Hi all. These are two keys hands that happened tonight, and I'd like some input and feedback, as well as how you guys would play them (please no fold pre's lol). Instead of making two threads, I've consolidated both hands into one OP, especially since both involve the same three villains.

The villains:

V1 (seat3), older white guy. Golf shirt, glasses, clean cut. Seems like he's the boss of his department type of guy. V1 is a big stack and has recently been moved to our table, since his table broke. Has hero covered (~$1100). From the three or four times I've played with him, he seems TAG, mostly plays fit or fold, but takes unorthodox lines sometimes. In the first orbit we played a multiway pot (I opened to $12 and one other V called) where he check-raised my $20 bet to $60 with QJ from the SB on a 10Q8 board. I had 32 and folded. He took the pot after the 3rd V folded.

V2 (seat 6), MAWW. Dressed fancy with high leather boots. Keeps talking about her husband, yet very flirty with good looking dealers. I think she's out looking for some strange on the side. Would bang/10. V2 is to my immediate right and has been there since the start of the game (me, V2 and V3 were there from the start). She is capable of making moves, especially OTT (more on this later). She raises and c-bets with high frequency, sometimes even donkbetting. Sometimes limps when she feels her aggression has pacified the table. Definitely LAG. Sitting with slightly over $500 at hand 1, and around $400 at hand 2. She's a better player than V1 imo, but not as good as yours truly ldo.

V3 (seat 1), MAWG. Plays mostly tight, leaning towards weak-tight. Has 3-bet 0% of the time in the several hours we've played thus far (probably because he hasn't been getting much premiums, but idk). Likes to limp a lot and see flops. Has a tendency to call a lot of opening raises, but mostly in position. Raises his fair share of hands, but plays them MUBSy. Early in the game he raised $12 with AA, hit top set, checked behind OTF, bet the turn, and checked behind OTR, because it ran out backdoor diamonds. He's positionally aware and seems to understand c-bets, both as bluffs and for value. At least, I think he does. Has ~$350 at the start of H1 and $250 at H2.

Throughout the night I've been picking up tells on V2 and V3. When V3 had hit his set of aces his eyes glazed and widened, and he was blinking very aggressively, like something was being flicked at his face. When he's weak post-flop, he tends to look to the opponent on his left a lot to see what he might do. V2 hides her tells well (women), but her bet of $21, $22, or $23 is her semi-bluff, pot builder bet, and sometimes her stab bet when people show weakness. The pots where she does this are usually limped pots or pots where she raises and c-bets in heads-up or 3-way pots. I've seen this bet OTT at least 8 times when everybody checks the flop and checks the turn over to her. No physical or betting tells on V1.

Hero's image is very aggressive pre and post flop. Have only shown down one bluff (against V2) in a heads-up pot when I got called OTR and missed a straight. Every other showdown has been a winner. Two players at the table make comments about how I bluff a lot (doesn't bother me) and keep needling me to show, but they don't have the chips (or the guts, I guess) to call.


OTTHs:


Hand 1:

UTG, UTG+1 and V2 (~$500) all limp. Hero (~$750) limps with 65. Folds to V3 (~$350, CO) who limps, BTN folds. V1 (~$1100, SB) raises it to $12. Hero, V2 and V3 call. BB folds, rest fold.

FLOP ($54):

579

V1 checks, V2 bets $21. Hero pauses and studies V1 and V3, then calls. Both V1 and V3 call behind.

TURN ($138):

579 Q

V1 and V2 both check. V3 looks slightly bothered by Q.

Hero?


Hand 2:

Hero (~$950) is dealt QQ and opens to $12. MP1 (~$75) calls. V3 (~$250, HJ), V1 (~$1000, OTB) and V2 (~$400, BB) all call. SB folds.

FLOP ($63):

922

V2 checks, Hero pauses, looks to his left at MP1's stack, and bets $45. MP1 folds. V3 tanks, looks at V1, tanks some more and raises to $120. V1 and V2 both fold.

Hero?


Thanks for reading.

Hand 1: I'm ok with 56, although I prefer suited here. I'd probably make a healthy raise preflop, though. Would fold to reraise. I like these hands now and again to mix it up.

Flop, AP, I like a raise over V2's semibluff/feeler bet. Probably go 100 all day.

Turn, AP, I dunno. I think V1 and V2 are out, and the good news is we have weak/tight left. I guess if we are feeling frisky, we could go 85-100, we do have some equity when called. It's ok to let this one go, though, we have played pretty passively up til now.

Hand 2: Pros: We didn't get our eye glaze tell, I'm guessing, how many 2s does he really have in his range? He could be putting us on AK. He has cleared the field for us. Cons: He's weak/tight. He just bet half his stack.

I dunno, He definitely isn't playing back at you, and he seems to want to end this hand early. I guess it would come down to how much I think he is capable of overvaluing TP. Unfortunately his MUBs doesn't help us much here, as i could see this bet with a vulnerable TP hoping to end the hand before it gets really scary. This one is tough.

H1: fold pre both times, fold flop. AP, 4 ways I just give up but I'm never in this spot.

H2: This one is tough. Even this guy I would expect to 3! KK+ pre but I consistently get surprised about the ways fish play AA preflop. I probably bet this super dry flop a bit smaller (~$35). For a little over 100BB I'm probably going with QQ here just because its hard for him to have many 2s and it makes no sense for him to play 2x/99 like this here, and he can easily be playing JJ/TT (A9??) like this.

Hand 1 I don't mind pre and flop too much, but just give up on turn. I might have raised on flop because of V2's betting tell if I sensed weakness from the others. I could fold pre, too.

Hand 2 is a raise on the flop -- or call planning to gii on the turn. This is if your tell on V3 is correct. Seems strange that he has this tell and then raises, though. Has he raised before? He played his As so weak, it's hard to believe he's bluffing here. How accurate is your tell?

H1: I like a flop raise given the sizing tell of V2 and a weak-tight V behind. As played, I'd go $70-80 given the weakness shown, as well as your pause on the flop decision.

H2: This would be a tough fold, but I think this opponent has us beat. He may not 3-b pre, so KK+ could be in his range. Given his image, I don't see JJ/TT raising.

Hand 1:

I'm ignoring fold pre. I'd definitely bet the turn Q against just V2. I'd probably bet against V1 and V2. I would not bet against three villains who all called pre and the flop bet. I think your FE is very small, which means you need to rely on bluffing the river or binking a 5. The 6 and 8 are outs. Two pair puts a 4-straight on the board and the 8 makes a non-nut straight. Not a great case for betting, imo. I doubt V3 bets. Just check and take a free shot to bink.

Hand 2:

The SPR against V3 is <4. I'm ready to gii on the flop. You have 45% equity against 99+. If he slowplays a boat, then you're 50/50 against TT+. You still have 46% equity if you throw in two combos of A2s. You need 37% equity to profitably gii. I don't see the point in calling because you're both committed. I don't think he ever raise/folds with JJ/TT.

Fixed.

He's check-folded or folded to a bet every time he's done that, so I'd say accurate enough.

OTF, no, he hasn't raised like this before. The largest raise I've seen him make post-flop before this was $50 after BB bet $15 in a 4-way pot.

I would shove, disregarding the tell. if he has AA-KK so be it, he could very well have it but he could have TT-JJ just as easily or maybe even something like 77, hard to fold when you bet a decent part of your opponent value range.

the first hand I have no clue, if you're going to be a huge fish and limp call 65o you have to bet turn bet river.

damn, idk then, you def don't make a huge mistake just folding your hand here, maybe call/shove only with KK+

Tells in live are really undervalued imo.

Yeah, it was most definitely fishy. lol

The idea was to look for a cheap flop and play for stacks on a favourable board. That plan changed when V1 raised, and then it changed again when V1 checked and V2 made the semi-bluff stab.

I'm still not close to 100% sure about H2. I don't know if calling, raising, both, or folding is a mistake.

H1: Fold flop
I don't doubt your skill edge vs these fish. I also get the dynamics in play here, some of which work in your favor, but others that do not for your particular hand. Also, you have relative position problems at work here. Mainly, the hard fact is that your actual outs on this particular board are either immediately dirty and/or will add equity to the 3 ranges likely to make it to the turn (assuming you don't see OR ck-r with a hand he overvalues).
Your trip outs always add a BDFD and straight outs complete the JT gutter as well as a BDFD most of the time, some of which will be free rolling you. These aren't the most MUBsy of scenarios, but rather some reasonable outcomes when you actually DO complete your draw and this doesn't even touch upon some of the somewhat marginal IO you have when the obvious draw immediately turns.
With this much marginality on "good" turns, you'll just be running low quality bluffs (better to check here when V2 ck turn no?) on bad runouts in a bloated pot with fish with terrible relative position.

H2: I'm betting a bit less otf to capture more calls, but could easily be faced with the same problem no matter how I sized it. AP I'm just shoving it now because he is shallow enough/bad enough to cooler himself without too big of a sting. Getting eff shoved on this far up in my range on a board I would handpick If I had my choice is alarming, but for reasons above I still gii and win enough.

Hero bets $55 (~40% pot). V3 tank-folds. V1 and V2 insta-fold.

I went with my instincts and trusted my reads. There was a sense that V2 gave up after the turn check, and I got the impression that V1 just didn't like his spot. People tend to be a more honest OTT, and V1's check had a high chance of being weakness. The Q couldn't have helped V2's hand, as it didn't fill any draws. Betting against into V3 was based entirely on feel, while against V1 and V2 was based on their lines.

Hindsight is 20/20. In retrospect, this was probably a bad textbook bluff, but I picked this spot and lucked out that it worked just right.

I didn't expect the responses to H1 to be so varied. Some advocated a flop raise, some called and checked the turn, while others folded flop. Only one person (samo) was in favour of betting the turn $70-80.

Hero tanked and raised all-in. Villain called.

I'm curious as to which dynamics are working against me here. We tend to have difficulty spotting weaknesses in ourselves, so I probably overlooked something key and didn't factor it in.

grunch. i bet 70-80 in hand 1, and call hand 2. probably would bet slightly smaller than $45 too given that MP1 has $75. somewhere around $35 and if he shoves over i have the option of repopping anyone who flats.

EDIT: yeah i don't really see anyone calling your turn bet with anything less than a Q/picked up bdfd, and given that you know V3 is going to fold you're going to be able to play the river in position against the two players with hands that are clearly weak enough to fold to a high pressure bet on the river if it blanks.

not a fan of shoving over V3 as it kind of turns your hand into a bluff. would rather call him down

So when you know your bread and butter is that these fish are simultaneously bad enough to frequently ck-c weak draws ott facing a single bet while at the same time not good enough to frequently fold when they improve to 2p+ on almost any river, then what you're actually doing is taxing your low equity hand/strengthening their calls/spewing. This isn't a semibluff, but a low quality bluff in spot where your alternative action of ck turn will almost always see a free river anyway w V3 fit/fold last to act. The other dynamic is that V1 is deep and ck-c flop after raising PF with some airy AQ/AK type hands are now likely in ck-c mode if they realize their pair equity. He doesn't have to have air ott either just bc he ck-c flop OOp, V2 has a super wide range of hands that want to ck-c-turn, and any calls from V3 complicates things.

Amongst very good players I think this type of spot is a common leak. Being good enough to find a line to win this far down in your range just isn't enough to justify executing it. Here, you have assumptions that are likely valid, but you too often have air otr which goes hand in hand with my preferred exploit of folding flop.

In hand 2, he gave his weak tell but made a bet that he's never made before? That's pretty confusing. Not sure what to make of it, but I'd probably just call on flop and re-evaluate unless you really think he'll call a raise with worse.

That's a lot to think about. Thanks for the detailed explanation.

In addition to the tell, I figured that if he had 99, he would want to invite more $45 calls into the pot. There's no way he would have any kind of 2 other than 22. Even if he had that, the same logic would apply with having a nut/near-nut hand: invite as much money into the pot as possible. Because of this, I concluded that he can't have 99/2x and shoved. This player wasn't a multi-level thinker, so intents and actions usually match one another.

He had T9.