Full ring 1/3 NL.

Villain 1 (BB $350) - tight in early position

Villain 2 (MP2 $500)- Has gotten extremely lucky this session. Although fairly tight pf, he holds on to his cards too long in situations that are obvious folds.

Hero (button, $450) I had been playing fairly tight, semi-aggressive, generally letting people bet into me with worse hands. I did win a few hands by floating, but I haven't shown any bluffs. Made a great fold of 2-pair on the flop to a shove against a tight player (he had a set) on a draw heavy board. I had been dealt AA four times this session and played them cautiously, winning small amounts of money on most of those hands. The exception was when I raised the river when the low card on the board paired on the river and was paid off nicely.

PF hero dealt 48 on button. Literally every player limped, so there is $25 in the pot prior to me. I was debating whether to raise to $25 an attempt to steal, or limping a hand that plays best multi-way. I was sort of afraid that someone may be trying to limp/re-raise a monster, so I elected to just call. Both blinds called.

Flop $27 after rake. 873 checks to villain 2 who bets $15, folds to me who calls, villain 1 calls.

Turn $71 Q Checks to me who bets $45 (I am hoping to give an incorrect price for a higher flush draw to call. Given action so far, I am not too scared of the Q)

River $206 J checks to me. I bet $75 planning on folding to any significant re-raise. After the hand, a player I respected said that given the action, he would have checked river. However, I think that I would be loosing value from hands like small sets, 7-8 or 9-10 given the pf action. Thoughts?

Pre is usually a fold, but given the eight billion limpers and position, you're getting enough odds to play even that trash hand.

Flop: I like a raise with a weak TP and FD. A call pretty much puts your hand face-up as a draw, and the FD is the most obvious of those, so you'll have trouble extracting if you hit, unless someone else also hits, in which case you're likely over-flushed. Although a call isn't terrible, adding FE to our "made" hand and our weak draw is preferable, imo.

Turn bet is good. I make it a bit bigger, but that's nit-picking.

River is the most obvious b/f ever. You hit your draw, now you need to get some value for it. Any two pair or straight will definitely call, though given action there should be no sets out. If you are raised, it is pretty much always a flush, and as you have a low one, you shouldn't be calling.

This is not semi-aggressive, this is weak-tight passive. Don't "let" people bet into you with worse, be more active in manipulating situations...

This makes me cringe. Why on Earth do we want to play the best starting hand in poker cautiously at a 1/2nl table full of level 1 droolers who think TPGK is the nuts?

What I find interesting is that a 1/2nl player has no problems being aggro with TPGK and even stacking off with it, but that same player will be paranoid about losing with AA to the point of either overplaying it preflop and driving out all lessor hands or underplaying it post flop afraid of getting stacked. Just play your hand for max value like you did when the bottom pair paired.

84 suited is a garbage hand, even on the BTN. I would fold it. Playing baby flush draws in 5-way or 6-way limpfest pots is how we go broke because when we are chasing a naked flush draw odds are we are behind if 2+ villains are calling down likewise chasing... Even when the board flops 7 6 5 for a straight we get owned by 98. So I'm not a big fan of playing 3 gapper SCs. The other component in whether to play SCs is our post flop ability. In order to profitably play SCs, we have to be capable of taking pots down post flop X% of the time (X will vary based on eff stacks). Basically, too many players have hard-ons for SCs when in reality they aren't as profitable with them as they think they are and in most cases are probably losing more money with them than they are making. Food for thought. So, I would probably fold 84s here as nitty as that sounds.

You need to blast this pot right here right now. You got more or less the absolute best you can hope for with your garbage hand, raise to $70. Yes, that's right, I said raise to $70. Pair + FD has a lot of equity on the flop and we are in position. Go ahead and blast it. Or put another way. If we are going to play garbage and hit our garbage then we have to be aggressive with it. We are in position and more or less hit our garbage hand. Blast this freakin pot with a raise that says, "FU!!! This pot is mine" Seriously, being selectively aggressive is part of being a winning player and this is a perfect situation to be aggressive with. We have a ton of equity and are in position, so break out the big guns and go to war!

Sigh. This is weaksauce. Betting $45 into a $71 pot is not pricing anything out. With implied odds, calling with a FD or SD is still +EV. As played, bet $65 to $100. Yeah, that is overbetting the pot, but big deal. That is a "don't F*** with me" bet and I get the sense from your relatively weak line you kinda don't have any of those in your arsenal.

Or put another way. The reality here is that you have a weaksauce hand. With your hand, I'd much rather win the pot through aggression because if we miss a FD and go to showdown we are losing. Simultaneously, V has FD's in his range and if we hit there is a chance we get stacked So this is an interesting dilemma here. We have a hand with value but we can lose both ways, we can lose to a better 8x or we can lose to a better FD. So what should we do?

This is kinda why I'm a big fan of just whipping out the big guns and blasting away and playing to fold out V and win through aggression. But on the current course you are on with this hand, we allow both parts of V's range to pinch us and the whole time we aren't quite sure where we are at. Not to say we should "bet to see where we are at". Just sayin...

The Jack is an interesting river card because it does make the T9 straight which can be in V's range. I'd like it better if you bet at least $100 here as $75 seems a touch on the low side and whenever I take a bet/fold line I'm wary of betting too small which could induce V to raise simply because he senses weakness. So then, I don't know if his raise is because he has it or because he just senses weakness thus making a bet/fold line not optimal. This is easily fixed by betting a touch more on the river, so I make it $100 or even $125.

Backing up a bit. If we were more aggressive on the flop or turn then the river would actually be the perfect card for us because if V did continue despite our aggression odds are he isn't on a FD but rather 2p so we can go for max value.

But that might be a little results oriented on my part. Overall, I guess I'm just more aggressive in these types of spots. We are in position with a garbage hand that more or less hit giving us decent equity but equity that is based on a draw. So in these spots, we need to win a fair amount of the time through sheer aggression for our play to be profitable.

As played, I think the hand played "okay" just not optimally. This hand and our position is a great opportunity to be selectively aggressive and I feel we didn't quite maximize that opportunity. This sort of aggression should augment the other aspects of our game, namely other hands where we DO have the nuts.

If we can be aggressive in these spots then later when we are monster and are aggressive, it doesn't seem so out of place and we will get more value. But on the flip side, if we are "one of those" players who only raises once an hour in a hand, then we turn our hand face up. Granted, that isn't that much of a problem at 1/3nl when a lot of our villains are level 1 players who don't notice anyways, but some of our villains will notice. In any event I'm rambling now. Other than the preflop leak of calling, I guess post flop is okay, just more on the passive side than I would have played it. Again, just feel like you lost some opportunities to take it down or set yourself up to take it down with continued aggression. The reason that's so important to me in spots like this is that most of the time, you aren't going to hit your draw. So being aggressive means you win more of those times not to mention augmenting the other aspects of your overall game that I mentioned above...

Thanks for the analysis. It looks like it took some time to write it up, and I appreciate it. Re-reading the hand, I see that I should have raised the flop.

After the hand, the player that I was speaking with said that I should have checked the river, because the $75 bet looked exactly like a bet/fold given the pot size, and he would have raised me with any two cards. If I were to have bet higher, I would likely only be called by hands that beat me, hence the best play was to check through.

Maybe he was trying to level me, but I think that his analysis made some sense, which is why I posted the hand. I do understand that playing the hand more aggressively and building the pot earlier may avoid that type of situation, but it is hard for me to do in practice with these types of hands.

I wanted to highlight the above, whatever a player tells you on 6th street (especially AFTER the cards have been shown) is almost always FOS.

Everyone is a genius and poker expert after they see all the cards. Particularly when they say, "Well, if you would have done this I would have done that..."

6th street conversation is full of more S*** than a thanksgiving turkey.

When players talk about all the stuff they would have done, they are just trying to impact your future play.

Of course, "some" players are honest on 6th street, but their sincerity is still often influenced by now having all the information once the board has run out and all the cards have been shown.

For the most part, whatever a player tells me on 6th street, I just believe its opposite...

How often do you see any check raise bluffs on the river at 1/3 especially of $75 bets.
Bet/fold is fine as played.
I agree that all other streets could be played a bit better.

That makes sense, if you were playing him, "a player you respect." You're not, though. You're playing a couple of randoms who have likely never heard of the concept of bet/fold and have likely never raised a river as a bluff, ever.

I will believe a V has a river bluff raise in their arsenal when I see it. Until then, b/f is like printing money in LLSNL.

Sounds to me like the guy you talked to has a bad case of "mirror imaging," i.e. thinking that V's will play their hands like he would play his.

truest thing i've read all day

I fold preflop. 3 gappers and small suited cards are ripe for RIO when we make worse straights / flushes / two pairs. Having position does help limit the damage in these cases, but we never get ourselves in a spots where we want to play for big stacks (which is the whole goal of overlimping junkish hands in LP). After a zillion limpers at obviously loose table, I would definitely not attempt a squeeze play as it simply isn't going to work without risking far too much.

I'm cool with just flatting the flop. It sounds like we have 0 FE against this guy (one of the reasons we might raise) and he still did just bet into the world (this has to be respected). We have position, we can decide on later streets whether we want to start shoveling in real money. We also have a showdownable hand that, if it doesn't improve, we don't really want to build a big pot for. When the tight guy calls we have to be a little worried about RIO issues.

I might check behind on the turn. Again, I don't think we have much FE against V2, and it really looks to me like he's just randomly scared of an overcard to his TP+. I also don't want to be check/raised and priced off my draw. I'm pretty happy with playing a small pot here.

I like your river plan. We have about 1.5 PSB left (well, a little less), but I think this is a spot where we can bet and then safely fold to a raise (even K high flushes might just flat for fear someone has the A high flush, so anyone raising is a pretty strong hand multiway on the river). I like the smallish sizing to attempt to get paid off in a multiway pot where the main draw has come in.

ETA: I don't think I agree with dgi's aggro flop play in a zillion way limped pot. If the pot was HU, sure, ok, fine. But here, there's just too big a chance that someone has flopped something good, and then that means we're shoveling in money with just the flush draw (cuz our other outs won't be any good). As well, we have TP. I always find TP + a draw a little weird to play when compared to like middle pair / low pair + draw. First, if someone else has TP, then we don't have nearly as many outs. And second, middle/low pair is unlikely to be good (so we're cool with FE), but TP actually has a chance at being good, so it has some showdown value (but UI is a fairly mediocre hand where we're cool with keeping the pot small). Same line of thinking for me with just checking back the turn as well. Just imo.

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