Uncapped 1/3 homegame friday night. Good action this weekend,as several players have had a summerbreak while going on holidays with family so people are hungry for action, and couple of those players are amongst the biggest fishes/whales in the game.

UTG $700: Young guy from another city, first time in this particular homegame.Hero have history with him from many hours of play in another underground game. Tight non out of line preflop range when he raises, but is still capable of some buttonclicking post from time to time if he gets bored or steaming. On his first bullet, so doing fine tonight so far.

MP $650: Huge whale who consistenly plays something between 50-80 percent of hands he get dealt to any raisesize. At this point in the game he plays closer to 80 percent vpp and anything remotely playable. Consistently loses 300-400 BB every game on average. Chases draws like a madman post and overvalues hands regurarly aka bad on relative hand strength.Down couple of buyins so far this evening.

Cutoff $900: Another huge whale, this guy recently started playing in this game. Always buys in deep,minimum 200 blinds- and is alot more aggro/fearless than your average player. Plays pretty much every hand dealt, very aggro,capable of firing big multistreet bluffs+ buttonclicking of various sorts- but he is also a callingstation who loves to see turn/rivers with his hands in case they improve to whatever good hand he can possibly make. Can be tricky to play against sometimes as he can barrell big with all kinds of hands, medium pairs, draws,nutted hands, or bluffs.Down alot this game like $1200, but not visibly tilted.

Hero,button $800: Well known winning TAG reg in the game, with a tight rep. Everybody loves to suckout on hero though for a good laugh,especially the looser fish/whales. On his second $300 bullet of the night, lost first one to the cutoff whale when hero squeezed 3 bet with AK from the BB, whale 4 bet piled with the mighty 9-5 off and binked a pair to scoop saying he thought hero squeezed with nothing to buy the pot.


Onto the hand. UTG raises to $12, MP flats, cutoff flats and hero is loving life as he looks down at American Airlines on the button. Hero 3 bets to $50 and all 3 players ends up calling.

Pot $204, flop: A73

Checked to the cutoff, he donkleads $50. Hero?

Do you have the A of spades?

Yes, i have black aces.

Call flop. If utg or mp call jam turn. If you get it heads up with aggro CO player. You might be able to call one more time. But shoving most favorable turn cards. Im usually a fan of fast playing hands but given the descriptions of these guys and the flop. I could see this being a profitable spot to trap CO

Sent from my Z851M using Tapatalk

I raise to $150

From player descriptions you can get value with a smallish raise here, but would be nicer to not have the As. Raise to $125 and look to jam turn.

Sent from my VS988 using Tapatalk

These guys don't like to fold, so I would put in a smallish raise. Anyone with the case ace, gutshot or flush draw is likely to call. I'm not as concerned about trying to squeeze value from a hand like 66/88, and I certainly don't want to give a cheap turn card to anyone with a draw-even though we hold the A of spades.

Pre sizing seems way too small given table dynamic. I’d imagine you still get action going $75-100 here.

Would love to see a pre size to at least $70. With your descriptions, they wont fold hands they call for $50 to a $70 raise. We don't even mind knocking out UTG + 1, since its pretty certain at least one of MP and CO stays.

Against the CO specifically I like raising to $140-$150 to start building this pot. He may get that feeling you're raising with nothing again. Also, by just calling we let a lot of these FDs and gutters like 54hh see a cheap turn, and if they are really playing top 50-80% of hands they'll have a ton of these.

I do. Call.

Yeah call. Any overcall from MP or UTG is just free money and we definitely don't want to fold out any of cutoffs bluffs or weak pairs. We can easily get stacks in on turn or river.

Thanks for the input on pre sizing too.In the moment of this hand i didnt have the 9-5 spazz hand fresh in mind that occured very early in game, and i went with a non out of line sizing of a little more than 4x.

When i look back, both whales are in this hand and they basically call anything to gamble against me at this point so you guys are correct that 3 bet is too small.

UTG probably not continuing 4-way w/both whales without a big draw, set, or big A (discounted obv). I’m not extremely interested in his overcalling 50 in this spot. My targets are the other two.

I imagine MP (and especially CO) will call 100 if he will call 50 (or just 50 more).

I like minraising this spot as it gives everyone a chance to spaz on a very draw heavy board by reopening betting and it still disguises hand strength as AAA typically goes at least 3x on this texture. I would expect all three player types described above to have a higher spaz frequency if we minraise than if we 3x or more the flop. It also starts building a big pot faster.

4x is a standard size for you to a raise and two calls? My standard is 3x+ 1 per caller so I’m going 60 minimum and I don’t have a problem sizing up to 70 against whales.

I think standard here is to raise. I don’t think if you flat you get utg to put a bunch more money in dead if he’s a thinking player. If mp chases draws like a madman he probably still calls a small raise for even his non spade draws like gutshots and we obviously want to charge him more when he does have spades.

I think a flat is tempting giving your relative and absolute position but I like $150 a lot more vs described villains

When i said standard, i ment generally speaking. In this instance i am on the button with AA (a dream spot really),and i dont mind at all going 3 ways to the flop here. Even 4 ways as is the case here is not really a problem, the pot will be nicely juiced anyway and especially the two whales ranges is wide open.

I surely agree though as stated earlier that i went too small,considered the dynamics with the two whales in particular and the cutoff have shown serious spazz tendencies. This game doesent play this wild on a regular basis though, and i guess i had in the back of my mind from earlier games if i go too big i can start to get folds pre wich i obviously dont want at all with aces on the button.

Do you mind eleborating why you want to raise here Mike? I just like to hear out peoples reasoning of why they advocate a certain action,not just what they want to do.

agree re. 3b pre sizing too small.

i would also raise flop, simply because we are in with whales and one of them has led. if we size it right, cutoff should call nearly 100% of his range. given then, flatting is missed value, despite how locked up we have this flop. we are also deep (additional reason to raise).

i like Mike's sizing and also make it around $150. keep in mind the lead size was 25% pot. there is lots of money in the pot to justify putting in $150, or $100 in CO's case. we could even make it $175-200.

edit: absent this whale dynamic this is usually a pretty standard flat or in some cases a min-raise.

Why a standard flat to a 1/4 pot donk?

it's a weak lead. we can min-pop it against a normal player but they'll often fold with their mid-pairs and draws here that they stabbed given our image (while this player won't). flatting gives the advantage of bringing the other players along, which we like since we have the flop pretty crushed and we have redraws on scare cards. in OP's case this is outweighed by a highly probable call from this villain, as well as another whale that might even come along anyway if we raise 3x or so. whale dynamic is the most important feature here.

sometimes we can min-raise if villain is on the looser side.

Seems like a very good spot to flat with 2 whales behind and holding As

What’s the rationale behind calling being optimal when H has A of spades.

We block the NFD, and we also have a BDRD (flush and boat). If we raise we pretty much fold out everyone without a good ace or possibly a FD (if I saw everyone's cards and saw someone had a fd, I would still flat to keep the big degeons in). We have position on everyone in the hand along with huge equity so I prefer to win more money from a guy who likes to run multi street bluffs than risk taking it down now. We have a position advantage, card advantage and a skill advantage over the player described so I don't wanna fold out his bluffs or medium strength hands.

Idk. If CO is leading 50 into 200 with KsQX type **** I don’t think he’s folding for 50 more. He wants to see a turn and if it bricks he might shut it down regardless of whether he’s still got the betting lead.

Let’s think ranges here:
1. After raise/checking, UTG likely has 99-KK. Once we put money in against the whale (even just calling) he’s probably done.
2. MP is ATC at this point but as I said before based on his player description he’s very unlikely to fold for 100 what he’d call for 50 (even with a bet/raise dynamic and the original better left to act).
3. CO has indicated he wants to play this hand (I’d be shocked if he folded to a minraise and very surprised if he didn’t call ~all turns for 150-200 after putting in 150 pf/flop), and taking the betting lead from him is fine given his low sizing (plus he could easily spaz lots of random hands to “put the weird button min-raise to the test”)

For people who don't want to raise the flop:

Why are you assuming that this pod of whales will only put $50 rather than $150 into the pot on the flop?

Your description of the whale in the cutoff says

"but he is also a callingstation who loves to see turn/rivers with his hands in case they improve to whatever good hand he can possibly make"

You said he runs multi street bluffs. You didnt give any examples of them but I dont think its all that likely that he will continue to bluff the preflop 3 bettor once you call. I think its more likely that he will call a raise with a flush draw, straight draw or something like 87 that he will chase trying to improve. I doubt hes folding an ace to a raise and if he happens to have 2 pair you can stack him much easier by raising now.

There are also 2 other guys with deep stacks in the hand. One of which apparently wont fold a draw. Im going to let whales do what whales do best. Call, call, call.

I assume you would've bet more than $50 yourself if checked to so Im raising for sure here.