Bovada
6-handed
Effective stack size: $49.35

I open UTG w/T 9 8 6, fold fold, button calls, blinds fold

Flop: 7 6 Q
I bet $3.50, call

Turn: 4 (pot: $11.25)
check, bet of $11.25, ???

Villain's unknown. My immediate thought here is that if I hit one of the best hands I can hit and am still not sure what to do, that I should fold preflop. Thoughts on that, turn play, and what to do otr if we make it there?

If villain is unknown, i think the general advice is to respect the bet.. you hit the flop really hard though, maybe he is just trying to pounce on weakness when you checked. Me personally, i would check, reraise 3x and be done with the hand if he retaliates..

Take this with a grain of salt, thats just how i would play lol. but i'm a spewtard.

What do you think his range is? i think button range would be loose, so maybe if he is a thinking player he'll respect your tight UTG range..

Please tell me if you disagree, thanks

Loose (bad) utg open. Turn is sucks. I would call 1st time to see his river tendency. (Usually he pots or check back so if he pots you can fold and adjust)

Agree about pre - I don't think I'd open this ds UTG but it would be close. He's obviously polarising his range on the turn but I don't think opponent's at this level will be balanced enough to make folding reasonable. This looks like a naked Ac trying to get you to fold. Call turn and I probably call most river bets against an unknown.

Wouldn't we be better of bet/folding the turn as we are oop and will most likely only get 2 streets of value of our hand? Now we are just showing weakness and give villian a chance to try and bluff us of our hand. We are guessing now and unless 5c comes off on the river we are gonna have a really hard time calling another bet.

@ trudingaling : we cant c/r 3 times and then fold when he shoves with stacksizes the way they are that would be superbad and it also lets villian play perfectly (fold his bluffs get it in with us crushed).

And this is why I am starting to love you for pointing stuff like that out to me.. Thank you! I also agree with c betting turn, why check?

but, as played, it's a tough situation as lunatic said. are we just giving up after pot sized bet?does anyone think about calling down and looking him up? What do you guys do here with zero reads?

Double suited I would def. be opening but SS it's a fold.

Villain's pot sizing OTT is slightly unusual but don't know if it automatically makes it polarized. He could be betting this sizing with most of his flushes because most players are too unbalanced and won't check a flush in OP's position (as evidenced by Lunatic wanting to bet the 9 high flush OTT) - thus, you can in villain's position comfortably bet Q-A high flushes for value - hoping we have a worse flush and call one street or we have a set and chase a FH.

Not sure how many naked Ac villain has here. He flat from BTN to UTG raise so automatically has way more suited than non-suited Ac hands.

My standard here anyway is to c/c turn and see what villain does OTR. We do have 2 nut outs if behind

Let me counter your question with a question. What do we do otr if we get called? That's why betting turn sucks.

As for preflop, when I first started playing PLO, I didn't open this hand. However, after reading Hwang's books and another book, they both advocate raising these hands in every position. I'm not sure I agree with it, but I've been trying it.

Checking the turn like i said gives our opponent a chance to bluff our realize his equity for free in case he was drawing with 2pair or a set. By betting you might also get called by a turned straight or whatever. All those hands will check back the river when checked to and they dont improve. Also when we get raised on the turn we can comfortably fold as we most likely are beat with our 9 high flush. On the river as i said before, when we check it to him, very unlikely he will bet a hand that we beat so i he makes any reasonable bet we can fold.

@ Ivanovic : I would check a flush in our position but not vs an unknown. Balancing our range is good and all that but when we have no reads on the player the most likely way the hand will play out is we c/c and then c/f the river. Only we we develops some reads like we have this situation 50 times against villian and he pots every time we check to him etc i would. I'd still prefer a bet here for all the reasons above.

The typical player is raising both of those hands on the flop.

All of this is completely illogical fwiw. You're betting to make the hand easier to play which isn't a reason to bet.

Re Lunatics posts:

On this turn, a reasonable flop calling range has a Qcc+ about 31% and a better hand about 37%, given our holding. (Give or take a few %.) You're looking at an overall turn calling frequency of ~50% after card removal. A "value bet" where you have like 25% equity when called is pretty dire. Even protection or preempting bluffs isn't that useful.

In order for the most likely set of events to be "we x/c the turn and x/f the river", villain has to actually bet the turn and the river. And given that villain's range is ~37% better hands (and less of that is actually betting for full pot), one of two things is going to be true: (a) he's betting the turn and river so often that you should actually x/c the turn and x/c the river; (b) you are going to be allowed to get to showdown a lot, somewhere (whether it's after a turn check, after we call a river bet, or both).

As Rei has alluded to it's not even about balancing when we check the turn with a 9 high flush (that would more so be the case if we were checking a K high flush) - it's about the fact we just don't have enough value in a bet.

As you said, we're only going to get 2 streets of value from our hand anyway so IF villain did turn a straight and turn gets checked through we are far more likely to extract value from his hand by betting river (for simple reason it's last bet he has to put in. OTT if he calls he knows he could face a river bet)

Also as .isolated pointed out; there isn't a lot of value in getting him to call with sets or fold his equity with 2 pair because most of his sets will be raising flop. Some of his 2 pairs will too - but a 2 pair doesn't have that much equity that we need to protect against. It makes better sense for us to again try and get him to call a v-bet on the river.

cheers for all the discussion and pointing out the flaws in my thoughtprocess. It's awesome.