Solid vid Ryan. A few thoughts and questions: the very first hand you suggest to 4bet (shove?) AJs if his 3bet was bigger. Obviously against this better villain we never get called with worse. Are the times we are taking down the pot without seeing the flop compensation enough for the times we get called and are (sometimes far) behind? Is it such a big difference wether the pot is $160 or $180-$200? Without any info about the opponent I like the flat better. We are in position and dominate quite a bit of his 3betting range.
At 14:50 hero folds to Villain's checkraise with 44 on a 932xxx flop. Against this Villain I definitely don't fold. I also don't want to see any turncard which rules out flatting. Your minraise idea gives Villain enough room to 5bet shove air or to flat hands like A5, A4 or overcards. On a dangerous looking turn (which is basically every card for us) he could potsize-shove and force us to fold the better hand. Hence I'd prefer to maximize our fold equity and 4bet-overshove the flop and take down the $420 most of the time. Or is the risk-reward- ratio too bad?
At 26:29 you suggest to reshove AQo rather than 3betting to $350 because it would to tough to play postflop. I think in this case Hero was setting up a go n' go, he could shove any flop with a PSB if called. Still I would reshove since it might look weaker to this Villain. I don't think he would ever flat a third of his stack hoping to hit.

Thanx, Martin

Hi Martin,

Very good comments.

My AJs might be a little bit too liberal with a shove.  However, I really dislike flat calling 3-bets vs unknowns.  People play so different in 3-bet pots and that has a huge impact on how I will play a hand, if my bet in a certain spot is pure spew or gold, if check raising certain textures is great or terrible, etc.  I really hate to leave myself in those spots, when fast playing a hand like AK or AQ is clearly correct.  I don't think AJs is that far off and is probably a profitable 4-bet/shove against a majority of players that 3-bet you on the first hand.

However, with a smaller 3-bet, we're playing a smaller pot, we're picking up less chips when they fold to our 4-bet, so it really becomes a clear call in my mind as the sizing becomes smaller (smaller sizes are probably stronger hands on average, though I wouldn't overweight this at all, a lot of guys use small 3-bets for all of their range).

About the 44 hand:  With the stack sizes this way, making a small 3-bet to 440 or so puts the remaining effective stacks 710 chips.  The pot is then 1k.  I'm not too worried about him 3 or 6 outing us in that case, his flop call is terrible if he's floating us with 6 outs, he's almost never seeing a river since we're in position.  If we think he shoves A5 or A4 there, as well as some other random weakish stuff (maybe overs once in awhile) plus weaker pairs, then we can just call his shove there.  But the way RT had played so far, combined with this villain looking super polarizing on his flop check raise, made me feel like a small 3-bet might be great here, perhaps a flat call and call turn shove as well (really, other than 9x, what is this villain shoving the turn with that we don't beat?).  We also have position on him, which is very important on the turn.

The AQ hand, a go and go is fine, but I usually want to see a loose calling 3bet opponent that plays too much fit or fold postflop (or is slightly weak say) to make that decision over a shove.

Hi Ryan,

thanx for the promt and detailed response. Your reasoning makes a lot of sense. ABout the 44 hand: if this Villain 5bet-shoves your min 4bet, will you call or fold?

Thanx Martin

It boils down to whether or not I think he's shoving wider.

If I'm 3-betting that flop, odds are I'm folding to a shove and respecting his play.  If I think he's gotten out of line and can bluff/semi bluff there, then I probably don't 3-bet to begin with, but may still (read would have to be fairly precise).

It's tough to say, because as I said in the video, I'd of played back at this guy in several spots previously and I'd likely have a much better idea of how he plays in that spot.  I feel like he'd get spewy if played back on, at least spewy enough to small 3-bet call in the 44 hand.

If you need a more precise answer, let me know, I'll look back at it more thoroughly but that may be as in depth as I can confidently say given the flow of that match.

Hi Ryan,

A question about the T8c hand at 7 mins... I agree with your reasoning regarding it being not a good hand to 3bet with as you will be dominated by the majority of hands he calls with.

In saying that, would you 3bet this for balance if the opponent was someone you play on a semi regular basis or someone that had some knowledge of your game? Or at this level ($55) would it be better just to play standard OOP because:
A) These spots don't come up often enough to worry about?
or
B) If you are a winning player the chances of you playing someone alot (before moving up stakes) are slim?

Thanks!

Hi,

Not a bad question at all.

I'll say first that I would still 3-bet T8 in hindsight even if the player were only calling with strong hands if: He was opening wide, AKA folding way too many hands to a shove.

Now, I don't think that was going on in this video, so T8 probably wasn't a good shove.

To directly answer your question, I think for the reasons you give I wouldn't even consider making a -EV play for future play purposes.

Even if I knew I was playing him, I think that even doing donkish stuff from time to time isn't that beneficial.  Too many good/regular players will just quit you if you're beating them, and if they are winning they are just as likely to keep giving you action regardless if you look fishy or not (when people are winning they think they are playing a winning style, when people are losing they may think you are just getting lucky, but they are less likely to keep playing after a certain period of time).

So all in all, no, I wouldn't make a play I thought was -EV, even if the guy had the potential to keep playing me again and again.

Thanks Ryan everything you said makes perfect sense. I think the word balance is also thrown around too much and is probably mis-applied even more.