1/3 with $10 straddle.

New table so almost everyone is sitting with max buy $600 effective.

V1 is straddle in this hand. Young white guy in hoodie. Tough player, mixes it up, capable of large bluffs. Defends his straddle fairly light: showed down Q8o in a previous defend spot. Respects Hero's game.

V2 is a huge whale. Doubled up his $300 short buy by calling an all-in on a 568 flop with K5s. Really awful. Stack is now $600.

V2 limps $10 UTG, MP call, Hero makes it $55 with A8, V1 calls in the straddle, V2 calls, MP folds.

3ways to the flop: T83 (pot = $175)

Hero bets $55, V1 calls, V2 folds.

Turn: T835 (pot = $285)

Hero checks, V1 bets $75, Hero calls.

River: T8354 (pot = $435)

Hero checks, V1 shoves for $410, Hero folds.

Analysis:
Thoughts on the preflop iso? V2 whale is playing close to 100% of hands and stacks off really light. I'd probably iso with ATo+,A8s+, 77+, any suited Broadway, KQo. Should we tighten up given the straddle is a tough player who defends wide?

OTT I think I'm forced to call given the pot odds. I have plenty of Ace highs that I plan to x/f, so A8 is too high up in my range.

OTR I'm struggling to construct a fair bluffcatching range. I do show up with a fair number of flushes in this spot (mainly AJ,AQ,AK ), along with a few overpairs which I'd checked back OTT for balance, 99, AT (offsuit or suited), and A8s. Obviously it's great to have the A, so I should plan to call with ATx and AAx.

As for what to do with A8, I don't know whether it's better to hold the set blocker with the 8 or to hold the flush blocker with a hand like KKx.

If I'm going to raise with this hand (to "iso," but this is not an iso), I go bigger. Make it $75. There is $30 in the pot already and V1 likes to defend and V2 will call light. I probably just flat pre and play this fit/fold multiway, though.

Flop is too small. Bet bigger (~$100) or check.

Turn is meh. It's a small bet, but you pretty much know what's coming on the river. Why not bet turn yourself and keep up with your story?

Edit: I agree with folding river, but I don't like how you got here.

i dont think raising preflop here is a good idea OOP. just complete.

Out of curiosity, why didn't you barrel this turn card? It doesn't complete any draws and you can probably get some weaker Ts to fold with another barrel. I feel like i'm barreling like 95% of my range on this turn card.

River is a fold but i think this spot could have been avoided by betting turn.

60 blinds effective, I just don’t love raising pre out of position

Wow, max BI of 200bbs? And most everyone buys in full? And $300 (100bb) is considered a "short BI"? And a $10 straddle instead of a $6 straddle? This game likely ends up a lot deeper than my normal 1/3 NL game, and I don't excel at deepstack.

There is no way this can't be the worst seat at the table, no? There is no reason we should be sitting with this guy to our direct left. Until that is rectified, I keep pots small OOP, especially since he's unlikely to fold preflop. With the whale in the pot and a hand that welcomes multiway pots, I'd just lean to seeing a flop, so I limp in and go from there. I think raising here is real spew; it just builds a bloated pot OOP (neither the straddler nor the whale are folding, right?) with a mediocre hand with a difficult opponent having position on us.

I'm either/or on the flop. I don't mind a bet as our hand is often good and we're protecting, and the good opponent can't get too out-of-line at this point with the whale behind him. But on the other hand we're still building a huge pot OOP with a mediocre hand.

The turn/river we should have seen coming from a mile away, in fact as soon as we were dealt our cards. The overwhelming vast majority of the hands are going to play out this way. Good guy has position in a multiway pot, we flop mediocre at absolute best, and our left with our dick waving in the wind on the turn when called. I avoid these spots at all costs because I think they suck. If you're really good in them and relish these spots, then keep getting into them (hint: I doubt too many people are nearly as awesome in these spots as they think they are, so the real key is avoiding them altogether).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Barreling turn is definitely an interesting idea. I guess I felt that A8 had too much showdown value to turn into a bluff -- Villain has a fair amount of 8x and small PPs that are calling the small bet on the flop and then checking back turn. Didn't feel like I needed to turn my hand into a bluff.

Re preflop, I certainly think I could have gone larger -- I had been using the rule of 4x+1 per limper from OOP, or 5x the $10 straddle. Could definitely have rounded up a bit more to discourage the blinds and straddle from calling. I also see the merits for just completing. And I would just complete in 99% of scenarios. But V2 is an exceptionally bad player -- I saw him open 66 from UTG for $60 in an unstraddled pot. I think he's open raising ATo+. Therefore, A8s is actually quite a strong hand against his open-limping range (which is probably like the bottom 80% of hands).

Yup, the games in texas are pretty crazy. You should come for a visit some time This is actually match the big stack, so later in the evening most players are sitting on 1k-2k stacks.

I normally sit opposite the "young hoodie", but he moved his seat at the last minute. There was a real spewy player sitting to my right, so there were some benefits. Mine might have been the third worst seat at the table (with the second worst seat being directly to hoodie's right, and the worst seat being to the right of this other spewy player).

I don't necessarily mind getting into these spots OOP against tough players. Like, I would have felt comfortable calling river with A T x in this spot. I know it's a high variance spot but my bankroll can handle it. I obviously did get myself into a ****ty spot though, and maybe completing SB would have been the better play here. There's a balance here between getting the hand heads-up with a guy who's willing to stack off with bottom pair, and the downside risk of getting involved with the good player OOP. I don't know how to solve this equation for the optimal play.

Fold pre

This sounds like my games. There was $25,000 on the table the other night in a 1/2 game

It looks like you have a weak hand when you bet flop small, check call small turn bet. on the river you say you could have some nutflush hands but most of your range is made of hands that cant call this shove. I wouldn't hate a call in the right circumstances like with the As

Turn seems like a clear shove ap


Ap meh fold

Pre is too small

Flop is too small. Bigger or check

Prefer to complete pre. I see no reason to bloat a flop against a tricky, competent V oop.

Flop seems ok to me against these Vs in this situation. Normally I'd check it.

The turn has to be a barrel. You say above you don't want to turn your hand into a bluff. Fair enough. But you've instead turned it into a bluff-catcher by inviting near certain aggression on a brick-ish turn. Still worse, V seizes the initiative with a blocker bet of dubious sizing.

Now this wise-ass has the initiative, you've capped yourself and he's going to barrel any scare card. Naturally, one arrives on the river and you now have a bluff-catcher.

I think he made a straight not a flush. But ap I fold

I think I often get caught in the old dichotomy that we either bet for value or as a bluff, when in reality it's more complex.

From my understanding, the new school of thought is that there are only two reasons to bet: First, to deny our opponents realization of their equity; second, to build the pot up for a later streets in case we win. The opponent has many draws which carry significant equity against our middle pair, and by betting we deny that equity. By betting we also deny our opponent the value derived from bluffing.

We have a significant number of overpairs on this low flop, so we can probably get away with a range bet here, but we cannot bet our entire range on a blank turn. We will have to check back a lot of Ace and King highs. Don't we have to also check back some good 1 pair hands and nut hands on the turn for balance against this tough opponent?

I played around with PioSolver and on this blank turn it did indeed advocate betting with A8s (checking was significantly less EV). It advocated a mixed strategy of checking back some proportion of ATo for balance (checking vs raising are identical EV). Which is still so counterintuitive to me. These hands appear almost equally vulnerable to overcards and spades, and AT has more value against Tx. The new school of thought would seem to favor a bet with AT to A8 because AT has a higher chance of winning at showdown, but apparently that's wrong. How can we explain this discrepancy?

My only thought was that by check/calling ATo we allow our opponent the opportunity to value own themselves by betting a worse Ten. But still, this explanation doesn't seem applicable to live poker where I don't expect opponents to bet a worse Ten on both turn and river (as the solver recommends) -- whereas if we barrel both remaining streets, the opponent is likely to call with a worse Ten.

I gotta think more about the ATo example. I don't want to say something stupid UTG or I'll be check-raised when the better players read this lol.

The A8s example is pretty much (similarly) covered in the recent Janda book on pg 44-5 and I'm not surprised at all the solver agrees with me to bet this turn. It makes some sense too just intuitively - FD board, no obvious straight draws have come in yet but there's craploads of combo draws and overs H needs to charge etc. and we have a hand that is ahead quite often.

I agree with you that there are plenty of turns we have to check back here, but this ain't one of them.

The river was nearly the nut-worst river for you. Now we're sort of at the bottom of our minimum defense range facing a huge bet having capped ourselves on the turn. Apropos of your question, I think AsTx would be my minimum defense hand here on this river. But of course we'd have bet the turn with it too, so who knows?

I just received this book today from Amazon. Can't wait to dig in. Thanks for the pointer.

Villain and I spoke today. FWIW he told me he flopped a set in the OP hand. I tend to believe him although it is a bit of a strange line. Perhaps he slowplayed flop to try to entice the whale to enter the pot. Not sure.