Hero 1200 eff.

5-10-20 straddle.

Villain UTG+1 raise to 50. UTG+2 call. Hero in HJ KQo call. Button calls.

Pot 235 - KQJ rb.

Villain bets 180. Folds to hero. Hero raises to 500. Button folds. Villain 3 bets to 1150.

What do we think he is c betting? I thought ATs/T9s/sets/KQs/KJs/AA/AK/ maybe AQs/AJs? then Ax hands as bluffs.

So I thought I should raise to get value from AA/AK/KJs and if he has AQs/AJs. But honestly not sure if I should raise less than T9, or have raises at all given he has all the sets I can’t have.

Once he puts me all-in, I felt sets might flat my raise, and I was committed and he could have Ax bluffs.

There's definitely no sense in having a raising range on the flop in general, and KQo in particular is dipping way too low.

As played, fold. We can fold almost 50% of our range, and it's hard to imagine how we have any bluff combos here. It's sick that KQ makes up 9 combos, but hopefully you decide to flat a lot, and you probably stubbornly call off 1/2 PSR raise with top two a lot anyway so it solves itself.

I like a just call on the flop the first time around. I don't think he's going to be calling you with much that you're beating.

AP, I probably fold. I don't think he's bluffing Ax often, as you've basically committed yourself and he probably thinks your range is value heavy with some pair+SD in there as bluffs.

Dislike preflop. Flatting flop. You can probably fold as played. This is A9s 0% of the time imo.

He's risking 970 to win 915. Folding close to 50% would be ok from a gto perspective only if his bluffs had 0 equity. Besides, attempting to play gto in these spots is usually lighting money on fire.

Only if the conclusion brings us to a bad practical conclusion. We both agree it's a fold. I was just saying, "And btw, you don't need to feel like you're getting owned by folding here either." Just thought it was worth pointing out here because people tend to think folding after putting half your stack in with a value hand is theoretical suicide, but this is an exception.

Yeah, I eyeballed the math with him risking 1150, so my bad there. His bluffs cap at 14% equity, so we can still fold over 35%, which still compels us to fold most of our KQ combos. And again, that's just the theoretical justification; in practice, there's no reason to call.

Makes sense, thanks guys. Villain had T9s

I prefer a 3bet pre vs that weak opening size and coldcall.

3! or fold pre. I really dislike flat calling pre.

Fold pre. Just call flop

Call flop. Fold now, you're in terrible shape vs his range. The flop raise is really really bad and should be the important takeaway for you.

I think the preflop call makes a little money, mostly from the ability to profitably bet the flop a lot when it checks to you.

Flat. These hands you think youre getting value from should be folding to a raise.

You shouldnt have even encountered this spot cause you shouldnt have raised but this is a horrible thought process (not tryna be a d**k just being honest). It sounds like you just made three unjustified assumptions (most of all the Ax bluffs, thats like never happening) so that you could give yourself an excuse to put your money in.

That's a bit of an ambitious source of profit from the HJ facing a 2.5x open. I think flatting depends so much on the makeup of the four players left to act behind us and the players already in the hand that I didn't bother mentioning it. Default fold seems correct, easy to imagine spots where we can flat, much much harder to imagine spots where 3! is my favorite option.

The comments are spot on, and I also +1 on the preflop being questionable.

I think flatting is not necessarily bad though; some player reads can sway it into being okay. At lower stakes games where people play worse postflop I think it'd be a mistake to not vpip this hand.

Hmmm...this might be a leak I need to fix, because I probably do the same and call in the hj with kqo also. Can someone explain why they think it’s a bad play? My instinct is that it’s pBecause it leaves us open to a squeeze?

Flatting QxKx pre 4 ways to a raised flop is suicide even if you have position.... 3bet or fold pre

When an EP player such as UTG +1 opens action and we see an additional caller and the button left to act looking down at KxQx should absolutely be a preflop 3bet or fold IMO for some of the reasons listed below:

- we will inevitably narrow the field to 1-2 callers max in most circumstances and and if button folds we can play our hand in position

- we can size a 3 bet large enough to take down the pot preflop and scoop dead money with a marginal hand (given the action and Number of callers in this particular hand I would say 4.0x -4.5x)

- If we choose to 3 bet preflop and get 4 bet we can comfortably fold our hand preflop and feel good about it because if we get 4bet even though we have position ( if button folds to our 3bet) we are often getting owned by AQ suited , QQ + (yes I know we block Kings and Queens and other larger Broadway combos such as AQ,AK but if facing a 4 bet live at these stakes Villian is 4betting value hands at probably a 90% frequency compared to ambitious 4bet bluffs preflop maybe if we are lucky 10%)


- If we opt to fold preflop... well then we don't get ourselves in a sticky situation with monitone Q high or K high flops which can be suicide 3-4 ways to a flop regardless of having position.

With all that said I made this change to my game in the past 6+ months with off suit Broadway hands in late position when facing an EP raise with additional calls from MP and 3betting or folding has paid dividends and made an impact in my bottom line, I was previously setting money on fire by flatting preflop.

Make the adjustment you'll be happy you did

Thanks for the detailed explanation. It’s so funny that theoretically I know all this but sometimes we need to hear a story like this to trigger that oh moment haha

Hey anytime man that's what this forum is ideally about is brining different thought process together and working through different leaks and situations so as though we can all become better poker players. I am glad you found my insight helpful and applying it to your game will absolutely help in the long haul.

I think he cbets basically only the first 4 that you mention. super super wet board oop vs two, I see no real incentive for him to be adding in extra bluff oop. Maybe TT or 99 or something has some justification as a mix, but the others you mention I really don't like... also it's live poker, if there was ever a spot where people weren't going to mix or balance KQJ has got to be at the top even for $2kNL

I think you should have very limited raises on this flop, given read on what I think he should be cbetting. agree that T9 is where you should start from a value standpoint. don't think you really need bluff raises here, maybe like a 25% mix on QTs bdfd or something, idfk, even that probably plays better as a call.

I turbo trash KQ to the flop 3bet

....
also yes to the fold pres, didn't notice we weren't suited here

it leaves us open to a squeeze which we can never call, + most people from UTG+1 are opening something like 66+, any two T or better suited, AJo+. We're dominated a ton, and even when we aren't a decent player can take advantage of the fact that we're capped and attempt to blow us off K hi and Q hi boards or if an A shows up ever. This is, of course, after the fact that we only flop a pair+ 30% ott.

Just all kinds of bad situations, better to avoid this one.

Curious on the point you made about T9 being where we should start from a value standpoint.

Wouldn't hands like QQ or KK make sense for value, given they also have pretty good equity against flopped straights?

May be semantics, but I would think we can go for value with sets.

We flat pre so we shouldn't have much KK QQ.

what Pixie said, additionally let's say that we do have QQ, or JJ here. our issue is that we just aren't getting called by many worse hands, and more importantly when they are worse they rate to have very few outs. QQ is going to block most 2 pair combos and unblock AT9, while T9 unblocks all 2pair and set combos. which do have relatively significant outs, and which rate to be top level bluff catchers.

I'm sure that if we hit PIO that QQ and JJ would mix raises here but I would imagine it's much lower % (i.e. 25-50% possibly) than a lot of players would think. all I'm really saying is that I think it's a pretty common misconception that these should be fist pump, gii type hands (JJ in particular or in hero's case, KQ) on this board.

*** so just ran this in PIO
I used a 10.5% opening range for Vil and capped 7% calling range for Hero
PIO recommends that HU vil bets 5% of opens oop at this sizing, which actually leads to Hero only raising ATs and T9s combos and surprisingly infrequently (<10% mix otf)
I think this has a lot to do with the relatively low flop SPR. It does look like KQ & QQ are raised at a relatively high frequency ott once we flat flop.

I have to go back to what MuffinMan said up above though. All of this revolves around Vil taking a gto/solver type line on this flop and turn, which almost certainly will not be the case on this board at this stake due to the fact that a gto line here oop requires much more aggression than most people are willing to take, i.e. taking a 'gto' line against vil is probably burning money in this case. With that said I generally stand by my arguments from above that we shouldn't be venturing very far into sub T9 hands in terms of flop raises. I'm sure with a little node locking this could be proven, however I'm taking the easy way out and just going with above for now, would be happy to talk further if anyone's up for it