V1 ($200): Spewy Asian, won't fold most draws, or TP+. Opens most pairs, and AT+, KQ. Limps most of the rest of his range, only open folding about 1/3 of the time. Will lead with draws, but plays passively when facing aggression. He stacked off to me a few hands earlier after he l/c my PFR, and called a flop cbet, and a turn 1.5x pot shove on Q7892ddxxx when I had KK, and he mucked. He also called a 3-bet of mine earlier with A7o after he raised over limpers OTB, flopped 2P, he shoved and I folded (KK) but he lost to a loose-passive short-stack's flush.

V2 (Covers): 30s White male, seems inexperienced, and was dragged to the casino tonight by a friend of his who seems to go regularly. Limps most of his hands, but opened ATs to $12 earlier, AK and 88 to $15. Built most of his stack in the following hand:

V2 opens AThh UTG to $12, two callers, OMC in BB raises to $40, V calls, two calls. Flop KJ6hhx, OMC checks, V2 checks, limper 1 ($80 behind) bets $40, limper 2 calls, OMC check-shoves for $250, V2 snap calls, limper 1 folds, limper 2 calls. V2 makes the nut-flush to beat KJ for the limper and AA for the OMC.

He has not verbalised any of his actions yet, except when he snap called in that hand.

Hero ($450): Young Indian, has been to two showdowns so far, one with KK (above), and one with AA (AI OTF against a combo-draw, lost). Been playing less hands than most players at the table, although have been playing almost all of them for a raise, so I probably seem more active than I actually am.



Onto the actual hand:

V1 limps UTG, V2 looks at his cards, pauses for a moment, says 'raise, $20', and puts out 4 red chips. Hero, next to act has QQ. The next 4 players are telegraphing a fold. If I call here, V1 is almost certainly calling.

From the actions, and sizing of his raise, I feel that he has a very strong hand, do we call to set-mine (i.e. c/f 278r), call and call down on low flops, or 3-bet/fold, expecting him to call with TT-JJ, and 4-bet KK-AA? Given V1 is in the hand, and will stack-off very light, does this affect our decision at all, or are we hand-cuffed almost entirely to V2?

Given the bet sizing and verbalization tells, I do not raise here. I call to set mine getting great odds and a likelyhood of him overplaying the hand, and very occasionally see cheap show-downs or take it away on scary boards when checked to post-flop.

call to set mine 3
call and call down 2
3bet fold 1
3bet call 4

3 bet calling leaves us drawing to 2 outs.
Calling to hit a set 11% of the time would be treating qq like 22
Call and call down leaves us open to being bluffed or owned if our read is already 1010-aa and does not allow us to take control of the pot
3bet/fold- this is optimal to me for 2 reasons
1. take the betting lead
2. narrow his range
The first three options also leaves the door open for v1 to outdraw us on a discount
3bet folding most likely leads us heads up.

3bet fold 55$

Eh. He has already shown a tendency to call 3 bets with dominated hands. Im not thrulled with the sudden uptick in betsizing but there are a couple things to consider. Were there limpers when he raised smaller before, and does he have any white chips in front of him? $20 is scarier when they have whites and could have gone 16 or 17.

Ive certainly set mined QQ before, and I dont think its terrible here, but I think his inability to fold to a 3 bet outweighs the bet size here. 3!/Fold seems right.

I'm calling here, have position on both, be nice to flop a set but also let's play some post flop poker in position with a great starting hand, sounds good to me.

Forgot to say that the blinds were tight players, and weren't telegraphing any action.

Yes, he had a bunch of whites as well, and even when he limped he counted the white chips very deliberately.

So we are terrified that V2 has AA KK? Seriously? Flatting behind is good if you think it will go HU and you disguise your hand, but not bc youre scared of the only 2 hands that beat you. In most cases, 3b him, and pot the flop if it runs undercards




Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using 2+2 Forums

villain has already shown a tendency to overvalue the strength of easily dominated hands by opening ATs UTG and then calling a 3-bet.

You should definitely 3-bet/ for value and expect to get called by all kinds of dominated hands such as AQ, AJ, AT, KQ, KJ, JJ-88...

its obviously possible he has AA/KK... but him giving verbal tells of strength and a sizing tell of strength doesn't mean he has it. He could just have JJ/TT, AK, AQ which to this inexperienced player, all look like stronger hands than they actually are.

I find that a verbalizing actions are strong but they are often not nutted because when ppl have big hands and WANT action, they tend to not want to draw attention to themselves. Its a different story when you have weak tight players who want to avoid getting sucked out on so they let everyone know they're strong by verbalizing or being aggressive with putting their chips in the middle... but judging by how he played the AThh hand, I don't think this is the case with this player.

20 raise at 1/3 vs limper isn't that big imo, considering that at 1/2 it's an easy ISO raise to 14-15 with good hands vs limpers and still get flat calls and go into familly pot postflop.
Certainly not flatting here.You're ahead of a lot of hands like TT-JJ/AQ/AK even AJ can play like he did, which are bigger part of his range here, rather than putting him strictly on KK/AA.

3 bet. Let him define his hand more. Otherwise you are just guessing based on some super speculative information. You are both deep, you are in a good spot to stack him, so get that going. If he comes over the top, fold youll have better spots against him. I think hes waaaayyy too inexperienced for his raise to mean anything. Let alone scare QQ. Alos raise for iso, and to put the fear into him for the rest of the hand. Make your opponent have the tough decision. Quit taking that burden from them.

Masta--

I'm totally fine with flatting. There's hardly any money in the pot now worth fighting over. Warning bells seem to be going off with his raise size / tendencies. 3betting and having to fold to a 4bet (which we'll have to do) sucks when 1/8th of the time we woulda flopped a set had we only managed to see a flop; things also get sucky if he juts flats a 3bet with KK (which a lot of players do for fear we have AA). Implied odds of 22+ against a guy who probably has a monster. Let's see a flop and almost set-mine. If the flop checks to us, we can throw out a small bet with an overpair and go from there. If Villain continues on non-dangerous flops, I'm pretty cool with throwing away my overpair at this point; if it happens to be a mistake (such as versus JJ on T high flops), whatever, it's a smallish one that only cost us $20 (less than 5% of our stack, no biggee).

ETA: To all those who are 3betting, what are you doing if he 4bets? I'm assuming folding, which seems like such a waste to me. Also, although nothing much has been said about his cbetting habits, the fact that this is likely to go 3way means he's less likely to bet A high on the flop, so we can still get our value postflop versus worse hands (especially against the other villain).

GnexthandG

3bet fold if you expect a flat call from you means it will go four ways or more to the flop. I think I just flat here and play post flop. KK is an easy 3bet fold for value unless you think his 4bet range is more than just KK+. Problem with 3bet folding QQ sometimes is KK may flat fearing AA and also both KK and AA beat you and we don't get to see a flop when we get 4bet.

I'm good with flatting or 3-betting, but I think I prefer the 3-bet for reasons stated and because I don't want V1 coming along for the $20. (I fold to a 4-bet, which I think he does almost exclusively with AA.)

Sometimes you just know when certain players have AA/KK. I was 3bet with KK once and absolutely knew the guy had AA. No other hand he could possibly have. I couldn't fold KK, so I just called (pathetic, I know). Lucky for me, a K hit the flop and he just couldn't fold AA

this.

he almost always has KK here.

Sounds like you hate making money.

Ofc we fold to a 4bet. If he flats with KK-AA so what? We have control of the hand and position. You're telling me you're that scared with the 3rd best hand? Play .10/.25 or a stake where you won't have monsters under the bes lol. Explain how folding to a 4b is a waste, bc by not 3betting we lose a lot of value from 88-JJ, AJ+, all hands that will probably dump if they whiff the flop that we couldve committed villian more to


Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using 2+2 Forums

Grunch:

A raise is a terrible play in this spot IF it folds out the whale. If he calls the 3 bet most of the time then it's ok, but its waaay better to go three ways in a single raised pot with QQ vs. one V who's showing strength tells and one big fish.

Possible outcomes of 3 betting:

V1 folds. V2 folds. Unlikely
V1 calls. V2 folds. Unlikely.
V1 4 bets etc. very unlikely.
V1 folds. V2 calls. Likely.
V1 folds. V2 4 bets. Somewhat likely.
V1 calls. V2 calls somewhat likely.
V1 calls. V2 raises. Likely.


If my assumptions are correct, raising invites the least desirable scenarios. Just flat and eval the flop.

If we have to fold to a 4bet, that costs us our ~$60 3bet, plus the real potential of stacking Villain for $450 when a Q flops 1/8 of the time.

If he flats a 4bet with AA/KK, in most cases we're going to lose our ~$60 3bet as well as probably at least one more bet postflop (unless we're thinking of checking it down postflop, which obviously we're not).

And 3betting also blows out the terrible V1 (not only for his $20 preflop, but also potentially his $200).

We also have 3 postflop streets to attempt to get value from worse hands if we decide to do so.

Flatting preflop has nothing to do with being MUBSy with the 3rd best starting hand in poker, especially 150bbs deep. I don't think we're missing out on nearly as much value as you think we are.

Having said that, this might also be a stylistic thing. If we're 3betting a wide range of hands, we should probably also be 3betting when we're at the top of range too.

GhatesmakingmoneythehardwayG

Seems like there's still a decent divide between calling and 3b/fold, so I'll wait tad before posting results, because there seems like there is still discussion to be had.

doubt there's more to discuss, unless you went postflop and give us the board.

Fair enough, onto post-flop:

Hero calls $20, folded to V1 who calls.

Flop: T 8 3 (We don't have the Qc)

V1 checks, V2 says 'raise' again and says $65, hero?

A relevant read at this point was that when he had whiffed with AK as the pfr, he bet $15 into 3 players after his PFR size was $15 as well.

^^^ this is why I 3bet pre vs his range, and define his hand.
If he flats our 3bet, we're ahead pre flop a lot.

Now OTF we feel blindfolded tbh.
With about 64 in the pot? he leads 65?
considering your postflop reads on him, you only beat JJ here, ad lose to everything else.
I feel lost here and when I am in this position I fold.

What has been the sizing of pre-flop raises at the table in general? I find that people who have been "dragged to the casino tonight by a friend" aren't serious players and don't put that much thought into their pf raise sizes. A lot of times they just imitate other players at the table.

If there's been a lot of people putting in $20 pf, he could just be parroting them. Don't assume that he's adjusting his bet size to the number of limpers either. If 6 people limp and the button raises to $20, all a fish might see is that someone raised to $20 pre-flop. He might think "I probably should occasionally raise to $20 if others are doing it".

I'd 3-bet QQ here. I'd assume V2's range is wider than monsters here. Also, with no 3-bet, V1 will certainly call (and others too) and there's just so much trouble we could get in post flop. With position and deep stacks, I don't think flatting is bad, but QQ figures to be best here a lot. If he 4-bets with AA, oh well. NH. Sucks to get QQ vs AA.

Yuck! We get what's typically a good flop for QQ and we're rightfully MUBSY. Can't table talk because of a 3rd player in the hand. Since we played the hand to set mine and didn't hit a set, I guess we fold. Could call to see if he fires again on the turn, but I would rather have invested that $65 in a pf 3-bet.

+1 ^

Well we just called to set mine and play some post flop poker, you seem to have picked up a betting size tell. There could be arguments for all the 3 actions call, raise or fold. Still also another player in the hand as well.

We are only beat JJ here and with your bet sizing tell I'm probably folding, he seems pretty strong, pretty nitty folding QQ on that board without raising somewhere so not sure it's the right play. Curious as to what others think.