Background: I played LHE almost exclusively, live and online, from around 2004 to 2008. What little poker I have played since then has been mostly the NLHE variety, so I'm a bit out of practice and not aware of how the game has changed, if at all. This is all to say: go easy on me if this is a stupid question with an obvious answer.

Game: 6/12 LHE

Table: pretty juicy. Lots of cold calling preflop -- any two suited is worth calling three bets for at least a couple players. People have been chasing weird draws after the flop too.

V (UTG+1) raises
Hero (MP) 3-bets with AK
HJ calls
CO calls
Button calls
SB calls
BB calls
V calls

Flop: JK6

V bets
Hero...?

I guess my question boils down to whether I'm calling to keep all the garbage in because I have a drawing hand or if I'm raising to see if I can isolate V because I might actually have the best hand (and obviously the best draw).

Thoughts?

You want to raise because it's awesome when people call you with QT or AxQ or 99x or what have you.

You raise because your have a boatload of equity and don't care if people call or fold.

you raise , you want to make the pot as big as you can

Welcome back to the min bet Texas. Attack.

Preflop went UTG+1 raise, then MP 3 bet, and it is still 7 players seeing the flop for 3 bets each - what makes you think they will start folding now? Raise.

I'd actually say you raise because you have the best hand.

The reality is that raising in this situation probably (though not certainly) shrinks the pot, so if I had the ace of hearts and no pair, I'd probably call the flop donk and encourage people with weaker hearts and various other draws to stay in the hand.

But here, we have top pair top kicker as well as the nut flush draw. So the raise is for both value and protection.

I think that a raise is certain. I am curious if player behind 3! or call and what the turn is.

I think this is actually closer than people think and calling certainly has merit.

I'd raise. I think in tougher games where the coldcallers have more high ranking flush combos than they do here that calling would be good, but passive players like the ones that coldcalled 3 preflop here have less hands that can 3 bet us. We crush the pocket pairs and lesser Ax with a heart. If and when we get 3 bet from behind, we have a solid draw to top two, trips, or the nuts, which will win sometimes, often, and a lot respectively.

I would raise. If I had AK without the heart I think there is merit to calling with the intention to raise blank turns because the pot is huge and I feel that gives us the best chance of winning it.

Here, though, the pot is huge but so is our equity. I feel like we will get tons of value from hands that will call 2 cold and be drawing almost dead. I think trying to maximize our value against these hands is more important than trying to protect against those hands that have decent equity against us.

I also think raising is the best way to accomplish getting value, because the pot is so big. I think most people who will call one bet will call 2 bets also because of the pot size. If it instead was something like we open, 2 people cold call, bb calls then donks, I'd find calling more attractive because I'd expect fewer dead hands to call 2 bets.

Couple general questions 1.a what would you do if villain only saw Villians hand and it was a flush 1.b how often does he have a flush.
2.a what would you do if only you saw Villians hand and it was 2 pair or a set 2.b how often does he have 2 pair or a set
3.a Will people really call two cold on flip with red nines? 3.b will they call 1 bet

Most of this is true but I think you likely underestimate how often villain has a flush here. Sure if he's a drooling idiot than I agree and raise but if he's just s normal idiot he has a flush often

comon jon...
Yeah the donker might have a flush but what % in his entire range that flush represent ?
It is so minuscule that i would not care about it in this huge pot with so many players.
Even more so when we have the nut redraw.
His 2 pair again is what in % ?
KJ and thats it.
His sets ? only 1 combo of K and maybe 6 for J & 6.

I mean his range that beats us in total is so small, it is not the time to get scared facing 1 sb in a 21 sb pot, and again, not when we have the nut redraw to compensate on top of it.

This is what i am more scared of:
- How often TPTK wins in a 7 way pot ?
Not often !
- How many hands would call a raise that we beat ?
A tons !
- How many hands can outdraws us if we do not raise ?
Again, a tons! even 45o would be correct to call 1sb and hope to hit a runner runner 2 pair, straight or trips for example.

And finally, this is a special situation we are in this hand, but imo a very important one.
How many hands ( like 1 pair hoping to hit 2 pair, or 3 of a kind ,etc) that would be correct to call 2 bet cold but might fold incorrectly because when we raise, we might already have the nutz in their minds and with the action not over (UTG will have to decide to call or 3bet), they might fold because they are not closing the action ?

A lot of hands might fold here that would be correct to call if they saw our hand, and this is a rare occasion because this flop is very scary for a weak 6 or J for example.
So it is a huge win if they fold incorrectly but if they call ( well we rather they fold ), we win huge equity wise with our nut draw anyway, it is an easy win-win scenario for us.

My point jon is that the factors that can beats us if we do not raise far outweigh the factors that we might be beat already...

I guess I just disagree with all of this, unless you think he just donks into 7 people here with like Th Js. He can maybee 2 combos of Kx Qh and pretty much every other hand he has should have us beat. I don't know why you think a flush should be a miniscule part of his range. Sure theres not a ton of combos he would open raise with that make flushes here, but there are even fewer combos of hands he's going to donk into 7 people and pre-flop 3! with.

I'm not saying don't raise here, but its certainly close and there are lots of players I would just call versus (and lots I happily raise versus)

How many people donk a made flush into the preflop raiser next to act?

Small stakes donks are almost always weak.

I guess I can just disagree on this with most people, no big deal. In my experiences people are at more likely to snow up with 66/ flush here then some random second
Pair/third but flush draw.

if they are spazzy/bad enough to lead JT with a heart here into 7 people then we likely know that, will have that read and I'm on board with a raise

I agree with you if for example he defends his BB 3 ways and Donna this flop

But he (1) opens utg+1 so shouldn't be to weak (2) gets 3 bet so should be somewhat scared of a big hand (3) leafs a monotone board into 6 people...,

This is not to consistent with someone thinking man I'm really scared what to do here.

Ah is in hand and Kh Jh are on the board. If he's "not too weak" then you're putting him on exactly QhTh?

I think you're right he may have a set. But I'd also put a lot of things like AK and KQs and KoQh and maybe even QQh.

I think it's likely he could have gotten out of line with Q9hh, 56hh, 89hh hands. I've seen plenty of people get bored and show up with the K2s UTG +1 here (although this does contradict my precious statement, so if he can have crisp flushes he can easily have Q-10o and be leading these hands as well).

Villain raised preflop early position. The A, K, and J of trump are spoken for. Just on combos, there aren't many flushes that should be in his range. And if he has one, the most logical play for most players would be to check-raise.

Eh, that's what I get for grunching, Callipygian already made both my points!

I think it can't be that often just because there are not many combos of flushes he should have after he opened UTG+1 and 3 broadway flush cards are dead. There might only be exactly QThh unless he open raises 9Thh but I don't think many 6/12 players would.

So we don't need to have many other hands added to the range before the flush becomes pretty remote. KxQh is 2 combos, but maybe we can figure he donks with KQo some percentage of the time because he's afraid of hearts and doesn't want it to check around. And maybe he bets pair+FD combos some percentage of the time because people always just jam with these hands figuring it can't be too bad. Or maybe he has something that should have capped preflop like QxQh or AK but he didn't because this is 6/12.

But even if we know he is ahead of us, it's not like we are going to lose tons by raising because we will often have multiple people continue behind us and our equity multi-way with the nut draw will be significant.

It seems that when we have the best hand, we are going to be way ahead most of the time and so it is really valuable to get extra bets in there. When we are behind, we would prefer not to get extra bets in, but it hurts us a lot less than it helps us when we're ahead. So we could be ahead less than our fair percentage of the time, but a raise could still be profitable because their hand is less likely to hold up.

all right jon, Are you 100% sure his got the flush to be scared of raising this flop ?

I will even be worst than you, let just say 2 players has a made flush already on this flop and someone else had the Q heart and decide to fold ( so we have even less outs to hit our flush).

Which gives us 4 outs to the nut flush.

Maybe i am wrong with my math or logic but here it is.

So we raise the flop it got 3 bet and cap.
We got isoraise with the worst hand not by one but 2 players ( to discount even more our outs for the flush not forgeting someone else had another heart as well, the Qh holder or any other heart for that matter, that folded on the flop).

21 sb pot before the action
12 sb added from us and the other players.
Total 33sb pot after the flop.
4 outs gives us 16% equity.
this gives us little more than 5,3 sb pot value for our draw

So basically, we pay 4 sb when we have a little more than 5 sb worth in the pot.
Our raise do not cost us money in the worst case scenario possible.

But, let say you are not sure 100% that his donk represent the flush already, this is a huge pot of 22 sb ( donker bet include) which could easily end up around 30 sb bet worth.

IF by not us raising the flop,we let someone calling 1 sb that would of fold the flop to a raise with 76 for example,
and we loose this pot because he hit trip or 2 pair on the turn, Do you know how many medium pot size it will take to regain that loss for :
1 sb bet you prevent to raise on the flop to save "money".

It is around what ? 10-12 BB worth of pure profit ( not counting the money you put it in).
Around 3 to 4 succesfull blinds battle wins to the fullest value (without raises of course).
{SB vs BB (raise pf 4sb+flop 2sb+2BB turn+2BB turn=7BB divide 2 = 3,5 BB pure proft}

Imo that is a lot for only 1 pot when speak of : should we invest 1 sb to help us wins a pot even tho we do not have the best hand.

In TOP, sklansky says to even raise with the second best hand any day in big pot, imagine in this one.
This is a basic rule , huge pot is not the time to try to find places to save bets. Yes in small pot not in huge ones.
He did not say that for nothing i guess or i completely misunderstood is meaning.

Big pot, calling stations, lots of equity, gotta raise it up every time

Im not saying call becusse I'm scared of a flush, it's more what are people doing behind us with red 99. If they will fold for two cold but call one bet and UTG range is weighted to hands that beat TP at the moment we don't want him to fold. If they are gonna take two to the face with red nines like some people suggest, then raising is def fine