How to play a draw at 10NL

[nawhead]

I was playing a 20/10/1 game over 150 hands at the table before I decided to raise 85s in the CO.

The reason I raised the SC was that it seemed the other players had me tagged very tight (rightly so) and I wasn't getting any action. I intended to play a small pot and just show my hand down if at all possible.

I felt I was 50/50 on the flop, maybe villain was donking 8x or 7x. I had BB tagged as a very erratic fish, and as such his stack had been going up and down, since he bet and called with a wide variety of hands in all positions. Then on turn I felt he either had a strong hand or a strong draw himself (but too unlikely he had the same backdoor flush draw) and wouldn't fold to a raise.

The river was meh. I got my wish of showing my hand down cheaply, but I felt uncomfortable with just calling a minbet. Is there any merit in a raise here either as a bluff or for value?



Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (4 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (Button) ($11.20)
SB ($17.45)
BB ($8.85)
UTG ($7.85)

Preflop: Hero is Button with 5, 8
Hero raises to $0.40, 1 fold, BB calls $0.35, UTG calls $0.30

Flop: ($1.20) 7, 8, 4 (3 players)
BB checks, UTG bets $0.80, Hero calls $0.80, 1 fold

Turn: ($2.80) 2 (2 players)
UTG bets $2.00, Hero calls $2.00

River: ($6.80) K (2 players)
UTG bets $0.10, Hero calls $0.10

Total pot: $7.00 | Rake: $0.70

[Trikkur]

It's fine. Raising doesn't fold much on that flop and you don't really want to play a huge pot on that board.

[zayphod]

Trikkur isnt this one of those spots you commented about earlier though in a different post (comments on the 100NL vid). You raise and get donked into which may suggest the villain is trying to figure out where he is at. So if you reraise his donkbet he either folds it or continues. Then we can reevaluate on the turn.

And ultimately I think it would probably cost you about as much as you have put in to the river anyway as this may force him to check the turn and river. Just a thought.

[mxrider]

generally, those are spots when the donkbet is usually a min bet or something small compared to the pot. This happens to be a fairly good value bet size.

[zayphod]

good point by mxrider, which may just lead the hand to going the way it did. I think if you call the 80cent bet on the flop you do need to consider what you are going to do for the rest of the hand when he continues to bet, and if its to not invest to much more then a laydown on the flop is probably in order (but may not be the correct play)

[Qgel]

fold preflop. You worry about your image too much. As you can see you got 2 callers even with your "tight" image.

[no eff eks]

Originally Posted by mxrider

generally, those are spots when the donkbet is usually a min bet or something small compared to the pot. This happens to be a fairly good value bet size.

Don't really think the size of the donk-bet is as important as you're making it out to be. I'll admit that I'm raising donk min-bets about 100% of the time, and I'm not raising larger donks nearly that often... but in general it's not so much the size of the donk bet that matters, it's the fact that they did it at all.

In this case I don't mind just calling since we didn't completely whiff the flop but raising basically turns our hand into a bluff.

[JibNinjas]

I would disagree with everyone here. I think that we need to reraise the flop. Yes we hit a piece of the flop but there are very few cards that we want to see on the turn or the river. What are you going to do on that river when he leads pot into you? You are going to probably fold. And if the river was most overcards you are going to fold. Your hand really does not have any equity, unless you hit your gutter. If you reraise flop and he calls you should be able to get the river for free and if he fires again on the turn you know that you are crushed. You raised as basically a bluff so you need to think as your hand as a bluff unless you his 2pair or better. otherwise you are just going to call down and leak money. I am just not understanding why we would call down here?

[Trikkur]

Raising this flop is ok, but not great. We have a bad top pair and a gutshot. Which is good enough to see a turn, but not good enough to get it in. Since are hand is better than a bluff, but not good enough to get it in, it becomes correct to call on this flop. You guys have to learn to think one step ahead (atleast) If we raise, what can our opponent do? They can fold, call or shove.

So....

If we raise, and he folds - well he was probably bluffing in which we could of let him keep bluffing.

If we raise and he calls - he probably beats are bad top pair and we stuck in money behind when we have showdown value and could of called with our made hand + draw.

If he shoves we have to fold. He's going to do this with hands that are worse than use a lot eve. Think 9T, etc but we just can't call.

All of this adds up to polarizing your range is probably best on drawyish flops when donked in to. When you have a good, but not great hand, raising a donk is only going to force you into bad spots.

Don't forget to think 1 or more steps ahead on how YOUR OPPONENT can react to a play of yours.

[JibNinjas]

I do not see a lot of people coming over the top of our 3bet here. If he has a hand like A8 he will still probably just call. Then we now have the option of taking the lead on the turn and pushing him off of better hands depending on what the turn card is, or just taking a free card. If we are planning on just calling his double barrel then we are going to commit about the same amount of money to see the river except w/reraising the flop we picked up another way to win the hand by betting.

if you think that the player will 4bet on a bluff or draw then calling would be better, i agree, but i do not see a lot of people doing that at these limits.