Hand Lesson - Playing Middle Pair against the preflop raiser

I'm gonna start posting some strategy hands on my blog.

Hand of the day

Lesson: Valuebet Sizing

Difficulty: Low
Applicable: Often
History: None

$1/$2 No Limit Hold'em on Cake Poker.

Seville (6-Max) 11475 -- $1/$2 NL Hold'em -- 2011/09/19 - 03:08:03

Seat 3: tele***3 ($249.81 in chips) DEALER

Seat 8: itsa***8 ($147.24 in chips)

Seat 9: Leviathan101 ($200 in chips)

itsa***8: posts small blind $1

Leviathan101: posts big blind $2

Dealt to Leviathan101 [ Ts Ac ]

tele***3: raises to $6

itsa***8: folds

Leviathan101: calls $4

*** FLOP *** [Tc Jd 2d]

Leviathan101: checks

tele***3: checks

*** TURN *** [5s]

Leviathan101: bets $10

tele***3: calls $10

*** RIVER *** [Jh]

Leviathan101: bets $30

tele***3: calls $30

***SHOW DOWN***

Leviathan101: shows [Ts Ac]

tele***3: mucks

Leviathan101 wins $92 with Two Pairs Jacks and Tens

tele***3: mucks [Qh Ad]

Explanation:

Preflop: Facing a button open, you generally should not be folding ATo in the big blind. This hand is very far ahead of his raising range, and will be infrequently dominated allowing you to play for your fairly strongly when you flop top pair. You will sometimes have to consider playing Ace high unimproved on certain flops that are unlikely to have hit either player, such as a 773 flop. I prefer calling to 3betting preflop, because I think a reraise will likely fold out a lot of his dominated holdings like T8o, and A4o. Also we don't know yet how he responds to a 3bet making it more difficult to play correctly after the flop and in response to a 4bet.

Flop: We flop a medium strength holding. On this flop I think I am generally willing to get 1 to 2 bets throughout the course of the hand if nothing changes. If three bets go into this pot, I will likely be beaten. In order to prevent three bets from going into this pot, I will check and call a normal sized bet. If he does something unusual like bet extremely large, I may fold the flop. I will never check raise my hand, because I think that will overplaying my hand, and reducing my hands value to something close to a bluff. There is some merit to raising if you think he has a draw, but at the current point in the hand it is impossible to distinguish his exact holdings.

Turn: When he checks behind the flop, I think his most likely holding is a medium strength showdown hand (like 77) or a marginal draw he would prefer to take a free card to potentially make a strong hand (Like 79). I think he will usually bet his stronger draws and stronger pairs, meaning hands like Jx and KQ, K9 and flush draws. He may check a hand like AQ or AK which has both the qualities of a strong draw, and a medium showdown strength. My bet size is designed to extract a large amount of value on both the turn and good rivers. The current pot size is about $12.5 ($13 minus the rake), I bet $10, a largish bet designed to allow me to get additional value on the turn. I feel like when people check behind the flop with a showdown oriented hand, they are generally insensitive to the bet size. They will both call a large and small bet especially with no history, so bet larger. If I get raised, I'll deal with it when it comes, but I'm probably going to fold.

River: The Jack on the river is obviously a great card for me. It reduces the already low chance he has a Jack and he has less reason to believe I have a value hand. On this river card, I am going to bet large for value. I think if he has a showdown oriented hand, he will likely call a very large bet on the river. That said I don't want to overbet because I don't know how he will respond to an overbet. So I bet almost pot and get called by AQ. If I get raised on the river, I will have to evaluate, but I will likely fold, assuming he checked back a weak jack on the flop.

Bryce
I'll see you across the felt.