OOP against a 'cannon'
i was playing in a low stakes, loose semi-aggressive live game, a bit short-handed, a few days ago. we got a call that HE was coming. i hadn't played against him before but they told me HE was 10x more aggressive than the uber lagtard i have written about previously and 10x looser too. time to tighten the chin strap and fasten the seat belt...
in the hour or so leading up to this hand, he has straddled every chance that came up (always on my SB) and has raised every time, no matter how many limpers in the hand. he has built and destroyed mountains of chips, including taking a decent pot from me when he decided to push his suited connectors PF against my high PP and managed to hit quads by the river.
so once again he is straddling my SB. i sense EVERYONE licking their chops as every person (5 others, not counting me or BB yet) at the table smooth calls his straddle. i look down at AA. i have about 90BBs in front of me. he has perhaps a bit less. others have between 50 and 200BBs. what is your preferred move here (besides mucking, jimmy) and why?
in the hour or so leading up to this hand, he has straddled every chance that came up (always on my SB) and has raised every time, no matter how many limpers in the hand. he has built and destroyed mountains of chips, including taking a decent pot from me when he decided to push his suited connectors PF against my high PP and managed to hit quads by the river.
so once again he is straddling my SB. i sense EVERYONE licking their chops as every person (5 others, not counting me or BB yet) at the table smooth calls his straddle. i look down at AA. i have about 90BBs in front of me. he has perhaps a bit less. others have between 50 and 200BBs. what is your preferred move here (besides mucking, jimmy) and why?
Comments
If you know he's going to raise, smooth-call and re-raise. You will get a 'few' limpers perhaps that will call his raise (knowing what you know) getting you some really attractive potential dead money.
The keys here is the size of his original raise and the size of your re-raise, it has to be large enough (hopefully combined with your image) to get a few people off the hand and get you as close to HU with this guy. He may fold if you go too big (maybe not), but that's a read you need to make at the table. Depending on the size of his original raise, perhaps a push is correct here.
What would be optimum would be another high pocket pair and whatever garbage he's holding along with you going to the flop.
PokerStove says:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 69.738% 69.84% 00.18% 1434975482 3706025.00 { AA }
Hand 1: 16.845% 16.73% 00.18% 343775633 3734440.50 { QQ }
Hand 2: 13.417% 13.24% 00.23% 272087606 4705583.50 { random }
Even if he only calls your re-raise with 60% of hands (which seems somewhat reasonable based on his commitment to the pot already combined with his looseness) PokerStove still likes your chances:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 70.286% 70.06% 00.22% 6344348162 20214981.00 { AA }
Hand 1: 16.845% 16.66% 00.18% 1508874153 16704453.17 { QQ }
Hand 2: 12.868% 12.58% 00.29% 1138869556 26571315.17 { 22+, A2s+, K2s+, Q2s+, J2s+, T3s+, 95s+, 85s+, 74s+, 64s+, 54s, A2o+, K2o+, Q5o+, J7o+, T7o+, 97o+, 87o }
and yipee if you get him heads up with him calling with the top 60% of hands:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 84.852% 84.53% 00.32% 6087867684 23099286.00 { AA }
Hand 1: 15.148% 14.83% 00.32% 1067884368 23099286.00 { 22+, A2s+, K2s+, Q2s+, J2s+, T3s+, 95s+, 85s+, 75s+, 64s+, 54s, A2o+, K2o+, Q5o+, J7o+, T7o+, 97o+, 87o }
there was approx 17BBs in the pot when it got to me. i limped and the BB limped. my worst fear would be the cannon might realize someone could be trapping and not make another foolish raise but he did not disappoint - he raised to 10BBs. i was a bit surprised when 4 of the 5 limpers also called. what kind of hand ranges am i up against?
pot is approx 55BBs. i have just under 90BBs left. what is your preferred move here and why?
If they all fold you increase your stack by about 60% with out even taking a flop. That is damn good living.
If you get callers and you likely will then be happy about it.
what is this, 1/2 or 2/5? it always gets to me when players call pre-flop and then when it is raised to 10BB they all call like sheep to the slaughter. I say to myself, 'you don't raise and then you call a 10BB bet??". Not unless they are all hoping for a raise by the villian, but then they don't re-raise so they likely have small pairs or suited connectors (decent players) or Arag-AK.
I would just push and hope to reduce the field to 1-2 other players. Personally, I don't like the push and pray kind of poker. Although, against a cannon this is a good way to double up.
In games where you have loose players, I find its better to play your hand straight forward as they are not playing their cards but rather the player and if you can show genuine fear when they call you can induce them to bluff off their stacks.
With loose players you just increase your avg bet sizes (preflop i usually get away from 5-6x preflop to almost 7-9x)
The idea behind this is getting the loose player to commit his stack without him knowing. A lot of players don't think too far ahead about how much it is going to cost them on later streets.
Rhetorical question? :P
Pretty sure shoving is the only play here. I mean even if everyone somehow folds, you just got 55BBs without a flop, not the worst way to win half a buy in.
If this guy is reraising every hand preflop then I tend to agree with the call then shove approach, kind of like its a low level rebuy with a raise/shove every hand guy. Of course if he chooses that one time to fold or call you are staring at AA in a 8 way pot which is not always a fun time
i did, in fact, push. unfortunately no callers but one guy was very close to calling with 88. i'm not sure what the others had, likely weak Aces, suited connectors or small pairs, i guess. maybe even the odd KJo thrown in.
my thought on pushing here?
* i didn't like just calling here and taking a flop OOP against 7 others. i think we can all agree on that?
* would a smaller raise have been more profitable? i could have put in something like 25-30BBs and expect at least a couple of callers. i would push my remaining 60BBs on just about any flop. if they happened to flop any kind of draw, they would have proper odds to call my push. if i had more gamble in me, i might have tried this and there's some chance we could be discussing a bad beat here.
* i sort of liked the idea of adding 60% to my stack without even looking at a flop but if one or more gamblers wanted to give me huge odds at another 80BBs apiece i could live with that, too.
p.s. yes, jimmy, it was 1/2nl this night. much of the same group plays 2/5nl on another night. my rule of thumb with these loose players is, 'if it is worth $2, it is worth $35' and they rarely disappoint me.
Just calling preflop is definitely not an option especially he did what you wanted him to (raise and get called multiple ways).
If you were deeper (120bb or so), then it is totally justified to raise to 30-40xbb and shove any flop. Any less is probably not an option as cannon will probably call, and leading to others calling. You had an in-between stack size in this situation where a shove is not going to be called very often, yet at the same time you can't make a standard 3-bet go-go.
Adding 60xbb without a flop is definitely a case where you should not whine about.
Yeah calling here is definitely a big no. I think what you need to realize here is that if anyone had any sort of "premium" hand you would have heard from it already. You shouldn't be worried about someone calling off an overbet because once again you are forcing them to make mistakes (whether it is calling with 88 without having raised to figure out where you are at, that player can't possibly then decide to call an all in shove because he has no clue how strong or weak you are and 88 should be the one pushing not calling in this case)
When deciding whether or not to shove or raise here you have to determine the likely hood of you getting called (which is effectively what you want, no matter which way you think about it...you have the best starting hand and anyone calling is in essence drawing or trying to make their hand improve with most likely insufficient odds after the flop as you will not have fold equity...)
Now to determine this information you have to replay the cannon's tendancy in certain situations. I like to block it off in this fashion
1. Type of cannon - does he just raise with any two, or is there some sort of pattern (he raises with suited connectors, he raises when he sees weakness, he picks on certain stack sizes) By paying attention to these small things it allows you to prepare yourself to make a play at the cannon. I think everyone has shook their head at least once when you see the cannon make a huge bet and you have a monster only to have him fold after you either smooth called his bet, to bet the next street, or re-popped him on the same street only to have him fold.
2. How does the cannon preceive you? Now this can be built by yourself or you can just get labelled. I like the cannon to pretend he is watching a movie about my play style. I want him to know when I have a bad hand and when I have a good hand. Once I have determined he knows my pattern I switch it and go in for the kill. This is very important as well as most of the other players will get run over at the table by this player because they will not adjust fast enough or he just continues to get lucky catching cards on people. Most times you will find the cannon has a lot of money in front of him and I make it my goal every session to try to stack him (with in reason of course). Think of it as big game hunting...lol
With this information I can then formulate how I will play against this type of player. For example:
1. If cannon understands betting patterns and stack sizes, I will never try to make a bet that looks like I can't fold. I will place a bet that induces weakness on my part to look like I am scared and don't know where I am at. I want him to re-pop me so I can go over the top and trap.
2. If cannon has no clue about (1) above I generally play my hands face up. What you have to remember here is that your range will be marginally tighter than cannons so when you are ahead you are likely way ahead and he is trailing but he knows if he hits is miracle card he will grab you. At this point you are gambling in its purest form with math on your side. Take advantage, you may get hit for 1 buy in but most likely you will end up leaving up 3-4 buy ins because not only will this cannon pay you off, but he will induce others into making mistakes because they once again can't adjust to his play and see him winning with junk so they start playing the same way. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
The bottom line is unless you have a few crafty players at your tables always take limps as a sign of weakness and look to play hard position against them as they call OOP.
Well played either way...cheers
i'm thinking my position relative to the cannon and having him act before the others would be significant if i had been much deeper. my thinking is he would have likely called any kind of 25-30BB raise and that would have touched off an avalanche of over callers behind. now, if he had been on my right, i think i could have played it completely differently and gotten heads up with him but probably not shown a lot more profit than i did in this situation.
I was reading in Harrington Cash Games II this morning that sometimes its actually better to be on the right side on a loose aggressive player. Most of the time it is preferred to be on his left, so you can act after them (fold into a raise, etc.); Harrington argues that being to the right is sometimes preferred as you get to see what the other players will do before the action gets back to you. So if you have AA and are to the left of the LAG, you expect they will raise so you gain no new information. Furthermore, if you re-raise, it will likely scare all the other players out of the hand. If you are to their right, the LAGs raise may be called by a few players as they know this player is loose (and therefore expect a raise) or it may be re-raised by another player before the action gets back to you. Food for thought.
I think just c/r defines your hand too much. Yes, its obvious, let him raise and you can reraise to isolate. But when he calls you don't have position and you're going to be stacking off with top pair. Or he folds to your committing reraise.
Another move would be to get into a pissing match with him preflop. If you have been aggressive at the table this could very well be a time to get him to commit way more chips- preflop.
I raise about the pot here; there are already ~17BB to take down, but that likely isn't going to happen with lagtard.
If he 3bets you can safely 4bet push and hope to get called because it can look like your tired of this guy pounding you and you're taking a (possibly weak) stand or an outright steal.
If you raise and get flatted with many callers, well don't dump many more chips into this hand OOP unless you're nut peddling.
If you raise and he flats you, play very defensively. Take control of the pot if you can. You're not going to know what he has after the flop.
Position is everything, and even AA doesnt trump it
now let me go read how wrong everyone will think this is