1/2 underground NLHE in Warsaw, Poland.

6-handed, hero is the shortest stack with 230, biggest (V in this hand) has around 800.

Hero had nice winning session playing borderline nitty the day before at the same club but the table is almost an entirely new lineup, only one guy from the day before (whom hero stacked with an exceptionally played AA that session, so he's generally avoiding me).

Today hero is the clear donktastic mark at the table, having already dropped 3 BI to the V in the hand presented below, once by shoving TPTK into a rivered 2p, once by getting it in OTF with middle set vs. NFD which hit on the turn and I failed to boat up OTR, and once by trying to fight back after getting run over all night by stupidly 4! shoving PF with AQ and getting snapped off by KK.

That said, V's game is a bit hard to categorize, he's clearly got my number and 3! virtually each one of my opens, he's so deep that a light 4! doesn't make any difference to him and he'll call reasonably wide, I can't bring myself to just flat with weaker holdings knowing that I'm likely to miss, I'm all over the shop playing against this guy.

So my image is total loserville, if I get a hand and raise PF I get 3-4 callers, I've hardly hit a single flop, my c-bets are getting called when I miss and then I shut down when turn doesn't improve my hand, it's an unmitigated disaster of a session and I know I shouldn't be at the table any longer but my roll for this game was essentially my profit from the previous night's game.

Then this happens...

folds to CO who limps, H OTB sees J9 and raises to 8, V in SB calls, BB folds.

FLOP: 9JA

V checks
H stupidly decides to trap and checks

TURN: J

V bets 10
H ... ???

SPOILER DOES NOT CONTAIN RESULTS!



RIVER: A

V checks
H ... ???

SPOILER DOES NOT CONTAIN RESULTS!



I seriously think my utter incompetence in playing this hand has convinced me to stop playing poker, as it just underlined how big the gap is between my poker skills and the poker skills of, say, your average Ritz cracker.

Note to mods: this is not a bad beat whine, I really want to know if I butchered this hand as badly as I feel like I did, and I'm looking for feedback on the decision points in the hand.

Yes, you butchered it. It starts with your raise OTB. Just fold. Wait for a better spot against these guys. I'm beginning to understand why they don't respect your play.

Bet the flop! They have no respect for you, anyway, and will call/raise with almost anything.

As played, raise the turn, which you know.

Just check back on river. Nothing worse is calling.

Raising pre 100% in this spot

Bet flop raise turn check river. Simple hand.

You're a good writer. Hand was played horribly but some funny stuff in there.

Check behind on river. You won't get this guy off a chop for any reasonable price, and he has enough aces in his range that trying it is suicide.

The rest of your failure you have already documented here. Failing to bet flop or raise turn is simply terrible. Not betting flop a fairly wet flop is terrible when you have a good but vulnerable two pair. You could make a case for checking turn if you had bet flop, but once you fail to do that you need to hammer turn.

Why? You have a losing reputation and nobody respects your c-bets, so you absolutely must hit the flop. It happened here but how often does that happen? and how often do you have the best hand with the J 9 when you do hit the flop?

Plus, $8 w/ a limper?

People can fold pre, people can miss the flop, we can make a hand, we can outplay people using position...J9o on BTN over 1 limper is easy raise if you play decent post.

In abstracto I agree, which is why I raised, but...

Go back and re-read the HH, maybe find the other 4-5 histories I've posted in this forum, peruse SSPLO for a history I posted there, and then come back with a 1500 word essay on why the advice bolded above is around twelve shades too optimistic in the case of this hand's hero.

Your image as described means I dont compute why you would trap by checking.
You raise alarms by checking.
You trap by cbetting.
You have the perfect image for this hand, you can barrel potsize and get snapped off without an ace, lol
Obv raise turn massively whatever its already butchered by then and he might even get away when you raise that turn, but if you had cbet flop you likely own his soul and he snap calls hugely sized double barrels a lot.
Check river, dont quit poker.

Raise more PF, c-bet the flop 100%, since you didn't, raise the turn big, and now check back river since you're not getting called by worse.

Exactly all of this.

Edit: Think IP betting a reasonable amount OTR is also fine to try and get V of a J sometime (but only if you have it in you to also fold to a big raise) and the image/dynamic has to be there.

This exactly. Your image is bad and J9o on the button, with a limper and the V who owns you in the blind, isn't a good combo.
Bet the flop all day. ALL DAY.
Turn, bet/raise.
River, check behind. You got a terrible river card, but even if it had been perfect, you didn't build this pot enough OTF and OTT to get stacks in on river, so it almost doesn't matter.

Funny, funny stuff. I appreciate the style.