatever.
  2. The explainer hasn’t explained adequately.
  3. They’re smarter than the explainer who doesn’t see what’s wrong with the explanation, and sees rightly that the explanation doesn’t make sense.

I’m going to guess 2, here.

But I’ll go ahead and take a stab at it.

Raising with 63s, either you’re taking the blinds, or you’re seeing a flop. You’ve got a pretty good chance of either. If you get the fold, you make 1.5BB for a 2.5BB risk, which by itself isn’t great, but if this move works 2/3 of the time, you’re profiting.

But also, you can show your weak cards and maybe it’ll give your opponents an image of you as a risk taker who’s very loose in late position, making your “real” hands in late position that much more profitable.

If you see the flop, you can probably expect to dump most of the time, and hey it’s only 2.5 BB. You might try a c-bet bluff if the flop misses your opponent’s range, and if so maybe you’ll get the hand that way.

Or, you might actually flop something, as you did here, in which case you can play the hand out and make an even better profit, with the advantage of showing some ridiculous cards at the end to show your opponent that you really could have anything at any time, and that you can win with garbage. Psychologically, this can make your opponents dread getting into a hand with you.

And all it costs if you’re wrong is a tiny piece of your deep stack.

Conventionally you do want to make +EV decisions most of the time, but once in a while it may not be such a bad thing to risk a little and make what seems like a bad play, with some thought behind it, in order to cultivate an image that will be helpful in getting your opponents to bet into you, and to call your bets. If they think you’re only playing QQ+ AK, of course they’re never going to call when you open a hand, and you’re not going to win much that way, especially since you’ll hardly ever be entering into a hand.

Or is there more to it than that?

You may indeed be correct in assuming that I’m am not teaching well. I am not a teacher and some things that I just pick up on intuitively I may have a harder time explaining. All I can tell you is that when you’re playing poker at 200 bb’s deep with only 4 other players at the table your abilities to hand read and exploit opponents become much more important than the actual cards you hold. Your ranges should widen considerably as should your opponents. When they’re not adjusting well enough then you can adjust more and should to take advantage of them. Now if I was at a 5 handed table with better players I may indeed let 63 go some of the time but it would be in my opening sometimes as part of a mixed strategy. That being said 63s in position is always going to be an open for me, not because of the added value it gets from being able to make a flush, but because of it’s playability post flop as it can flop and turn well enough to continue much more often than 63o.

This isn’t about the hand 63s, it’s about playing opponents where I feel like in position I am profitable with any two cards because they are so readable and face up. @1Warlock, @love2eattacos, @WannabeCoder maybe can articulate this better than I can. My bad @puggywug, I wish I could help you more. Maybe I’m just tired and not all there mentally. I have worked 90 hours in the last 6 days and am feeling pretty burnt out. 4 more days and I get back to normal. Cheers.

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6 back to back 15-hour shifts will kill you. Get some sleep and some exercise.

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Some brief thoughts on opening 63s (and small suited connectors in general)

  1. Stack depth makes a huge difference. Small suited connectors become more playable as you get deeper because the implied odds are so large.
  2. It also makes a big difference that dayman is open-raising not open-limping.
  3. If the players behind you are aggressive (meaning specifically that they are likely to 3bet you often) then 63s becomes a fold.
  4. On the other hand if the players behind are too tight then virtually any two cards become playable because you’re in position and can take pots down with aggression on later streets.
  5. In general from the cutoff you should be open raising pretty wide (like a 30% range) if it folds around to you.
  6. 63s is fine to open-raise here but things like 83s or J3s are still a fold. That ability to make a straight makes the difference.
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This is a serious request

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  1. Can you explain that more? How/why does stack depth make these hands viable? Because you can throw away the hand if it doesn’t hit, and you’re not too badly hurt?
  2. Of course.
  3. Makes sense, but then I’m already thinking this is a fold, so not surprising that I would agree; I don’t feel I’m agreeing with understanding here, other than of course you don’t want to call a raise with 63s.
  4. Sure. I’ve found this to be true myself when short-handed, and shallow stacked at the end of a tournament where players are playing super tight trying to hold on to survive the bubble. (Or, rather, when I’m deep stacked, but the player I’m betting is short stacked. I consider these plays blind steals, though. I’m not trying to get them to call me… I’m bullying.) But… this isn’t that sort of situation, so, I’m not sure why these players are tight enough to reliably fold often enough to the small raise here. Maybe that’s just a matter of knowing those players, if so OK; if not what else is there that I’m missing?
  5. That seems reasonable.
  6. Makes sense.

Thanks:)

I.m just wondering why the down bet on the flop? If he thinks you are too aggro, he expects a standard c-bet a high percentage of the time. No need to down bet there, you’re just giving away information.

Anyway, it was a classic “dying swan” line, and a fella should appreciate that. Each bet so feeble, so lacking in confidence that you couldn’t possibly have anything. The desperation over bet on the river sold the whole performance, of course you’re always bluffing there! Lines like this is where poker becomes art.

Attacking blinds that fold too much isn’t exclusive to ring games. It’s probably more important in tournaments, where there are often antes too. This hand is complicated a little by the 2 guys in between our Hero and Victim, errr Villain. The button should be playing back at you fairly often, but if they’re mostly folding, you should open almost everything. Why not?

Just look at what happens when you get the BB isolated. Let’s say you go crazy and don’t bother to look at your cards and open 100% of the time. If he’s gonna fold 70% of the time, who needs cards? If we do this 100 times, we pick up his 70 BBs, plus the 70 SBs, which is 105 BBs, plus any antes! Now all we have to do is lose less than that on the remaining 30 hands where he calls.

So you pretty much know what kinds of hands he’s calling with, so you c-bet all of the hands that probably missed him, and probably win 70% of those too. Of course, you c-bet when you flop a beast too, which is why I was curios about the down bet. I know, art. I get it.

So the 30% they call on the flop narrows their range further, so now we know what they have pretty close. Knowing your opponent’s game means you know what their checks, bets, raises mean. Even among the 30% of his hands that calls the flop, you aren’t usually more than a 2-1 dog overall, so you will win 1/3rd of those too, and will probably get paid big on most of them. The ones you lose don’t cost you much, because you know when to get out of the way.

So you lose less on those hands you lose and win more on the hands you win.

If you only break even, or even lose a little, on the hands he calls the flop, you’re still a kazillian BBs ahead from all those times he folded, so who cares?

Pug, think about this: Bets make a statement, lines tell a story.

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What you’re saying suggests that it is largely about blind stealing, which when I asked that, dayman denied. He said he was trying to build pots and win hands.

The rest of what you elaborated on is basically what I was saying in one of my comments above, when I said “if it works 2/3 of the time, you’re profiting”.

I know every bet says something, but what are they saying? Sometimes, I have a clue…

Pug, that’s a smaller part of it. The main reason is that you can win a huge pot in situations like this one. It changes the risk/reward ratio.

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Thanks, that makes sense; the other side of the coin.

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With a hand like 63s, you are pretty much trying to make a straight or flush by the river, or to take the pot down with aggression. You’re very unlikely to make that type of big hand, so you need to get paid BIG when you do.

Simplifying the math a bit just to make the point clearer: If you raise to 3BB and you’re 30BB deep then you can only win a maximum of 10 to 1 (30 to 3) when you do hit and get the chips in. But you’re going to hit big much less than 1 time in 10. So you’re not going to make a hand and get paid often enough to make it worth playing this type of speculative starting hand.

On the other hand if you’re 300BB deep then you can make 100:1 when you do make a big hand. It’s that occasional opportunity to win an absolute monster pot that makes the difference.

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That depends on who is saying it. When an aggro player downbets, there’s a good chance he wants you to stick around. When a tight trappy player calls your turn downbet, it means you start thinking stacks, not pots, and think he might be thinking that too.

I am at the moment in the midst of another 15-18 hour day, this two week swing needs to end. :joy: But hey, work = money right.

I would love to answer this @JuiceeLoot, I’ll try and get to it this evening but in all honesty it may well be tomorrow or the next day. I’m having trouble just working in showers and sleep. I would want have time to give a well thought out reply.

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At this table I am opening so much that I do need to c betting a ton. These flop down bets give my “bluffs” a much better price this more opportunity for success. I think @love2eattacos is the only who had played at the tables with me in a somewhat frequent basis and I’m sure he can attest to the fact that I use this down be my on flops a lot and anyone pay half attention sees it to. With these guys and players on Replay in general I’m not ever so much concerned with balance as I am exploit, but when it comes to this open/c-bet frequency even the most unaware players can see that I’m down betting flops with 85% of my range. I do go bigger in certain situations or vs certain opponents but there is a lot to that, maybe for another post.

In this spot the BTN was very weak and 3! zero. I iso raise the BB to play HU. He was the only one of the 5 at the table capable of ever 3!. Besides giving me more opportunities to bluff because the price I give myself, down betting also allows me to keep V’s range wide. For this bet size he’s calling all his broadway over cards and I really want him to make a pair.

This is true. Attacking blinds and antes are a much bigger deal in tournaments. Like I stated in another reply, I’m not playing to steal blinds. I want the BB to call because I want to play pots in position with him because we’re so deep. A lot of people have it backwards, they think tournament play requires you to be tight and survive but you can play more aggressive in cash games. In fact it’s really the exact opposite, you HAVE to be aggressively attacking weak players and blinds and antes in tournament poker. You can and should be more selective in cash games because the blinds don’t increase and the game never ends.

+1 I love everything about this line. You have a way with words @SunPowerGuru that I really appreciate. Cheers

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I feel like 52s and 74s are getting underrated here.
If played with extreme skill, they can also lead to full houses.

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