Fold pre. Small blinds and can wait for a better spot.

Agree OKie

I almost never fold in this spot, but somehow I did and got very very lucky.

Personally I thought it was an awful fold. I should've have at least flatted and if a 4 bet came from the original raiser could always lay it down.

You can imagine how I felt watching the action post flop, I felt sick and even after seeing the boat at the end, I felt like I cheated death. But I suppose it all adds up, you make some great plays and great calls and somehow they hit their 1-3 outer on the river, or get that impossible runner runner but this time I made a bad play (which I don't think anyone is immune too)  and was spared by the “poker gods”.

Why did I fold? Don't know, like I said, at the time just wasn't quite sure what to do so I dumped it, but looking back after the game, it's not that difficult a spot, so maybe a wake up call for me of how much more I need to learn.

Jlude said it perfectly imo

JLUDEOBV said:

I like a fold in this spot as well. Yeah you have the button, but if you flat Clydesdalez still has to act and he may 4b. Unless you are playing in a high buy-in tournament with a lot of regs, people aren't getting out of line this early in the tournament. When Cousteer 3b, his range is pretty polarized to 1010+ AQs+ imo. Unless he is 3b frequently and you see this on the HUD stats. This spot is an easy fold, but def villain dependent as well. If it were two aggressive regs in this spot, I def 4b. But as played fold>4b>call.

And people never 3bet in this spot to polarize the ranges of their opponents?  I want more information before I fold, if you four bet to say 650ish that still leaves you plenty behind if jammed on and you can safely fold leaving 50+BBs behind.  Think about how strong the 4bet looks, what are you representing?  AQ is the bottom of our range and most of the time we get folds.

Not to mention this is a single table tourney.

I still do not go broke on this hand but I know after I am 5bet by cousteer that I am beat and lay it down.

I want this hand posted again in a month or two without this outcome……..have your straight hold and then ask opinions.

Also, Donskey………I can imagine the turmoil then relief as this hand unfolded…..

dont think we get enough folds from cousteer to make 4bet/fold profitable to be honest, as QQ+ AK+ never fold. and he may be flatting JJ 1010 and AQ to keep dominated hands and let them cbet/barrel with worse/let people squeeze with worse.

also plenty of 4betting at the table so not an ideal 3betting light spot for him ao not a great place to 4bet bluff for us. (which 4bet folding AQ is)

however cousteer is competent and could easily recognize that he is getting a shit load of hands to fold rather than 4bet, and can take down pot postflop alot with cbet/turn barrel. so he could potentially have Ax here (although i do think his range is polarized, there are way more combos of value than the occasional bluff). however Clyde is likely to have a reasonable range from his position and will flat 3bets more than average given the agg dynamic of the game. So i think flatting sucks since Clyde comes along alot/4bets his nutty range, and cousteer doesnt pay us often when we hit our A and quite often has us beat when we hit a Q, and we hate getting it in with overs/draws post flop when Clyde can be holding our outs a large portion of the time. 4bet/folding sucks because we get 5bet shipped on alot given their ranges.

So i prob fold here and look for a better spot tbh

Nice post Don and great discussion. I think this sort of levelling is what makes these home games so appealing. Its not until I started playing with this regular crowd have I become more appreciative of how much player history and understanding their tendancies is an important component of the game. It's also interesting to see how people adjust their play once they become aware of their own perceived image. This will contribute to an interesting evolution of this league.

Given we know how this hand went down the following account is inherently bias, but I'll just add my two cents for fun… and open up to critique.

3 and 4-betting is very common in this league, particularly as the starting stack ($5K) caters for a bit of flexibility. Hence my relatively small 3-bet, as I wouldn't minded someone clicking it back. A 4-bet by Dons would not have been out of the ordinary (HUD advice), and I'd expect him to do so with a relatively tight range AQ+, maybe QQ+ and this range would've widened to KQs+, JJ+, maybe AJ for some of the other players left to act pre-flop . Anything less, but decent, i.e. 99+ maybe JTs+ , I would expect to get flatted in a multiway pot. I was not particularly worried about Clyde… (and for those not aware, most of us were involved in a Skype conference call). Anyway if Dons had 4-bet and Clyde came along I certainly would've 5-bet (50-60%) and reassessed, and would've struggled to get away from this hand pre-flop. 

Action on the flop would've been very interesting if Dons was involved, however, at this stage of my poker development I think I'd struggle to fold a flopped set, despite the connected texture…. 

Despite the air of 'results orientation' permeating through this thread, I really see the value in these types of discussions and am stoked that the 'Home Game Down Under' tournies are proving to hone our respective games, make us think out-side of what can become a complacent level, and are awesome fun.  

Well done guys, and thanks, I'm having a blast!

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