1/3 Wednesday night

Hero: 30's white male. Image should be very TAG, skilled player. I stacked V1 in this hand about an hour ago and have been running good since. Taking my share of pots and not giving any away. Stack covers

Villain 1: 30's east indian male. Still in the action despite having to buy in for again for $300, or maybe because of it. Action player, does a decent share of betting and raising. Not afraid to bet or bluff either. LAG if you want, though I don't consider him a great player. Stack $345

Villain 2: 50's/60's white male. Relatively tight older man, but poker savvy and raises enough for me to not label him a nit. He stacked someone with quads earlier in the day which doubled him up. He and I haven't had any significant hands together but we've been at the table since it opened 5 hours ago and he's seen me just keep winning. Stack $550

On to the hand!

Villain 2 raises to his standard 12 UTG+1, CO calls, Hero calls on BTN with AJ, SB folds, Villain 1 in BB calls.

I'm open for debate on 3betting but felt it was overplaying my hand. I could see an argument made for it though.

Flop: J85 (Pot=$48)

V1 donks out 30, V2 calls, CO folds, Hero..?

Raise to $125

I don't like 3b very much since he's a relatively tight EP raiser.

Raise flop to an amount a draw you have crushed will call, somewhere near $110

at first i felt like i could play this hand couple different ways

then i reminded myself....its 1/3

raise for value

Seems like a clear call. Raising is turning our hand into a semi-bluff which has a good chance at being at showdown unimproved. We aren't afraid of any turns. V2 still has all overpairs in his range, V1 could have some sets/2P and we're too deep to be wanting to stack off with this hand.

wut? we should be wanting to GII against anything except a set. V2 might even fold an overpair to a flop raise which is an insanely good result.

Villains who want to pile in 200BBs on the flop are going to have sets a lot. Even if it's +EV to GII our hand is doing even better against the ranges we're up against right now. I'd rather raise flop if didn't have top pair with the NFD.

Folding out an overpair is great, but villain has a lot more hands than that. A turn raise would be better if action tells us our hand isn't good and we think villain can fold overpairs.

Agree with raising. You have tons of equity. Increase the size of the pot while you still can.

The bolded is quite puzzling to me....

V2, a "relatively tight older male" rarely has 88 here given preflop action, and has like zero combos of 55. There is only one combo of JJ remaining. I'll give him 3 combos max of sets. He has 15 combos of overpairs alone.

As for V1, sure he has more combos of 88 or 55 than V2 does, but he also has tons more Jx and naked diamond draws. We need to charge those hands now before a scare card hits. If he has a set, then whatever, we're only 100 bbs deep with him.

Anything but raising here is nitty MUBSY poker.

TPTK + NFD on a super wet board with flush draw and two separate OESD's. Raise is in order.

V2 has an SPR of 11x. He absolutely does not want to stack off with an overpair. His most likely holdings are KK/QQ which we are slight favorites versus 52/48.

This is a rare situation where we can fold out better (V2) and get called by worse (V1) when we raise. We also don't care about stacking off versus V1 who we have an SPR of 7x with. Even if V2 calls flop we have another chance to fold him out with a turn bomb.

raising all day to like 140.

raise to 90-100 dont want to fold out worse FDs, jam all turns that aren't A,J or diamond. Bet smaller for those turns. Maybe check-call K or Q turns, not sure.

I think I'm ok with preflop. Basically we're getting a good price in position in hopefully a multiway pot where we are mostly just playing for the multiway properties of the hand. We can easily be dominated, so we'll mostly have to give up ASAP with TP, which we should easily be able to do in a multway pot if the raiser continues.

I feel most people overplay TP + nut flush draw. With our TPTK, we have a showdownable hand at this point which doesn't really want to build a bigger pot UI. If we had like bottom pair + nut flush draw we'd have much more reason to raise because there are so many currently better hands that we can fold out, but with us already having TPTK that isn't the case. I mean, there are still better hands we can fold out (such as raisers QQ or whatever), but there just isn't as much of them. I think I lean towards a call and play later streets in position. I don't hate a raise, especially since we always have some FE plus we still have decent hand equity, but I'm not convinced this is the best hand to do it with since we have solid showdown value right now and would puke if anyone decides to reraise (where we'll likely have to fold). Money in the pot is also relatively small compared to stacks behind (i.e. if SPR was much smaller then more reason to go after the pot now).

ETA: More on board with browns thinking in this hand (plus I also forgot to mention his point of how we don't really fear any draws, another good reason to flat the flop). But admittedly we could put old guy's overpair to the test here (which is typically what he has unless he's got the one combo of JJ).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Uhhhh, what? Are you joking?

This

Unless big stacks move in really easy postflop in your game, we are often only drawing to discounted flush outs. We should definitely be puking in our mouth if someone decides to play for them (especially since we know noone is making this move with the nut flush draw). If relatively tight old guy decides to get in almost 200bbs, he's got a set and only a set and it's that simple; for 75bbs, sure, we could easily be up against an overpair (which we have good equity against), but not for ~200bbs.

GimoG

+1, imo

Basically, a raise here with TPTK often gets a lot of worse hands that were drawing to 1-2 outs (hands like KJ/TT/etc) to fold. That's not exactly a real coup.

However, if we have bottom pair, then a raise often gets a lot of currently better hands (those same KJ/TT/etc.) to fold, which is a real coup.

There is admittedly still some better hands to target, but it's not nearly as wide a range to target as if we had bottom pair (and targetting such a small range of hands might not be worth it if we get shoved on by the monsters).

GcluelessNLnoobG

I don't think you have much, if any, fold equity in a 1/3 game vs QQ with this flop texture. You also can't get in for stacks which is what's optimal vs V2's likely range. As such, I don't think flatting here is about being mubsy or not. This decision feels a bit closer because if you raise V1 here and V2 flats, a turn shove, assuming almost zero fold equity, is going to be solidly -EV.

I think a raise on the flop is still best by a decent amount but I'm checking back any turn that bricks. I'd be looking at the flop raise more as equity protection since you might get V1 and/or V2 to jam over top and realize your equity, or you might get a flat from one or both and an easy chance to peel two cards.

I like a raise vs. an action opponent (V1) w/ 115 bbs stack. While he has 88/55 in his donking range, there are also JX hands, FD/SD in there as well.

While I disagree that V2 couldn’t have 88/55 in his PFR range (I do as an older player), he would likely not flat a set on this flop texture, rather raise for value. His hand is likely capped at TT/QQ. Possible FE with a raise.

And if the sky opens up and a black hole devours the Earth then we are all dead.

Play your equity versus a range instead of being overly dramatic and MUBsing worst case scenarios.

Flop vs a loose action player and a call is a clear raise for value. We are flipping with two pair and overpairs and are only behind sets. We can get value from other jacks, straight draws, flush draws etc.

We are rarely behind v1, v2 basically never has us beat, we can get value by raising, I don’t really see the argument for calling.

For those of you trying to range and figure out Villain 2, let me drop some more information.

He's ABC on more of the tighter side. He does limp and sometimes raises but hasn't played many hands since making his big stack, but he does both and I consider his game ok. He's seen Villain 1's shenanigans and I don't know how he'd react to the donk with an OP but I'd like to believe he'd raise. Flatting the half pot bet seems out of character. I'd seen him give up on pots before, usually on the flop. As for potential hands he could have here, 88 is probably the bottom of his range to raise preflop and may even limp it half the time. Hard to say.

I think V2 has KQ or KKx, or QQx. Maybe even KxJx/AxJx. I think V2 DOES open raise 88 and JJ and limps 55, because he just flats on flop I feel like he doesn't have a set, though it wouldn't surprise me if he would slow play a set against this specific player, but I think him raising a set is more likely with a player behind and a connected board. He could of course have aces, but you have one and I feel like he would raise this player with aces which makes that slightly more unlikely, so I feel like it's probably one of those hands. It would depend how quick he called on the flop. If he thought for a second maybe he was considering a raise, which could increase the chances of him having a set. If about 5-10 seconds go by and confidently counts out chips and puts them in without any weird looks back at opponent or anything, then probably an over pair. What did he have?

You're wrong. Please don't post incorrect analysis. It confuses people.. if you you're not raising a pair plus flush draw on the flop then what on gods earth are you raising? do you just have a 100% calling range? Like i said, please dont post here anymore