full ring, everyone is real loose and bad

i've bet folded the turn twice in the last two orbits

5 limpers, sb completes, i raise QhTh in the big blind, everyone calls


flop J93 two clubs one heart. i bet, one caller, second limper raises, two cold calls, I three bet. first caller calls, raiser caps, one cold caller calls (the other folds?), i call.

turn T spade, checked around

river T club. i?

What's your thinking behind the flop 3bet? Not sure you have enough equity to jam here (although the BDFD may swing it upward enough).

As played the river is super gross and I would probably check/call.

pure equity i thought with the BDFD, OESD, and overcard. i might be wrong with the flush draw on board though.

I am curious to the thinking to betting out on this flop. Your OESD and BDFD + overcard has tons of value and the pot is big. The board is pretty coordinated for lots of plausible hands. Would trying for a checkraise by letting the aggressive pre-flop better have a crack at the flop help protect your hand?
Or would waiting until the larger turn bet be even more effective? **I am pretty sure I know enough from Miller to try to be aggressive in big pots, and not enough to implement it correctly often.

Betting out first here for the small bet probably does nothing to thin the field but if you were hoping to make the pot huge---well done.

As played, the river sucks--but doesn't suck enough not to call down.

nothing i do on the flop will protect my hand in this game. i like the flop check raise plan, but for pure value only.

His q high doesn’t need protection, and any hand you are trying to fold out with a check raise is not going to fold out.

Check the action again.

I'm fine with not 3-betting this flop. I'm not sure you have equity because the flush draw taints your outs. I would also consider the possibility of check-raising the turn if you hit your straight as an increase of value. But I don't think 3-betting the flop is a huge error.

I go ahead and bet-call the river. Capper could have jammed the flop with a flush draw, but he also could have Jx that got cold feet on the turn because of the connected board. Trip Ts is strong enough to not hate paying two bets on the river.

FOLD! lmao. YEa Yea, you can make a crying call if you want to but Highly probable that someone has flush...they didnt lead out because they are afraid of boat

im first to act on the river, im not open folding.

Check-call seems fine on this river, but I'd add to the chorus of not liking the flop 3-bet. Our equity just isn't big enough to jam here.

Personally I'm jamming this flop too. I'll jam any quality draw on the flop -- even if I take slightly (only slightly!) the worst of it on the additional bets.

My reasoning:

1. It slightly increases my payout when I hit my draw -- people don't like to fold on the end in huge pots if they have anything to show down (which is not wrong of them). They may even bet into you if they didn't "put you on the draw". That at least somewhat makes up for the fractional small bets you lose from the flop bets.

2. I can jam my monsters and I get paid off huge. Even loose/bad players notice you jamming your draws. They just think you are crazy and will pay you off (even though you fold most of the time preflop -- this overrides that)

Totally agree on that last part. If you're a mostly tight player but can create a loose flop image, then you get paid off, reraised, and bet into on the turn.

It's not immediately clear to me that the increase in payout on the end offsets the "small fractional bets" you lose from the flop bets. It's difficult to measure because you're trying to estimate the bets for which someone on the end will fold instead of calling. In this case, even without you 3-betting the flop, the pot on the end is expected to be big, so it's not clear to me that making it extra-big will tip the scale for anyone. (It's also worth noting that you might get yourself sucked into calling extra on the end because of the size of the pot when you back into some hand that wasn't your primary draw.)

Also, at the low stakes I'm far less worried about players who fold too often on the river. And if I were, there are much better places where you can squeeze extra value.

One of the challenges with this is that the frequency with which you flop draws far exceeds the number of monsters you will have. And it's not clear to me that you would need to jam all your draws in order to get the perceived benefit. And you're also foregoing other ways to achieve extra value on the big streets when you hit your draw. I think it's fair to say that not jamming the flop will create some opportunities to do that.

I would argue that there are certainly good times to jam draws. I'm just not sure that it's actually profitable to jam all your draws.

I'm not talking about situations where I'm clearly taking the worst of it. I'm talking about borderline cases were I'm not sure. This is one of those cases. OP is open ended to the nuts with an overcard, with 4 opponents, with a possible flush draw out there. It seems likely that at least one of his opponents has a flush draw but that's not 100% certain.

OP probably wins 20% of the time. If not, it's close. 6 outs with 2 cards to come is 24.1%. The flush draw redraw kills it 19.5% of the time. So he makes the nuts 19.4% of the time. Sometimes he wins without making the nuts. Sometimes there is no flush draw out there; sometimes runner-runner trips are good; sometimes just a queen is good. Jamming here is an easy decision IMO. He is either getting the best of it or very slightly the worst of it.

I don't disagree with your general ideas, but I'm not confident the analysis is sound. And to be clear, I'm not saying that it's somehow obviously losing money to jam borderline situations. What I'm claiming is that not jamming may be more profitable, and not jamming is worth doing sometimes in borderline situations.

1) Drawing to a straight against a flush draw does decrease the size of your win on average because you usually lose more when the flush is out there. So you may be underestimating the downside which is leading you to overestimate your overall EV.

2) Your analysis doesn't take your relative position into account. A turn check-raise (for example) is a big win if you've got good relative position and a reliably aggressive opponent giving action on the flop.

3) Your analysis doesn't take your absolute position into account. This is kind of an ever-present aspect of poker, but I think you shouldn't negate the value of relative position. In position, I'm less inclined to jam small edges because of the opportunity to raise on a big street.

So I think there's a lot more going on that your analysis misses, and that you may not be maximizing your EV by taking that incomplete analysis to the table with you. The essence of your claim is that because it's roughly neutral EV in terms of equity, it doesn't matter what you do. My position is that there are future streets of poker to play, and you should take that into account as well.

These are fair points, but I'm not sure that they apply here.

1. It's true that I'll lose some extra bets when I make my straight and lose to a flush, but I don't think that affects the profitability of raising the flop. I'm losing those bets anyway in that case.

2. In this case the relative position is more or less irrelevant. Of course if the better was directly to my left I'd checkraise but in this case there are players in between on both sides.

3. Absolute position will sometimes cost me an extra bet on the river, but that's true regardless of how we play the flop.

Basically, I think that your points are very relevant to the implied odds on future streets, but I don't think that capping vs calling the flop affects those implied odds in this case (the pot will be too big to fold a straight no matter what we do on the flop)

Also, since we raised out of the blinds we have a very well disguised hand here. Opponents may well put us on a big set or overpair, and jamming fits into that misread. That can gain bets on future streets.

Again, one of the main reasons that I like jamming here is that it keeps opponents off balance. Your play with a draw looks an awful lot like your play with top set. It's not just for this hand -- "maniac" is a profitable image in a loose game where opponents don't really know how to deal with aggression. I generally see players get scared and revert to being passive calling stations (even in small pots where they are losing money by calling, or in spots where they really need to bet their hand) or they decide that they aren't going to be pushed around and to try to play back at you, but because they aren't that good, they do it in really bad spots.

In a tough game it's different. But I try not to play in those.

Maybe. One issue I see is how this plays out on the turn. Let's say that you 3-bet the flop and it's not capped. The turn comes T as it did here. I would generally think that

1) If you had the lead on the flop, you're leading the turn.
2) If you did not have the lead on this flop, you're not leading the turn.

(Some people also don't have the discipline to check the turn when it bricks, though I don't know whether that particular error applies to you.)

So I think that jamming the flop leads to more times you lead the turn with weaker holdings. I tend to think that this is setting up for slightly more errors of putting in bets while behind. (Imagine a player in late position just calling the 3-bet to raise the turn.)

In this case, I agree. Relative position is a wash, and you're out of position, which can indicate higher levels of aggression to offset the positional disadvantage.

Balance for you is good, and your balance creates those situations where your opponents are off balance.

However, I'm looking at this statement:

If this is true, you're probably not actually balanced. There are far more ways to flop a draw than there are to flop a monster. So if you're jamming everything that's close, you're likely jamming way more often than you "should" to be balanced. But it's interesting exercise to look at different flop textures from different positions and think about that.

(Though in this case, I think it's close. Your hand range is so strong raising from BB that you don't have too many drawing hands to begin with. The effect is much stronger when you have a wide range, such as in later position or if you had just checked preflop. You say your play looks like top set, but presumably you're going to 3-bet a hand like AA or maybe as weak as QJs? Maybe one way to gauge this is to think about what hands you would bet-call here. If there aren't many, maybe your whole outlook is too aggro? There's a lot to contemplate here.)

Let me rephrase a little.

Obviously I want to make as much money as possible. When I am getting the best of it with each bet, I have to balance getting as many bets into the pot as possible on that street with extra equity I get from increasing your chances of winning the money already in the pot (eg, "protecting my hand"). The 2nd consideration may make it more profitable to wait for the turn, but this is rarely (never?) the case with drawing hands. This is more common with top-pair type hands if I can force potential callers to call two big bets cold (and they will never fold on the flop). So I might give up some flop bet equity in order to gain some turn fold equity. But, again, this doesn't really apply to drawing hands. So with drawing hands if I am getting the best of it with each bet that goes in, I'm maximizing those bets ("jamming" was a poor choice of words -- I might be checkraising or betting and raising depending on relative position. I'm just maximizing). This is basically the most important thing I learned from SSHE, and it improved my game dramatically (almost overnight)

In cases where I'm getting the worst of it with each bet, but the pot is large enough to continue, I'm minimizing the number of bets that go in (which usually means checking and calling).

Then there are the cases that are close. This usually means that I might be getting the best of it with each additional bet, or I might not be, depending on what my opponents hold (ie, how many of my outs are live). In this case, if I really am not sure, and think that on average (averaging across my opponents' ranges) it doesn't really matter what I do. In these cases I prefer to my first (maximizing) strategy. I'm well-bankrolled, I don't mind the variance (I actually enjoy it), and it's good for my image. "Crazy gambler" beats "math geek" any day of the week as far as image goes, IMO.

In general, when I have choices that are about equal EV (ie, "all else being equal"), I'll choose the one that has me putting more money into the pot.

I play tighter (preflop) than anyone else in the game that I play in. Even players who play mostly the right hands in unraised pots call far too many preflop raises. I really want to shake that tight image, and I'll take any 0EV (ie, free) opportunity to do it.

In this particular case, I think that the chances of making a straight with no flush possible, combined with the backdoor flush draw, makes jamming clear. As for the turn, I'd check if a blank comes, but bet if I pick up a flush draw on the turn (giving me 13 clear outs and 2 questionable outs)

Pairing the turn is not great; I may pick up some 2 pair / trips outs, but it makes my straight draw questionable (1 carder, not the nuts) and of course it might complete a straight for someone else. Definitely treating it as a blank (and checking).

I'm not going to go point by point. At this point, I'm finding your logic to be increasingly slippery as you're not actually addressing the points I've raised.

But...

In big pots and loose games, "protecting your hand" is grossly overrated compared to straight value by getting bets in the pot when you have the best hand. This is even more true if you're trying to get a gambler image going.

That is absolutely not true. In fact, it's the opposite of what's true.

In a larger pot, the value of protecting your hand is larger, and the value of getting more bets into the pot is (relatively) smaller. That's just simple math -- the value of increasing your chances of winning the pot is proportional to the size of the pot, while the value of getting extra bets into the pot is fixed.

There is a whole chapter dedicated to this in SSHE, and it's an incredibly important concept for limit games that have many big pots.

It's fine to say that the "value" of protecting your hand is larger, in the sense that if you're able to pull it off, you've theoretically won more money.

But the frequency with which you're able to do it effectively is quite small. It's not often the case that your opponents are doing things to help you accomplish your goals.

You can call it a "whole chapter" but it's only a dozen pages out of a 350-something page book. There's very little discussion about anything like "balance getting as many bets into the pot as possible on that street with extra equity I get from increasing your chances of winning the money already in the pot." Mostly, it's about betting/raising when you have a good hand, which is the play that I've described.

Maybe you're talking about those 2-3 pages about "When a raise does not protect your hand" and the very limited conditions in which that applies.

This was clumsily worded. My statement here was meant to convey that it's not often the case that "protecting your hand" is accomplished by not simply just betting/raising when you have a good hand.

Usually when people talk about "protecting your hand" it's some sort of delayed raise or something like that, and that's what I interpreted with regards to the "balancing" statement that was quoted.

I think that protecting your hands always involves getting fewer bets into the pot, in exchange for increasing your chances of winning the pot. The two options always have to be compared to see which is worth more EV to you. I don't think that that's a controversial statement. It's also obvious that the larger the pot gets, the more protecting your hand is worth relative to the extra bets, so protecting your hands becomes more important in games that frequently have big pots.

As for how you do it, it might be using relative position to make your opponents face 2 bets, rather than trapping for one bet twice. Or, yes, it might be waiting until the turn to make that same play, if you think that 2 flop bets won't fold your opponents but 2 turn bets will.

Regardless of how you do it, you are trying to manipulate opponents to fold rather than to put more bets into the pot. So yes, you need to choose between a pot with more bets in it and more opponents (and lower winning chances) vs a pot without those extra bets but with fewer opponents. And, yes, you make that choice by comparing EVs and picking the higher one. This all seems obvious -- I'm not sure which part you are disagreeing with?

By the way, there's more written about this in SSHE than just the "protecting your hand" chapter. See, for example, the "playing aggressively with marginal hands" section of the "large pots vs small pots" chapter. Before reading that book I would have either bet out, or check-called in that spot.

This is an odd understanding. I don't believe that this is accurate. If you raise in an attempt to knock out another player in a 3-handed pot, it's far from obvious that this is about "getting fewer bets into the pot." You're preventing the other player from putting one bet into the (forcing either two bets or zero bets), and you're getting that same bet into the pot by the original bettor.

I believe that this is in direct contradiction with SSHE. My recollection is that there is a point where the pot is so big that you should really just focus on getting value and not worry about trying to get other players to fold.

Okay. But the further down this path you go, the further you get from your original claim and justification for jamming the pot. Any argumentation that you make along these lines isn't really supporting your position.

And in case it's not clear, I'm not advocating that one should just shrug and play passively. There are times that raising a draw will keep people out of the pot. There are times that raising will get lots of bets into the pot.

My basic position of "Have neutral equity draw, will bet/raise" is not a solid/complete poker thought.