Villain 1 (360): older Asian guy, had a decent stack when hero first got to table but slowly lost it. Villain usually plays pretty passive and likes to chase draws. He also messed up big time earlier when he rivered a straight flush and went all in excitedly but there wasn't enough money in the pot. I'm sure that tilted him. He lost his remaining stack after that and has rebought for 400, the max.

Villain 2 (170): has been losing all night. Is pretty much calling with anything playable to try and get even. He's in for about 700 or so. He is currently pounding flops that he hits hard and willing to chase anything.

Hero (covers): has been playing fairly tight, only shown down 3 pocket pairs all night, QQ, JJ, and 99. Biggest pot was with villain 2 when he went all in preflop for about 140 and hero called with 99 and was good.

There's a high hand every 15 minutes for $500 just fyi.

Preflop: villain 1 raises to 17 utg, villain 2 calls, hero calls on button with A♧5♧. All others fold.

Typically villain 1 doesn't raise much, I'm thinking his range is strong here, but he's on tilt so could be wider. Villain 2 is calling with almost any 2 payable as mentioned earlier.

Flop 3 way (55): A♡ J♧ 5◇
Villain 1 checks, villain 2 bets 25, hero calls, villain 1 calls.

I think 2 pairs is good here but villain 1 might be slow playing because of high hand so I called to see what he did.

Turn 3 way (130): Q♡
Both villains check. Hero bets 50, both call.

I should have bet bigger here, but I wanted to find out villain 1's hand strength. If he had me beat, I'd find out now as the board is getting wet and I'm showing strength. I also wanted to get crying calls from KK and AK/AT.

River 3 way (280): 3♡
Villain 1 grabs his remaining stack and goes all in for about 270. Villain 2 folds, hero??

Thoughts on all streets appreciated thx!!

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raise flop and pound turn hard. As played fold river, but in general play this hand much faster.

Bet more on turn for value. Call river.

Ugh, I think I could find a fold OTR as played, but I would have been piling money in OTF/OTT to where this would have been a trivial call-off OTR. Raise to $70-$75 OTF, size turn accordingly based on how many flop callers you get.

The call pre is pretty thin given the short stack sizes. I prefer a 3-bet or just fold it.

AP you hit your hand so raise OTF to like 85.

AP Q is a terrible card for you as you're now losing to AQ and villains can have heart draws since you failed to raise the flop. Given they both check I'm betting though. Make it 100 or so.

AP 3 is a pretty bad river. Not the worst but what do you really beat here? V1 was PFR. He checks twice then jams river for a PSB? With what? You lose to hearts, AQ, AJ, KT, QJ, AA, QQ, JJ. All we really beat is AK. Would he really play AK like this? Check it twice then shove when the hearts get there? Doubtful. Even if he does, there are many more combos of hands that beat us and we are barely getting 2:1. Could V1 be on a huge bluff? That's pretty rare at this level and more than that there are no busted draws so how does he even get to the river with a bluff?

Absent some live tell that V1 is spazzing out with KK or TT or something I'm folding here and not thinking too hard about it.

Agree with Shai Hulud, except I like the flop call. I think we're WABE and SPR 7 is just a bit too high for me to want to auto-commit against V1.

Turn thinking is confused. Betting a small amount planning to fold to a raise isn't a good idea unless you have a solid read that small bet sizing won't induce. Information does have value, but in this case it should be a tiny part of our thinking.

We're betting both to make the pot bigger if we win and to deny opponents their equity. I'd probably go closer to 80, but 100 seems fine as long as they'll still call pretty wide. One of them might have turned a BDFD, but that's unlikely.

I don't think LLSNL V's x/c, x/c, jam as a bluff even nearly 1/3 the time. Sigh fold.

Fold pre vs a passive player making a large raise UTG. 3 betting would be awful.
Raise the flop small. They have been chasing and will have a tough time folding any ace or gutshot.
bet small on the turn
if they check to me on the river im jamming, but if they jam im folding

If you think his raise UTG pre is strong, why would you call A5s against it? Fold pre.

I'm raising the flop here. V1 has all kinds of big Ax hands in his range. Assuming either V call, I'd then barrel any non-K/Q or any club turn or check back any K or Q and re-evaluate on the river. If you raised the flop and got called, I think betting into a K or Q on the turn is really thin value. Since you didn't raise the flop, though, their range is still a bit wider so when they check to you there's no choice but to bet as you did.

As played, that's a pretty big river jam but passive players don't donk bluff pot-size shove rivers very often. I don't think a call here is bad either, though. It's super close and I'd just trust my gut one way or the other.

Raise flop 100%. Try to get A-big to commit a bunch of chips when the board is not so scary for them.

AP, bet way more OTT. I like 100.

I'm folding that river 100% of the time.

I like taking lots of flops IP and I would never fold this hand on BTN so I don't mind PF call as much as others on this thread. It really depends on your skill post-flop and your ability to get paid off when you hit 2p+. If you usually know when to lay down TP, it's good. If you're the type to get stuck calling 2/3 streets with TPWK, then it's probably best to lay down pre.

But a lot of this is meta-game, too. If I'm known to call a lot in position, V's tend to get very confused and will think when I bet/raise post-flop my range is wider than it actually is. In reality, I tighten up significantly especially OTT when I'm playing my A-game. V's will confuse seemingly loose/passive or LAG play preflop with general-TAG/sometimes-LAG post-flop. When you take flops in position, you instill this fear of the unknown in V's and they will tend to play extremely straightforward because "you could have anything."

Pre is kinda weak at these stack sizes.

I'd bet like 100 on the turn if V1 is steaming

V1 is passive and he shipped river? Eh, that feels like a fold, it feels like you're praying he has QJ, AK, or AT if you call.

I fold preflop. Not nearly multiway enough to warrant a call, poor RIO, poor IO, way too short against V2; having the Button isn't going to make up for all this, imo.

Flop is fairly drawless, so I'm ok with just flatting in position. Might bring along V1, and otherwise pot will be $105 with V2 having $128 left so should easily be able to get that in by the river. When V1 calls, some warning bells might have to be going off; is he really doing this with KK on this board when there's a bet and a call?

Kinda gross turn card as some two pair hands moved ahead plus a gutshot got there. But board is fairly drawy and you'd think good hands would bet not knowing if turn would check thru. I'm actually cool with our smaller sizing although I probably still go a little bigger (like 1/2 PSB).

Kinda weird spot on the river. Is a tilting guy really doing this enough with KK? Or is it more KJhh / JThh? In the end, the guy bet into two opponents on the river, I just don't see this being a bluff / weak showdownable hand bluffing enough.

ETA: Unlike others, I'm not seeing as much reason to raise the flop. V2 is only going to have a little over a PSB left if we flat (easy peasy to get this whenever we want), board is fairly drawless (more reason to raise if a flush draw but there is none), and we're cool inviting V1 along since if we're ahead he's drawing very slim (and if we're behind we don't want to build a huge pot now).

GcluelessNLnoobG

First of all, A5 is an excellent hand to 3-bet on the button. Yeah, it's a semibluff, but we can often get tight villains to flat call hands like 99 - QQ, AK and then x/f when there's an overcard or they miss, or they fold outright with hands like KQs AQ AJ 88. I've even gotten people to fold QQ several times and KK on occasion. Particularly if you have not been 3 betting much or at all, you can get away with a light 3-bet here. Note I am absolutely not advocating 3-betting all AXs. That would make our 3-bet frequency too high. But we need a couple bluffing hands in our 3-betting range so we're not just 3-betting super premiums. I would recommend something like {JJ+, AK, AQs, A5s, 76s} as a fairly conservative 3-betting range. You might want to flat JJ or AQs on occasion but A5s and 76s are just tremendously good bluffing hands and we have position. With A5s we can barrel a lot and stack villain on favorable runouts such as this one.

Folding is also fine if you're not comfortable taking aggressive lines in 3-bet pots. But calling 17 when the PFR only has 345 left is not so good. His remaining stack is 20 times the cost of a call. If you follow the 10-20-30 rule for calling with small PPs, SCs, and AXs/Suited one gappers, this is an easy fold because we can't win 30 times our investment. And note most poker authorities are recommending the 15/25/35 rule nowadays. To cold call we would want V1 or V2 to have more like 600. Also, with set-mining we are generally targeting the PFR, hoping he makes TPTK or an OP and we can get his stack. Calling with AXs we are targeting overcallers, in this case V2. Our goal when cold calling AXs is mostly to win by overflushing someone, and the overcaller has fare more clubs than the PFR. The UTG PFR probably only has Broadway clubs so we don't have that many chances to overflush him. But many LP players will cold call almost any suited hand so against V2 we have good chances at overflushing him...however, he only has 153 left which is 9 times the cost of calling, not even close to enough.

Second, flop raise is a must vs tilted villain. Why did we call an UTG raise with A5s if not to pour the money in when we hit? Villain probably has something like AK AQ or TT+. TT will fold, we lose to JJ and AA but if he comes over the top we can probably fold and that's just 4 combos. Is Villain 1 checking JJ here though? He might, good to know your opponent. But there are 16 combos AK AQ that he's just not going to fold to a raise if he's tilting. No way. He might even call 12 QQ KK combos at least once, but we're mostly targeting AK AQ.

Another reason to raise now is there are a lot of bad turns for top and bottom pair. Any K Q T are all bad as they complete sets, make bigger 2p, complete some broadway straights and make some pair + gutshots. A J is really bad as V2 has a lot of JX in his range and now we lose to AK AQ and chop virtually every other AX scenario.

So that's 15/47 pretty terrible turn cards. About a third the deck. Additionally villains are more likely to put money into the pot OTF when there are two cards to come. It's going to be harder to get stacks in and still be ahead if we don't raise the flop, and we sometimes end up in dumb scenarios like this where we're sigh folding OTR.

I disagree villains are unlikely to have hearts OTT. I mean yeah it's more likely they don't have hearts, but they have enough hearts (particularly V2) that we should be betting the turn bigger. 50 into 130 gives 3.6:1 express odds to draw. We can charge a steeper price and set up for easier river decisions.

As a final note, once V1 ships the river it becomes MUCH more likely he has hearts by Bayesian inference, which I'll try to illustrate.

Let's suppose V1 can arrive OTR with the following hands (the particular set of hands doesn't matter that much, just illustrating the Bayesian inference): JJ+,ATs+,KJs,QJs,JTs,KdQd,KhQh,KcQc,KdTd,KhTh,KcTc ,QdTd,QhTh,QcTc,AJo+. This is 50 combos of which only 3 are hearts. (As an aside we have 52% equity against this range).

So P(hearts) = 3/50

But which of these combos does he shove on this board? Probably these 12 combos: AdAs,QdQs,QdQc,QsQc,JdJh,JdJs,JhJs,KhJh,KdTd,KhTh, KcTc,JhTh

But...he may not always shove the sets or even straights three ways on a flush river, electing to x/c or x/r them. Let's suppose he ships 4/7 sets and all 3 straights. Okay so he ships 10/50 combos for value.

These are the only bluffs he can really have assuming he's not raising really wide UTG and going crazy post flop: KdQd, KcQc, QdTd, QcTc (4 combos). There's also 6 combos KK and a number of JX he might spazz out with. Let's guess he has about 4 combos of either pure bluffs or made hands he turned into bluffs. I think this estimate is high but w/e. So combining his bluffs and value shoves he has 14 combos he shoves. So P(ships) = 14/50. Let's assume he always ships his flushes.

Then Bayes Theorem says

P(hearts|ships) = P(ships|hearts)*P(hearts)/P(ships)

P(hearts|ships) = (1)*(3/50)/(14/50) = 3/14 ~ .214

And this is assuming he bluffs more than he probably does, that he ships his sets more often than not, and that he always ships straights. If we assume villain is more passive we can reduce bluffing to 1 combo, shipping sets to 1 combo, and shipping straights to 2 combos, in which case we have P(hearts | ships) = (1)*(3/50)/(7/50) = 3/7 ~ .429

It's not important whether particular estimates are accurate--what's important to realize is even if he has hardly any heart combos (just THREE), his river shipping range still has a LOT of flushes, probably in the range of ~21% to ~43%

And if the turn and river had been, say, diamonds, the probability the shove is a flush is even higher, as in that case V1 can have the nut flush draws.

Note that tilted Villain (the preflop raiser) checked the flop (the shorterstacked preflop caller was the one who bet the flop). Which typically means he either hates it or is slowplaying a monster.

GseesnoreasontoraisetheflopG

LOTS of stuff here ... reading a bit into your descriptions ... bet sizing is a huge issue on Flop and Turn.
1) V2's Flop bet is not 'pounding' at 50%, but if he's chasing I want to make him pay more to do so. I also want to force the pot size so I might be able to get V1 into a side pot that I can get back some of my chips that I might lose to V2.

2) I'm not letting a UTG raiser get a card at 4 to 1 after checking Flop. I'm raising for value against any hands that he would continue with (mainly Ax) and letting him fold out any hands that can snap me off unless he wants to pay a premium for the card. There's a small taste of 'see where I'm at' in this raise, but it's more for value against a UTG and chaser.

3) Interesting that V2 now checks Turn ... must still be chasing. And we know nothing about V1 ... So we offer 3.5 to 1 on a call? Value, value, value is what we need here. Or just check it through for pot control since a decent value bet will bloat the pot and you will most likely be forced to call a River bet by either player. Why bet if you were going to fold to a raise?

4) Did V1 even 'really' see the River card before he shoved? If not, then those tend to be 'reactionary' bluffs. It's possible that he knew exactly what was in the pot and shoved pot. The problem is he did shove into a short stack that only has $78 behind (5 to 1 on a call). Another problem is I can't really see him with AJ/AQ/set/AxKh, maybe KhKx that picked up a cheap gutter on Turn and saw the heart hit the River. A player with those hands 'should've' protected their hand on the Turn with a c/r. Even if V2 calls are we really 'good' 30% of the time here, even for the side pot.

Strange hand ... Can't think of anything 'conventional' that we beat .. or lose ... to that V1 wouldn't have been more aggressive with, except a heart draw or AxKh/KxKh.

Typically when I think I've played a hand wrong/too passive I try not to exaggerate my loss by calling a River bet like this one. IMO we have V2 beat, but are we good 30% of the time against V1? If he truly is a passive draw chaser then this line fills the bill ... and calls for a fold. GL

Probably just fold pre given read that V hasn't been raising hands pre. You're going to be dominated by his Ax hands, he's not folding to a 3! and any time V has KK- and you flop an A, you win a small pot and lose a big pot if V flops a set

AP OTF, raise

We have an SPR < 3 vs the SS villain. He has AX a lot and is probably not folding. If he does, who cares, we probably weren't getting much more value from him anyway. I'm happily getting it in with 2p and SPR < 3.

And the reason to raise is

1) We build the pot when we have the best hand, which we usually do
2) We aggressively deny equity to hands like AK AQ QT by charging them to see the turn

If the flop were two-tone do you still flat call?

I agree that if the flop has a flush draw that it is much better to raise, but that's a pretty big difference (we can rep the draw ourselves and get looked up lighter, and villain may have the flush draw which he's unlikely to fold so we get value from that).

I just don't think it's necessary to deny 6-outers like AQ from catching up (especially since we can easily see 3 of the counterfieting J outs), and ditto for 4 outers / 2 outers (which V1 most likely has if we're ahead). The best worst hand we're up against is a 6 outer, which is a 7:1 shot; they've already offered themselves fairly poorish 3:1 (it's not as if we're giving them a free card). We're in position and can easily play for stacks against the shortstack on the turn if desired. Otherwise, I think it's much more important to tread carefully against the deeper V1 (if he calls a raise on the flop I think we should be throwing up in our mouths a little).

GcluelessNLnoobG

I'm ok with pre, though this could be a spot to 3bet.

Flop is tricky. PFR checks and other player donks half pot into it. I'm on the fence on whether flatting or raising is the better play. I usually lean on the side of playing hands like this quicker, especially against someone calling anything and gambling to make back his losses. We may fold out a hand of V1's like AK or AQ and the like. He may also call with those hands and we'd be putting our money in good there too.

Turn bet should be bigger. Board has gotten scary but also more draws and we still may have the best hand.

As played, I guess I sigh fold on the river. Villain is jamming into both of you despite the obvious flush coming in. Seems like a terrible spot to bluff, which is all I feel we're beating if we do call. As a standard rule I try not to call passive player's pot sized river jams and its worked for me so far.

Must raise this flop. Rest of the hand is much easier to play when you do so.

And bet more on the turn (probably as a b/f).

AP, river seems like a clear fold. And blame yourself....you let it happen by playing so passively.

A 6-outer will catch up roughly 25% of the time by the river if we're just passively calling down. Considering both villains could have these types of hands we are not protecting our equity by passively calling and can end up in stupid river spots like this.

Besides, the point of raising is not so much to protect against any specific hand but rather to build the pot with the best hand and deny equity against villains' entire range of continuing hands. There are 15 very bad turns. On a Q turn for instance villain may decide to bet or x/r with AK (or hearts, or anything really) and we end up folding the best hand because we didn't aggressively deny villains their equity.

If V1 calls a raise it's no reason to panic. We have position and we still beat AK / AQ. Yeah it's weird he would check these hands but it's also weird he would check AJ or sets. I'm assuming V1 likely missed and more concerned with stacking V2, but not the end of the world if V1 calls. We block so many sets we're only concerned with max 11 hand combos at the moment, probably much fewer since V1 is described as passive and therefore probably doesn't even raise AJ or 55 UTG. If he bombs the turn after calling a raise maybe it's time to panic / fold but people call flop raises with all kinds of crap especially if the guy's tilted. And if he checks the turn we can make a judgment call and check back if we're getting MUBSY.

If we flat, many turns change the situation from us being worried about 5 to 11 combos to now being worried about ten times that. Slowplaying 2p is rarely a good idea especially with top and bottom pair where we are easily counterfeited or can lose to random AX spiking a bigger kicker and on top of that we often don't know which turn cards hit villain or didn't.

Basically... calling with a weak hand like A5s then flatting when we hit against ranges rich in Aces is a really bad strategy. We hit our hand. Raise FFS.

Thanks for the replies all! Especially Shai with your detailed analysis, much appreciated!

I suppose I wasn't playing A game this session, but didn't realise it until afterwards. I was just calling preflop because as stated, villain 1 is passive and villain 2 super wide and they're both on tilt, so I felt I had an advantage. There was also the chance of a $500 high hand needing only aces full to qualify. And I certainly wasn't only playing to make a hand.

Flop I think going either way is good, I still like calling, but I definitely see the merits of raising, especially vs villain 2 who should never be folding after he donks.

Turn I agree should be a much bigger bet, like at least $80 or so. I'll admit I wasn't counting the pot properly and I wanted to bet an amount that villain 2 could call.

River should have been a fold, and I was about to, but then this random old dude next to me literally called clock on me after 30 seconds or so. Floor came by and gave me another 30 seconds, and I couldn't think of any hand that THIS villain would play like this, so I called.

Villain rolled over 9♡5♡ for bottom pair on flop, turned flush draw, then rivered flush and had a nice double on me.

Oh well, live and learn! You don't make money calling down passive players 'big bets, even when they're on tilt!

Again, thx for all the comments all!

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You're welcome. One more comment, playing a hand to hit a high hand is almost never a good idea. Particularly this applies to AX hands. The probability of flopping FH/quads is about .1%. Additionally there's about a 1% chance you flop trips AND make a boat+ by the river. I'm assuming any Aces Full qualifies since you didn't say otherwise but where I play it's Aces Full of Tens. Anyway you make Aces Full by the river half of your boats roughly, .5% So let's say P(HH) = .006 and P(HH holds) = .5

EV(HH) = 500*.006*.5 = 1.50

So your potential high hand, assuming it holds up half the time (which is probably too high since most of your chance to make the HH is from a FH and a FH is easily beaten) is worth about $1.50. But you pay more rake than this.

It's hard to think of a situation I would play a hand I wouldn't otherwise in order to hit a HH. Even if you had a very high payout like 1k your A5s hand is still worth, optimistically, about $3 for its HH potential. The hands with the best potential to make big HHs like pocket pairs, suited broadways, and AK/AQ you are pretty much always playing anyway. I suppose if your decision between folding and calling is close to neutral (say a tight UTG player raises to 4BB and you have 86 OTB about 130BB effective) you *might* decide to play the hand because it's pretty close either way, but just keep in mind the high hand adds very little to the value of these hands, so you would need to legitimately think calling and folding are about EV neutral before you factored in the potential to make a HH.

Also, interesting to see that specific hand from V1. He's definitely tilting if he's raising that trash. But regardless, even hands like this where you are way ahead at the moment have a decent chance to draw out on you if you let the guy see both cards cheaply. If we raise, he might or might not fold. You'd be surprised how often people peel with BD draws or bottom pair even against a raise. But the important thing about raising is we deny villain implied odds with these kinds of hands and make him put money into the pot while he's behind. And if he folds that's okay too. Our goal isn't to find the line that leads to us stacking villains the most but rather the lines that make us the most money overall, and even if both guys fold OTF, that is not a bad result here.