7 Handed 10/25 at MGM National Harbor mid afternoon Sunday

Hero is early 30s caucasian in town for the weekend, played with a few of the players in the past.

Hero (6k) opens CO 75$ 43hh, BTN - Mid 30s asian gambler/fun player (5k) calls, BB Mid 20s tag (10k) calls.

I played some 5/10 with BB about 2 months ago when I was in town for a week, he probably views me as a nit/tag.

Q75hh, BB checks, hero bets 150, btn folds, bb c/r to 500, hero calls.

Q75hh (1200) 6x, BB bets 900, Hero ?

You're obviously never folding, and plenty of rivers may kill your action. His line based on sizing doesn't seem bluffy enough to go into calling down mode, imo.

I like jamming with these stack sizes.

Edit: I thought he had 5k and you had him covered. Changing my answer slightly. I make it 2.1-2.2k ott as played.

I probably flat, esp when you block hearts and you dont have a lot of hands here you want to be raising turn with IP. A lot of hands you have here want to just be calling down.

I'd start with a fold pre though. I'd open 54s in the CO. 43s is an awful hand, and unless the whole table is horrible, it's -EV

I'd be surprised if you couldn't profitably open this hand.

Raise. This seems like one of the best value hands to do it with as so many rivers make it difficult to extract value, especially with our nit/tag image.

if we make it 2.1K and villain jams we will be getting ~2:1 on a call.

im always suspicious when i hear someone recommend raising such a large % of our stack without just jamming. Do we really ever have a raise/fold range here? do we expect villain to think we have a raise/fold range here?

furthermore, if were make it 2.1K were giving villain 3.5:1 on a call, a very good price especially if he has implied odds or any chance of bluffing us out on the end...

I would just shove the turn.

I'm a little torn between shoving and basically clicking it back. I don't think we have to worry about getting bluffed out later - if we do make it say 2k on top of the 900 we'll have put in most of our stack. We should have about 3500 left after matching the 900, so any raise commits us.

The question for me is what do we think V likely is doing this with? If he's just got say AQ he might call a raise but not call a shove. If he has better than that he's likely calling our shove. And he may well shove over the top of the smaller raise if he happens to have a set, and we'd be happy to see it.

I meant to say make it 2k or so, not 2 K on top of the 900. Although not sure it would change much in the V's eyes either way. It's still a smallish raise vs a shove choice for me.

Fold pre with the loose gambly player on the button. Almost all of the EV of opening 43s in the CO comes from getting the rest of the players to fold which is very unlikely to happen with this guy OTB

I'd play my entire continuing range on the turn as a call.

I am definitely clicking back on the turn - 2.2k.

Villain can have AQ, sets, flush draws, and the occasional 98ss


This doesn't seem like a bluff from villain and you are almost definitely ahead right now. Clicking back gives him "odds" to hit his flush if he's drawing (he won't know he only has 7 outs) and also charges boat draws. Gives him opportunity to jam it on you right then and there. If he has a set, it's a very difficult spot for him to flat as he doesn't know what cards he needs to dodge. You do not want to flat here IMO.

Jamming seems way too big here. We'd be putting in >4.5k on top of his 900 turn bet. What do we expect him to call with?

Agree - his only likely calling range to a shove would be sets, and even then he'd be leery with anything but top set, if hero's image in his mind is as described in OP. Some of us have a little different image and might get a call

Jam is better than other sizes. We don't have no equity bluffs here, we also don't have much fold equity (and worse still, can get jammed on) with a small sizing, so we don't want to use that sizing with our bluffs (whatever they may be), so there's no real reason why we should pick a small sizing.

Villain is going to have sets or NFD/combo draws a lot, and against that range, there's just too much value to jam. We don't really need this hand in our range to facilitate call downs on bricks. Just pick a different hand we arrive on river that works as a bluff catch. It's not like if we flat here, our opponent would suddenly be making a mistake value betting a set, or that he'd be punished for it (since sets would call a jam on turn anyway, his sets actually lose LESS money if we call straights on the turn) so there's no real purpose in having it in our call range.

Yeah if it's that easy to fold people off hands, I don't see why you wouldn't just jam all your draws on the turn.

Ask yourself this, what would call a 2.2k raise but fold to a 4.5k?

That's right, DRAWS. The EXACT HANDS we don't want to give good odds to.

If villain has two pairs, what reason would he have to continue to 2.2k, and then fold on a brick, but not 4.5k?

I actually don't know why people are so allergic to making big raises. It's exactly like the live tournament players who complain when you shove 14bbs on the button and tell you how much of an overbet your raise is.

i am down with not having a ton of raising combos here, but we should certainly have a few and this is probably my favorite combo on the value side. pot size sucks, but a shove is only 1.5x pot and clicking it back looks pretty strong from somebody with your described image anyways.

if villain is bad enough to call a minraise/shove with AQ, I guess go for it, but I'd rip a lot of the time.

+1 to this entire post. Every word of it.

This thread is the reason that the "raising half your stack is the nuts" read is so reliable. Everyone's afraid of "over-raising" a few hundred dollars more than pot with their value hands, but when we have semi-bluffs, no one wants to raise a small amount and leave awkward stacks behind, so they either wimp out of bluffing altogether or just say YOLO and shove.

I'd tend to just call because these deep spots tend to play absurdly nitty without history. He could easily fold a set to an all in raise here.

Tercet, how did you decide to play it?

I sigh shipped, villian turbo insta snap folded.

What do you shove here as a bluff? We need ~38% bluff combos if I am not mistaken.
Do you c-bet flop with 7xhh && 5xhh?

This EXACTLY. Out image plays a huge role in this spot.

We don’t actually NEED bluff combos; protection can be good enough reason on its own if jamming is better EV than flatting.

What you mean is you need x% bluffs for opponent to be indifferent to calling or folding, which is a) not necessarily relevant, b) dependent on how much equity our bluffs have.

If we're gonna raise turn at all the only size should be all in because the only hands that want to raise want to also jam. Still calling my whole continuing range though.

I mean yeah... this exact combo wants to jam turn more than literally any other hand in our range so I'm fine with just jamming this hand and no others. Agree with Renton that I doubt you're getting called by 55 too often not that it matters too much. In fact not allowing 55 to realize their boat equity is pretty sweet

EDIT: Okay okay the more I think about it I like jamming the turn specifically with 43hh. Definitely not raising any other hands though which is congruent with my original comment because I don't even have 43hh in my preflop range in this spot. nh nh

Pre is 2 loose
Turns a solid raise

I'm not sure how you get more money out of villain. I'm sure your image played a huge role if you think villain views you as nit/tag. You can't ever really just call, and I think any raise you make will set his spidey sense tingling.