[gfhawk]

and not a squeeze bc no calls between.

[gfhawk]

guess Im just bitter b/c of the 2-outer on the flop….

[jim]

Hi @GFHawk that is a frustrating spot for sure, and it’s natural to be upset. I don’t know if this will help, but would it have made you feel any better if they had called your 3-bet with AKx or AQs or AJs instead? On the runout you describe, you would have lost all your chips to any hand they called your 3-bet with that had an ace in it, which they will have with a relatively high frequency. BUT if they call with 44 they also probably call with 22, 33, 66, 77, 88, 99 which you beat on the same runout.

So I know people have said this before, but we really should be HAPPY when people call our 3-bets with the wrong odds, even when they hit every once in a while. You’ll profit from that mistake in the long run. That probably doesn’t make you feel better, but the only thing you can do is make a note on that player and adjust your assumptions about the player pool – maybe you can include hands like that in your assumptions when you are playing with them or similar players next time, even though it’s not how you would play the hand.

Keep it up though my man – we’re all learning these lessons together! I wish I could avoid getting frustrated when I lose too – I always give myself the same amount of time I would need to curse and shout if I had stubbed my toe really badly – but then I make myself release that negativity and move on to the next hand. I hope that will help! Maybe you need a “Toe-Stubbing” window to vent and release that after a bad spot like this. Just make sure you aren’t venting AT anyone – it’s not the fault of the dealer or the other players that it didn’t work out, we are just mad at the world. So as long as we keep it polite and classy at the tables and in the chat, I think it’s perfectly fine to do a little shouting in the privacy of your own home! GL bud, see you on the felt!

[gfhawk]

I agree that is what I wanted, just so they don’t hit the flop! 🙂

[fivebyfive]

This is definitely frustrating. Someone hitting a set when we have a premium after calling our 3bet is a recipe for losing chips. But I want to mention one aspect of this hand that I see all the time and that is good to clean up in our game if we can. I think it happens most with hands like KK and QQ. You have a premium, you 3bet, get called, and an Ace comes, then you cbet, get called. Now we reach the turn with position. And here’s the key, we no longer have a great hand.

It may feel like we should still have a great hand. We may think let’s just get this hand over with because I was supposed to win big here. But we’re not in that spot anymore. That A on the flop makes our hand a middling, bluff-catching hand. So let’s retain that value and check back the turn.

Think of it this way, when we’re called on the flop, what do we HOPE villain has? I think our best hope is some kind of broadway J—KJ/QJ/JT. But we’re also behind hands like 44 and a bunch of Ax. Our goal is no longer to get stacks in, our goal is to navigate to showdown and hope our marginal hand can win a medium pot.

The other great thing about checking is that we can see how villain reacts on brick rivers. Let’s say the river is the 7d. It is a fairly rare villain that can check again on this river with value that beats us. Maybe some marginal Ax might, but anything that crushes us bets. And when villain checks the river, we have an easy small bet for value targeting those Jx type hands.

So this situation stinks, but we don’t need to compound it by shoving the turn and letting our opponent play optimally against us.