Live 1/2. Stacks for this hand are $230 effective.

Hero is in MP with 10c 8c. UTG limps, everyone else limps to me, I limp, everyone else limps to BB who makes it $7. Everyone calls.

Flop is 7h 9h 3s. Checks to BB who bets 30. (He has been playing extremely extremely tight postflop thus far). Spewy guy in EP calls. MP calls and I call.

Turn is the 10d. BB bets 70. Both other players fold. Hero Calls.

River is the 2s. BB checks. I check.

BB turns over 7s 9s.

Is this hand played very standardly or did I mess something up? It feels bad that I lost over half my stack so what did I mess up this hand?

1) Dont play 10-8 from MP. Simply fold pre at 90 percent of 1-2 tables, even though they are some exepctions. But start worrying about the exepctions when you have developed more of your understanding of the game. Until then, just fold this and avoid follow up mistakes postflop that compounds on your poor preflop decision. Youre 7$ preflop mistake can very often (as it did here) lead to alot more costly mistakes later on in the hand.

2) Fold to the 70$ bet on the turn. Youre not deep enough to continue, because your implied odds if you hit is limited due to your stacksize behind after calling the turn. Also some of your outs might be dirty, so its quite easy to miscalculate your actual amounts of winnercards.

Hm AP, I can't even fathom the call on the flop and definitely not the turn. River was played nicely though for some positives haha.

But in the future for one limping is usually not okay unless you plan on limp/raising or have a better hand than this in MP imo. And calling a pot sized bet on the flop with 4 outs OOP is never profitable. Maybe (just maybe) if you had a flush draw it's be more understandable yo call . The turn even though you hit top pair calling a pot sized bet there is also never standard, plus the mediocre kicker.

Over all pretty bad hand imo . I'm sure if you slowed down and thought about ranges or and odds blah blah blah you'd play this a little better like calling pre and folding on the flop.

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

Pre the first time is a fold, in part because a lot of times someone raises and you have to fold anyway. You're lucky the raise pre turned out to be so small, calling the extra $5 is fine because there's unlikely to be a 3-bet.

Flop is fine.

Turn is a deceptively bad card for us. Now, we may be drawing for a chop against hands like 98/87/88. If our straight hits there are 4 cards to a straight on the board which means we may not be able to get stacks in, and the turn bet is very large which hurts our odds. I fold turn even though we pick up outs against V's exact hand.

If you're gonna play this hand, raise it pre. Depending on how many limps, I'd raise anywhere between $10 & $20 to go heads up or three-handed at worst.

It helps to know how many callers and how much in the pot going to the flop. This is important info to calculate your pot odds. As played, I'm 50/50 on calling/folding OTF. There are two hearts on board. So if the 6 or J of hearts comes on the turn, while you made your straight, someone else could easily have hit their flush.

Assuming I make the call OTF, I'm folding the turn. You may have turned top pair, but based on Villain's image and how he's shown great strength, it's clear to me you're beat. You're therefore drawing to a straight, pure and simple. Based on the bet size OTT, it seemed he had a minimum of 2p, quite possibly a set.

Fold it and move on to the next hand.

So my thought process pre was that I had a hand with decent implied odds although in a multi-way pot my flush draw might be dominated. I was hoping to flop some type of straight draw or combo draw.

I thought flop was pretty good for me since I was drawing to the nuts on two ends. Also, because the pot pre was 63 (minus rake) and now after the bet and the call there was over 150 in the pot and i only had to call 30, I felt like I was definitely getting the odds to hit my 6 non-flush straight outs.

Now that I think about it, turn is absolutely horrible for me. If he was ahead before, he's probably still ahead now and there is no way he would bet 70 with just a pair of 9's. So therefore, he most likely has a set in this spot and I will have to hit my straight on the river. And even if I hit my straight, that puts 4 to a straight on the board and I probably won't get any value off of my straight. Thus, I can think that I have 8 outs and need to call 70 to win an extra 250 in the pot. Thus, I need about 20% in direct odds to call and I'm barely not getting that. Therefore, it feels like an absolute fold.

I guess I just didn't want to get rid of my hand on the turn since in my fishy mind, my hand had "improved" to top pair and a straight draw when in reality, my hand had severely reduced implied odds. I guess in the future, even when the turn gives me what on the surface is a stronger hand, I must consider ranges more heavily and let it go when necessary.

But we beat all those hands.

Limp pre is bad for pretty much this reason, as played everything is fine. You easily have odds to call on the flop, on the turn you have a ton of outs and sometimes the best hand.

Yeah postflop you can't play it any other way really.

I query your thinking preflop though. T8s and similar have more implied odds deep stacked in raised pots than mid stacked in limped pots...

Raised pot, deep stacks: your opponent(s) have a stronger than usual range and they have been trained to bet or call for value with their strong pair+ hands and they think it unlikely a lone opponent hits hard on most boards. Therefore, when you hit 2pair+ you likely get paid and stacks are deep enough for you to get paid enough to make up for the times you miss, fail to bluff them out and have to concede the pot.

Limped pot, shallow or mid stacked: everyone is doing the same thing - limping in to cheaply spike a monster hand (2pair+). No one puts in many chips without hitting >TPTK. Because now your opponents hit so rarely (1pair isn't good enough) you won't get paid very often by crushed 1pair hands, you'll only get it in vs other strong hands. So now you have poor implied odds and, with a hand like T8s you actually have significant reverse implied odds.

Limped multiway pots are difficult to play well and are best avoided, particularly when way OOP or trapped in the middle. Folding pre or iso-raising avoids this problem.

fold pre

this isn't a game of bingo.

Well limped MW pots ARE a game of bingo, it's just you can't win longterm at bingo

Oops you're right.

Pre: meh. Probably bad but I probably limp too when I'm not playing my best. Double down on this when it gets lol raised.

Flop: it seems at first glance that it's a call but I'm not so sure. We should probably not count the 10 or 8 with the entire table playing. That means you need at least 5:1 to make the turn profitable because you're almost never getting a free river. Add in the chances that someone raises behind you or your straight is no good by the river and I'd bump it up to at least 10:1 and probably more. you need to not get raised behind, AND hit your straight on the turn, AND not get counterfeited on the river, AND get paid off for this to be good. I don't see it. Not all draws are created equally.

Turn: So you're getting like 3.5:1. This is probably ok assuming you don't make the flush with your straight since he either won't pay you or occasionally gets there too. It's not extremely profitable anyway.

River: bluff would be suicide.

Welcome to the forum, OP. I didn't see it in time to edit it out before people replied, but in the future please don't put results in your hand histories. Get up to the spot you have the most question about, or the last decision point, and then don't tell us what you did. Instead ask what you should do.

I don't mind preflop actually, unless you are likely to get raised by someone in position, or face a big raise. Sounds like that was not the case at that table.

That flop and action is pretty bad actually, BB is not a good person to bluff, and you gotta assume one of the callers in front could have a flush draw. You're not getting the direct odds to call the flop with 6 outs. As someone posted above, a lot needs to happen to realize your implied odds, I'd fold flop.

I'd most likely raise this over limps in a soft 1/2 game but without a very clear handle on your opponents most here will want you to fold. However, there's probably no way you're going to look down at a cool hand like this in a 1/2game and not vpip.

Anyways as DKBarrel said you have odds to call flop/last to act, as for turn, well, last to act you're still getting more or less the right price, but what you add in equity you lose in implied odds...you also need to realize that equity which might not be easy if he shoves all rivers- basically it's just a marginal call/fold spot that you were fortunately able to show down.

Hold on, what are the actual pot odds on flop? Pot is 9 way with $7 each in preflop so $63. BB bets $30 and we see two calls before we act and we have players behind to act too.

Pot is $153, we have $223 effective and face a bet of $30.That's 5 to 1 direct odds on the flop when you have 6 clean outs to a straight with no three flush on the turn. 6 outs from 47 unseen cards gives you 7 to 1 for your draw meaning you need to win a further $60 over turn and river when you hit to break even.

Yes you get raised out on flop sometimes but it'll be rare. Yes you get outdrawn on the river by FDs and sets/2pair boating up but that'll be less than 20% of the time you make your clean straight on the turn.

Your 789TJ or 6789T straights on non 3 flush turns are both the nuts so you won't get outdrawn or counterfeited very often.

You still have $193 behind and 3 opponents when you make your nut straight on the turn.

I think the flop call is absolutely OK.

When you miss your straight on the turn V bets $70 into $183 leaving $123 behind. You are getting 3.6 to 1 direct odds with 7 to 1 odds to make your now non-nut straight. You only have one player left to pay you off and he doesn't have enough chips behind - you both need 3.4*$70=$238 behind to make this call just to make the straight.

So I think calling the turn is the big waste of chips in this hand. Hitting top pair confuses the situation and makes it look like you improved and should call but really you won't know where you are when you improve on the river so your clean cear nut making plan just got ruined!

Calling $30 with good direct+implied odds to make the nuts was fine.

Calling $70 with bad direct+implied odds to make the non-nit straight, trips or 2pair was not +EV.

Wow. That's an excellent post. I learned a lot just by reading that, so I have to say thanks a lot! You're thinking on a much higher level to me. Just wondering, how do you train yourself to think like this quickly at the table and make decisions in the heat of the moment?

nononononono

Preflop I might iso myself, pretty big.

Other than that, hand seems pretty standard? We're given super good odds on flop and turn we have decent equity ok price. River is obviously a check. Am I missing anything?

Of course turn is closer, but I think we still have needed equity with that price vs range. We need 21% equity, which is reasonable. I can see a fold though, sure, but it's by no means outrageous.

Genio22:

I can't currently do all the thinking ITT in game. I'm too slow.

What I do is rely on a mixture of conscious observation of important variables and subconscious processing of those variables. In game I'm striving for a relaxed state of watchfulness. At minimum I aim to always be aware of how each hand plays out: who did what when and in which position.

Beyond that I try to consciously estimate ranges, stack depths and pot odds at each each action in every hand I observe or am involved. To maintain calm and not miss any of the basic action I accept I can't always manage the ranging and odds calculations quick enough. However, I am slowly getting quicker and more accurate with these in game analysis simply though regular practice.

Away from the table I analyse hands in more detail, read up on theory and strategy, challenge myself to analyse other players' hands and do some basic mathematical modelling (combinatorial analysis, calculating pot odds and equity). I do the maths by hand at the moment but intend to get a computer to do some modelling using flopzilla.

I find it very difficult but it is also the most rewarding part of the game for me.