Hero has A4QT in CO.

86/14 fish limps in middle position, I raise, the BTN (33/8) calls, blinds fold.

Flop: A52

Fish checks, I bet, the BTN calls, and the fish folds. So HU to the turn.

Turn card is the J making the board A52J

I check, BTN bets, I call

River card is a T.

Final board: A52JT

I check, BTN bets, I call.

fold river. i think that the worse 2 pairs+missed live lo draw (a239, a244) type hands aren't vbetting river. and the only hands that are vbetting river are kq, all of the sets, a wheel, and maybe aj WHICH SCOOP, whereas the only hands you GET HALF are a246, a237 type hands. and even the 2pair+8lo prob aren't vbetting.

i'm kind of judging this from dude's pfr stat though. i know i'm at least halfway wrong to assume dude's post af.

I feel like not betting this turn after betting the flop is a mistake.

as played, river is a guess, but the odds for winning half the pot look reasonable, i think calling is unlikely to be more than a small mistake

betting the flop is fine, its one of the flops that we should sometimes check for balance

again though, not betting the turn seems like a larger error

i also like bet/folding turn (assuming villain moderate to low af stat). i think calling river is more than a small mistake if villain isn't a complete spewtard post though.

I would fold to the turn bet.

Buzz

Don't check/call on the turn. Either check/fold or bet/fold.

Your hand is pretty darn weak but you might actually be ahead on the turn, so, if you were to bet here, if you get raised, it should be an easy fold. But, when you check, villain supposed to be betting his second nut lows, a worse ace w/no shot at a wheel, or even two small pair,(which he may actually fold if you bet instead). So imo, you need to be more decisive in your line. And betting defines his range more, imo. And, because you know how strong you are(which isn't very strong at all), you can check/fold pretty easily too here if you can trust what villains bet represents a good % of the time.

I think whether you should bet/fold or check/fold the flop depends on how much you know about villains post-flop tendencies and aggression. Without knowing much, I tend to think bet/fold is better.

As played, I call down on the river. I don't see how check/calling turn but folding that river card can be right. You're not getting the pot odds to only call down when you make a straight.

the only hands i can see a 33/8 villain vbetting on river (that we have half of) are a pretty specific and limited set of hands. a24(6-8), a23(6-8) and MAYBE something like a356ds. combinatorically, i don't think that those hands will make up 25% or> of villain's range when the other part is made up of mostly hands like 34w, AQK, AA, ww22, aw55, JJbb, TTbb, AJbb, AJw(ss)+. maybe someone here can do the math because i suck at it.

I will give a breakdown of the arguments behind my play, but I want to preface that with acknowledging that I am not a winning L08 player, I'm a mediocre player at best who gets lost postflop all the time. So I'm not really arguing against you guys, I just want you guys to know what I'm thinking and hopefully poke holes in that thinking.

Preflop: I'm in late position, I have a hand that plays very well HU (lots of high hand potential and a good low vs the fish's range), and if everyone calls behind me it's not the end of the world because my highly coordinated hand plays well mutiway too. So an iso-raise feels like a no-brainer here.

Flop: Ok, obviously not the flop I'm looking for, but at the time I felt like my hand was still at least worth a peel if I had checked. After all I'm not dead in the water here. I have two backdoor FDs, a chance at binking the 3 with my wheel draw, and a chance at hitting a good two pair on the turn. Generally speaking, whenever I feel I have enough to check/call in a 3 handed pot, I'm gonna stick with the initiative as the preflop raiser and Cbet.

Based on looking at some propokertool simulations it appears my intuition on having enough to see a turn card was correct. Here's how our equity is doing against a reasonable coldcalling range:

Link

So yeah, flop is a marginal spot, but I'm ok with cbetting 3way...

...although that still begs the question of what I should do if someone raises my flop bet. If the 33/8 raises the flop, I think we have to fold as NickMPK implied above. I expect a 33/8 type guy to have a very tight raising range on wheel board flops in general, something like AAxx/34xx seems right to me. Against that range we only have 14% equity after being raised which I think justifies a fold.

In the scenario where the fish check/raises after I bet and the 33/8 guy folds, I'd be tempted to peel one off but I think folding is still probably best without a special read cuz this is just not a board people fool around on.

Turn: My thinking at the time was although my hand is marginal I had too much to bet/fold with a double gutshot, a live 4 for the low, and still a chance to hit a good two pair hand. And with such a hand bet/calling felt gross too, so hence the check/call. But looking back at this, I hate my turn line vs a 33/8 type of player because there's no good reason to fear bet/folding vs him. I mean, a typical guy with that stat line plays like a passive live player ime, and if they pop that turn they pretty much have 34xx always and against that range we only have 7.63% equity, i.e. we are virtual toast and can bet/fold happily. Also when we check/call the turn vs this guy, his turn betting range is not going to be the same as his flop calling range or his turn calling range if we had bet. His range is gonna tighten up a lot those times he bets turn, thus making my marginal hand much weaker than it already is which could perhaps justify a check/fold if we hand checked.

So now that I've ruled out C/C vs this opponent, it's down to B/F or C/F, and I'm still not sure which one of those is best, but ruling out the worst possible line is still tons of progress to me. So yeah, I like this advice:

BTW, against a ******ed aggressive person I think my turn check/call line could be hot. Although this phenotype may be rare in live play, at smalls stakes online, I run into this type of opponent rather frequently.

River: My thinking was simple--and thus likely flawed. I basically said to myself, okay I made two pair, can't fold now, hope I get half the pot.

In retrospect, this feels so right:

Although logically this is true:

But the problem is the assumptions underpinning my logic were flawed. I wrongly assumed this guy would bet a much wider range on the turn+river than what is probably true in reality. So basically I created a garbage in garbage out type situation. I think my play could be justified against a very bad aggressive opponent tho.

Here's how we're doing against a range that comes pretty close to the range you suggested:

Link

IOW, not good.

Sorry, I meant bet/fold or check/fold the turn. I certainly dont think you should check/fold the flop.

That's true, but in a head's up game only two players are dealt cards. Aren't you playing in a full ring game? More opponents than one were dealt cards! Get it?

In a two handed game, your opponent has a 50/50 chance of having a below average starting hand. However, in a multi-opponent game, if you manage to get heads-up by knocking out all but one opponent, you won't likely end up playing one random hand that has a 50/50 chance of having a below average starting hand. Get it?

Why do you think he's a "fish"? When I read your post originally, I thought you were trying to get one-on-one with the "fish," and if your move has a good chance of succeeding, then it seems reasonable to me. But if you raised to get one-on-one with the "fish," and if your move failed, then it was a mistake. Do you see that?

That's true.

Another good reason for raising with an ace-four is you might possibly knock out ace-less two-three low draw hands.

I don't think the same way as you.

I agree.

I like your bet better than a check/call.

Depending on BTN I might check hoping for a check from BTN too... depends on my assessment of BTN.
• If I thought BTN might fold if I bet, then I'd bet.
• If I thought BTN would almost surely bet if I checked, regardless of his cards, then I'd go for a check/raise.
• If I thought BTN would probably only bet with a strong flop fit if I checked, then I'd check/fold.

I agree you have enough equity in a fixed-limit game to call a flop bet and then, depending on the turn and river, possibly "call it down."

And I like a bet better than a check/call.

OK.

Agreed. But you can't play scared. I think if you're raised, you reassess.

I liked the first part of Rush's advice "Don't check/call on the turn. Either check/fold or bet/fold." (I like the other responses you got too - all very logical).

After reading Rush's post again, I also like the rest of Rush's post.

Really? It's entirely possible some of my casino opponents have been ******ed. I just don't think of them that way because I don't want to underestimate my opponents.

I think if you check/call the turn, then you also check/call the river.

Buzz

ProPokerTools Omaha Hi/Lo Simulation

15,588 trials (Exhaustive)

board: A25JT

Hand	Pot equity	Scoops	Wins Hi	Ties Hi	Wins Lo	Ties Lo
AcQs4cTs	48.87%	4,698	9,270	1,436	0	0
a2, a3, a4, a5, AA	51.13%	4,882	4,882	1,436	6,432	0

This would be a sim using a few broad categories of hands. Clearly all the hands in these groups would not vbet the river (most that we beat), but if our opponent has a 3bet range btf then quite a few of the hands wouldn't be here with our opponents line of action (most that we lose to). We can leave 23xx hands out of this since we have enough equity to call against that group of hands.

If we include JJbb, TTbb or AJbb to the sim we can safely call the river since it appears we have already concluded that our opponent is a spewtard.

There isn't enough information to fold the river getting 7,5-1.

Don't you think checking flop might be better 3way with all our backdoors to keep fish in the pot and get better price since we generally should do well vs BTN's range , it's not like he has ton of 43 hands esp given we have a 4.

Idk what do you think is closer to give up when flop checked through (vs wider range) or after we bet and he called flop bet and now price is better.
I think it's viable to c/c train bet considering people click a lot of buttons but I understand why you Buzz say c/f.

Folding river seems a bit insane after we made nut hi.

When I originally read the opening post, I thought Hero bet in order to isolate fish. And that makes sense to me.

(However, that's evidently not why ILOVEPOKER bet this flop).

In general, I don't like check/calling here.

I don't know.

What is a "train bet"? It did not cross my mind that "people click a lot of buttons."

The nut high is an ace-high straight (Broadway). A five high straight (wheel) is also possible. We don't hold the nut high.

Buzz

Auto replacement obviously
Train bet = turn bet

Yeah I see, I thought we made nut straight.

True, but there's a decent likelihood that my hand will get HU if I raise.

Yeah but the guy that limped in was an 86/14 superfish.

He was playing 86% of his hands.

Nah, that's just results oriented thinking. Guy on the BTN--who's folding a lot to my raise--woke up with an A2xx hand. Nothing I can do about that. Also, with this highly coordinated hand getting HU isn't that imperative. So I don't mind if my iso-raise doesn't go as planned (although I would obviously prefer the BTN to fold). Now if I had a less coordinated hand like A46T, then I suspect my iso-raise better work a lot to be worth it.

Didn't really think about that benefit at the time, but that's definitely an added bonus.

That's interesting to me. I did feel strong about my preflop play and still do, but who knows. Hopefully my preflop line here is at least defensible. Too bad we can't play god and run this spot out a zillion times and see what's better between raising and overlimping.

yes, the iso raise is standard.

But HU when you push others out with a raise is not the same as HU when only one opponent is dealt cards. The difference is the one player who doesn't get pushed out is likely to have some advantage a single opponent with random cards doesn't have.

Not really. At least I don't think so.

I believe sometimes Omaha-8 players make moves that work in other games (especially Texas hold 'em and Omaha-high) and against other groups of opponents, but that don't work well in Omaha-8 or against the particular group of opponents they're facing.

But I think I understand what you're saying.

Thanks.

Buzz

What the % of hi hands played or 3bet ?