I'm pretty confident that not calling was correct. Villain had been at our table for about 15 hands and had folded every time except for once when he squeezed with a shove. I would normally think of this as an unbreakable jack but 5-handed it's too good to fold. I hate flatting jacks for the obvious reason of playing the hand face-up. If he draws and I pat I'm in a gross spot when he leads. I suppose flatting and chopping around for a small pot here would have been the better part of valor. As it was, once he raised and we had chips behind I thought I could shove and hope he was drawing (again, hadn't seen a single showdown for him) or fold since I break to a straight draw.

Anyway, any thoughts appreciated. When this hand was over I was so conflicted.

PokerStars No Limit Single Draw ($200+$15) t40/t80 ante t20 - 5 players

BB: t6,575
UTG: t4,640
CO: t3,280
Button: t3,560 (Hero)
SB: t5,660

Dealing Hands: (t220) (5 players)
UTG folds, CO raises to t160, Hero raises to t350, 2 folds, CO raises to t1360, Hero folds


CO collected t920

Not sure I like your raisesize. Id go slightly bigger to make his 4-betting more polarized towards pats. Good fold I think.

Thanks for this - was so focused on feeling sick (and sorry for myself) I hadn't pondered what that sizing might look like to him - and I knew what the RR w/ chips behind looked like to me.

Yeah, I would be tempted to 3-bet bigger because I doubt he is going elsewhere otherwise. Folding to the 4-bet is fine.

When do u guys start calling his raise? Would you call with J2345? How good does ur 10 have to be for u to call if u even call with a 10.

I call any draw to 96 or better here. If Im pat I would probably assign a range to his 4-betting and fold/ship it in. Normally going with T6+ I would assume.

We are in position so breakable Ts(like T8652 and such) I would call and evaluate villains action on the draw. We are a small favorite to hold vs a draw to the nuts so patting and checking behind is the right play if villain draws. If he is capable of 4-bet-draw-bluff his missed draws then this line becomes really hard to play.

Aren't we playing a bit face-up calling here and patting with a ten? Since you'd like to pat with a jack vs. a draw, yet flatting that and patting is so weak, what is a reasonable range for calling a 4-bet and then patting when he draws? Certainly no better hand than a rough 9 is flatting in that spot, right?

Or maybe I just didn't follow what you were saying since you were talking about way better hands than this donk had.

I think Bjornar's suggested range is pretty good. And yeah we are playing the hand a bit face up if we are just calling on breakable tens, but it's still doable if this scares the OOP opponent enough to rarely bluff postdraw. Playing the hand this way will at least reduce our variance since its a possibility that not our entire stack will go in. However, I wouldn't suggest playing hands like this too often as a fold/raise situation with pat hands is generally better.