1/2 NL Saturday night. 8-handed table. Surprisingly, all players are unknown to me, most of the regulars in the room are playing a newly started 1/2 PLO game, and the lone 1/2 NL table seems to be populated by Saturday night rec players.

Villain sat down at the same time as me. British guy who I have never seen in the room. Isn't shuffling chips but seems comfortable enough. Bought in full ($200)

Hero ($200) (HJ) is dealt 56. Button is absent from his seat, so I'm effectively the CO

Entire table limps, Hero limps, Villain limps in CO, SB completes, BB checks.

I would raise here sometimes, but I usually like to observe the table for a bit when I first sit down. I elect to limp, but a case could also be made for folding or raising here.


Flop ($14) 349

SB checks, BB checks, UTG bets $6, 1 caller, hero raises to $36, Villain Calls $36, everyone else folds.

Turn ($92) 10

Hero tanks and checks, Villain checks.


Once villain cold calls the flop, I feel his range is strongly weighted towards sets and higher flush draws and occasionally 9T+. I don't feel he is folding any of his range to a turn bet, so I elect to check/evaluate. Once villain checks behind turn, I am weighting him strongly towards higher flush draws and 9x hands, and I intend to bluff about 1/2 pot on non club rivers.


River 5

I now have showdown value against higher flush draws, so I elect to check river and evaluate.

Villain bets $75. Hero ???


Villain is in seat 1 and I am in seat 9 (seat 10 was empty), as I am thinking, he leans forward (like 3/4 of the way out of his seat), around the dealer and starts staring at me super intensely.



Comments welcome and appreciated on all 4 streets, as I think that there are multiple reasonable options on each street.

lol

snap shove and it's not close

don't check the turn

Bet turn. Fold river.

You're shoving river with a pair of 5s? Shoving is the worst. V is never folding a T

Follow thru w your read and hope he doesn't have A2cc.

grunch: fold

new table so you don't have a read. no need to make a thin call. find a better spot imo.

shove turn, you can bluff out a good number or hands

The 3 LLNL live reads that I put most weight on in order of profitability are 'chip grab' (i'll bluff into this a lot), 'stare down' (i'll call light), and 'speedbet' (ill call light).

You are in an interesting spot here. His range seems polarized to 2 pair+ and clubs. His check behind on the turn definitely puts weight on the draw side. However, you have no clue how this guy plays. As played with no player tendencies (while i'd love to hero this), I probably lay it down.

As far as your line, considering you didn't raise pre and have no reads, I might just play this hand ultra passive and call the flop. I'm deep in the agro camp, but in order to play agro, you need to know who the stations and who the bluffers are.

What was your intention with the raise if the original bettor called you and checked? Were you going to bomb away or check behind? Did you have a plan or did you see 'I haz lots equity I raiz'. It seems as if your plan had a beginning and middle but no end and that's why you ended up here.

In this instance I'm betting a lot of the time. I think a weak lead and then calling the raise is 9x a lot of the time, and unlikely to continue to another strong bet. The cold call from the only player at the table that has position on me is a lot more worrisome, imo.

In your case, I have a lot more information to work with. 3 actions from the villain (weak lead, call raise, check turn). In this case, I have only 1 action to consider (cold-call a bet and a raise).


As far as my plan, I have so much equity on the flop that I want money going in. I'm ok if everyone folds, I'm ok if I get called, I'm ok if I get raised. Really, the only situation that I'm not thrilled with is the one that happened, getting cold-called by the only guy that has position on me, but even then, it's not terrible. I plan to bet most turns in almost every case, but plans aren't static, they can change based different dynamics.

To me, this is a fold. You have a reasonably weak bluff- catcher and not nearly enough information to conclude his river bet is a bluff. Also, IMO, overly intentional tells are rather hard to interpret. I wouldn't place much stock in Villain's drama here.

Fold.

I strongly considered this.

I think betting any less on the turn is optimistically targeting only the 9J+ portion of his range. By the turn, we are in bad shape against flush draws, and our equity against sets and 2-pairs has been cut in half. higher flush draws are calling anything up to a PSB imo, and a PSB leaves awkward stack size for the river.

Anyone have thoughts on this? any good reasons to bet anything less than all-in on the turn?

you are confusing odds to draw with equity, if they were the same thing there wouldn't be a distinction

equity is why we bet the turn to about 70, if you didn't know those two terms have different meanings you would think checking is better

actually you are kinda too short to make it 70, shove does make sense

another way to go is a little smaller to set up a psb river shove

Meh, are we really going to argue semantics? In this case, if we bet 70, our odds to draw make up the overwhelming majority of our equity anyway.

If you are interested in putting together a non passive aggressive argument for betting over checking, I'd love to hear it.

I'm not trying to be "guy who posts hand but already has his mind made up on the correct line". I don't think I played the hand well, and I'm happy for discussion, I just think posts like your first two in this thread are the worst thing about this forum.

the math simply says to bet all the way through because the hand you are playing has 50% equity vs all hands that continue through 3 bets

what that means is you maximize your "equity" for each individual hand. that usually means having a plan because our goal is to maximize our equity throughout the hand, even when our odds to draw change

this is a simple hand because it is impossible to construct a hand range in which you are worse than a flip, so to maximize your equity, you only need villain to fold once because for very small edges FE+showdown equity = total equity

that means you make a profit if he folds one turn or river over the next infinity

bet bet

you want to try and leave yourself a psb on the river so you can back out if you totally whiff or if you think villain is smart enough to call perfectly, but most ppl don't so bet 3 streets and print money

bet that turn for aggression and profit when your money-cards come in.

fold river. he bought in full, he's either bluffing (wp move on) or he's getting value with a hand better than a pair of 5s.

Survey says fold here & move on to the next hand.

I don't know what that flop raise was meant to do, make sure only sets and nfd's came along?

AP, at least continue the aggression and bet ott.

AP, looks like V can only win with a bluff because he missed the nfd, I'm calling.

do you think I should have just called the flop, or raised less?

A 6x raise is getting a lot of 9x to fold, it's too big. If V had a set, he probably thinks with that sizing, you're never folding and shoving. Looks like a classic nfd to me, I guess that's the good that came of the 6x raise.

Flatting is weak. Raising (if the one guy with pos. on you had folded) allows you to see two free cards, no one oop is going to lead ott and you can check behind ott if you want, or you can barrel again if you think the oop Vs have FE.

I think the flop raise is too much because your stack size is kind of awkward now, and you aren't really upset when people don't fold. I'd have gone 24.

as far as the river goes, when he doesn't bet the turn you can pretty much discount any sets. The only hands I see him having on the river are terribly played 9x and missed flush draws.

also, when people look at you "intensely", that is usually a tell that they are trying to get you to fold. I'd shove to get him to fold any BS single pair hands he might show up with, but I think his range is almost exclusively missed FDs on the river