When they give away their hand...

As I was playing yesterday I had an interesting hand happen - well you not might find it interesting but I found interesting myself:

I had been playing for about four hours when I found myself looking down at JJ and facing a raise of $15 from a very tight player. I contemplated three betting but after thinking about it I decided to flat in position on the cut off. 2 factors are at play here: he rarely raises and therefore I'm likely to be behind his range, or I'm 50/50 with an AK / AQ. Otherwise, I'm ahead of him and don't want him folding. In other words I don't want to put a ton of money in where I don't know whether I'm at in the hand. One other player came along - a fairly loose bad player.

The flop came all under blanks; 2 5 8 rainbow. It checks to the original raiser who immediately lead for $30. This is a fairly safe board; he's leading 2/3 pot... somewhat reasonable, but if he has AA, he's probably wanting value on a board that connected with very few hands of the 2 remaining players. KK / QQ, I understand - but this feels like an automatic c-bet. Therefore, I think for a moment and decide to flat once again.

The bad player surprisingly decided to check raise all in for $76 total. This has the original player in the tank. After much contemplation tight player flat calls & here is the title of the story - he gave his hand away - no aa kk qq - he's got a marginal overpaid that he doesn't want to fold. A tight player who's confident in his hand is always shoving / snap calling / whatever but a tell like thinking for a while and just flatting - that's a good indicator of weakness. Add to his data points the fact that I just flatted his c-bet - it just wreaks of weakness.

He has $120 or so behind and I opt to shove which puts him into the tank once again. Eventually, he calls and shows TT. The check raiser mucks and I win a decent pot with JJ!

A little playtime yesterday...

I decided to degen it up yesterday by taking the day off and go play a little poker.  My wife is away until Tuesday, so I have to get the kids off to school and back again - I have about 4-5 hours in between to get some time in.  The table was surprisingly loose for a 10am table - these were mostly regs, but some of the regs were pretty woeful to say the least.  I'm not going to get into the regs and surprising play, but there were many many profitable spots including calling down 2nd and 3rd pairs a ton for crazy prices...

There were 2 hands in question that I'll share today:

2nd or 3rd hand against a brand new player, I'm dealt TT in position and raise $15 against 2 limpers.  Get called in both spots.

Flop comes QQ5 rainbow - it checks to me.  I check through thinking that only a Q is going to call in this spot, so why bet.  Turn is an 8 and new player leads for $35.  I flat and the other player folds.

River is a blank.  He insta-shoves on me (~$125 effective).  I have showdown value here - what to do, what to do?  Knowing nothing about this player, I fold.

Thoughts?  Unknown player?  Checks flop out of position, leads turn and shoves river?

A bunch of hands later, I see him betting & raising a TON of hands.  He's getting away with it on small pots, where he's raising unreasonably large on mostly blank flops, but his raises seem out of whack; it appears that he's trying to win the pots outright and buy people off hands rather than get value for anything.  He's clearly fishy, and I'm thinking I made a bad lay down there...  I think I have to lay down there though given the strength he's shown and the lack of knowledge.

I get retribution from him (and then some) when the following hand arises:
I limp QJo in the HJ position (he's to my right so I continually have position on him).  It limps to a 4 way flop:

Q 6 2 (2 diamonds).  BB leads for $8, folds around to fish and he raises to $20.  I think for a minute and raise to $40.  BB folds and fish calls.

Turn is a blank and fish checks.  I think about how to maximize value here - I bet $75 and he insta-calls.

River is another blank and he checks again.  I think I can eek out some value here - perhaps $50 or so, but my thought is that he's calling better hands and folding draws, so why bet here?  I guess I shouldn't think when I'm dealing with a fish, and only act strong.  However, I [perhaps weakly] check through and wait for him to show.  He shows K6o, and I win a sizable pot for a pair of Queens, J kicker.  There were many eye rolls and dropped jaws when he showed mid pair after calling $115!  This guy would go on to bust through his starting stack, but he's apparently well known to do this kind of bad play.  QJ is such a check / call get-to-showdown-cheaply type of hand 99% of the time, but I got nice value for it on this go-around against this kind of player...