Hi all,

This is my first post so please lmk anything I should fix.

1/3 - Caribbean Poker Saturday afternoon - My first real hand I played, 9 handed, bought in for $300

Preflop:
utg limps, utg+1 raises to 17 (stack ~250), I call with pocket 7s in the cutoff, utg calls

Flop: (pot size is ~54)
5 6 Q rainbow
utg+1 bets 22
I call, utg folds
(This is a flop preflop raiser would almost always bet on since it's so dry, so I think it's fine to call with 2nd pair and some backdoor equity)

Turn: (pot is ~94)
7
utg+1 bets 33

I raised to 100, and he folds. turns over AQ!

This is something I don't really understand. I've only recently started playing live poker in casinos, but everyone seems to play super tight. I don't see 3 bets very often at all and when people raise they almost always have the nuts. When I played on a poker app with some friends, or if I played live home games with other friends, everyone seemed to call very loose.

Should I be adapting to people being tight by playing more loose and bluffing more? But this goes against a lot of online advice I heard about beating the low stakes 1/3 games. Was my choice to raise correct? Did I raise too much? I don't think it's that this guy is just super tight because he definitely did a lot of loose plays later in the game.

Just a newb trying to undersand.

In live casino NLHE a turn raise typically is very strong. Few players will call flop and bluff raise turn. Thus, a reasonable adjustment is to bet/fold the turn with good but not great hands. General advice you see online tells you how to beat loose passives (calling stations) and will say you raise this and don't bluff at it. If villain is a reasonable tag then you might need to find some adjustments.

Let's talk about the ranges first:
What hands do you call pre then call flop with?
What hands do you think villain raises pre, bets flop, then bets turn with?

Now that we know what hands get to this spot in our ranges, do you think villain could have a good idea of your range up to this point? If not, what do you think he puts you and how is that different from your actual range?

Now what hands do you raise on the turn? What hands could he put you on when you raise the turn?

How many of his hands are ahead of your raising range and can continue? Again, does he have a good enough idea of your range to know this accurately?

Letting go of the Socratic stuff, I lean towards adding in more bluffs because they are fun and if you get caught at some point you start getting more action. Now, you probably can't assume he'd always lay down top pair top kicker when you raise the turn. But now that you know you can profitably float him: 87 might be a great turn semi-bluff. What else in your range on turn could you bluff with?

Edit: well, maybe you shouldn't have 87 here... That's part of the problem with flatting first in pre.

Standard until the turn. Your raise size is quite large. Unless you're doing an exploit on a known calling station or trying to level an opponent the standard is to call again since you're last to act and see what he does on the river.

He will either bet in which then you can raise or he will check and you can bet and he has a chance to call.

When you raise the turn you basically throw out your positional advantage.

Not to mention that you should no raises on this turn.

I think raising turn is correct, though smaller sizing like 75-80 might have been a little better.

Before any betting, UTG1's stack is ~210 on the turn. Raising to 100 looks extremely committal, and likely part of why he made the big (and very good) fold. His turn bet leaves a just over PSB shove on the river (180 behind, 160 in pot), so calling is an option. If you raise, you can basically minclick it to 70-75 and set up a super easy river shove.

With his decent sized preflop raise & flop/turn bets, I think you have to worry about him holding a draw very rarely. That also incentivizes us to flat call the turn.

I agree that a smaller raise on the turn would have been better, but raising that much you've polarised your hand, and given away the position advantage you had.

You want to keep in all the Q's in his range, and 2 pairs.

I would have made a call and then raise on the river.

Preflop is very meh. If we're setmining we'd like more callers to be guaranteed to be in the pot since we're putting in a fairly large 7% of our stack and are only getting about 15:1 IO against the raiser. Yeah, we're in position, but the smaller our pocket pair the more we're rarely going to be able to put that position to good use on most flops. It's borderline, imo.

Flop call is meh. On some boards a call of a cbet with second pair here would be ok, but the Q hits so many raising hands plus he could still easily just be betting JJ- or better. We really need him to start having a fairly wide EP raising range once we get past AK.

If we call the turn bet, we'll have just over a PSB left for the river in position. So if he bets the river he'll probably have unwittingly committed himself, plus he'll have a hard time check/folding to most bets if he actually has something. So I would lean to a flat against most, even though it does risk action killing cards.

This is 2019. If you think people are just going to hurp durp hand you 100bb stacks when you flop a set, you're mostly mistaken. But also doesn't necessarily open the door to just bluffing all the time either, because people are still loose enough preflop for flops to go multiway (and getting yourself into a later street spot where you can pull off a bluff is difficult due to this).

GgoodluckG

i think in position flating turn is better than raising on this run out. he might bet river he might check call river. here if he has air he has to fold, he even folded a hand as strong as tptk. there isn't really a lot of rivers we are scared of, so we don't need protection he is likely to have just a one pair