u/EdgarMarkhov

From a Friendly Home Game, Effective Stacks are 100 BB (roughly equal +/- 5 BB to both Hero and V)/ .25/.50 live.

Hero: Button

Villain: HJ, fishy player, on the more passive side, hasn't shown many bluffs, but has shown some aggression with his strong (or what he perceives to be a strong hand, though this is rarer).

Preflop: V raises to 3BB, H 3Bet to 10 BB with AJss, both sizes are standard for the game. Everyone else has folded.

Pot: 21.5 BB

Flop: AcQc6h, V leads for 4 BB, I raise to 12 BB, V snap calls. Snap call worries me a little bit, this is the type of player to flat AQ/AK or QQ preflop to a 3bet, but he could have some draws here with JT/KT/KJ or a flush draw. I think the donk leading from this player, however, is a little worrying in regard to my specific hand, as on this board I'll typically be much stronger than he will be. Because of this, I go into the turn a little bit worried.

Pot: 45.5

Turn: 2x, don't remember the suit but I do remember that it was not a c nor a heart. V donks again for 16 BB. I'm very confused/worried now, As I figure at this point that I am up against a better ace or 2p+. I don't see this player bluffing nearly ever, and given the player type I figure that I will rarely be good here, so I fold after a 45 second tank.

Because it's a game amongst friends, I windmill my cards to him and V turns over Q10o for just middle pair. Now, I can't tell if he was value betting or bluffing, or what exactly just happened. I'm a little dumbfounded by how this pot went down, so I'm looking for some insights from some better players about what I could have done differently or played better to learn from this spot.

Looking to play some NLH, if anyone has or knows a game let me know please 🙏

For context I’m a recreational player mainly playing 2NL to improve. I’m actively studying and trying to get a good volume of games in, while also starting to slowly build a bankroll. I’ve just played home games before, and they arnt easy ones by any stretch (table is lots of very solid guys). Admittedly I would say I’m a fairly decent player, up about 200 BB over 20 hours of play last month.

Starting out online was a little tough; I felt it more difficult to get value from my opponents and I was blundering a lot of spots, retroactively justifying mistakes by just rationalizing spots (saying things like I know this is a bad call but for 50 cents I can afford to). The lack of live reads was also hard to adjust to.

This lead to me losing like 1000 BB worth of money (so like 20 dollars), and I knew continuing to play like this would be a bad move. I started actively focusing on spots, player types, and other solid strategies while learning from better players.

Since then, I’ve been playing a 3B or fold strategy from every position except BB or Button, and have tightened up significantly (though not insanely due to the player pool I have encountered, though this is obviously dependent on V). I understand why this strategy works at the micros. What I don’t understand is the following:

Typically, on the flop when it favors my range I just click it to .33x pot, and villain normally calls. It is irrelevant what 2 cards I hold are, whether I miss, hit, have or don’t have a draw, if it favors my range, I bet. On the turn, when it either bricks out, gives me a draw, or else wise, I’m betting .75x pot at a frequency of about 90 percent (excluding times when it causes me to miss horribly or obviously helps my opponent) and the villain folds nearly every time. And, on the river, I typically follow up with an over bet of 1.25 pot (so long as the river isn’t a card that, again, obviously benefits villain) and, again, no matter what I have from a missed draw, second pair, or the nuts, villain folds 50 percent of time, pays the nuts of 25 percent of the time, or calls with worse and then mucks 25 percent of the time, and I’ve only lost like 3 times using this strategy. If I’m ever reraised without a value hand I can just snap fold and lose the minimum to a monster.

Across like the 3k hands I’ve played (so a tiny sample size but I feel as if it’s still relevant) I have been raking in so much money in terms of BB and my win rate has gone up to like 200 BB and hour (again definitely inflated but I feel as if there is some merit to it considering the consistency of it) and I want to know why. I don’t have a super deep grasp on the deep theory of poker, I’m just familiar with the common buckets of spots in poker, and I feel that by understanding the why behind what I’m doing, I’ll be able to apply it to other similar situations, find more exploits, and at some point move up stakes once my (small) bankroll can afford it.

Appreciate any help in understanding the theory behind this, and, seeing as this is my first post in the sub, please let me know if this post is violating any rule or something. Peace