Hi all,

What are you guys thoughts on this hand?

Stacks:
Hero has ~900
Villain 1 has ~650
Villain 2 has ~500

Background:
Villian 1 I've never seen before, but after playing with him for 4 hours, he's quite aggressive in his spots, but not super LAGgy in the sense that he's playing every hand. Definitely closer to LAG than TAG, but the key takeaway was aggresion in the hands he played. We played a hand earlier where he raised preflop, cbet the flop on a QQ5 board, I raised his cbet w/ 44, he raised 3bet quite large and got me to muck and then flipped AJ, so he's definitely capable of 3betting a total miss.

Villian 2 is a solid TAG reg.

There is a 10 UTG straddle, I open UTG+1 for 35 w/ TT, I get called by Villian 1 in MP, and Villain 2 on the button, blinds and straddle fold.

Flop comes 985 rainbow.

I lead for 60, villian 1 calls, villian 2 folds.

Turn is 3, full rainbow now, I lead for 100, villain 1 repops to 250, he has 300 behind.

What do you do here? In my head, I'm only really concerned with 9 combos of 55, 88, and 99. I think I get 3bet preflop by any pair >TT and I don't think he's loose enough to have hands like 98 and 76 in his range when he's the first caller and I'm raising a straddled pot 3.5x pre as first to act in UTG+1. Maybe he flats me w/ JJ, probably not, but definitely not w/ QQ+

Against this sort of villain I'm not betting the turn unless my plan is to stack off when raised. This board hits his range harder than ours, betting again is pretty much defining our range as overpairs and maybe the occasional set. I'd rather check and keep our ranges wide and allow him to bluff.

As played I think it's an easy fold just looking at where it sits in our range. We could have JJ+ here, we could have 99 or 88. TT severely blocks hands like QT and JT, which are the bluff hands we're hoping he has if we don't fold. This is probably the absolute worst hand in our betting range to continue with.

+1 and i would add that his line of call behind flop and then raise a brick turn is strong. if his plan was to semi-bluff a draw, he probably would have done it on the flop. the turn doesn't bring any scare cards, so it smells like value.

I had the same thought. I don't think it's impossible that he plays JT like this, flatting the flop to try to keep the other guy in and turning it into a bluff once that fails. That said, looking at it again, it's probably not that likely given stack sizes, because if he has JT and we jammed with a set that would be very painful for him.

Do we want to play a bloated pot OOP to V1 (or even V2 for that matter)? I don't. So I just limp in and see what happens. Thanks to preflop, our SPR is ~6, which is kinda a really gross spot (are we committed on the few boards we don't hate?).

I'm either/or on the flop. With a much stronger hand that is much less vulnerable (such as AA) I'd be cooler with a check since V1 could put us in gross spots. With this vulnerable hand I'm cool with a bet, but we can still be put in gross spots.

I probably just fold the turn as played, although this ain't the best guy to do that against.

The bottom line for me comes down to why are we building a bloated pot OOP against difficult players with a hand that is going to see a lotta gross flops (noting that this is like almost the best non-set flop/turn we can see and yet we're still hating life).

Gputyourselfingoodspots,imoG

our optimal preflop action depends on more than just these villains IMO. i'm limping or raising based on stack sizes of everyone, particularly the spots, as well as game dynamics. limping might be correct, raising might too. i'd have to be at the table. but on average i don't think we're even close to short enough to be worried about SPR post if we raise. we have plenty of breathing space. (at least based on stacks in this hand)