$530 NLHE MTT Deep Stacked: This LAG owned me! How should I have played him differently?

[Jacki Burkhart]

$530 NLHE MTT Deep Stacked: This LAG owned me! How should I have played him differently?

This is a live MTT tourney with about 365 starting players. I'm at a pretty tough table. As such, I've got a very tight image, the only hand I've showed down is TPTK to win a medium pot. I am in seat 4 and haven't gotten to play too many hands mostly due to having very good players to my left, and seat 1 to my right who I'll describe below:

Seat 1 younger asian LAG. after a while I picked up that he min raises with a wide range (40%) but he only 3x raises or 3 bets with a real top 5% hand. there were a few exceptions but he played A LOT of hands and generally played them pretty well. He would fold preflop a decent amount of the time to a 3 bet if he min raised, but if he 3x raised he was prepared to be all in preflop or on the flop. Bascially, for him a min raise was like a limp and so it became like a limp for our whole table because he played so many pots.

Hand #1

We've been playing a while and Mr. Min Raise seat 1 guy is raising 3 or 4 hands every orbit and I decide I've now got a pretty good line on his play, I've got position on him and I should use it! He usually folds to a 3 bet anyways... I've got most of a starting stack ~9,600 and he has about 12,000.

Blinds are 100/200

He raises to 225 again from UTG+1 and I reraise to 650 with Js8s (yeah....light, I know. He's supposed to fold! and when he doesn'tfold at least I have position!!!).

Ok, so this time he flats and we are heads up to a flop with a pot of 1,450.

Flop comes Ts7c6d:

Mr. min raise bets out 800

OK, I've got a gutshot, an over and a backdoor flush draw. and most importantly I have a tight image and position and he has been raising 30-40% of hands. I raise to 2,100, representing the overpair.

He tanks for 60-90 seconds then reraises me to 4,800.

I tank, while knowing I'm going to fold the whole time. he pretty much has to put me on the overpair, and thinks he is good. Then I fold.

blah

Meanwhile, back at the bat cave....

OK....quite a bit of time goes by and I'm just carefully watching my table. I win a small pot vs. Mr. Min Raise when he opens, one guy flats and I have KK and I reraise to 6x the BB. They both fold, zippity freaking doo dah!

Later, I take out a short stack with AQ in my BB vs A4. That helped.

Hand #2

Now we are in the next round (1 hour rounds) which is 100/200/25.
I'm up to about 13,500. Mr. Min raise has about 15,000.

OK, now seat 1 min raises again, Mr. Seat 2 who loves to call Mr. Seat 1 just flat calls and I look down at AK offsuit in mid position.

I raise it up to 2,000

Mr. Seat 1 tanks. looks like he might fold then flats (WTF?? He always folds his min raises to a 3 bet, except apparently against me!)

Seat 2 folds.

Flop comes 974 rainbow. Pot contains 4,700

He checks I check. (Why did I check? I don't know. he seemed strong to me. I have NO freaking clue what I put him on. I kind of put him on AQ, AJ or maybe KQ but mostly he is hard for me to put a range on since he plays so many hands).

Turn is a blank small card. He checks, I check. Why did I check? I don't know...I guess weak poor play is habit forming...

River is another blank card I cannot remember the exact board except it was 9 high and no flushes.....so basically like all medium cards have a strong hand now. Problem is, I don't put him on medium cards. I think I put him on 2 big cards just like me.

So, now that I've checked to him twice he bets out 3,500 into 4,700. Since I have no idea where I stand, and I have Ace High and I have a vague idea he might have a worse hand than me, I decide to just HE-HAW call that river bet and he turns over TT. :banghead: I can't believe there isn't a donkey emoticon! ??)

well....the bright side is I didn't have to show...on the other hand what hand could I possibly call with that doesn't beat TT and isn't a total embarassment?


I know I horribly misplayed this hand. It is really embarassing because I am a much better player than this.

anyways, how would YOU play it?

 

[AlfieAA]

hand 1 ...were you UTG+2...if so then this is prob a fold especially with all the action still to go behind you...
not really a spot to be stealing 225 chips i dont think....as played i would bet/fold the flop....has alot of small/medium pp's
in his 3bet calling range...​

 

[AlfieAA]

hand 2....pretty same as the first one...bet/fold the flop...
checking is quite weak here since you are the preflop aggressor and you need
to keep the story going...if he reraises you otf then you can get away and if he calls
you can re-evaluate and check/fold the turn imo

 

[Jacki Burkhart]

Hand #1: no I am 3 to his left so I am the Hi-jack/late mid position.

I was willing to pick up the 225+300=525, but mostly I was trying to play a pot in position vs a guy who opens waaaaay too often with what I thought would be a well disguised hand if it hit and I thought I could outplay him if it didn't hit (wrong! that was before I learned he was better than I gave him credit for).

good insight, thanks for humoring me.

yeah....hand #2 made me want to puke then hide in a hole...luckily break was like 3 minutes later so I was able to regroup. I don't know what I was thinking. I should Cbet here and then fold to his inevitable re-raise. would have been cheaper too....

edit: actually, I should raise less preflop, more like 1,300 then that makes a Cbet more affordable for my stack and the ENTIRE hand would be cheaper....

 

[AlfieAA]

Hand #1: no I am 3 to his left so I am the Hi-jack/late mid position.

I was willing to pick up the 225+300=525, but mostly I was trying to play a pot in position vs a guy who opens waaaaay too often with what I thought would be a well disguised hand if it hit and I thought I could outplay him if it didn't hit (wrong! that was before I learned he was better than I gave him credit for).

good insight, thanks for humoring me.

yeah....hand #2 made me want to puke then hide in a hole...luckily break was like 3 minutes later so I was able to regroup. I don't know what I was thinking. I should Cbet here and then fold to his inevitable re-raise. would have been cheaper too....

edit: actually, I should raise less preflop, more like 1,300 then that makes a Cbet more affordable for my stack and the ENTIRE hand would be cheaper....

ah right ok, the raise from the HJ makes more sense....although when he flats your 3bet like that you have to put him on a different range from his limp range....maybe just limping yourself in that spot to see a cheap flop and play him in position and hopefully hitting a good flop would have been better...coz no doubt this guy is a station so let him hang himself instead of you forcing the action....

hand 2....deffo raise with AK pre, cant be limping unlike the opportunity with hand 1....and yeah cbet and fold to a reraise...i dont think you want to lower your raise amount pre with AK or for against this mr limp guy....coz if you hit the flop then you can stack the guy and get it in....and if you miss you can take the stab for info...a couple of chips here or there aint gonna make much difference i dont think, plus other people will pick up on betting tells....i doubt mr limper would though lol

 

[duggs]

hand 1, calling pre would be fine, never ever doing anything other than folding on the flop to his lead tho.

hand 2 im checking down and folding to his river bet.

 

[pistolpetewags11]

Hand 1: He leads out, he has a wide range of hands, you have a very good drawing hand. Call the 800 and see the turn!

Hand 2: He put you on a strong hand with your raise, as he checked down till the river. You could have continued flop and turn, and with real aggression probably got a fold if he is a strong player. (Bad players will call over pair)

 

[Jacki Burkhart]

Hand 1: He leads out, he has a wide range of hands, you have a very good drawing hand. Call the 800 and see the turn!

Hand 2: He put you on a strong hand with your raise, as he checked down till the river. You could have continued flop and turn, and with real aggression probably got a fold if he is a strong player. (Bad players will call over pair)

he's a good player.

I'm even more convinced I should have C-bet the flop. He would most likely re-raise to find out where he is at, then I can fold. I know he only calls me preflop with a tight range. If I bet flop and he calls or raises I can pretty much put him on exactly TT, JJ or a set and happily fold. I don't think he would ever float me with 2 overs in this situation because of preflop action.

because I played it so weak and shiiiitty I had no information on the river...definitely should never call that river bet since even pocket deuces beats me....

 

[duggs]

dont see any value in cbetting the 2nd hand, what are you trying to make fold?

 

[Jacki Burkhart]

dont see any value in cbetting the 2nd hand, what are you trying to make fold?

its a good point.

He would fold AK/AQ or small pocket pairs if he was set mining and missed.

yeah.... I suppose a Cbet doesn't fold out too many hands that he could call me with preflop.

thanks for the review!

 

[Jacki Burkhart]

I don't know. I think ideal play would have been to re-raise less preflop. maybe 1,300-1,500. He flats. pot contains about 3,900.

Flop comes, he checks I Cbet for about 2,300. He folds hands like AK/AQ/55/44 and possibly even 99 or 88. There's even a very very slim chance he would fold TT although I think he'd reraise or flat call with it.

Now, after a preflop raise and a failed Cbet. I'm done with the hand, I won't lose another penny and the whole hand only cost me 3,800 and I would have played it strongly giving myself a chance to pick up a big pot when he misses his hand, all while keeping my TAG image intact.

clearly now I'm just shoulda woulda coulda this hand to death!

sorry to drag this on and on....

 

[kanselau]

Just because hes a LAG doesn't mean hes raising garbage in early position.

I try not to build big pots with speculative hands , get in there cheap.

1st hand fold > call > raise
Flop fold >call >raise
The reality here is , he s a good player hes raising UTG and you want to take him on for what , play him when you got the goods and for the time being build a solid table image and concentrate on taking money of the weak players.

2nd hand
Now you 3-bet the sucker , yea hes doing it from early position but at least you got a hand.
I don't mind a c-bet here because (1) we have position and if we get called we might spike an A or K and if not because we showed initiative pre and followed up on the flop villain likely checks turn as well unless hes strong , we can check back turn and get Aor K on river.

As played fold river , not a good time to be a hero. Save the hero calls when you are almost certain villain is bluffing (solid read).
That's when table image skyrockets.