Hero: CU this hand,playing 220 BB stack.

Is on his buyin number two of the evening, after losing a big flip in a straddled pot with AK against QQ. Have been playing very few hands and folding a lot due to being extremely carddead for several hours. The table is playing lose-passive with at least 2 horrible players. Hero is joking around and having a good time with villain in this hand, we are coming along great- wich is one of the better players at this table.

Villain: is in BB this hand, covers hero for 220 BB

Has build his stack up from hos 100 BB buyin. Is splashing around preflop and calls alot, especially in position and if the PF raises is around 4-5 BB mark. Rarely 3 bets preflop without the goods. Every 3 bet i have seen from villain (both this evening and in the past) have been AK or QQ+. Villain has an online background from very high stakes, and have played an EPT main event live beforee. Now plays live mostly for fun.Has told hero at the table many times that he seriously respect my game and that hero knows what he is doing. He usually stays out of my way, and vica versa. When playing with hero in a pot, he is very suspecious and careful compared to playing with the other opponents.

The hand:


Hero decides to mix it up and use his tight/nitty image and raises it up to 5 BB with 5 3. Villain smiles and makes a small 3 bet to 12 from the BB. This is the first time in 5 hours of play the villain has 3 bet hero preflop. Hero decides to see a flop in position, knowing that villain never will put him on this kind of a hand due to raising preflop.

Dream flop comes up: 2 4 6


Villain C-bets 20 BB into the pot of 25 BB.


Hero?
How do we apporach this scenario, and how would you think we squeeze out the most value of our flopped monsterhand? I would appreciate you guys to back up your views and thinking process when answering.

Oneliners like "shove" and no further explenation is not interesting.

^^^ shove ^^^

If you think he will get it in on this flop with his QQ+, then I don't mind the shove.

However, I probably click it back... 40bb.

With V 3! preflop, we are hoping he has an overpair he will stack off with. We should start building the pot now with a raise. If we wait, a or overcard to his pair might come and slow down the action.

My default would be to raise 50bb to 70bb total, and ship 138bb into a pot of 165bb on the turn. If you think V might be scared away by the big bet on the turn, I might raise 40bb to 60bb total on the flop. Make a weaker bet of 60bb OTT and ship the rest (88bb) on the river.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

No reason to get fancy here. Any deviation I would make from the plan suggested above would be extremely small if any.

Slowplaying is awful, and we can and should size our bets to get all-in on the turn.

+1. I make it exactly 60bb

Raise 80bb

From my experience i have with this villain and his experienced background from both live and online, he is for sure capable of folding a big overpair here to a shove: especially more than 200 BB deep. This villain is not a usual 1/2 fish that autostackoff with overpair on a raggy board.

Min raise is an interesting approach, its very rare that i use the minraise. How is your experience with the minraise in certain spots Lapidator? You use it alot?

In a homegame where there is (presumably) plenty of history, I use the min raise all the time. Probably too much.

But, OTOH, in almost all of the home games I play in, I'm a huge spot at the table, and folks line up to play against me because I give lots of action. So anyone with at least an IQ that beats the sum of his shoe size and his fingers and toes counted twice would know that I'm capable of having exactly ATC in this spot.

Having said all that...

In less insane environments, I like the min-raise here too because you're basically getting called even by Villain's AK, AQ and worse parts of his range. What you're really hoping for here is that Villain hits an A on the turn. You want to get some $$$ in the pot, but you want Villain to continue with his entire range.

Obviously, if Villain wants to 3b, then you click it back with a min 4b.

I have no problem at all with a larger 2b here, but it is one of those rare spots where I do not want to overbet.

ETA: Given the description of the situation in the OP, I would expect Villain to have a lighter 3b range in this hand, so we need to proceed accordingly.

FWIW, I'm going broke with a flush here. I'm never trying to get away from this hand. It is something you have to live with when you decide to play small suited cards.

I've we push Villain off his AK here OTF without getting him to put $$$ in on the turn, I would consider the hand a disaster.

If you cannot get almost all of Villain's chips when he has AK in this spot (flopping gin in a 3b-pre pot), then you really shouldn't be playing small suited connectors because its simply not going to be profitable enough.

If Villain has QQ+, then we should be getting his stack here almost all the time even without really trying very much.

That is also my opinion. I mean, even if he is able to fold an overpair here and i dont get more money off him i would consider it a disaster.

Its no doubt the consesus ITT is to raise the flop for value and to possibly stack villain. However in the hand and against this particular villain, i decided to flatcall his bet and make him think i was drawing was the best line. My thoughts on the flop was: If i give villain a chance to make a big fold against me, he certainly can do it. Not to forget i at this point thought villain is more likely to put more money into the pot by betting himself on further streets, than to call a flopraise. Also with smashing the board like this i would feel horrible if dont making more money out of him.

So i ended up flatting his bet (wich maybe is a mistake due to the consesus ITT), praying for a blank turn card like an offsuit J or Q, so he can keep firing at the drawinghand he very well can put me on.

Unfortunetly a horrible actionkiller card falls on the turn, the 5, making 4 to a straight on board. Villain as expected with this card checks the turn to hero.

The pot at this point is 65 BB

Hero?

Raise the flop. V doesn't sound like the sort to double barrel AK on blanks anyway.
Losing value is worse than losing out on V spiking a turn card some of the time. There are a lot of action killers. A/K/spades/4 straights will slow down the V.

I would say that preflop is pretty bad with a nitty image, there are a lot of boards which you cannot credibly represent strong hands. Boards like 78X or JTX you aren't going to be given a lot of credit. Your actual hand does incredibly poorly on most boards for value/semibluffing. I hate saying fold pre on these forums but really, fold pre.
The thinking: "I'm tight so people will fold to my aggression" isn't true.

I play home games in my town. My experience is that the good regulars are very careful about stacking off w/ an OP (esp. 200 BB's deep).

With all the history you have with the villain i would play it the same as you would TT, As long as villain has an idea of what you do here with mid PPs. Would you put in a small "where am I at raise" with TT then do that. If you would call OTF and reeval OTT w/ TT then do that. I would want the villain to be sure his hand is good. Let him think he is going to get value from us. If he respects your game i would not take the lead away from him yet.

I prob just call OTT as well letting the villain put in a value bet OTR as well.

If he checks the turn I'm betting 3/4 - a whole pot size bet no matter what the turn is.

Yeah... but there's a huge problem. If you're not actually drawing, and the draw hits, you lose value. So its a fine line to run where you don't want to blow him off his hand, you don't want to turn your hand face up, and you don't want to give him a cheap exit.

LOL... that 5 sux...

Now you're in no-man's-land where Villain isn't likely to catch up. The only hands you're going to get value out of now are [Big-PP, AX]. I probably go for a 1/4 pot bet here and see if I can induce some spazz.

I agree that playing this hand at all is speculative. But i have to say i do it exetremely rarely, and before i did it this time i had been folding and folding for more than an hour. And i personally believe in mixing it up some small percent of the time getting in there with a hand my villains wont be able to put me on and can make them do some big mistakes. Also when playing alot with the same villains, i think we can make an argument for just having those small suited cards in our raising range- making sure that villains cant autobounce on weakness when we C-bet whiffed raggy boards with AQ/AK for example.

Then you need to confuse him by bluff-raising him in other spots to set up what you want to do now that you actually have a hand. Don't change your plan in this hand. Just raise like you're supposed to, and if he folds, chalk it up to you misplaying other hands, not making a mistake in this hand.

EDIT: Also, what I quoted totally contradicts what you just wrote above. You cannot have it both ways: if he won't be able to put you on a straight, then you'd better raise when you have it! But if he is giving you credit for hands, you should be able to bluff him off a lot more pots than you probably are.

Thanks for the input Vernon. Yeah, its more like i believe he is able to fold because he dont autostackoff with overpair more than 200 BB deep,than i think he can put me on the nutz.

But your absolutely right: due to his respect for my game and the ability to making folds against aggression from me, you can make an argument for me bluff-raising him more. Bluff-raising is an aspect of mye game i struggle with, mostly because i feel i lack confidence in picking the spots and pull off succesfull bluffs.

Please do not sacrifice fat value from large overpairs for the sake of trying to extract another 20 BB's from an AK/AQ type hand. In all likelihood if villain has AK that 20BB c-bet is the only value you have any hope of getting from him anyway, unless you flat flop AND he hits his A or K, but those cards scare off as many hands as they help. Obviously AKs is coming along for a min-raise but that just helps him keep the cost of a draw at a minimum when he's sure to come along for a larger raise as well (again losing value).

B&E's post was spot on -- raise 70 and shove all turns.

Add up the combos of:

1) AKo, AKs, AQo and AQs

vs.

2) QQ+

And tell me what is the larger part of Villain's range.

You have to understand that you're stacking Villain 100% of the time if he has AA, 90% of the time if he has KK and 50% of the time if he has QQ without doing anything special.

Its all the rest of the times... like 60% of the time... that you can get more value from Villain in this spot by taking a more creative line.

I have three main reasons that i weighted heavy when deciding on flatting the flop bet:

1) I have position on villain. Wich means i can control the action on every street and for example making sure the turn dont get checked through. If i was OOP i would much more likely been raising this flop.

2) I smashed the board so hard that its no scare cards at all for my hand left in the deck. If i had like top two here or a set, i would be much more inclined to raise the flop.

3) Villain has shown an ability to fold when facing big aggression from me.

there's a ton of cards that kill your action.

There are 32 combos of AK/AQ vs 18 of QQ+ so obviously AK/AQ makes up the majority of his range. If we assume villain calls an additional 20BB's with 100% of this range, but only calls an additional 50BB's with 40% of this range (QQ+, AK/AQ spades) then it is EV neutral on the flop whether we raise to 40 or 70 BB's (0.40 x 50BB = 20BB).

I think it's actually much more realistic that he only continues with QQ+, AK/AQ spades to any bet size, but even if we are being generous an say that he also continues with his non-spade AK combos some of the time for 20BB but never for 50BB we have still dipped into -EV territory.

This is then compounded by the fact that a min-raise makes it more difficult to get stacks in by the river, or even better on the turn, both due to smaller pot size and to the possibility of scare cards coming. If a scare card does come (5 for example) then Villain will have an easier time getting away from a 105BB pot with about 170BB's behind than he will from a 165BB pot with only 140BB's behind, and we should be doing everything we can to see that he can't get away from it.

I think it's great to think of creative lines to try to extract value from good villains with a history, but to me this is not one of those times. Fat value now!

Like disko said above, it's not that you should raise to protect your hand from cards that may hurt you, it's that you need to get money in before something comes to lessen villain's willingness to commit more chips to the pot which is what ended up happening on this particular hand.

I'm thinking any card that made it 4 to a straight, or any spade (which hurts almost 80% of his QQ+, AQ+ range) will hurt your chances of stacking villain, and that will happen by the river more than 50% of the time.

I absolutely understand this point of the hand, and for me thats the biggest argument for raising the flop and fastplay the hand.

My state of mind when this han occured also played a part in it, because i probably felt a little bit "scared" to make him fold the flop and not getting any more money out of my monsterhand. I had been a cardwreck foldin 9-2 and J-3 off hands for hours and had very little going for me this evening.

Been there done that. That's why these discussions are great, they help to keep your head straight when you face a similar situation in the future.