1/3 Midwest Casino - 9 handed

Hero is OTB with 88

4 limps, Hero raises to 12. All call.

Flop J55 Pot is ~$60 after rake.

Checks to Hero who bets $25. 1 Caller in MP with ~$200 behind. I have him covered. Decent player/nothing out of the ordinary either way in what I've seen from him, but not any real/extensive history with him.

Turn is 6 Pot is $110.

MP checks, Hero bets $45. MP thinks for a bit and calls.

River is 3 Pot is $200.

MP checks. Hero?

No

Way too small pre. 4x over 4 limpers? We need to be charging crappy hands a lot more than this.

Flop bet is meh. Like we’re 5 ways. It’s easy for someone to have a J or a 5. At least it’s a smaller bet.

Turn, I’ve no idea what this bet is for. Is this value? Is this a bluff? Are we blocking him from making a bigger river bet?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't want to make a big pot with this hand and I can't rep a big PP post-flop with every hand I play. I'm building a bit of a pot for times I hit and getting to see a free turn sometimes.

Turn bet is a little bit for value vs. FD's and folds out some weak Jx hands that may have called flop to see if I check back the turn with the UI overs portion of my range.

Bad thinking IMO. You have a good hand. But you really don’t wanna take 88 to war 5 ways. It’s not like you need a set to win with 88: it’s a top 6% hand.

Yeah i hate turn bet. This turn card is a blank. Villain isn’t incentivized to fold Jx to a small turn bet. So it doesn’t work as a bluff. And his pair distribution far exceeds his flush draw distribution, so it’s not working as value.

Like look at how much worse 88 gets as you add players to the pot (this is a half hearted limp call range FWIW):

3 way:
5 way:
What’s good about NL versus a more structured game like PLO, where limp folds are rare as prices and raw equities are too good, is that if people aren’t deterred from giving you action with junk like T7s for an 8 bb raise, then you make it more. Then more. We can gladly accommodate their desire to gamble. So let’s do it.


Edit: hypergeometric distribution is our friend BTW. If we’re up against 4 unknown cards, not counting hand removal, there’s a 62.75% chance we aren’t up against a J or 5, which means we likely have the best hand. But against 4 players (8 cards), that probability drops to 37.5%. This is why it’s good to clean up preflop.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

don't cb crap 5way
polar turn, big with AJ, 5x, fds with blockers to his Jx

Depending on table tightness PF bet size I think is fine. Flop cb is suicidal against a limped call pot on this flop. So is turn bet.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I would mostly just overlimp here especially with shortstacks in play. With bigger stacks in play there is more an argument to raise in order make playing for stacks easier postflop when we hit our set, but with shortish $200 stacks in play that shouldn't be a problem. Other than juicing, I don't see much reason to raise with mediocre hands if we're going to go 5ways, but that's me (and others will disagree). I also think the more noobish you are (and I believe you are just recently coming over from Limit?) the more you want to keep pots small preflop (which will limit the size of your mistakes overall).

I'm either/or on the flop and don't mind a bet. If betting I like betting smaller like we did.

On the turn we're really hoping he's on a flush draw cuz other than that he most likely either has a Jx or a 5x. A smaller pair likely wouldn't have called the flop action without setting up and the preflop raiser cbetting into the world and the world left to react.

Not convinced a Jx is going to fold all that often if he's calling the flop and turn (where we are now turning our showdownable hand into a bluff). 5x obviously never folding but seems unlikely that he has that given the way he's passively played it on this drawy board. I just hope I'm up against a busted draw and check the river behind; we're rarely folding better / getting called by worse with a bet.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Grunching:

Check behind. That pot is as big as you want it to get with that hand, and you don't have a good sense of V's hand strength. Bluffing V off TP+ is bad biz, and a river bet would be mostly value owning itself anyway.

+1. Flop bet is pretty bad.

On the other hand, assuming stacks are big enough and none of the V's are dangerous, I don't mind the preflop sweetener for IP set-mining.