Haven't posted a hand in a long while - would appreciate any thoughts here. Thanks!

Stacks and images:

- Villain 1: Somewhat aggressive regular. Has about $500.
- Villain 2: Not a regular from what I can tell. Has been aggressive and somewhat tricky. Can't tell at this time if he's good and tricky, or just clicking buttons. Stack of about $950.
- Hero: Not a regular. Have been pretty TAG and have not shown down anything but good hands so far. Stack of about $1200.

A couple of limpers and I make it $20 with AcKc. 2 callers and Villain 1 makes it $115 from BB. Folds to Villain 2, who thinks for a while and calls. I make it $300. Villain 1 insta-folds, and Villain 2 thinks for about 10 seconds and calls.

Flop is Q,8,4 rainbow. Villain 2 pretty quickly bets $400, leaving himself about $250 behind. Hero folds.

Pre-flop my thinking was I wanted to either win the pot right there or be heads up with Villain 1 playing for his 100bb stack, thus the $300. Really didn't put Villain 2 on much and was thus pretty surprised when he called.

I am pretty comfortable with my fold here - even if he had called with like Qx or 8x, I'm still in bad shape, and of course he could have slow played QQ+ pre. I saw nothing from him - either before or after this hand - to think he'd be making an elaborate play here with air. Yes, AK a possibility, but not too many combos left and would think at least some of those are raising pre.

My questions here are 1) what range would you put him on, and 2) are you ok with the $300 pre? Some of my friends were saying I just should have flatted pre, and I obviously disagree.

Fwiw, villain did make some very loose pre-flop calls in 3-bet pots in later hands, but I could not have known that at the time.

Thanks!

I think preflop is a pretty easy shove. As played fold.

You might want to re-post this in Live Low-Stakes NL, just because the preflop meta at 2/5 is so wildly different from 5/10 or higher. The Foxwoods 2/5 pool in particular is especially passive pre compared to places like Borgata and many players just peel in that spot with AQ or even JJ so squeezes are way more polarized. That said I'm still 4betting here like 90+% of the time, but I might peel occasionally if I'm randomly spooked for some reason/just so that the dominated hands in their range stay in.

On the Q84 board he probably doesn't have QQ (he'd most likely slowplay that since he has such a hammerlock on the hand). I'd say he has AQ sometimes and a lot of weird spazzes (mid pairs like 99 or TT, maybe some random JTs blow-ups, etc.) for the rest of his range. So of course fold.

Thanks. Will repost there. Appreciate the feedback.

I agree with this. The thing is once you put in 33% of your stack pre you are pretty much pot stuck, certainly you will be if u c-bet the flop. So why give your opponents reasonable odds to draw out and extract value on the flop?


Also when villain cold calls a bet and a raise the last thing I would be putting him on is 'not much'.

I agree with the mid-pair spaz; that seems to me like most likely part of his range given pre-flop cold-call for $115 and then peeling flop for the additional $185 in a HU situation.

Shove pre

Shove pre. $20 raise over two limps is all kinds bad, too.

exactly! @ 2/5 there is no meta

Do you play at fw at all? I think it's pretty close. Very few guys that play there are raising oop w/ AQ or less than TT. Almost nobody bluffs in that spot. I think fe is much smaller than you might think.

His range is prob AQ-AK (with AQ severely discounted), AA-77 (99,88,77 increasingly unlikely). Most likely hands are TT or JJ.

I think it's a shove or a call; probably is a shove, but it's closer than it looks.

3 bettor is described as aggro and cold caller is obviously a dolt so I think it's pretty clear cut. If 3 bettor was tighter it's a lot closer but still hard to resist given the $115 in dead on money in the pot.

obv you should make your decision preflop but is this an auto ship? I don't play these games but is he really making it 110 out of the bb with 99/AQ? If people do that type of stuff then obv ship it in, otherwise I might consider folding

meh there is already 270 in the middle to fight over. card removal and the possibility of someone folding QQ / JJ is worth the risk of running into AA or KK imo. Only very rarely are we ever getting it in vs a non pair for sure (although I did get $800 in pre two days ago at 1/2 w/ AK vs AQ) but we're taking down the pot or having a +EV flip enough of the time to justify the rare occassions that we are skewered by AA or in bad shape vs KK.

Raise more over limps, between 25 and 40 depending on the table standard.

What position are you? What position is villain 2? The first limper or what? This stuff matters....

I don't see a huge problem with making it 300 vs shoving. If you can get V2 to make gross peels for 185 more, might as well. Flop is an easy fold, he has KQ/AQ all day.