The action available to US players has been pretty limited, and this game is hardly my specialty, but with the choice of games so restricted I get involved when the games run on Merge now and again. This came up in a shorthanded game where everybody was at least 20 bets deep, so no shortstack considerations.

Game is $5-10 4-handed, UTG (loose, "creative" player) opens, button (pretty tight/abc) rr, I am in sb with 8642x. I instinctively cold called, but immediately it seemed like a spot where I should 3-bet or fold. If I have a 7 in my hand instead of a 6 I like it better both for card removal and if I get in a weird spot I sometimes make a hand I can break and redraw vs button, while I expect any 87 to be profitable against aggression when UTG gets a wild hair and tries to outplay me.

I'd usually cold call my better 2cd in this spot, figuring that I'm drawing better that UTG most of the time so he's unlikely to 4bet and can catch up with button often enough to play oop, but this seems like a more vulnerable situation.

I don't like the thinking that you'd rather have a worse 1 card draw so that you can make a hero break down the road.

If you are inexperienced at this game an easier way to play the 8742x would be to call and draw 2. Oop you are going to find yourself in challenging spots, especially if plan going in is to build a hyuge pot, make your hand, then break. 4b the good 86 but calling isn't a big deal imo.

The key point being that there are two villains in the hand, one ABC tightish who might not pay to draw out (and me holding a 7 and a 2 makes his better draws less likely), but could put me in a spot where a break would be appropriate, one loose enough that against him an 87 is as good as an 86.

I try not to think of draws as "better" or "worse" based purely on how smooth they are in absolute terms, but rather how likely they are to complete compared with the value of those likely made hands versus the opposition. Versus some players 8753 is a strong draw, quite likely to make the best hand, vs others it's not because a wider range of complete hands will lose.

Most people don't really ever break strong 87s. I don't know why you are so adamant that part of your plan is to break this hand once you make it bc button is "tightish abc". I also reject the idea that 87 is same as strong 86 versus loose creative player. But you do whatever you want.

coming from a holdem background myself, i found myself with these two problems:

1) the 3bet or fold mentality does not apply in TD
2)too much calling on the river is *not* very bad in this game, but not enough calling is.

and this hand is an easy cold 4bet imo 1cds are very powerfull in this game. btn can have easily a 3468 draw and utg can easily have a 246 draw

also, why do i always hear of merge games and i have never witnessed one? what times do they run usually (EST or something)?

I'm confused by what OP is getting at. Is he thinking just playing 246 or 248? This would be bad.

Here I would pump it or dump it; otherwise your hand becomes more face up. But if youre going to call/draw 1, I think this is one of the better hands to do it with because your draw is stronger than most cold calling draws. Generally, if button is not 3 betting all 1 cds and only premium 1cd draws, I would consider dumping. Being OOP sucks. By default I'm capping, but it's probably pretty marginal vs. good TAGs.

I was looking for advice about this 3-way situation with an 86 1cd oop when the two villains have different profiles, one loose and tricky the other tight and straightforward.

Even if both villains are nitty and tight I think this hand is worth a cap, it is a very solid 4 card hand, especially given its basically a blind steal situation.

pretty easy/standard cap vs basically anybody.

Has to be this.

Question: in live games with a 5 bet cap, do you still 4 bet?

Probably, but this could be a leak. My experience with 5 bet caps is virtually nil. My MO is to pump the pot with most 1 cd draws. The big drawback to just calling here is that it sorta yells "my draw is mediocre!". In live play that's probably a smaller leak than I think, but I still don't like it.

Considering you're SB, you really want to pump or dump here. If you think are in a bad spot for your draw (I don't think we are for this hand), then you should get out because you have the worst position at the table. If your hand is worth drawing to, then pumping pre increases the size of the pot and relatively lowers the power of position as post draw bets will now be a smaller portion of the pot.

Not sure if this tends to be a good way to look at it. Your decisions are still harder due to position and now they're larger when you make them for one thing.

Well, of course decisions suck worse OOP, but they really aren't much "larger" postdraw since this is a limit game. The only thing flat calling pre might do is make us fold the turn when the pot offers us only 7 to 1 vs 8.5 to 1 if we 4-bet (which becomes 10 to 1 if it gets capped 3 way). But probably folding the turn for a single bet in any of these spots is a leak, so if you're going to do that, you should just fold pre. 4-betting this in a PL/NL game might be suicidal though.

I agree with parts of the conclusion just not with using big pots make the positional dis-advantage smaller as a reason. I mean, if they wanted to play the game with a reasonable table ante on my button I'd be pretty happy whether it gave people correct odds to call my turn bet or not.