Reads: This is early in our session (i think this is only my second or third SB). MP is older fishy white guy, stereotypical passive fish. Button is younger aggrodonk. He has raised probably half the hands pre-flop I have seen at the table, and has won some and lost some. Haven't seen any raises from him post even though players have donked into him. I three bet him once the last orbit pre, he called and check folded flop. CO is 20ish white guy. No real read on him. Villain in hand is button.


OTTH: Hero ($355) is SB with 67. There are three limps and I call the extra $2. BB checks his option.

Flop ($10): Q75 Checks to MP2 (the guy I have no real read on) and he bets $10, button calls $10. I think it's close with 10% rake on these small pots for this to be a fold, but with the board being rainbow and having both BD straight and flush draws, I call. If I thought BB or MP were aggro or likely to raise, I would fold. MP older guy calls.

Turn ($44, $6 rake removed) 10 With the picked up equity I lead for $25 to set my price. Plan is barrel river cards that are hearts or under the J except if older guy calls in MP (I'm not bluffing him).

MP folds, CO folds and villain on button calls.

River ($94) Q I actually think that it is likely that I may have the best hand / we are chopping a lot against the loose spewy button. I can check call if I think he bets his busted straight draws or bet to get him off chops. Ultimately, I didn't want him to polarize his river bet (I have seen this recently from some of the younger guys) so I bet the river $55.

Thoughts appreciated.

Why take the bluffs out of his range? He could easily have a queen here. I don't get the river bet at all. If your hand is good he's either going to check behind or bluff. Just check/call.

I would have probably folded OTF given we are OOP so will have trouble recognizing value if we hit our hand.

I don't understand the turn bet at all. Sure it gives us potentially some more outs, but it opens us up to being raised off our hand if someone has a big Q or better. Unless I am willing to 3! GII on that card (and I am not), I would prefer a check/re-evaluate line (maybe fold, maybe call).

Same on river. Whenever top card pairs, that is a trouble sign especially for an "young aggro donk" who has played passively up to now. Gonna guess you got shoved on and are lost now. I think river is most likely a c/f.

Fold flop. Your OOP and the implied odds aren't great.

I don't like leading out on this turn, but if you do you should bet bigger. $25 won't get much to fold and you risk getting raised and being forced to forfeit your equity here. I'd probably just x/c given your reads villain isn't going to fold a Q here.

As played I would never ever lead this flop. I really can't see you getting thin value here. x/c river here if you read villain as weak.

I'll give results after some more comments, but if I were shoved on (I wasn't) I would know exactly what to do (fold).

And I'm not going to get too defensive about the hand. I don't really like how I played it either (hence the post).

There's no way you get called by worse and like you said the only benefit to betting is to maybe scare off a chop, but what 7x hands is he still calling the turn with? If he's been chillin on a weak Q he's going to snap call. Tx doesn't make sense unless he has like T7 or ATs that floated the flop.

I would check and maybe call river. Betting is turning your value into a bluff but you think he's weak so why not bluff catch?

I'm ok with preflop. I've come to think small suited connectors are vastly overrated in my games, but I can't pass this up for this cheap price preflop even though we'll be OOP.

Super easy check/fold to this action, imo. We've seen a bet and two calls on this fairly dry board. Our outs may be dirty / drawing dead. We'll be OOP (making get paid off with the best / limiting damage with the worse difficult). And, as you say, rake is really crippling in these meaningless small pots. We'll end up folding the best hand here a percentage of the time (likely a small percentage), but at worse that is a very small mistake in this size pot and nothing to worry about when we do. Preflop becomes more of a fold if we're leaking money with weak hands postflop, imo.

I don't think I like the turn donk. Looks like we're up against 3 opponents so we should have little FE on this fairly non-scary card; I would have liked it better on a Th high flop to donk a Qh turn for more FE or against fewer opponents. We could get raised which really screws up the pricing we're attempting to set. I'd lean mostly to check/calling a reasonable bet.

Think I'd lean to check/call on the river as it seems this guy is more likely on a busted draw than anything and will most likely check back his middling hands.

Gmeh,imoG

And since we have to fold to a raise, it's a pretty big disaster forfeiting all our equity if that ends up happening.

GcluelessNLnoobG

On the river our equity is either 100% or 0%. I am not sure what you are saying. I don't think this villain ever bluff raises us.

I thought (perhaps incorrectly) that the initial comment was with regards to the turn (which is what I was referring to).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Somehow this hand ended up being a comedy of errors that turned out great! I got called on the river and he showed a 5. Said he was bluff catching because he thought I was on a heart draw. Original bettor said that he folded a bad Queen on the turn. So I thought in retrospect that I didn't like my line, but I got the dream scenario of folding out a better hand and getting a worse hand to call. Pretty Cool!