A new player is sitting to my left. Everyone else at the table I'd played with and all wanted to limp into hands and see if they nail the flop.

4 limpers and I'm on the button with A4s. I raise. I'm clearly not folding and even though I have a small equity disadvantage having position, a highly probable chance to take a 4-card flop and the deception generated compensate.

SB (the new player) coldcalls, BB calls and all limpers call.

14sb in the pot, flop comes K56r (none of my suit). Checks around to me and I take my free four-card flop.

Turn is a 7. The new player bets, BB folds, UTG raises, folds around to me. There are 10 big bets in the pot, I have to call 2 to stay in the hand, and I might get reraised and possibly even capped.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that all of my straight outs are good. I have 8 outs and therefore about a 16% (1 in 6) chance of making my hand on the river. The pot is not laying me 6 to 1 odds - not even close. I do have some implied odds on the river as long as nobody has 89, 99, K9 etc.

The new player could have been betting a king that he wanted to checkraise me with on the flop, and the raiser could have a set or two pair.

This decision, at least to me, is actually close (putting UTG on 89 feels MUBSy), but I lean toward folding for the simple reason that I don't like cold-calling raises - 3-bet or fold, and my hand is not strong enough to semibluff 3-bet.

Thoughts?

I think the 8 is best excluded as an out. You have a gutshot.

Nh as played. Fold now.

Think it's a call here, why discount an Ace for outs?
I mean at least 1 .

Because it's a live 3/6 game and a dude has raised the turn

always forget that part..

I think its a mistake to raise A4s in this passive and lower limit game. Your opponents are definitely limping hands which have you dominated from 44 -88 and also A7s -AJ. When you just flop an ace you lose money and most flops completely miss your hand. In position I would recommend taking a cheap flop and being able to get alot of bets in post flop when you make a big hand. Otherwise, get away from this hand cheaply. In this particular hand its a very easy fold on the turn
Also, the philosophy of raising preflop to be able to get to the turn for free -your 4 card flop idea- is significantly flawed. 3 -6 players aren't paying close attention to preflop raising ranges often but will notice if you are giving them free cards after raising pre. Resulting in more people calling, making it harder for your top pair hands to win.

This is the wrong way to look at it. Sure, they may limp dominating hands. The question is about their ranges. By your argument, someone who limps 100% of his hands is bad for the A4s raise. "He might even have AA." Sure, but A4s is a 60/40 favorite vs. <random> and is an easy value raise in position. If our hero has an edge and is pushing it, nice raise.
I'm with you that playing for 4 card flops is meh, mostly because you're at a limit where people just donk.
They were limping and won't notice our raises. It isn't about them "figuring us out" and our TP hands not winning. Our top pair hands are equity hogs, and they'll win more than their fair share of money. If our villains were limping 60% and now limp 70% because our hero raises pre and then checks flops, is this somehow bad for us?

No part of small stakes limit is about getting the respect of the table and winning more pots. Any thinking about protecting your top pair hands just has to go away.

If you want to argue that our hero has admitted that this hand isn't a favorite and thus raising is bad, I'm 100% there. He can make a close to 0EV overlimp and play good poker in position on the flop, and that's clearly a better play? Cool. The idea that there are a few dominating hands in villain ranges or that somehow we will overall lose EV with a loose image doesn't work for me.

If you want to take this logic to the extreme, then we can say to not reraise KK because the other guy could have AA.

Just because they're allowed to have us dominated, doesn't mean we don't raise. Loose, low stakes limpers have lots of crap in their ranges, stuff you'd never expect.

Here's an example of 4 ultra passive limpers that limp as strong as TT/AJs/AQo along with random blinds:

1/6th the equity 7 ways? Sounds like a raise to me.

We don't raise to get a 4 card flop. We raise to get value. An additional benefit is that sometimes when the flop comes Q82 w/ a heart and we'd really like to look at a turn card, we're now more likely to. But it's not why we do it.

And before you say "they don't have 32s and 76o", yeah, they do.

Where's 54o and 68o?
Because I see that plenty even in 20/40.

I tried to not get too ridiculous with the slider . But yeah, those will be in there, too (so our equity becomes even better once added).

Over limping is what the 65 year old nits do who then wonder why the crazy raising kids always seem to win bigger pots and get more action on their nut flush.


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Huh? Against multiple players I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. I have been up for about 36 hours so maybe thats a contributing factor. In a good mood won 1200 in a round by round game my uncle has once a year before going to vegas for a month. 5 10 limit holdem and omaha hi low baby.

I guess my main point is you will not be ahead very often when you get alot of action post flop. I honestly love playing against ppl who will raise often in this spot so I have no idea why I am arguing against it.... clearly I feel the biggest edge I have is post flop although I will raise and reraise 89 suited thru KQ suited in the aforementioned spot A4 multiple ways I clearly believe a call is better. Now for a nap... P.S. also don't raise A4 in hi lo and in the 2nd paragraph of post OP states 4 card flop being a determining factor in his decision? I guess I would be pretty stunned if you belive A4 wins very many pots flopping one pair 5 handed...however in the midwest sometimes 3 6 is the biggest limit running while in vegas or on west coast I will grant the play is probably much more ragged.
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I have a bet I just made with my cousin. Tk KQ suited for my hand and A4 suited for your hand. Deal out 4 hands randomly then deal a complete board. Every time A4 is the best hand you get 2 pts KQ i get 2 pts. Anytime any other hand dealt would have reasonably given action to you and your hand still would hv won 5pts. We only did 2 dollars and 5 per hand but after 100 hands I was up 60 bucks. You can be loose with yr interpretation of reasonable action. 8 high all around is 2pts. 4th pair feel free to tk yr 5. I would run 500 hands with KQ suited and 10 J suited run separately vs A4 in a 5 handed pot. NOT heads up vs each other.Sorry forgot the kicker. Anytime you would hv reasonably gotten to river and lost minus 5pts and obv same for me and the bet is dealt from an actual deck
not a computer

This has just become my favorite gambling game of all time. We have added some rules for more fun. Deal rotates dealer decides if 4 random hands are dealt face up or not and each player has to declare if they are continuing with their hand on the flop. "Surrendering" your hand obv you lose only 2 pts

That's an incredibly absurd way to define hand value.

Firstly, that game doesn't mimic real world game play at all. Hands aren't a rigid award of chips at showdown. Plus, once a pot is bloated, top pair universally does well in single bet postflop pots. Not to mention that these are the easiest people on earth to squeeze value from (and fold to once they start showing aggression).

Secondly, even if KQ performs better massively multiway on the button, that doesn't disprove A4s is a good hand to raise with. To take your scenario to its logical extreme, if we played the same game where I had AA and you had KK, I'd obliterate you. But that doesn't mean KK isn't a profitable raise. KQo has more equity than A4s anyway, so it's a silly hand to use as a comparison. Why not compare A4s to KTo? Their hot/cold equities run far closer.

Thirdly, and I hate making appeals to authority (as 4 limps to me isn't exactly something I have a ton of online data on), but if all the crushers are raising the button in this spot with A4s and all the break even nits are limping, what does that tell you about the hand?

People can dominate you massively multiway when you flop an ace. It happens. But last I checked, a pair of aces beats a pair of kings.

You have to love two things. One, our O8 friend replaced hot/cold equity sims by dealing actual hands. The second is a nice hustle. As you point out, the fact that KQs is a better hand than A4s isn't in question. Yet he gets a profitable prop bet vs this straw man argument. Well played. Jdr is correct, imo.

Here's partial homework. Let's assume villains would raise top 4% or 5%, and that the limpers play 40%, 45%, 55%, and 60% ranges. They're terrible and this is a 50%-ish VI$IP game. The BB is never folding, because lollimit. How's A4s? This is a 6 way pot, so fair share is 16%.

Equity Win Tie
UTG+1 17.38% 15.92% 1.46% { 99-44, ATs-A2s, KJs-K2s, Q4s+, J7s+, T7s+, 97s+, 87s, AQo-A3o, K7o+, Q8o+, J8o+, T8o+ }
UTG+2 17.03% 15.58% 1.46% { 88-44, AJs-A2s, K2s+, Q4s+, J6s+, T6s+, 96s+, 86s+, 76s, AQo-A2o, K6o+, Q8o+, J8o+, T8o+, 98o }
MP1 16.05% 14.71% 1.34% { 77-33, ATs-A2s, KJs-K2s, Q2s+, J3s+, T5s+, 95s+, 85s+, 75s+, 65s, AQo-A2o, K4o+, Q6o+, J7o+, T7o+, 97o+, 87o }
MP2 15.80% 14.51% 1.29% { 77-22, ATs-A2s, KJs-K2s, Q2s+, J2s+, T3s+, 95s+, 85s+, 75s+, 64s+, 54s, AQo-A2o, K2o+, Q5o+, J7o+, T7o+, 97o+, 87o }
BU 19.45% 17.38% 2.07% { A4s }
BB 14.28% 13.30% 0.98% { random }

Coming as a surprise to exactly nobody (not named Omahaisbetter's friend) , KQs is a much better hand

Equity Win Tie
UTG+1 15.92% 14.71% 1.21% { 99-44, ATs-A2s, KJs-K2s, Q4s+, J7s+, T7s+, 97s+, 87s, AQo-A3o, K7o+, Q8o+, J8o+, T8o+ }
UTG+2 15.61% 14.36% 1.25% { 88-44, AJs-A2s, K2s+, Q4s+, J6s+, T6s+, 96s+, 86s+, 76s, AQo-A2o, K6o+, Q8o+, J8o+, T8o+, 98o }
MP1 14.68% 13.56% 1.11% { 77-33, ATs-A2s, KJs-K2s, Q2s+, J3s+, T5s+, 95s+, 85s+, 75s+, 65s, AQo-A2o, K4o+, Q6o+, J7o+, T7o+, 97o+, 87o }
MP2 14.40% 13.33% 1.07% { 77-22, ATs-A2s, KJs-K2s, Q2s+, J2s+, T3s+, 95s+, 85s+, 75s+, 64s+, 54s, AQo-A2o, K2o+, Q5o+, J7o+, T7o+, 97o+, 87o }
BU 25.47% 24.46% 1.01% { KQs }
BB 13.93% 13.11% 0.81% { random }

25% freaking equity 6 ways? That's huge. It is way better than the ~20% that our profitable A4s friend got.
Most live players think that anyone who is more aggressive than they are will be bad players. I could tell you stories about my own version of getting my head kicked in while learning to play 6m while thinking this. It was expensive. The play is either correct or it isn't, the observation that "I like playing vs guys like that" only holds water if you can point out the mistake.

You can play with these ranges and find starting ranges where KQs is profitable and clearly a raise while A4s isn't. In that case, raising A4s is wrong. There's nothing in your exercise related to ranges. With my quick and dirty limping ranges, both A4s and KQs are easy raises. Work out your own sims (your hands will be sore dealing 30 million runs by hand).

A lot of action? If you give a lot of action with TPNK, you deserve to lose. Since villains play a lot of suited cards and our hand makes nut flushes, that's a good spot. Run KQs into A4s with the same suit on a flush board.

To be clear, getting a guy to play you even money with those two hands is pretty epic. Definitely admire the hustle.

I think you made a good fold. Congrats.

I think pre-flop is uninteresting, and despite the equity advantage, there's definitely an argument for calling as well as raising simply because I don't think most players know what to do post-flop if they raise and flop an ace. But whatever, it's fine either way.

But I think the turn is a clear no-brainer fold, because you have to discount your outs a lot here. (Or to put it another way, there's a reason this type of straight draw is referred to as "the idiot end".)

I prefer "the ass end", but that's just me

You raised an interesting question though - what *do* I do if I flop an ace? I can't imagine betting it into 5 other people or however many there were, no matter how passively the table had been playing. I would be thinking about a cheap showdown and using my position to let the villains tell me how good their hands are.

I generally bet three times if they keep checking to me.

Depends. In a 3/6 game you are going to get nitrolled a lot doing that.

What I am getting to with "most players don't know what to do if they raise A4s and flop an ace" is precisely that while betting while checked to on the flop is a no brainer, you have to evaluate after that, especially on the river if the board doesn't counterfeit kickers, because against passive, nitty players, it becomes very possible for 50 percent or more of their river calling range to be better aces (or even, with the very nitty, sometimes some two pairs).

(In larger games, it's easier because you will get check-raised or donked into by someone who flops an ace.)