Poker, Math, and Theory (continued)

Okay, a quick update on the previous post: I consulted with my braintrust, two respected and feared poker players with healthy experience at the stakes I play. Here are there thoughts and my reactions:

(1) Jaconda felt I unfairly discounted the chance that Carl would flat-call my 4bet. She's right in that I should have given that possibility more weight; however, I think it's a weird play to flat a 4bet for a total of 25% of your stack. Also, we have to remember that Carl is out of position (OOP). Position is extremely important in poker and even more so in no-limit games like the one we're playing. Players out of position like to negate their disadvantage by getting the money in preflop if possible. Putting the money AIPF (all-in preflop) means that the player OOP won't be forced to make difficult decisions without the advantage of seeing how his opponent has acted.

Additionally, what is he gonna flat with here? I can see flatting AA and KK maybe but Carl has to think that we have a big hand and are gonna be c-betting virtually every flop (if only cuz we have such a strong image and the pot is so big). Would he flat AK? No way...he doesn't wanna play a flop with two big cards. What about TT, etc? Again, no way...he's not gonna wanna do this because he's gonna have such a hard time with a large number of flops. Unless Carl is setting up an elaborate and bizarre bluff, I can't imagine him flatting here. Even if he has QQ+, he's gonna wanna get it AIPF cuz my hand range loses so much strength after a flop and Carl wants to maximize value.

(2) Both Jaconda and Eltrain think that we should be folding to a 5bet shove. This disagreement comes from the fact that they're giving Carl credit for a much stronger range than I am. This is something that cannot be resolved, unfortunately, because only Carl knows what he would 5bet shove here. Assuming arguendo that his range is much stronger than I think (and that Carl is either gonna fold or shove to our 4bet), Jaconda and Eltrain are correct in that it doesn't matter what our cards are because we're folding to his shove. Ideally, we'd like to have an ace in our hand, only because that makes it less likely that Carl has an ace, which means that he's more likely to fold. Complicated, I know, but that's (online) poker.



By the way: I folded preflop, fwiw. No me gusta variance, haha.