Live 1/2 game, pretty deep stacks. I'm on cut-off or button with KJs at a limpy table. I have 250BB which is about average.

EP raises to 3.5BB ($7) and gets three callers, including me. I have position after flop.

Flop comes down Q x x with two spades and gets checked around. I check.

Turn card comes down spades, makes my K-high flush. Check, Raise $15, Fold Fold, I make it $50, about size of pot. Raiser re-raises to $125 to $175 or so and I call.

The raiser has a big stack, maybe 400BB and people to my left and right have been muttering about him not deserving that stack.

River card is a blank. No pair on board and still 3 s. So only nut flush beats my hand.

He doesn't have much information on me, although I had been playing a fair number of hands with some big pots -- mostly because I was getting good cards. So I may have a slightly LAG table image.

My immediate thought with his big re-raise is that he thinks I'm bluffing and wants to push me off of it.

He bets another 200 or so, which if I call leaves me with I think about 75BB ($150).

I tank. Nut flush seems likely. Pot's up to about $600 now so I'm getting 3:1 to call.

I call and he turns over nut flush.

Is this a standard call? My instinct was I was beat but the odds seemed too good.

(Where) did I go wrong, if at all? Should I have raised the flop instead of checking if I was interested in the pot?

Thanks for the help. I've read a lot and played some online but am fairly new to live play (maybe 30-40 hours total so far).

Sorry, I'm a new poster and just realized this should go in the Live forum. Can a mod move it? Thanks.

EDIT: Thanks, mods.

Without a very strong read and a lot of history I am never folding here.

There are a ton of flushes that will play this way that you beat.

First off, when your writing posts like this, please try to write in a clear way. There is no way to know if the guy who is raising you after the flop is the same guy who raised pre-flop. We don't even know the cards on the flop or turn. If you can't remember, then make a card up, but a flop card should never be x. Every street should have pot(100bb) or pot($550) or whatever. The point isn't to say exactly what happened in the hand, make something up if you forget, but don't just write nothing. This thread is awful. Anyway about the hand, based on what i figured out from what you wrote

Okay so here is my more clear breakdown... IF he was the PFR (preflop raiser), and he's like most 200NL players, he probably doesn't bet a suited connector or disconnector preflop... he just limps like everyone else before him... (its rare to see someone raise with a suited connector after a few people limp first) so if he has spades, he must have the ace of spades (because Q, K and J are accounted for, and he just wouldn't raise with a suited hand pre below T. If he had a pocket pair he might bet preflop... But most people will c-bet with a set on a draw heavy flop and this guy didn't C-bet.... so I really don't think he flopped a set. So if he can't have a set on the flop.... and he can't have any flush you beat.... the what can you really beat? Nothing!

If he did limp pre... he could have almost any two spades so i guess you have to call

My suggestion: Without any live tells, or any info on the player, I think it actually is hard to put him on a hand that you can beat, so long as he was the guy who raised preflop.... I just think he would bet out with a set on the flop, expecally because the pot has so many people in it and the flop was suited. If he limped preflop, I think all of a sudden a whole bunch of weird suited spades pop up in his range here, and getting 3:1, i think it is one of those sigh calls. That's how i feel about it... but then again, its also easier to make these decions behind a keaboard using your money and i know how the hand ends. In the moment i would probably call too

I don't think you can beat any sort of flush here. Ten high flushes just don't stick it in here, and that's the absolute highest he could have. You have to remember that the queen is on the board, and hero also has the J and K. I think unless this guy suffers from FPS you have to fold here

I think against some people you are certainly getting pot odds to call, a lot of fish LAG re-loaders
But against other players, the 200NL "regs" who only play the nuts, you should just fold.

this is a difficult fold, but it is a fold. You have to think, if villain does NOT have the nut flush here, what could he have... and would he play it like this?

considering you have both the king, AND the jack in your hand, that would mean that if villain did NOT have the ace high flush, the highest possible flush he could have is the 10 high flush...

if he has a 10 high flush, and he bets out $15, and gets check raised to $50, is he going to now *re-raise* the check-raiser to $150 , with a 10 high flush.. when a Ace/King/Jack high flush all beat him? or is he going to flat , or even fold.. i think it is much more likely he flats , or even folds a 10 high flush here.

when YOU flat the $150 , what does villain now perceive our hand to be? Remember that , if he does not have the ace in his hand, he can only possibly have the 4th nut flush. If he bets out the 4th nut flush , for $200, and you have $350 total... there is almost no way anyone at 1/2 ever, EVER bet/folds here for only $150 more. He is essentially saying, I'm betting $200 and calling another $150 , also offering you very good odds on a call.... now, combine all of this together, and consider the best possible hand he could have if he doesn't have the nut flush, is the 4th nut flush, and i think you'll see that you could logically work villain's line out to be a fold.

also i'd like to point out that this line is never a bluff. he checked it around, let the flush get there.. bets , gets *check raised*, and is now raising the check raiser.. this is a horrrrrrrible spot to bluff.

Thanks. I'll be more clear in the future.

I do not think the guy I was playing was the PFR but I honestly do not remember at this point.

Otherwise, I think I was a little tunnel visioned on the fact I had the K and did not think clearly enough about the Q spade and the fact I had the J. When you point out that his top hand is 10J, this makes more sense. I wish I had been able to think that through on the spot. I was focused more on what I knew about the guy and if he was capable of the play.

I will confess I'm not sure it was a Q on the board, it might have been a T. I remember it was a higher-end card and I did not have a pair. So that only adds a Q to his hand, which changes the calculus a little bit but probably not much given how he played it.

That said, the game was fairly loose and from what little info I had on this guy I think he was capable of the big re-raises even with a lower flush. I've seen much, much crazier plays in the room fairly routinely.

Another question:

Since I was CO or Button, do you think KJsuited is strong enough to warrant a raise on the button with 4 or 5 people before me? With me on the button, I'm pretty sure at that table a further raise of $25 or so (nearly pot-sized at that point) would rightly be seen as a semi-bluff or steal attempt. So I'm hesitant to inflate the pot with K high on the flop and happy to check because I doubt any raise that actually denies people the odds to call works as intended at this table. I doubt the hand-winner wins at this point folds, anyway.

I totally understand what you mean about tunnel vision, and when you have the 2nd nuts, and there are a lot of other really strong possabilities out there, it can be so hard not to just snap call. I probably would have called to, but i think if it was the Q and he was the PFR, you maybe could have gotten away from it. Not a bad call tho by any means.

In terms of raising from the CO, do you mean pre-flop or on the flop? Pre I think a call is the best play because KJs is a hand that plays very well in multiway pots. On the flop, I think betting is a good play if the table is weak post-flop. The last 200NL table I was on was so weak after the flop that I was able to barrel a lot of hands for fold equity, either on the flop or with a follow through on the turn. It also kinda depends what the other two flop cards are. The more separated they are, the better a bet would be, because your opponent will be drawing a little less.

My read that pre-flop raise is no good because it just inflates the pot and I don't get anywhere except an inflated pot with no made hand. Seems -EV and makes play on the turn more difficult.

On the flop... since it checked around and had position, I think maybe a raise works. However, I'm not sure. I'd have to put in 40 dollars or so to push off the draws, which seems too much given no made hand but still drawing. And I don't think the Ace high nut flush folds given his stack is so big. Of course I can't know that.

Agreed

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Don't know if it was said already, but an important point is that calling makes no sense. Calls in these spots usually come from guys who want to show off how cautious they can be (all you guys would have shoved but I knew I was behind), or how good their hand-reading might be (See, I put him on the nf and he had it, that's why I saved my last $150), or they're scared a shove will force a fold and no one at the table will see how good they are to have been dealt a flush (their concern is winning pots, not winning the maximum money).

Not saying you're one of those guys, just that a call doesn't add up. If you think only the nfd makes sense, fold. If you think you're ahead of another flush, shove, T9ss isn't folding at this point. Calling makes no sense.

Someone else I talked to said the same thing about shoving. I did a little math about EV under certain assumptions. I'll paste below. The rub is this:

If I'm good 15% of the time, a call or a shove is way -EV and I should fold.

But if I'm good 20-25% of the time, then calling is +EV and pays more than shoving.

However, if my hand is good 30% of the time or more, a shove is best.

So...

1. I can't see me folding to his turn 3bet. It could be a move to try to pick off a perceived bluff from my pot-sized bet. I'm not folding here.

2. Given his bet on the river, I should fold or shove UNLESS I can somehow magically narrow my probability of being good to between 20 and 25%. There's no way I can be that precise.

So it seems like I should fold or shove here unless I'm some math genius on the spot, which I'm not. But given my gut-estimate of it being good 25% of the time, I guess the call make some theoretical sense. I'm still not convinced the call's unreasonable given how the table was playing, the guys reputation, and so on. But it's definitely a sigh call, as someone said.

I don't really see this as a PokerStove (which you seem to have written your own version of, hats off) situation. Use Stove for giving guys chasing fd's the wrong price, setting your own correct price when you have a fd, etc.

This is more of a mentality thing. I folded a hand the other night, but it would have played out similarly to your spot.

I had T8, board runs out
Q 9 3 | J

I folded pf but the guys who got to showdown, one had KT. I would have lost nuts vs second nuts. The thing is, no matter how much strength I perceive V to have, I need to get ai in that hand. If you play T8, you're not getting paid off when the board hits 883, when it hits 883 you're getting stacked by the guy playing A8 or you're betting otf and everyone else will fold. You play T8 to make a straight. So when you make the 2nd nut hand, you're trying to felt someone. You shouldn't be thinking otr, "Oh man, he's so strong, I think he has KT, I'll make a crying call." When he bets otr, you shove. This happens a lot when you play small pp's. You lose set vs. set with your 444 but the right move is to get ai, when you run into 777 it sucks but you're playing a hand with implied odds for the purpose of felting an opponent. If you don't like the idea of flopping a set with 44 and losing, then don't play 44. Not only will you have the 777 vs the 444 the other half of the time and it'll even out, a lot of the time you will muck the small pp pf because you're not getting enough in the way of IO, a mistake tons of fish make. That's our edge. So it more than evens out. In the flush vs flush scenario, I actually rarely go after non-nfd's. I'll play suited K's because the A can hit and then you have the nfd. Or if it's obvious a guy has high pp, for example, then I go after a flush no matter what size. But when I can't peg a guy for safely not having the suited Ax, I've learned to not chase inferior flushes.

Not to be mean, but i think your post shows where you went wrong.
You were only focused on your hand... and only interested in making your flush. Then, when you made it - you re-raised and got 3-bet... yet you still called.

Lets play back the hand:

V raises pre-flop oop. Doesn't that feel like a big Ace or pocket pair to you?
On the flop, V is looking at the same flop as you and he checks. Okay... doesn't narrow his range too much. Maybe he missed the flop or is scared of that Q? But it would make my ears perk up. Why check a pocket pair here? or AQ? The flush can kill his hand.
The turn... ahhh, now v comes alive! Bets 15 into 28.
How did that card help him? Did he hit his set?
We reraise him and yet he 3-bets us! Man, now he really loves that flop! So what could he have? We have the K, so he doesn't have that. The Q is on the board. So he don't have that either. Would he do this with the JX? No, we have the J. Damn, that means that he'd have to be doing this with a TX? Wait... remember when he bet preflop we thought maybe he has an A?

This again shows your mindset. When somebody re-raises me on the turn when there's a flushed board - he's usually doing it with the best draw or the best hand. (BTW, if you were "bluffing" - wouldn't you be doing this on the flop when everyone checked and showed weakness?)

Now some of the better players might do this with a naked A hoping to hit a 4th on the river. But those kinds of guys would also c-bet any flop. So I don't think he's in that "tricky" camp.

You peel one off - maybe thinking V has just A. Not a horrible line. But then comes the river bet. Not a small bet. Not an overshove. But a bet that any decent player with 350 or more behind would call.

In a 1\2 game - against average players at a limpy table, this is rarely a bluff. This is what value town feels like.

Your instincts were right. Hopefully, by playing the hand over and over - you can see what your gut had deciphered but your mind refused to see.