I'm not sure what you mean when you say that I basically called 2000 into an 1100 pot. Yes it was 1100 on the turn when I stopped betting out, but why do you not factor in his chips into my decision? I'm winning those chips too, no? In my view, I called 2000 more in order to win 3100 meaning that I'd only have to be about 40% sure that he was bluffing to make it profitable, and imo that was not even close(as I said I insta called). I think it was more like 70% that he was bluffing to be honest.
This is the part that scares me. Yes, I understand that we have to count his chips in the pot when considering pot odds. But what I'm saying is, when people make 1500 bets in live 5/10, even if they're LAG, there's a better chance they've got something than at 1/2 or 2/5. When he called the preflop raise, called the flop, and bet the turn, the odds of him having something were much higher than 30%. I don't know if they were much higher than 60%, but it's dangerous to put someone on a >50% chance of bluffing. You had a great read on this guy, and I'm not saying you should have just laid it down, but this is a really tough spot.
My goal with the preflop raise was to get it down to me and him in a situation where I obviously have the best preflop hand. I did not want him to fold. And I'm not surprised at all that the hand took the line of bet, check/call, check/call....in fact thats probably what I most envisioned happening even before the scary board appeared.
I agree that this line was fairly likely, since you were trying to exercise pot control. The thing is, following this line, he stacks you when he has it, and you only stack him when he catches something second best. Since you can't assume that he will always bluff like this, you are left with the unfortunate reality that you're going to lose a lot of money with this line, or at least you're not maximizing. Think of it this way - his odds of beating you with any two cards on the flop or postflop are about 6:1. Preflop, he had over 30:1 implied odds to call your raise. It cost him 160 preflop into a 320 pot to call your raise. You gave him plenty of reason to call, since you've pretty much shown that you would check/call HIM no matter how scary the board. Postflop, you gave him about 13:1 on his call. If he caught any piece of the flop, he'd have at least a 10% chance of beating you on the turn, or 8:1, on a subsequent street. Again, you showed that you'd call him all the way down, so he had plenty of reason to call if he caught any piece of the flop. On the turn, when you went into check/call mode, you gave him a free card to catch on you. You've shown that you would call another 2000. If he catches, or checks behind and catches on the river, you're getting stacked.Now, maybe he didn't catch this time. But you gave him odds to stack you the whole way. Which means that, for your line to be profitable, you need him to bluff often enough to make up for those odds. And that's where SPR kicks in.
I can understand that you were pretty confident he didn't have JT or J anything, but you basically called 2000 into an 1100 pot because you were pretty sure he was bluffing. That seems a little loose to me. The preflop pot was under 500, which is less than 1/11th of your stack. That's about exactly the wrong ratio, according to Professional NLHE. If you reraised him to 320 preflop instead of 240, your SPR would have been closer to 9, which is a much more managable number against a LAG. But as it turns out, I think you were lucky he lost his mind on this hand.
I really need to read Pro NLHE because I keep seeing people reference these types of things and I have no clue what they're talking about(I probably do apply the concepts somewhat on my own naturally at times but I don't know how to express them at least). I've never paid for a poker book though, as I get all of them from the Full Tilt or PokerStars stores and I havn't seen this one available yet. So perhaps explain to me the concept of SPR and what you're getting at.
Well, one idea of SPR is that it's going to give you an idea on how to size the preflop raise that would make this a more profitable hand. SPR stands for stack to pot ratio. The stack is the remainder of your stack when the preflop betting is done. The pot is the final preflop pot. In this case, your stack was roughly 5500-240 = 5260, and the preflop pot was 480. So your SPR was roughly (5260/480), or 11. The authors of the book posit that this is almost the worst possible SPR for a big pocket pair like aces. The number they specifically tell you to avoid is 13 - which is the sum of a pot sized bet on the flop (one times the preflop pot, or 480), plus a pot sized bet on the turn (three times the preflop bet, or 1440), plus a pot sized bet on the river (nine times the preflop bet, or 4320). 1+3+9 = 13, or three straight pot sized bets. The reason you should avoid this SPR is that the odds of someone making three straight pot sized bluffs are rarely good enough to justify three straight calls if you flop the most likely hand aces will make - an overpair to the board. But with a SPR of, say, four, you could call (or make) two pot sized bets, which gives you a much better chance of winning the hand with one pair of aces if your opponent is strong enough to bet/call. (FWIW, 13 is a much better SPR for a hand like a medium pocket pair, where you'll get away from them if you don't flop your set, but be willing to go all the way if you do hit your set. Then you would WANT three pot sized bets.) In any event, the idea of SPR is that your preflop raise decides a huge amount of the rest of the hand. When you raised to 240, you set the final preflop pot at 480. That was your decision. If you had raised to 685, the preflop pot would have been 1370, and you would have had the perfect preflop pot size for that 4:1 ratio. I think we can both agree that raising his bet of 80 to 685 would have been slightly inappropriate. So in this case, it would have been impossible to get that ideal ratio. But is 4:1 really the ideal ratio in this situation? If you made or called two pot sized bets against a LAG like this, you're going to be in pretty good shape. You could probably even bet/call more than that. You naturally seem to have decided that you were willing to call off about 2400 on an initial preflop pot of 480, or roughly 5:1, and feel like you were still likely to be ahead. So by feel, you'd have been comfortable with a SPR of 5. But your SPR was closer to 10. What if he'd made it 1000 on the turn, and 3500 on the river? At that point, you'd have had a much less comfortable time calling, right? It'd be entirely possible you made it cheap enough for him to catch, and it'd be a lot less likely he'd bluff that big unless he actually had something. One big idea of SPR, then, is to get a feel for how much you'd be willing to call off against a LAG when you have various types of hands. You want to determine a target SPR for specific kinds of hands. For AA, that would generally be about 4, but you can raise that up to about 7 or 8 if you're talking about a LAG like this. Then you want to size your preflop bet to ensure that you get that target SPR. The way the hand plays out, you raised to 240 preflop. He called. The final preflop pot was 480. The flop was terrible for your hand. You led out for a 2/3 pot sized bet of 320. He called. The pot is now 1120. The turn is another jack. You check, he bets about 500, or 1/2 the pot. You call. The river is a blank, and you check again. He now bets 1500, or roughly the size of the pot. You call. Now let's replay your hand, except this time you make the preflop raise to 320 instead of 240, and assume he calls. The final preflop pot is now 640 instead of 480. On the flop, your bet of 320 is no longer a 2/3 pot sized bet. You need to make it 420 instead. He calls, and now the pot is 1480, instead of 960. On the turn, you check, and he decides to fire off a half pot sized bet. Only this time, instead of 500, he bets 750. You call, and the pot is now 3000. On the river, he bets the pot once again, but instead of 1500, betting the pot is now 3000, putting you all in. You've called the same multiples of the preflop pot, made more money, and been just as confident as you were before. But this time, you're getting a chance to play for your whole stack, and you're getting good enough odds to call him down if he does decide to play for your whole stack. You've effectively denied him the opportunity to get you to make a mistake for your whole stack, because even if he cracks your aces, in the long run, you'll win more than enough to make up for it. You might disagree with this application of SPR, and that's fine. It's an interesting hand for discussion. But the SPR concept is a really valuable one, and the basic premise is that your preflop raise should have been targetted to create a final preflop pot that was profitable for you to play for your whole stack.
