Hero has been at this tough table for ~50 hands, playing mostly a raise/fold game pre, valuing a couple of big pps, and taking the pot OTF. Image is tight, perhaps agg since I c-bet my QQ to an over card OTF, had to showdown vs. a short stack. It is early, besides never really sure how much is digested by the opponents.

V1 (BTN $325) – Late 30s, perhaps 40yo white male, t-shirt, earring, wedding ring and playing a tight quiet game so far. He has not shown any cards.

Hero (BB $600) – White male, mid-50’s, conservative image, drinking water, very quiet except for some light chatting with the players to my immediate right and left.

V2 and V3 cover and are MP1 and MP2 – They are very aggressive players, however do not play much of factor in this hand.

EP player limps as do MP1 and MP2. MP1 had been open raising ~75% of the time. The hand folds to the BTN who calls, SB folds and Hero taps the table w/9d8d. There are five to the flop.

Flop ($23) is Td-7d-3h.

Hero leads for $15, EP folds, while MP1 and MP2 call. BTN raises to $60. There is $128 in the pot and V1 has $265 behind.

Options and my thought process:
Fold – While there are 2 aggressive players yet to act, I am not that concerned since they are usually raising my lead with bigger draws/better hands. In fact MP1 is probably open-raising an Ace pre. I think folding is out of the question.

Call - I estimated my equity to be in the mid-40ish% vs. the top of the BTN range (TT, 77, 33, AdTx, Ad3d). I certainly have odds to call, but can I realistically add FE into the equation by 3-betting, i.e. putting the BTN AI?

3-bet – I’d have 15 outs twice if I can get HU, however BTN has been playing a tight game. I’m fairly sure he sees me as solid up to this point, so my lead into 4 players should indicate more than TP/TK. If we were to get it HU, I estimated low 40ish% equity (actually 44%); 310/(128+45+265+265).

Hero?

Do you play in the game a lot? Do you play with the villain a decent amount? I lean toward jamming. You have great equity vs a lot of hands and its a good image to have. Not to mention the villain is short

I'd call and bet the turn.

Flop lead is great, a lot better than checking imo.

With eff stacks of only 65 bb's I definitely get ai here.

No, B&M room, past Monday, late afternoon. No history with any of the players.

Another note - I also thought of potentially losing 2/3 BI in a limped pot. I have a phobia about those spots.

Btn's short stack is getting in there no matter what vs my hand since he is 65bbs deep to start. I never raise flop and smooth call to get either MP1 or MP2 or both to put some more money in the pot. Once they put a little extra juice in for us it makes the shove on the turn easy no matter what the card is since any hand except a set likely has a tough decision.

For 98s this is the equivalent of flopping 998, except we get more action on this flop, our hand flopped the world so get money in on turn ASAP as you might have more FE than you think.

[QUOTE=samo;33614090]No, B&M room, past Monday, late afternoon. No history with any of the players.

Another note - I also thought of potentially losing 2/3 BI in a limped pot. I have a phobia about those spots.[/QUOTE]

You think about poker very weirdly. Who cares that it was a limped pot? At this point you basically have a math problem. Calling, shoving, raising to whatever, all have a value and the fact that it was a limped pot does not and should not affect your decision.

Neither do things like "t shirt, wedding ring, drinking water" like yeah people wear clothes and drink water, get married, they also play poker.

Anyways, I would raise since you lead out(I would have as well). I think if you call it makes your hand pretty obvious. Raising might fold out a hand like K4dd from mp1 or mp2.

AT is rock bottom of villains' range here imo. Almost always up against 2 pair+.

Board: Td 7d 3h

Hand 0: 45.988% { 9d8d }
Hand 1: 54.012% { ThTs, 77, 33, AhTh, AsTs, Ad3d, KdQd, T7s }

Hands I put in his range:
1. Sets 77/33. Make perfect sense limping to setmine and now raising a drawy flop
2. The only 2 pair combos I put in his range are T7s. He's been playing tight so I figure he's going to fold T3s, 73s, and T7o
3. 2 combos of big draws (A3dd, KQdd). In theory he could be doing this with any Axdd, KJdd, QJdd, 65dd, 54dd, but he's getting great odds to draw in position and his raise doesn't look large enough to be trying to push people out as would be the goal raising the big draw.
4. 1 combo of TT. He's tight and maybe scared to raise a bunch of limpers pre thinking there are going to be overcards a lot of the time and decides to play it as a setmine
5. 2 combos of AT. Who knows, maybe he's been sitting there and now thinks "I've finally got something" and/or "I need to protect against draws"

Some reasons to shove:
1. If we can get just a few folds that is a huge victory since villain will be giving up a lot of equity by folding (may get folds from AT or diamonds that doesn't want to go all-in on a draw for a shove significantly larger than pot)
2. There are 0 hands that crush us when we get called. Worst case scenario is QJdd and we still have 38.99% equity
3. There's already $83 in the pot as overlay
4. We will likely push out draws to higher flushes that may have flatted our initial bet in mp1 and mp2 which would have made our hand rio when we make our flush if we flat the raise and they come along (this is somewhat offset by the fact that 2 of our flush outs make us a sf)

I'm going to do a little math. Assuming the range I assigned above, say he folds his 2 AT combos to our shove and calls everything else. There are 14 combos total in his range.

2 out of 14 times we get a fold and win the pot
2/14*$128= $18.29

12 out of 14 times we are up against his range minus the AT combos which gives us 44.343% equity in a pot of $685 (subtracting $310 from our ev in the $685 pot yields our net expected loss)
12/14*(44.343%*$685-310)= -$5.36

So our average return on a shove is $18.29-$5.36= $12.39

Since shoving is profitable folding is not an option. Now the question is: is more profitable to call? The math gets very complicated very quickly since there are 2 streets left to play and a lot of different possibilities, particularly multiway. In fact, even my analysis above does not take into account the times that other players stay in the hand. To determine whether shoving or calling is more profitable we're going to have to rely on a more general, strategical analysis like we would at the table.

Reasons to call:
1. To induce an overcall from the two players left to act behind us, thus increasing our explicit and implied odds
2. We may be able to get stacks in anyway when we hit our draw given villain has 2 pair+ 12/14 times (this is read dependent), so we can play the hand in a way that still maximizes our win the times we hit but also minimizes our loss the times we don't hit (though generally this is very hard to do oop, particularly when we hit our flush since it will be obvious that's what we're repping when we call then lead out when the 3flush gets there)

Okay I'm hitting a mental block so I'm gonna stop there

Make it 120. Shove turn.

120 to isolate and shoving turn puts a tough decision for the villian to call off his stack.

The big problem with calling is that if those MP guys have higher flush draws and stay in this hand then you're screwed. Getting this HU is really the only option.

3bet to $120 and shove the turn.

I would just call. Since you have 98, it removes some combo draws from his range such as J9 or 86. Therefore, his range is weighted more towards stronger hands that are unlikely to fold.

What type of hand do you want to isolate against?

What type of hands do you expect to fold?

Mathematically speaking how do you demonstrate a profit?

Against a worst case scenario in which villain only ever has sets and two pair in his range, we have 45% equity.

Add in fold equity and other possible hands and this surely becomes a profitable scenario to be looking to get our stack in there.

Tao couldn't have explained my reasoning in better terms.

My engrish is crap.

I'm 3-betting this