$1/$3 playing 7-handed.

Hero ($250) - Young reg, perceived to be loose-passive.

Bad Reg ($300) - 30 year old woman. Limps frequently. Shows moderate aggression but gives away huge sizing tells: you will see her open to $20 UTG with QQ and you will also see her raise to $10 with KTo.

Fish (SB, $140) - Loose passive fish. Rarely shows aggression.

Hero is dealt 53s on BTN
Bad Reg opens to $11 in CO (huge sizing tell here - her range is severely capped when she raises this small)
Hero 3bets to $35
Fish flats $35 I did not want this but oh well
Bad Reg flats $35

Flop ($98, 3ways)
T95r

Fish checks
Bad Reg checks
Hero ???

Two questions here:
1) What do you think of my play preflop?
2) What should we do on the flop?

preflop is terrible just play straight up vs fish man u dont need to be fancy and 3b 53 sooted. just flat or fold this hand honestly. wait for ur spot against these type of noob players and just go to value town when u hit

as played im betting flop its honestly the only way u win this hand.. no way u are good by river against two other players.

bet flop even if u do get a call normally they will also check turn to u and u can re evaluate often check back and get a free river card. obviously folding to any aggression

and btw u have 53s thats 5 high.. u know K10 is a better hand preflop than 53 right? just sayin =D

You know there's a thing called bluffing, right? If I know that her range is capped, then why shouldn't I try to bluff her?

I just told you exactly why because playing fit/fold is a better strategy vs these trash clueless players.

U bluffed with 5 high and got called in 2 spots and now ur asking for what to do on the flop when u hit bottom pair? Is that what you wanted?

And do you know what range is capped means? If ur confident that she would only raise to no less than 30$ with AA then fine but what about JJ or 1010? is she raising to 10 or 20 or 30 with these two hands? usually range is capped is a term used post flop for when V can't have the nuts..

I guess you didn’t want a bunch of fold pre comments, but I would have started the PAHWM pre. It is an interesting discussion regarding which hands we should use to 3-bet with when we’ve identified a major leak in villains opening strategy.

53s is pretty out of line and if the fish is cold-calling light it’s going to cut into your EV. It could be a profitable 3-bet, but I’d rather start by 3-betting some “normal” BU vs CO hands that we were skipping before, like Axs, and also 3-betting some of the hands we would have normally called.

Straight spew

Pre-flop: fold would be the best play.

3betting would be better if we had a tighter image (and a better hand!) but 3-betting to isolate the bad reg is okay. She is going to fold to a lot of cbets.

As played, I'm worred about the fish's flat-call of a 3bet preflop. Does that suggest JJ+? I think I just check it back and hope to hit trips or 2-pair.

If we bet 40 into 98 we need to be prepared to stack off to the fish in the SB for an additional 55.

"3betting would be better if we had a tight image"

We have a passive image though. Surely having a passive image should get us some respect, especially considering I'm almost 100% certain that the cutoff never has {TT+, AQ+}, due to the sizing tell.

<80 bbs deep with a short-stacked LP in the SB, besides a raise in front, this is an ez, peezy fold.

Flop - just check and try to get to SD. A bet borders on commitment threshold.

If we think the fish's range for cold-calling the $35 is JJ+ then I like pre. However IME this is nowhere near their true range which is much wider.

You can probably use a bigger sizing with your whole range since she's capped and hands like 99 don't have to worry about isolating themselves against the upper part of her range.

Also, OP, you don't know that villain never has AQ+/TT+ here. She could mix these hands. Even if she never opens to $20 with KTo, she might sometimes open to $10 with AA, unless you've played a lot of hours with her without seeing her do it.

I would make a small c-bet here, like $25. We want to be able to b/f against the fish and try to get to showdown cheaply. If the fish calls we can check it down and fold to aggression. If the fish folds and the reg calls we can consider barreling favorable turns or checking and bluff-catching favorable turns+rivers. This combo is a good c-bet because it has SDV and has a hard time realizing it's equity by checking. It also has more equity against one pairs than hands like 66-88.

You're rarely going to get good advice from 2+2 when it comes to bluffing, except when you shouldn't be doing it, because that's usually the advice you're going to get. It's probably something you should study off of 2+2 to get good at.

Call pre. 3b is silly, esp if relying on what bad players might think of you to win blind bets. I am not in the fold pre echo chamber bc I would continue w almost anything playable otb in this game.

AP Shove - Too shallow to play poker against ranges that have massive equity against your actual hand.

I think folding pre is likely best. I don't hate a flat, though stacks are at the very lower limit for me.

The key issue here for me is that you say her range is capped (I believe you), but you don't say that she'll fold most of that range to a 3b. You may think that's a given. I don't think it is. I'm much more interested in history of how she responds to 3b than the fact that her range is capped. I'd consider a 3b with ATC against an uncapped, wide range that folds to 3b a lot and snap fold to a capped range that usually calls pre.

To put this in perspective, you need everyone to fold 70% of the time in order for this to be breakeven (at which point we can count on occasionally flopping something to make the whole thing profitable). We don't need to know her range is capped, we need to know she's folding something like 80%+ (because sometimes someone else will call).

Is she?

AP, flop is (to me) an obvious give-up:
* Shorty is short. Both small in absolute dollar and only a tiny bit more than PSB left. His calling range is likely wider than it would otherwise be. Since he's loose/passive, it starts out wide. Wider than wide isn't what we're looking for here.

* Both V's are loose/passive. That means they like to call and they like to call with marginal hands. In order for a PSB flop bet to be profitable, they each have to fold something like 60%+.

* We have very little equity when called. If we're called, we're probably less than 25%. If we are by some miracle ahead, V probably has more than 25% equity. (There's no magic in 25%; it's just that they have more equity when they're behind than we do when we're behind.)

* Against shorty, there are no multi-street barrels, so against him, we can't plan to bet here and then again on the turn to move him off most of his range.

* V's range is capped at something like KT. This flop hits that range well. Hands like, KT, KJ, QT, JT are all not folding here. Medium connectors are probably not folding.

An effective preflop 3b game can include ATC 3b (or extremely light 3b in this case). But it's only effective if we can get away when it didn't work. It didn't work here. I think continuing now would be spewy.

Even when bluffing we still want equity when called.

That is why something like JTs makes an ok linear 3b, whereas a hand like 53s does not.

If you want to open up your game, start 3betting hands like JTs+,88+,AQo+

Fold 67s to an open. Fold 33 to an open. Fold KQo to an open. The exceptions to this are if you are exactly otb after several callers. Then you can flat 67s and 33.

Fold all gappers. Fold all scs below 7 high.

This is how you make money.

As someone who has 3 bet with things like 53s plenty of times, I'm obviously fine with it.
Due to the difference in the 2 villian's stack sizes I would take the free card.

Thank you everyone for the wide range of responses. And thank you to the people who can see at least some merit to my play preflop, even if you think that it's still a losing play overall (maybe it was).

Flop:
T95r

We all check

Turn ($98, 3ways)
T953 with two hearts now

Fish checks
Bad Reg bets $40
Hero ???

We've managed to bink 2pr on the turn.
Effective stacks are: $105 with the fish and $215 with the bad reg.

The question now is: do we flat the $40 to keep the fish in the pot and allow the bad reg to potentially fire another bluff, or do we raise here to charge draws the maximum and try to stack JJ/Tx before a scare card hits the river?

Im definitely pushing all in now. It will look like a bluff and you will get called lite a lot of the time.

Ship it.

Inducing is cool when it works, but loose/passive players aren't the ones on whom to try induction. Don't try to make bad players play more nearly correctly.

Pot will be 180 with our call and we'll have 175 back. Shorty is still short and wide. V is showing some interest. Our hand is vulnerable even if all she has is a pair; there are scare cards; she's not likely to catch up to a second best hand. No reason to get cute here. Just put the money in and let loose/passive people be loose and passive.

Not really.

Someone who has the discipline and patience to fold hand after hand is typically going to get more credit for 3betting with an overpair.

A loose-passive image is not something I would normally associate with respect. Maybe you mean hero is perceived as playing conservatively or straight forward post-flop? If anything, a passive image might be more likely to induce a call preflop as they can worry less about being pushed off the hand.

3bet is only good if you actually have a ton of fold equity, which you seem to think you should have given image but image only means something in this context if a) the villain sees your image as you think they do and b) they will adjust accordingly.

IME bad players in low stake games don't adjust by folding to 3bets as much as they should do. So I don't like the 3bet pre without some experience of the villain folding against you.

AP I take the free card OTF because now you have 2 monkeys in the hand and cbetting is throwing good money after bad.

OTT you may as well ship, hopefully they put on you on missed AK that you are bluffing or some other nonsense.

Turn ($98, 3ways)
Fish checks
Bad Reg bets $40
Hero calls $40
Fish folds

We decided to flat the turn bet to keep bluffs in her range and induce the fish to call. Unfortunately, the fish folded.

River ($173, HU)
T9532 with busted backdoor flush

Villain quickly jams $175 eff.
Hero ???

Can we ever get away from this hand on the river?

Calling river as played

Prefer betting the flop and raising the turn

I would never want to. If youre beat, so be it.

Given this description, what do you think she's jamming with? I play with people like the described villain. Their sizing tells are not strictly limited to preflop action. I promise you that if this woman had one pair on the river she is not quickly jamming. There is about a 1% percent chance she shows up with AT and 99% she has 99 or TT because this is exactly how a fish plays a set OOP.

I fold because I like money. Yes our hand is very well disguised but she is taking our ass to value town.

What kind of line is this w any hand you 3b pre? You're calling river now, there is nothing to think about except that you should have jammed flop and 3b for more pre (when you do 3b).