Hi all,

As stated in the title this is the toughest 1/3 game I’ve ever played in. I’m one of the worst players here

Everyone is roughly around 150-300bb deep including me with 500 as the effective stack in the hand

I raise UTG WitH AA TO 15 and 4 people call. Flop is 8 8 9everyone has position on me. I check the flop looking to pot control multiway and being OOP

THe whole hand checks thru

Turn is a 6 and I bet very small 15 and the player to my direct left raises to 50. Everyone else folds and I call.

River is a Q

I check he bets 100... we tank... thoughts?

I'm still betting that flop. There is no reason to give free cards to all the draws and worse hands when you still likely have the best hand. As played I call river. You underrepped the whole way and are good more than 1/4 of the time. This is really a hand where you lost value by playing so passively. Are suits relevant here or are they rainbowed?

Id bet flop
Here I would fold river - just quite a lot beats us now

Rainbow suits

Main V is a middle aged Asian man. Have not played with him before but appears Aggro overall. Stated he has 1000 dollars in chips I’m his pocket

So since its rainbowed only an 8 or JT beat us. I think folding is out of the question but that queen is a pretty terrible river since it makes it difficult to get called by anything we beat if we raise except QX which is rather unlikely. If river was anything other than Q,J,T,7 I think this should be raised for value.

Regardless of outcome, let's just look at how different this would be had we played the flop differently. When we checked it, QJ, QT, JT, 76, 65, and pps all got a free shot to win if you were ahead. With 4 other players, the odds of them holding one of those hands is fairly high and you'd likely pay them off if they hit. If we bet, however, 9x and most of those hands would happily call. At minumum you charge draws and thin the field. The 6 and other brick turns would allow us to bet again and very likely take down a nice pot. If turn was scary we could go into check call mode with what is still a likely winner. Quite honestly an 8 isn't in your UTG open range so you can probably get a river bet called off in most games as well if the board comes out safe.

Bet flop, a small sizing would be best. However, if you are ever checking overpairs AA is the best one to be checking since it needs the least protection. As played turn and river are horrendous cards that complete a lot of the reasonable semi-bluffs. Seems like a pretty clear fold. We are getting such a good price but that river is just terrible.

FWIW I think you're allowing your fear of a tough table to affect how you act too much. Sure the players may be good but I have to believe that on a normal table you'd play this hand much more aggressively. The call really is trivial if you consider all the worse hands that would value bet such passive play or bluff such a passive line...and if had been playing this passively all night good players should be (correctly) more than happy to bluff you here.

River is bad because it stops you from check raising but really isn't too bad for you in terms of equity vs range.

Check raising a brick river against a competent villain seems suicidal. Unless he slowplayed a big pair I don't know what you are trying to get value from. If I had K9 here as villain and got check raised on a 2 river by a guy who has likely been playing passively all night I'm snap mucking.

What are you hoping to get called by?

Well like I said, the Q makes it so a c/r on the river no longer has value so I wouldn't on this exact board. But lets pretend the river had come out an offsuit 2 or something. The fact is that a large portion of 1/3 players don't look beyond "I still have top pair strong kicker" or "I have an overpair and draws missed". I think K9+ and all overpairs call our reraise. Not always, and not all villains, but often enough. There's also the almost there players who think "man there is no way this guy has an 8". They don't think of what else we may have, but are sure we don't have an 8 and assume that means we must be bluffing.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people I would never do this to. Some I just know have an 8 too often and some simply never call. But I promise there is a large demographic who this would work on and that is who this is meant for.

Go $20-25 pre if table is deep/late night and you can get away with it.

At this point I am just trying to get this hand to showdown. Any number of players could have been slow playing 8x or 99 on the flop and the 6 on the turn completes the T7 and 75 straights.

Check the turn and see what develops. Once you bet and get raised by the very next guy with 3 more players still to act this becomes a turbo muck. Really confused by the bet turn crowd - we have like the 50th nuts.

I will disagree with others. No harm in checking this flop and even folding on the flop to any significant action behind you. I might check all three streets here as I don't view this board as offering tremendous value OOP versus 4 preflop callers. I will await the flaming that will surely follow the above statement.

As far as the game, if you are thinking about how tough it is, you should probably rack up. You can't play effectively if you are constantly worried that you are the worst player at the table.

Doesn't sound that tough .

Really, as games get tougher, you should be lowering your preflop raise size, else you'll be able to play a lot less hands profitably. You might want to consider an initial raise to 10, especially since in "harder" games, you'll see more 3 bets. In this case we'd want it, but still.

Flop check is okay, though a check would be better on 944. In this case, there are draws out there that can beat you on the turn, in which you're giving them a freebie.

Turn is too small. Use a sizing in the 25-35 range.

As played, you've potentially induced this bluff by betting so insignificant on the turn. Plus you're near the top of your range. You should call down.

A guy is not bluffing in a 5-way pot with 3 people still to act after him.

Going 5way to the flop OOP creating a very difficult to play 6.5 SPR with a hand that will likely remain just as one pair at the most difficult table we've played at is the nut low result, imo. Seriously, I'd rather have just open folded (you think I'm joking? I'm not). Super easy limp in and hope for a reraise to setup a trivial to play SPR or take down all the dead money uncontested (a fantastic result at a table like this), or otherwise play a skyhigh SPR pot where if we really wanted to we could even just setmine in this spot without giving up too much.

I'd also check the flop. If we start putting in bets our hand should be face up on the table and our thinking opponents should be able to play pretty optimum against us. Having the flop check thru would be a nice result.

I would probably check the turn against this crowd. Again, betting here really sorta turns our hand face up (what, we're delayed betting into the world with AK?) and lets knowledgeable players play appropriately. Turning our hand into a bluffcatcher or letting people value bet their worse hands is fine.

The problem with the bet is now we're just begging for someone to play back at us like this. So long as we have a plan for that, fine. But we absolutely know that if we call the turn raise that he'll be betting on the river the vast majority of the time. If we're not going to call again then, we might as well fold now.

If we called the turn, then I think we have to call the river.

ETA: Really in the passive postflop camp on this one. You might as well play your cards face up on the table doing otherwise against this crowd, and that ain't going to work out too well.

Gdon'tputyourselfintoughspotsattoughtablesOOP,imoG

Preflop is standard.

I like the check on the flop. You have a lot of hands that will want to x/f this flop, so you need to have some strong hands in your checking range. In fact, you can make a strong case for checking your entire range here, especially multi-way.

Turn, I'd bet larger. About 1/2-2/3 pot. As played, call raise, x/c river bet.

Flop: good.

Turn: bet bigger. Call is obviously standard.

River is tricky in theory. Assuming they don't play TT+ this way and random Qx this way (complete rainbow OTT, right?) then we're better off bluff-catching a bare 9. Tough to go wrong calling AA here though.

In practice, I'm not folding given villain's description. I don't know what he has and he credibly reps some nutted hands, but there's also a very good chance he just thinks we're weak and thinks he can get us to fold some bull**** medium-strength hand.

Pretty terrible hand.

What reasons do you think ur worst at table?

I'm never check AA even multi way on this board we have top of our range.

Turn bet is way too small.

By betting flop the hand plays out completely differently and you collect more info on further streets to make better decisions

As played call your hand is way underrepped

Edit.. further thoughts on the hand:

Honestly sounds like ur 1. scared money or 2. trying to get to showdown as cheap as possible

but in case 2 still betting flop will potentially save u more money on further streets so u really need to consider that and some other factors and why ur making each decision.

Also with stacks deep consider raising more pre to thin out the field

Do you know what top of your range means? Cuz one-pair is certainly not it.

Yes we are at the top of our range johnny one pair or two pair is completely irrelevant... what hands do we have here that beat AA? Nothing besides 99 and a couple of 8X combos..

7-8,8-9,9-9,10-7 suited, a-8 suited, we are far from the top of our range, and as played its a nit fold.As Johhny said, guy isnt normally bluffing with so many to act, best case scenario...our small bet induced on the turn, but he wouldn't know to turn his hand into a bluff on the river.Fold and don't show anyone.

10-7suited does not have more equity then AA? maybe u should take the time to read over my post again because again yes AA is and should be in the top of our range. u listed 5 combos and one of them is 10 high not sure if ur trolling but a nit fold? If u mean a "tight" fold then sure but "guy isnt normally bluffing with so many to act" isnt very good logic. the 15 dollar turn bet is just terrible and V could be raising here with lots of draws. our hand is way underrepped by not betting on the flop and turn bet is way to small that folding on this river given the way the hand played out is surely a mistake.

I would take a couple more minutes to do the math and tell u the exact % we need to win to call to make this a +EV play but given that u dont know AA is the top of our range here for any decent player im not gonna bother..

Thats pretty funny if u dont think AA is top of our range here unless V has 99 or 8x himself then what hands are we losing to? lol..

Even if we are at the top of our range, it may still be higher ev to check than it is to bet, when the board favors our opponent(s) range(s).

@Tucco

It's not higher EV to check then it is to bet because we are at the top of our range bro.. thats like hey we have AK and we flopped an ace lets not bet it? really?

If we get raised we can safely give up on the hand. By checking flop and betting 15$ on the turn its literally like giving up waiting for V to **** on u. even more so multi way