Full ring 20 Holdem CAZ. NFL Sunday very soft lineup. MP player is only other winning player in game.

Relevant reads:

Utg is one of the worst players I've ever seen. His tendencies are to play loose passive w fits of dumb aggression.

Hero utg +1. Image gambly lag tag winning in session.

Utg+2 bad semi regular lag.

Mp is a decent tag pro. He's not an expert but solidish ranges. He's too foldy post flop. He doesn't play well in multi way pots and gambly loose lineups. W 3+ opponents he will not c bet w high frequency. Also running bad and losing for session.

Cutoff is a local sports announcer. Very bad loose passive player.

Bb is another losing reg.

Game is playing very loose passive. Raises and 3 bets are being cold called by all. There are no isolation pots.

Utg limps. I limp two red sixes next in. Utg+2 calls. mp raises, cutoff bb utg, utg+2 and I all call.

Flop 352 dd

Utg checks. I glance at mp (pf raiser) who doesn't seem to like the board. I donk, calls all around.

Turn is the 3 spades. Checks to me, I bet called by mp, cutoff and Utg.

River is the T hearts. Checks to me, I bet?

I think all decision points are debatable. I do not normally have a pf limping range in these spots; however, given the very soft lineup and loose passive tendencies of the spots I think it's ok. I want to play pots against this lineup.

I welcome your thoughts.

I'd consider backraising here, especially since the only other decent player in the pot isn't a good MW pot player.

As played, yeah I'm betting 3x and expecting to be good quite frequently when called on the river in this lineup.

well-played, bet the river, occasionally losing to a T or perhaps 77/88, and winning an extra bet from A5/K5 and maybe even AJ+. Fold to a raise almost always (villain dependent).

nh

I like it

Looks good to me.

That is what I would have done.

why?

We're 6 way, we figure to be at least 17% equity and have a hand that will get paid for the times we hit a 6. Moreover, I'm less concerned about not being able to realize this equity in this kind of passive game. Though obviously the old bloat and chase can be somewhat dubious as well (versus just calling where we can x/f a bad flop vs x/c to continue our 2 out set mine).

Seems boring to say "nh", but there you are. NH.

Back raising is pretty bad to me. The defensible parts of putting in more money with a hand like this OTB is completely missing here in EP. This hand either hits or misses. Let's say we actually have 17% of realizable equity, though I think we tend not to. The flop is going to partition that a ton, where we have a 2 outer, we have a small edge on strange boards (like this one), or we're huge equity hogs. Nothing really good happens when we back raise. It feels like we're pushing a small equity edge to bloat a pot we can chase. Let's shovel the money in on good flops, instead.

I love how you played it, assuming you got called on the river by jtdd or ATo

Actually got called in all spots and was somehow good. Mp had aq, later told me he would bet flop (I disagree but whatever).

I guess the real reason I posted this hand is that I did two things that I typically think are mistakes when I see others do them. Yet both seemed like reasonable adjustments given game conditions. Pretty much everyone on here and players I've asked have had the same reaction which is basically that the hand is fine. In retrospect I think the flop donk is ok but that pf is a mistake even in this lineup. I appreciate everyone's thoughts.

Re: Backraising.

PF, in a multiway fishy pot, a small PP has close to neutral hot-cold equity. If we miss flop, we need 22.5-1 to call a SB to try to hit a set on the turn.

6way for 2 SBs puts 12 SBs in the pot, so we don't have odds to call 1 if we miss the flop. If we manage to bloat the pot to 18SBs, then we likely do have odds to call 1 assuming implied odds.

If it were 5way though, we could only bloat the pot to 15SBs, which is still bad for us.


Of course, 6way, even if we bloat the pot to 18SBs, it may still get raised to 2bets, and we would have thrown money away PF. OR, we could flop a set, and increase our IO since more people will float drawing very slim. OR, we may be good on the flop without a set (flop is 3 under cards or a small pair / trips), and now we are pricing everyone to outdraw us.

A lot to consider when bloating the pot with small/medium PPs. I personally like to keep the pot small: when the pot is big, fish are more likely to make correct decisions (by calling too much).

Aaron W had a nice 2+2 magazine article on the subject. The spot was close OTB. IIRC, his math said bloating was slightly bad. Mason liked the aspect of tying people to the pot when you hit, and posted an addendum that said he still thought it was a good play due to making more money when you hit. Reading both sides made it seem pretty close, and the field's reaction/future play was the crux of the debate. I think the raising arguments are weaker in EP, such that I much prefer jonboy72's play of it.

One point that Ed Miller made in one of his videos is that bloating also ties YOU to the pot. We don't think about this very much but if a raise on one street increases our pot odds when we are behind and drawing on future streets, that's a cost, not a benefit.

For example, consider a no-limit hand where you have a draw on the flop with a $100 pot. Your opponent bets $80 into the pot and leaves herself with $30 left. If you call the $80, you are basically committing yourself to call the $30 on the turn if you miss because you are going to be getting enormous pot odds on the turn call. Which means you really should consider the cost of the call as $110, not $80. Calling the $80 automatically costs the $30. That doesn't make the call bad, of course; it just points out that a play on one street which increases the pot odds on a future street can cost us money by forcing us to stay in the hand.

I think Aaron actually got at that point in his article, but it's worth remembering.

Why is preflop a mistake? You want a multiway pot, so the limp behind seems best. At higher stakes or in a tough game, it probably isn't best.

You are usually ahead on the flop, but hard to get everyone to fold on a 3 wheel card flop. For example AJ-AK have decent draws, as do some weak aces, and some other pps have straight draws.

Nh.

Among other things, backraising is probably not good because it always make the field play more carefully against you. And who wants that?

Jonboy: sometimes I think you get a little hung up on what "good poker" looks like. While we generally operate under rules of thumbs (limping is bad, cold calling is bad, hand X preflop is bad), there are clearly profitable (and balance-able) deviations from these rules of thumb. I think you've found one of the best examples of a reasonable place to over limp that I can think of. Folding this hand preflop for one bet seems overly nitty, you're unlikely to get punished by the players remaining behind you, and your hand is exceedingly easy to play multiway oop.