Cutoff: $2.5K
Hero: $1.5K

$10 rock is in cutoff. Two limps to hero, who limps with AKT7
I limped because the button had been 3-betting a lot recently, and I didn't want to get three-bet OOP with this hand.

Cutoff makes it $45, two limpers call, I call.

Flop ($180)
AK3
Limpers check, I check, cutoff bets $150, limpers fold, I call.

I decide to flat here with no redraw and because board hits cutoff's range well.

Turn ($480)
AK3T
I check, cutoff bets $375. I call.

River ($1230)
AK3T9
I check, cutoff bets $800.

Hero?

I put villain on a range of a set of aces, set of kings, QJ, busted heart draw, QJ + busted heart draw, and a bluff.

I think QJ without backup pots the turn most of the time, so I discount bare QJ based on the turn sizing. I think a set of aces and kings would take their showdown value here, but have seen plenty of players in this game make value bets in this spot here with top and second set. This seems likely, as if I had bare QJ, I would be likely to check/pot turn, so V may be confidently value betting a set.

Finally, given I didn't check/pot turn, hearts missed, and the board didn't pair, I think it reasonable that villain thinks I don't have a strong enough hand to call, and is trying to push me off my hand.

I end up tanking until somebody calls the clock on me....

What's your action in this spot?

Edit: To add, I had played with Villain for only half an hour up to this point, and hadn't seen any of his hands show down yet.

I think it's a muck unless you have an outside read. I look at it like this, im going to be up against what he outflopped me with, backed into or 3 barrels of air. I feel more often than not villain will table the first two scenarios and not just bc it's 2 out of 3. I think at best we chop with his worst value hand and the times he turns two pair and bets river are slim.

Is it worth mentioning that if strength on the flop is not demonstrated either by leading or raising (and I don't know which if either is correct), it's easy for him to rep aa or kk into someone calling down? Does this serve to increase the times he's barreling and is it enough to justify a call? How should odds and our estimation of his tendency to bluff here be used to make a decision?

I think you’re ranging and analysis are off or premature given 30 minutes of observation. I don’t think villain is thin valuing here, especially since you block many sets and 2pairs. This is a very polarized bet that looks like a missed wheel wrap with Nfd or a broadway wrap with nfd
Even though your line screams weakness I fold here


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not really sure what this thread is about. easiest fold ever

unless it's a bad beat thread where you're CO in which case wp

This is a good hand example why you shouldn't limp and limp/call pre in PLO.

With stacks this shallow, you really need to check-raise this flop if you want to go with this hand, or just fold. As played, you got one of the best runouts you could hope for with only one of Villain's realistic draws hitting, so why the hell would you want to c/c two streets just to fold on the river? Why call turn if you intend to fold a blank river? Isn't the sole reason you call turn (instead of fold or jam) because you want to give Villain the chance to fire another barrel on the river?

I am not saying that this is the best option FWIW, but why check three streets with such a holding and call a largish turn bet if you intend to fold a river blank? There is no logic in that.

Also why should Villain change sizing depending on QJ with or without backup? If he had sized small there might be some merit to this line of thought, but he bet like 3/4 pot and I do not see how this could discount QJ without redraws (at least considering you have no reads).

I like pre and the flop, but I think you should fold the turn, and having called the turn, should now fold the river.

fold

your line up to river could be perceived as QJXX, think most busted flushes give up than be possibly X/R'd on this

I only had to be good here about 30%, but still ended up folding, and cutoff showed KQQ8

Overall a good play and bluff by him, utilizing his blockers against me.

In poker in general and game theory wise calling turn and folding river is not illogical at all. See e.g. Miller's The Course (NLHE) on this topic. If X/C turn means we always X/C river then we're making turn/river play too easy for our opponents. They know a 3-barrel bluff can never work so they'll never try it, and they know a value bet on the turn can be followed by thin value on the river. Instead we should set a more difficult gauntlet by having both a call turn/fold river range and a call turn/call river range, so our turn action doesn't telegraph our river intentions.

Of course this depends on our opponent having a semibluff turn/give up on river range. If we know that any 3/4 pot on turn will be followed by a 2/3 pot on river, or if we just called the turn hoping for the best without any real plan or thought about ranges, that's completely different and obviously not good to call turn and fold river.

(Eager to hear why PLO specifically or this hand more specifically is different from the above, if that's the assertion you want to make. I don't claim much specific PLO knowledge.)

If it's such a good example, then the implications for postflop play should be obvious. Are they obvious?

We raise this hand and the LAG cutoff three bets, say to $125 or so. Maybe one of the limpers calls. The 3! hasn't really defined ranges much so we call it leaving an SPR between 3 and 6. In this particular hand we flop top two so I suppose we XR pot and try to get it all in, since AAxx, KKxx, and 33xx are all relatively unlikely?

But we won't always flop top two. Sometimes we'll flop QJ5 and probably wish the SPR were higher but be happy to be fighting for a bigger pot. Sometimes we'll flop complete air and wish we had put less money in.

And then other times we'll have all different kinds of hands. Do they all want a lower SPR or benefit from putting more money in OOP?

For this hand to be a "good example" of a preflop principle, I'd expect the principle to be generalizable across the range of flops and range of hands, not just for this particular hand flopping top two. Are you just advocating initiative for the sake of initiative? (In some games that alone is valuable.) Or maybe there is another elementary principle there I'm not seeing; please educate me by articulating it clearly (I mean that sincerely).

Calling turn to fold river is illogical with this hand. We aren't drawing to anything except 6 outs to a boat. There are plenty of other hands we are calling turn with intending to fold blank rivers - a set or some sort of king high flush draw that obviously has at least a pair and may also have 2 pair but where it has some blockers to the type of hands that villain could be bluffing with (KhQxh)

In holdem there are many more spots where a villain may give up on a bluff on the river (because they are betting ranges and not specific hands) but in PLO there are certain spots where villain is representing an exact hand - in this instance QJ and so if he is bluffing with some Q blockers and only faces a call on the turn they should always be continuing with the bluff on a blank river when nothing changes because their turn bet on it's own often won't be profitable.

This.

I maybe worded myself unclearly - I do not believe we are obliged to call all rivers with our entire range, but with this particular hand IMHO it makes no sense to call a largish turn bet just to fold to a blank river. Of course we have a range that calls turn and folds a blank river, but if we are calling turn with top two the only logical reason IMHO is to give Villain a chance to barrel his missed draws/airballs on the river as well.

Personally, I feel that top two in this spot is a too weak holding to take this line with, but once we call turn we should not fold on a blank river. However, with stacks being relatively shallow I probably just re-pot the flop and GII or happily take it down right there.

Fold turn imo. We block some bluffs with our hearts but for our two pairs to continue I’d way rather use AkJ7 but I’m not sure if we have that pre. All our two top pair with blocker hands we generally raise I imagine. Also raising flop is insane don’t listen to those guys good play. We have no AA and little to no KK in our range while he is completely uncapped. Having a raising range without exploitive reads would be begging to get wrecked. Pre is probably a fold instead of limp but it’s live and it would be boring to fold everything you are supposed to I feels.

As played, I agree folding turn is normal. I do think that co's line can be viewed as slightly unusual given the limps pre-flop but that doesn't make calling turn that much more attractive

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can you explain why us having little AA/KK in our range vs his uncapped range is a big problem for us? shouldn't there be benefit in having villain mistakenly perceive our range on runouts when we fill up?

thanks

His uncapped range means he is much more likely to have AA/KK than we are, even though my hand blocks those combos. Why? His raise preflop and continuation bet into a multiple-opponent field on an AK3 board represents such possible holdings.

Additionally, playing this as a x/r represents having top set or middle set, which isn't very believable considering I limp/called preflop. How many players limp/call AAxx or KKxx preflop?

There can be a benefit to villain mistakenly perceiving our range, but that generally won't happen on this type of board.

I favour c/c on the flop but if we were to x/r we'd rather our opponents did not believe that we have top or middle set.

You're missing the point... if they know we can't have top or middle set then they can play perfectly against our range... which is AK and?? not much else. Maybe a hand like QJT3 with Q high hearts because a lot of the combo draws or pair + wraps we can have on this board are raising pre-flop and not limp/calling. (again, the problem with a limp/call range is that it's so hard to balance)

We can be put in impossible situations where villain jams top or 2nd set and all his huge combo draws with maybe occasionally a bad draw as a bluff and we simply have to just always fold to a 4b shove.

you are missing the point. when you have top two, you don't want your opponents to think you have top set. We're not trying to fold out 333 here.

The whole point is irrelevant because top 2 shouldn't ever be a raise here anyway. We aren't getting value from worse hands and if CO shoves we have to fold because even though he can have some strong draws (that we're only flipping or behind against) he can also have AA/KK and we're crushed.

Agree. Not c/r unless they are droolers