1/3 – Friday afternoon.

Hero - MAWG - dressed like he cut out early from the office to go play poker. Hasn't been very active at the table.

V1 (UTG) – 20s white guy wearing earphones. Tighter than the average player and has shown down strong hands, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a TAG

V2 (SB) – white, probably in his 30s, maybe early 40s – loose passive. Has been tangling a lot with a LAG at the table and taking the worst of it. Calling raises pf w. stuff like 74o, and calling one or two streets with 3rd pair. Talks a lot between hands and is clearly thinking about the game – his thoughts are just not that smart.


Effective stacks $265

V1 limps in UTG
Folds to Hero on button with KQ - raises to 15
V2 calls, BB folds, V1 calls

Flop ($48): K J 8

V2 donks out for $25
V1 calls
Hero thinks about raising, but elects to just call. I hadn't been at the table that long and hadn't seen any really big pots yet, so I am not sure V2 calls a raise w/ K2 or the like. On the other hand, there are plenty of draws for V1 to have that he might call with, even if V2 can get away from top pair. Thoughts?

Turn ($123): 5

V2 bets $35
V1 calls
Hero ?

I guess it is sort of the same issue as the flop. With the low SPR is this a spot to be playing for stacks or is it too thin?

I rarely worry about balance at 1/3, but here is a time I would raise for it. I print money by raising "same bet" or near same bets OTT after calling flop with almost ATC.

In this case, I'd raise turn because 1) the price being offered draws is just too good, and 2) I want to show a "value hand" every once in a while after raising turn, and with SPR this low this hand may well get to showdown. I really don't think it's too thin, given SB's spewyness and V1's limp/call and two flats on this board really capping his range.

I'd raise for fat value against all possible draws/combo draws.
$150.

Raising for value. Hard to figure out the exact $ amount because sb already donked and could call this raise and give utg odds to draw. Automatically makes it awkward stacks no matter what we do. We have the best hand most of the time here, but spr is 5.5 three way with tpgk on a wet board that hits both V's range. Raising flop. I'm guessing to 100. Evaluating turn.

Typically a $15 preflop raise here is fine as it will get us HU with an SPR of ~8, which ain't a bad result in position. The problem is that things change drastically if loose V2 comes along, in that now we'll be 3way with an SPR of 5.5. With an SPR of 8 we have a little room to move postflop and can't be made to play for stacks on 2 streets. But with the smaller of SPR of 5.5, commitment decisions will arrive very quickly. Because V2 is loose and I expect him to come along a lot, I'd rather raise a lot bigger preflop so that I can feel more comfortable being committed postflop with just TP. So I'd raise to $25 if we expect V2 to come along a lot.

Kinda awkward spot on the flop, especially with V1 also coming along. Pot is getting very big compared to stacks, so worth winning on a drawy board, and yet at the same time we're not exactly comfortable stacking off postflop with just TP (due to our too small raise size preflop, imo). The pot is already $100, and we only have about 2x that left. Any reasonable raise to price out draws is pretty much committing our stack. But KJ got there and V1 might be slowing a monster. I think you could argue for a shove here, although that will probably get the weaker TP hands to fold, and obviously we get snap called by better. But we also risk a bunch of worse hands to suck out on the turn for very cheap in a big pot if we just flat.

As played, I think we just gotta get stacks in on the turn, especially since V1 isn't raising on the turn on this drawy board in a big pot.

The key for me is preflop. If we hadda raised to $25, we'd simply feel far more comfortable committing for stacks with TP (and yet, even as played, we should probably commit on the flop anyways).

GcluelessNLnoobG

we don´t know BBs stack
we don´t even know who covers who
we really don´t want to isolate the more competent UTG and blow the totally fishy sb out of the pot just to make the hand playing easier postflop

cut the spr talk once imo (esp since we have no info about BB whatsover)

That's fair enough that we don't know BB stack size / info, and that might play into our sizing. However, we have a limper and a loose SB whose effective stacks are $265. Frankly, at my typically loose table, as soon as effective stacks of the people already in the pot / expected to be in the pot are $300 or less, I make my preflop raise sizes to 10% of stacks.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Need stack sizes, but flop call is fine. Raise turn as played. Might need to shove depending on stacks.

$265 effective. Turn shove is a PSB, I probably just ship it for value/protection.

Sorry - I had $265 - both Villains are around $300 so they both cover. The standard raise at the table had been $10, regardless of the number of limpers.

I think you are highly overvalueing the concept of spr. it´s not that important compared to other things.

I don't think I am as concerned about commitment in the sense of what happens if someone comes over the top, especially on the turn. Neither player seemed at all tricky, like they would be putting me to the test. And while either might be capable of an overplay, I don't think either was capable of making a 3bet shove on the turn without the absolute nuts, which, given the pre-flop action, was probably very unlikely. I would think that the most likely results from a raise is that they fold or call, and then check to me on the river unless someone hits a draw. So I think that for the most part, I am going to be in control over whether stacks go in.

I was more thinking about whether, against what I perceive to be very weak ranges, it is worth raising and seeing if anyone is willing to go with a 2nd best hand, or if I am turning my hand into a bluff by doing that. If I read the responses correctly, the raise is worthwhile, as the board is drawy enough that even if the villains fold the bottom of their ranges, I am still ahead a lot and I do have flush outs, so my equity is pretty good. Plus, if everyone does fold there are worse things than dragging a ~$150 pot.

I am not sure that raising to $25 preflop really helps out that much. I suspect that at this table, a raise that size basically just takes down the pot pre-flop most of the time, as no one was raising close to that amount. Also, if I did that and got only one caller, the flop would be $50 on the flop anyway, so the SPR ends up being the same.

There is a pretty big difference between 3way for $15 versus HU for $25 (which results in the same SPR). In the first case, each opponent got 2:1 immediate odds and only got in smallish 5.6% of their stack preflop for decent implied odds of 19+ against two opponents. In the second case, the lone opponent only got 1:1 immediate odds and got in a big 9.4% of their stack preflop for lame implied odds of 11:1 against a lone opponent. And yet in both cases, the resulting SPR is one where we probably won't be able to get away from TP as we can get stacks in fairly trivially in just two streets. If we're feeling pretty committed with TP (which we should be in low SPR pots), I don't think it's close as to which preflop situation we would like to offer, and therefore should try our best to produce that result.

GimoG