All from an 8/16 half kill session

Hand 1:
Tigh passive limps, Bad loose player limps from mp, next up super tight non existant passive guy raises for the first time in over 2 hours, folds to me in the big blind with a9 suited. The flop comes 934 rainbow one to my suit. I check under the gun checks, bad loose player bets now mega tighty raises. He definitely can beat my 9 so I fold. I think this might be bad even if I'm losing since bad guy is padding the pot.


Hand 2:

LAG UTG+1 limps, bad player calls next in, two folds, tight player calls button. I have JJ in SB and raise, bb folds. Flop is QT8 rainbow. I bet, lag calls everyone else folds. Turn is a rainbow king. I bet he calls. River is total brick 3. I check he bets I call.

Hand 3:

5 limps to me in the SB and I have TT, I just call though I often raise. Flop is K85 rainbow. I bet, tight passive bb raises, loose horrible button calls so I do too. 9 on the turn and bb bets again, button calls and I fold.

Thoughts on all 3?

3 is a non-starter.
You MUST raise, every single time. Not "often", always.

Hand 1 - I'd fold this preflop. Here you hit tptk, and from the action you're pretty sure you're beat. If you're not going to be happy with tptk, why are you in this hand?
Guy hasn't raised in 2 hours? What do you think his range is here? Even for one more bet, you're calling in hopes of flopping either two pair or the nut flush draw at least (and two pair is iffy). I'd only call here with AK or AQs, otherwise I'm raising with TT+ and folding the rest. If he raises once every two hours, generally just let him have it.

Hand 2 - pretty standard. He may have you beat, but your check on the river may induce a bet from a busted draw, so instacall.

Hand 3 - Ugh...why did you just call? TT really needs to raise pre here. With 6 other players in, it's likely that there is at least 1 K out there...it might be a junk suited one, or hey...the bb got a free look at the flop with K5o. Once you've limped in, you now have a small pair hoping to spike a set. You didn't. If anyone has a K, you realistically have 2 outs, and you don't have the pot odds to call that. If you raise pre and get several callers, the odds are different and may be enough. Here you don't...trust your read of the bb and just go away.

No. Even if his range is [KK,AA], hero should still call pre.

Suggest 1 post per 1 hand

I respectfully disagree; the math doesn't seem to work for me. I am sincerely interested in your thought process to get here.

I strongly disagree that I should fold pre. Clearly I am not married to my hand and I am looking to flop hard against a very, very top heavy range giving me good implied odds. Folding pre is only good if you're too bad to be unaware of reverse odds.

I'm with donkey, never folding pre.
How are we not raising the TT?
Is the turn bet with JJ standard?

I should've raised the TT, can't explain why I didn't. I think the turn bet with JJ is close but this particular guy has a very wide range and I would expect a better hand than mine to raise flop.

[QUOTE=DonkeyOnTilt;52849546]I strongly disagree that I should fold pre. Clearly I am not married to my hand and I am looking to flop hard against a very, very top heavy range giving me good implied odds. Folding pre is only good if you're too bad to be unaware of reverse odds.[/]

What would constitute a good flop in this spot? (I mean, you are happy with your prospects to win AND you expect to win several bets from your very tight opponent.)

It's a four-way pot, A9s isn't looking to make money against tighty, but against the other two players.

And a good flop would be an ace high one (if his range is high pairs only, then we're almost always ahead on an ace high flop), 99x flop, flops containing our suit, flops giving us a straight draw.

And you don't need to win a ton of bets since you're big blind getting 7:1.

Edit: FWIW I come up with 19% equity taking A9s up against top 21% for "tight passive", 70% for "bad loose", and QQ+ for mega tighty. It drops to 17.6% if we remove QQ.

I play tight, too tight, and even I can find value in a9s 4 ways with 3 bad opponents. The tight guy has a mega strong range but he also checks too much so there is value in free cards as well.

Fair enough, and thanks for the serious and thoughtful reply.

The only thing I'll add is be careful when looking at equity. It's calculated hot and cold based on the hand playing all the way through the river. When you are out of position with a weak hand, you're often not going to see it all the way through. For instance, if tight guy has a big pair, a certain percentage of your equity comes from the times you spike the A (one of the results you're hoping for). But about 40% of those wins are coming on the turn or the river, so if you're not always seeing the hand all the way to the end, you are giving up a certain percentage of your initial equity in the hand (not 40% of course, you have several other ways to win, but it's not insignificant).

I like A9s, and will often see a flop with it. Here I'd let it go and hope to see what super tight turns up at the end.

Thank again for the thoughtful discussion.

This is a crazy bad way to evaluate a poker hand.

Um, it was a question, not an evaluation...

My apologies, I guess I just recklessly assumed you thought about the hand before you responded.

It's ok to fold top pair sometimes. You can't judge whether a preflop call is a mistake based on the results on the hand. You say TPTK like that's the important part, and not that the nit raised a donk.

Ditto, this is too much for me to be able to read and thoughfully reply to.

One post per hand, possibly unless the multiple hands illustrate the same underlying situation. (These don't.)

Let me join the chorus of people saying "Raise preflop!" in Hand 3.