1/3, 7-handed

V, EP - $1200, ABC nitty/mubsy rec player who never bluffs, slightly afraid of H

H, SB -$550, TAG "always has it" winning image

3 limps, H completes SB with A8o, BB checks

Flop ($15): Ad 8d 3c
H checks, UTG bets $15, V calls, HJ calls, H raises to $65, V raises to $180 (rest fold), H ??

I'm convinced I'm up against a monster as he's never doing this with any draw of any sort. But he also never limps AA. And I block 88. I'm hoping he has A3 but he could also have 33.

What to do?

The problem with this thread is that it's basically "if my reads are accurate this guy always has a set here. Are they accurate?". I dunno. Are they?

Probably fold, his line does look hyper suspicious and is probably 33/77.

Just lead flop yourself.

Fold pre

Ap prob just folding he cant have Axdd, and you dont beat anything besides A3 and thats discounted given the action

This has to be a joke.

Think long term you have to understand completing A8o in sb is a mistake. You might think it's "just" an extra $2 to win the pot. Yeah here and there youre gonna cooler someone on like a 883 board against a hand like 87. But how often does that happen?

Also, times where you flop the effective nuts like now youre raise-folding? :/ What do you want? An AA8 flop? Fold preflop!!, maybe if it's suited and has that multiway playability for the nut flush complete the sb.

As played, V might have A3. You block 88. AA is highly highly unlikely also as you block that too and you expect V to raise preflop. It's either 33 or youre ahead. I think fold is okay. I'd personally lead about $10. Check raising looks too strong 5 handed and your hand is faceup. Competent players can play perfect poker against you in that case. If you have some check raises in your range such as airs and combo draws i dont mind the check raise.

You just snap infected this thread.

+1

Call-back raise from a feltphobic rec is just always the best hand they can possibly have.

You basically told yourself what you need to do here. Live reads are always greater than relying on game theory. V is super nitty and just back raised you in a limped pot. The villain described wouldn't even back raise you if he had A8 because he's scared you have 33. This is an easy fold. Who cares if we block AA and 88? Sure it's less likely he has those hands but at LLSNL people pretty much play their hands face up and we can just rely on our live reads and fold profitably against such V. V shows up with AA/88/33 almost always.

This has to be a joke. Unfortunately, I doubt it is.

I don't know what your problem is, but I'd appreciate it if you didnt needle me/respond sarcastically whenever you don't agree with my advice. Idc if you have 33k posts and over a decade's worth of experience. And even then, some of your posts are pretty questionable, yet I don't act like a dick when the advice you give isn't optimal. And for that amount of experience & your attitude towards some other players on the forums, I'm surprised you're still posting threads where you're playing at low-stakes

A8o is just garbage from the SB. You're always first to act, have a crap kicker, the BB is probably raising 5-12% of hands here so you basically donate 2/3 a BB whenever he does, etc. It doesnt have a lot of playability multiway and is offsuit. We flopped gin besides AA8 or quads for our hand, and yet OP still doesnt know what to do & wants to consider folding

Relax dude. I don't remember needling you in the past, so I apologize if I've done it repeatedly.

One thing I find a bit exasperating about this subforum is that it is full of people who have found out that you can beat up LLSNL just by being a nit and now take the attitude that near enough is good enough and you should just avoid any situation that is at all marginal. I'm not referring to you here at all, it's something that's spread through the whole sub. Our opponents at LLSNL are BAD and we should be looking for ways to play more hands against them, not looking for reasons to fold.

In the case of A8 I really don't think it's close. Being in the SB sucks, I realize that. Fold A3o, fine. But A8 has solid equity - it roughly gets its fair share of equity in a multiway limped pot, which all else being equal would mean we could expect to get 50% ROI on the completion. I think it has solid playability and disagree that the kicker is "crap" in the context of a limped pot. I expect to be good the majority of the time when an ace flops and 8xx flops are good too. I will admit that when I posted my reply I hadn't noticed it was 1/3 and the completion is bigger than usual. I think at 1/3 it's still a complete, not super close. At 1/2 folding would be a crime. I would also generally rather raise the hand than fold it, although that's something that is very table dependent. Don't want to be getting three callers when we do that.

The fact that OP doesn't know what to do has nothing to do with the fact that he has A8, he would be in much the same spot with AJ on AJ3.

PS: I'm posting in LLSNL because that's what I play now, really just for kicks. I was semi-pro for a couple years and fully pro for 6 years and did well, but in the context of pro players I've never been very talented.

Pre seems fine to me though like all things it can't be proven.

I'd probably just lead flop myself for $15.

I like your x/r sizing.

Fold to the back raise from a nit. This is a spot where you shouldn't go broke in a limped pot. Hard to see what a nit is re-raising flop with that's not a set here. He probably has 33 or the last combo of 88.

Pre is pretty marginal.

Lead flop most of the time.

Fist pump fold now and get shown AKo and told "good fold, I had it" and then go on monkey tilt thinking about how hard these droolers are trying to give you their money and wondering how you ever lose at this game. Next time you are faced with a big decision this session you won't fold and they will show the obvious nuts. You go home and whine to your gf about how bad everyone is and swear off poker. Then you go back the next day and repeat.

Whoops sorry that last part I was getting confused with my own game.

Even though we are deep, we are OOP, and A8o is garbage (I wouldn't even complete on the Button). I fold preflop. ETA: Position, rake, very meh hand strength, rake, rake, position and rake our unlikely to make this hand profitable here against all but the super worst of opponents, imo. If we're super expert, whatever.

I would just bet/bet/bet this and then re-evaluate if raised / draw comes in.

A check/raise is really overplaying this, especially against a donk by the tight guy in EP (which is scary as hell, tbh). As played (checking), I might even just flat and see what happens on the turn.

This is the second thread of the day where I think folding top two on the flop is the correct play. The other thread it was more debatable. Here I wouldn't even think twice about it. You think a nit who is afraid of us is 3betting our check/raise with A3 (the only hand we beat?). 100% no, in fact, he might even (correctly) dump it. Every other hand that he's doing this with has us crushed, noting there is a very good chance he has AA (failed limp/reraise, not sure why we don't think he'd play AA this way this deep?).

ETA: And lol @ Ava.

GcluelessNLnoobG

But things aren't equal from the SB because it's undoubtedly more difficult to realize your pot share first to act even at a soft table.

Yeah, it's cool. Normally I don't get that worked up, but I literally just got out of my biggest downswing of my career and I guess was pretty irritable. Havent had anywhere near of a nasty downswing like that since around exactly a year ago. Also didn't help that my friend woke me up at 3:30 A.M. for something that wasnt important, and wasnt able to fall back asleep. So yeah, my bad for some of the snarky remarks and hope we are cool.

Yeah i know a decent amount of posters here are nitty, and I agree sometimes it goes too far. I actually play quite spewy & am usually a station/non-believer tbh lol. I probably have a higher 4-bet % than most players' 3-bet %'s, so yeah I'm not a folder/nit.

I mean, A8o is pretty close, esp with the rake. Limping A9o should be fine, A10o+ usually a raise.

Pre is a fold. But I'm rarely folding there cuz lol-live-poker and I have a 3% chance to flop top2p and get felted by the nit who was going for a limp/raise pre with AA.

Look, when the nit leads otf I'm probably just gonna call him down for three streets here.

As played, call now and maybe call ott depending on what's happening.

V as described probably doesn't even have AK or 33 all that often.

Ok, so the guy who led in EP wasn't a nit, he's loose/fishy and bets anything OTF. Guess I wasn't as clear in OP. It's V (also in EP) who's nitty. Also, the table was too fishy to give up A8o in SB.

Anyway, I call flop to see what happens. Praying for an A.

Turn ($405): 7d (brings the flush)
H checks, V quickly checks

River ($405): 2s
H ????

You are highly overestimating the value of this hand and of how it plays OOP in a rake raped game against even terrible opponents. One of the biggest mistakes a lot of players do is way open up their preflop range simply because of "lol fish filled table". Most open up their range so wide that they become the fish.

If you're an expert player, whatever, do what you want. I'll let you evaluate yourself accordingly.


This is the plan?

There are 2 Aces left in the deck (and that is a conservative estimate given the flop action). A 2-outer is approximately 22:1 or so.

Gthisisnotaverygoodplan,imoG

If you want to open up your game, the worst position on the table is not the place to do so. A8o is a bad hand to play if your game plan is to flop something good or fold. In a 5 way limped pot oop, what other plan can you realistically have? How would you have played this hand if it came out Kd 9d 3c?

For me, this would be a not even think about it twice fold. Give me ATC on the button in a limped pot instead. I know I can make some money then.

As played, I'd lead the flop. Top 2 pair is a good hand, but not something I want to be on the river betting out after the flop and turn. Any ace is calling and that's your money target. They won't fold until the river. Given the description of a nit, I'd fold to the raise. This is a set much of the time.

If you're going to bluff at the river, you want to shove. I'd be more inclined to do it if he isn't really a nit. Nits get married to their hands and hate to fold when they were ahead on the flop.

Yeah, so our ROI is perhaps not going to be as much as 50%.

But think about what the claim is from people who want to fold. They're saying that the opponents are so fearsome in position that not only can we not turn a profit postflop, but we can only realize less than two-thirds of the preflop equity that our hand naturally has. Like..... really? The task "break even postflop with a top 20%ish hand OOP against 4 idiots" does not sound difficult to me.

According to some back of the envelope scrawling I just did, we flop top pair or better somewhere between 20-25% of the time, closer to 25. How is it unreasonable to call planning to flop top pair?

Note that we only need to win the pot 13.3% of the time to break even on the call preflop, so the task here is literally "try not to lose too much money postflop when you flop top pair". I don't get how you guys think this is going to be -EV. It really blows my mind.

Wouldn't a non-nit be more fearless and more inclined to call a river shove, if he thinks I wouldn't put in $180 with a mere flush draw (which is what I'm repping) on the flop in a limped pot?

This guy is MUBSY and fears us as I always have it.

However, do I really need to turn such a strong hand into a bluff? Isn't there a chance he can have A3?

Rake is terrible. I didnt realize how bad until I bought PT4. In my 15k hand sample winning at 11bb/100 at 200NL, I won $3.6k. Yet I paid the house $1.8k. My last 8k hands were basically breakeven (down 1.5BI thankfully instead of my initial 12.5BI), but I probably paid almost $1k rake. but yeah I'm not super thrilled playing a mediocre hand from the SB even with idiots at the table when the rake is robbing me blind, and I play pretty loose like 26/21 6-max.

A9o I'm probably completing, A9s+ A10o+ isolating super big

Man, I can't even imagine playing microstakes anymore, and I feel bad for those that are still grinding it. Rake must be even worse for them

All good

I guess I'm a nit because I turbo muck this pre without a second thought. I don't really like completing from the SB and despise playing multiway limped pots OOP.

I'll complete some small pairs and SC's/SG's and Axs. If I want to play a hand I'd rather just raise it up and depending on how soft the game is that would be something like ATo+, KJo+, 88+. QJo I'll probably complete and simultaneously call myself a fish.