Fairly loose, not very deep 1-3 game at my local casino 7 handed. I am UTG with two black Qs and raise to ten and get 5 callers.

Flop comes 4s9d5c. BB checks and I bet 25, solid player about 200 deep calls and another younger guy seems aggressive with around 300 also calls and the rest fold.

So I am out of position with around 125 in the pot and Ac comes on the turn. I check and other two also check.

I can already see the younger aggressive guy planning some sort of steal, so I'm not so much worried about him but the solid player between us has me worried as I think he would have checked an A there. Seems unlikely younger guy would have.

River comes the 8c making the board 4s9d5cAc8c, I check again, solid player checks and young ag player bets 60 into the 125. I think about for a bit maybe he caught the runner runner flush somehow or maybe my read is completely off and he really does have the ace, but I look at the solid and he is ready to instana call, not even paying the slightest attention to me so I fold.

Young ag kid says small pair and shows some junk like 47, solid player shows JJ to win pot of 245 that should have been mine.

I couldn't even play anymore took the 100 I had left behind cashed out and got the **** out of there I was so pissed off. For one thing bluffs never work at that 1-3 game so wtf was that kid thinking it was obvious dude was not giving up his jacks. He might have got a read that I wasn't in love with my hand after the ace, but to try and get through two player in a fairly big pot for the game just seems ridiculous. Also he actually had some show down value with the pair. Maybe I should have just bombed another 50 on the turn like the ace didn't phase, but I think bank roll limitations are causing me to play too weak. I also really wish solid player would have three bet preflop with his jacks or even raised the 25 I bet on the flop with his over pair, but I think my tight table image caused him to really think I had the QQ, KK, or AA.

Larger pre.
Probably larger on the flop.
Turn check is likely good.

River is meh.
Probably a fold given the read on the player behind you.

You can call on river and strong player will likely not overcall. But betting river for value small like 40 might be better.

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larger raise preflop as long as you are doing the same large raises all the time. In my 1/2 games it can be as high as 20 and as low as 10 depending on the table. If they are calling bigger bets then you need to be raising preflop with any pairs at top range. You get more value for pairs and it will weed out all smaller hands. Doing this would of put you heads up vs JJ and then I feel you still would of folded. Once the ace hit I am sure you thought wow I am beat. This is a common reaction and this is where the read of the player comes in. Its a tough turn card to handle but reading the young guy stealing which you said you knew and his bet was the best info you had. Loose table I think calling was okay here two handed but three it makes you look like a calling station imo given the ace and the clubs. You played decent but the preflop raise needs to be bigger and more consistent and chalk this one up to learning how to control emotions.

thanks guys

If you trust your reads there's no need to fold the river. A minraise will be enough to get rid of the solid player.

You know who never makes a fold when they are good? A total calling station, that's who. Every winning player makes folds that they 'should' have called... but actually shouldn't because overall it's a losing play, even if that one time it would have won the pot.

Walking out because you're tilted is good, but better to let this stuff roll off your back.

Bet more. You don't want 5 callers. I don't know what the standard bet sizing is where you play but where I play I'd make it like 20. Whatever size tends to get 1 - 2 callers is what you want.

This flop smashes their calling ranges. Expect a lot of straight draws. You bet too small. You are giving odds to the straight draws to come along, especially after the first guy calls. I'd bet like 40 here.

Seems fine. I sometimes wait about 5 seconds in spots like this to make it look like I'm considering a check-raise. You just don't want your check to be taken as weakness by the aggressive player. However, it's also decently likely someone has an Ace and you don't really want to bloat the pot here, so checking is fine. This is why playing OOP sucks.

I'd bet the river given the turn checked through. An Ace is not really strong enough to slowplay, though fish do slowplay it occasionally so I wouldn't be that surprised to see someone has an Ace, but you're usually good here. It could be argued you won't get calls from much worse hands but you might. The other players might be thinking you don't have an Ace so they'll call a bet with hands like JJ TT J9 T9 etc. as long as you don't make it overly large. Maybe bet like 65.

Fold is a mistake particularly given your read of this player as aggressive. He's just trying a steal most of the time and you're getting 245:60 or roughly 4:1 if you expect the solid player to call, meaning your QQ needs to be good only 20%, and it surely will be. If you call and the solid player folds you're getting over 3:1 and need to be good only 1 time in 4, which you surely are against an aggressive player.

Gotta be careful with this entitlement mentality. Just because you went in with the best hand on the flop doesn't mean the pot belongs to you. You have a certain amount of equity and expect to win the pot sometimes and lose it sometimes. It doesn't belong to you. It sucks because in this case you would have won calling, and calling is correct here, but sometimes one of the players has KK or A2 or they spiked two pair on the river with 98, or a straight with 76.

You should have called, but the $245 doesn't belong to you. I'd guess you hold up about 40% of the time with 5 callers so at best about $100 belongs to you, but even thinking about it like that is not helpful.

I wasn't there but when there's an Ace turn and it gets checked through, then the PFR checks again on the river, a bluff actually has a decent chance of working. From the bluffer's perspective, it only needs to work 60/185 = ~1 time in 3. And in my games it will. But in any case, don't worry about whether the guy made a mistake or not. Just concentrate on how to play your hand.

And forget the wishful thinking about the guy 3-betting with JJ. It's useless. And if he did 3-bet, how confident do you feel with your QQ? Are you going to shove? If so you're going to run into KK+ a lot. It's just trading one problem for another, and frankly you have no control over whether he 3-bets so just forget about it.

Sounds like you might be playing underrolled and also have some problems with tilt control. This is a dangerous combination. Always remember the results of individual hands are largely random. Just play your game. Focus on the things you can control. And if you're underrolled, don't play to make money because it's going to stress you out. Just my 2 cents. Good luck with your future play.

I am definitely under rolled, but I, not necessarily playing for money. I'm playing with money I can afford to lose, so most of the time it's not really a big deal if I lose or win.

Tilt control is usually not a problem but I was very tilted after that hand and really was just feeling like nothing was going my way so that was more the reason for leaving. Also felt like the MOSS events on ACR might have had a bit more value, even though i ended up dumping another 50 busting out of every tournament I played last night but whatever today's a new day and I think I'm hitting up the 7:30 tournament at Turning Stone tonight. I also think 1/2 may be a better game for me. With the 200 cap instead of the 300 with 1/3. They do both seem to play so bad though, really wish mid limit was still alive, but I can't really afford 10/20 or 20/40 which is all TS every gets and parx with its 6/12 OE game is just too far a drive for a day trip. About the only decent limit game around me is a 4/8 1/2 kill O8 game on saturdays at Mohegan Sun Pocano and even that is tough to beat with the rake.

So almost everyone at least agrees that my preflop raise should have been bigger. So say I did raise it up to 20 and got maybe two callers. I'm sure solid player with the JJ would have called and maybe one more. So then same flop comes, should I just donk bet all in on that flop? I mean I would have about 120 behind so any decent bet close to pot would pretty much be committing me, like say I did bet 60 and some one raises I would have to call and pretty much anyone playing and paying attention to stacks would notice this.

This spot it probably would have worked out fine as solid player with the JJ would most likely call at the very least and probably would have just raised the rest of what I had.

When you get 5 callers preflop, you're almost setmining with QQ. Sounds like table is very loose and not deep, so I'd either lean towards (a) raising large to 10%+ of stacks and hope I narrow the field to HU/3ways-at-worse where I can then stack off comfortably postflop if I flop an overpair or (b) limp/reraising (especially if the table often sees a raise followed by multiple callers, where even turning our hand into a bluff and taking down all the dead money preflop will still be massively profitable). We chose the absolute worse raise size and got the expected worse result, imo.

SPR 4ish, against 5 opponents, OOP to most, with an overpair flying blind. I literally have zero clue what to do here, which is why I avoid this situation. I might check the flop. I might bet it. I might bet small on the turn to fold. I can't really hate too much on flop/turn play either way. The river I believe is a mistake; the solid player also realizes the other guy is going to stab at the pot often and could be calling fairly light, but he'd also probably bet a fairly solid hand on the turn on this drawy board and probably the river too for value, so I'd probably call the river bet.

In the end, if you had difficulty in the hand postflop either (a) get way better at these situations (easier said than done, imo, so good luck) or (b) do something different preflop to avoid them.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Is there a reason you're playing ~40BB deep? It really limits your maneuverability post-flop.

But let's say you make it 20 and get two callers.

There's ~60 in the pot on the flop and you have 105 left. I wouldn't suggest just shoving as it's an overbet, but you should never fold an overpair with a stack to pot ratio of < 2. You could check-raise all-in, but if it gets checked through and an overcard comes that's a mild disaster.

I'd bet an amount that lets you shove the turn while maintaining some fold equity. Maybe bet 35 on the flop. Say one guy calls (typical result).

There's now ~130 in the pot on the turn and you have 70 left. Now you shove if the turn is not an overcard. If it's an Ace like happened here, you could still shove, but any Ace will look you up. You might check to induce a bluff from the aggressive player. And if it gets checked behind you can shove the river.

While I agree with most of this, just two points:

- it has taken me a while to do so, but I've come around to the benefits of playing shortstacked, and one of those benefits is that it certainly makes playing hands like these (bit pairs) fairly trivial (and very profitable in these loose games where opponents will be willing to call off far too large a percentage of their stack to see a flop); admittedly, playing deeper will likely be more profitable for *good* players (i.e. proper self-evaluation is key here)

- not sure why we want to maintain some FE in this spot (better hands are never folding, and we always want worse hands to call)

GbutagreeotherwiseG

Playing short can be easier but a lot of people don't make the proper adjustments. They still play drawing hands passively 30 or 40 or 50 BB deep. Before playing short I'd make sure one reads about the proper adjustments for various stack sizes. The most important adjustment is you must play drawing hands aggressively when short stacked or not at all.

You're right about FE with respect to this hand. In general I'd like to set up bets so we have fold equity on any given street in case we want to bluff/semibluff. What I really meant to say with respect to this hand was to size bets so we're not committed on the turn. If we bet 60 on the flop we have 55 left into a 180 pot. We pretty much have to shove. I like to maintain some maneuverability so we don't force ourselves to commit on bad turn cards, and also to have the option to bluff on favorable cards (doesn't really apply to this hand, but what if we C-bet AKss on J76sdc and the turn is the Qs, for instance?)

I'm not convinced one has to play drawing hands aggressively short. Heck, even at lol 30bbs we're still getting 30+:1 IO if we can get into a pot for cheap in LP (obviously we can't be limp/calling or even limp/folding that often or it will quickly become unprofitable). Agree that that playing good draws aggressively postflop this short will probably be more profitable than playing them passively (since the FE makes winning the relatively big pots to our stack so worthwhile), but even still playing them passively should still be profitable.

In general if I'm setting up an SPR 2 pot, I'm pretty happy with committing myself by the turn if I've flopped an overpair and I'm rarely looking for FE. Admittedly, the A high case is different and leaving ourselves some room for turn options is fine.

GcluelessNLnoobG

The FE is something I wonder about all the time in this 1/3 game. Like this hand so say I did lead out big on the flop, like 60% of my remaining stack. This would be telling my opponents that I am not folding to a shove and probably not even folding to a bad card on the turn, but I do think a lot of times I run into a set or even a 45 suited for bottom two.

A very similar hand had came up last week in the same game. I raise AA up to about 12-15 and get two callers. I had just bought in fairly short so I had about 100 behind.

Flop comes Js8c3c and I bet 50 into about 45 just hoping to take it down there and guy raises me all in. At this point I think I'm pretty good, he could easily be raising a flush draw, str8 draw or I might have him crushed with something like AJ, A8, but he flips over the J8 off suit for top two and his excuse for the pre flop call was that "I knew you had aces or kings, I haven't seen you play a hand in 45 minutes".

So I get it all in bad and get saved by a river 3, another tough hand OOP where I got lucky to win it.

Also I have to say I have been running horrible which is really hurting my confidence live and online. I see hand like AK suited and almost just want to limp fold it been so bad. Kings make me throw up a little because the way I have been running I just assume I'm going broke.

Here is just one bad beat because its kind of crazy.

SO ACR pretty sure we are in the money in a 1000GTD MTT.

Dealt AcAs and I three bet and get snap called by AhJs. Flop comes Ad8s10s, I shove get called, which alls seemed standard in this spot. We both had below average stacks at this point, so its not like we are playing super deep, probably 20 bb deep max.

Turn comes 9s, river Qs and the pot gets pushed to villain even though I had the As covered, but guess what he hit his runner runner str8 flush. lol so that's the sort of thing I have been running into.

I know the math says it will all level out and I have only been seriously back at it for a couple months but after having a nice first month where I was up close to 1000 between live 1-2NL, 1-3NL, 2/4 and 4/8 limit and low buy-in online MTTs and SnGs, I have pissed most of it away this month and might be showing a tiny profit between the live and online right now but after last night with the 50 dollar lose at 1-3 and then not cashing a single moss event or sng its probably close to being in the red. On the upside I had almost 50 bucks in unclaimed bonuses I had cleared on ACR so I am rolled for the nights MOSS events without having to deposit again.

If you're buying in short, you're doing fine by fastplaying your big pair pairs. Opponents are simply calling off *way* too much of their stack preflop to ever be profitable, even if they only continue postflop when they have you crushed. But with these shortstacks, most opponents will end up getting it all-in with just TP, or draws, and even in the cases where they're ahead (like the junky two pair case) you'll have decent outs. You simply have to stomach the fact that sometimes you'll lose, but overall you'll crush.

AK can be played much the same way (committing the rest of our stack if we hit). Or if you raise enough preflop, you might just setup a ~PSB jam on any flop (FE + ok outs if behind). Or being this short you can also limp it, hope for a raise and some callers, and then simply jam it preflop (you'll have decent FE against better hands, and if you get called, you're almost always printing money due to the huge amount of dead money in the pot relative to stacks).

GgoodluckG

I wouldn't play drawing hands short period with the exception of weak pp's for a limp.

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My guess is that it would be ok to overlimp on the Button, maybe the CO, but other than that folding all speculative hands when shortstacked (even weak pp's in EP at aggressive tables) is probably best.

GcluelessNLnoobG