Another 5/10 NL game. I have 2600 and vill has about 4K. There is a straddle on making it 5/10/20.

A raise to 70 from mid pos. I call with 77 from the button. The small blind ans the straddle call.
Flop: 7c,Kh,3c

Actions checks around to me and I bet 170. The small blind calls and the straddle makes it 420.

Shove or just call?

shipping. sb x/r here is 33, two pair, all sorts of high equity draws. we gii vs. all of those, doubtful he finds a hero fold with k3 or whatever in straddled 130bb pot.

Yeah shove here for sure... Ainec. Dodge the combodraw.

Pretty sure you just wanna be calling here w your range here. There’s rly not another hand besides 77 or 33 that’s jamming flop for another 2k.

I would just jam flop cause people don't really have a x/r folding range from SB here and we beat all his value. But yes you're right.

You taking this line even tho we don’t close the action? Could potentially let SB’s strong flush hands draw at a decent price plus we get it in super ahead vs. 100% of value range from straddle overcalling a 4-way to the flop pot.

If we have seen straddle go nuts in spots like this with random zero equity garbage then calling seems better.


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I think calling might do slightly better here, but it's hard to determine the truth of that.

Trivial shove imo

This is where I was and we are potting/over-shoving any non club turns.

I think the difference between call and shove is marginal at best.

you want to protect your calling range otf by calling with these hands at least a decent chunk of the time, otherwise you make your calling range too weak otf.

also I think its nice to play 0% of your hands as a shove here, significantly simplifies your strategy and you lose little. if you play parts of your range as a call and parts of your range as a shove in this spot I think its easy to get owned by misallocating combos in some way

Marginally + EV and only against really strong players that will play you alot of times.


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Any thoughts on a min-raise here to 670? Sets up PSB jam on turn.

Jam turn on non-club, dodging 4 or 6. Recalculate for any 3 or K to maximize profit.

this is extremely transparent imo. seems way too imbalanced (how do you bluff here with the minraise?)


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the pots too big to fool around and just call. you are giving two players a free card to break you.
and may not get any further action of a flush card comes and you are best.

It’s quite easy plug into a solver

You can get stacked anytime playing nlhe but the idea is to play a balanced strategy that makes the most ev on avg if the other folks want to put money in there w draws that’s a good thing for 777

i stand by my post. it is foolhardy to just call here.

I don't see how this can be anything other than a mixed strategy spot.

Ray, how would you play AQcc, AJcc, ATcc here?

depends on the player. this is live. if i feel he is inclined to fold i move in.
if he is fairly tight i am more careful with my draws. he doesnt have thousands of hand histories with me he is shooting off the hip just like i would be.

so i do get balanced but it is player dependent so that is much better than just playing a balanced game as you are then not optimally playing hands, hoping someone sees and remembers them so you dont lose out later on.
i get to remember what others have seen and use that against them in future pots.

back to the set of 7's. the action has straddled originally. so a straddle player is looking for action. i know they are more likely to go all in or play a big pot than a random player. that makes sense and ive seen it all through my life. so in this particular spot i am playing to felt anyone i can and a straddler is prime for that. so i play the hand that way. not a way to balance for the future guessing players..

But couldn't an argument be made that you are letting him off the hook by jamming? Asked a different way, have you seen players that will be in the mood to gamble and try and jam their draw on the turn to leverage fold equity? This is not only about balance. It is about the state of the games and how best to exploit the tendency for players to make bold and aggressive moves, but also to wake up and smell the coffee when they are about to get in 4k with a draw. If calling protects our range a little in the process that can't be too bad?

you make a good point but consider extending your “wake up and smell the coffee” cold feet point to include the Times villain gets scared on turns and rivers and shuts down his bluffs too. In other words, lots of people play aggressively on the flop but do we really care about keeping their bluff range in if they’ll just give up on the river because they are too scared to pot it with a busted draw?

Against virtually all live villains in this particular spot I’m raising and reraising flop until all the money is in. I’d really need to know villain is capable of unloading the clip in order to play it more passively. Ime this is just one of those spots where if you don’t stack K3ss it is an absolute disaster regardless of how well you think you’ve balanced your range for when this situation comes up again 8 months from now.

To be clear there are plenty of times where I’ll call flop but in this particular spot (with straddle, caller in the middle, middle set where 2 pair and combo draw is possible, etc etc ) isn’t one of them for me

Yes I agree and having some info on villain could surely sway the EV in one direction or the other. I am sure we all know players who will follow through on the turn and some that will not. I mean it is a hand of live poker so there will always be a ton of additional factors including if the straddle is on for one hand and done by a gambly/fun player or is done as a part of a round/multiple rounds effectively changing the game.

Solvers translate very poorly to this situation so I don't see what use the solution would have. Optimal players don't straddle and don't c/r squeeze to 2.2x.

To be clear to the others, I said I could see it being a call from a purely max exploitative perspective, I wouldn't give one whit of importance to balancing my range in this situation. Calling takes an obvious risk that a flush card comes and hurts your action, or improves the in-between player to the best hand, and hopes to be compensated by the slowplaying value of allowing the straddle to continue to overplay whatever he has.