posted this in the wrong section, hopefully it gets some hits over here.

this hand occurred a few nights ago in my home game; it is technically $.05/$.10 but plays much bigger, the average buy in is 300bb+ and standard preflop raises to 5bb, 7.5bb, 10bb, etc, and overbets are not at all uncommon in this game.

i have lots of history with the villain, he is relatively new to the game; plays at my house a lot and i can see him improving but he is the very definition of 'wild card'. i have seen him bet ~50bb flop turn river with a bare ace no draw and have seen him call all in with bottom pair or queen high no draw, etc.

ONE PREVIOUS HAND OF NOTE

hero: ~1,000bb
villain: ~1,000bb
my hand: 67o

he calls, i raise to ~5bb, he calls.
flop (~10bb) 235 rainbow
i check he checks
turn (~10bb) 4
i bet ~25bb, he raises to 50bb, i raise to ~130bb, he insta shoves, i insta call
river (~2,000bb) K

hero shows 67
villain shows A8

we have since talked about the hand and he is not upset about it because 'i had a straight which is a really good hand and i lost to a straight and that's a good hand it happens'.


THE HAND IN QUESTION
hero (button): ~500bb
sb: irrelevant
villain (bb): ~500bb
other: irrelevant
other: irrelevant
other: irrelevant
other: irrelevant

i have QcJc

calls around to me on the button, i raise to 5bb, sb folds, villain calls, everyone else folds.

flop (10.5bb) 9c10dx
villain bets 30bb, i call
turn (70.5bb) 10c
villain bets 30bb, i call
river (130.5bb) Kd
villain bets 30bb, hero?



any thoughts on this? any discussion would help, thanks. i play bad and want to get better. thank you.

There's a couple of reasons this game is so wild. The biggest is that while it is a 300bb game, that's still $30. Therefore, the stakes aren't big enough where big raises and shoves aren't enough to hurt anyone badly. The other is that it is an insular game. Nobody is trying to make a living. There are no outsiders coming to take advantage of anyone.

There are many home game like this. If someone played well, they would clean up in this game for a while, but would eventually be shut out. If they hosted it, nobody would come. They won't get invited to other games. Especially if the game is social, as I suspect it is. Therefore, the decision making is going to be different than for a casino game where the stakes are in hundreds of dollars.

As played, I call the river for a couple of reasons. First of all, Hero doesn't have the nuts. You're only going to have a raise called by the nuts. The other factor is this is a friendly game. If your friend does have the nuts, he's made it cheap for you to call it down. By not raising and forcing him to fold, you keep the game friendly and not embarrass him. Your raise would earn you nothing anyway.

thank you for this post. i had not really considered the effect that the stakes had on the the game, deep as it is.

and i think you're right, while i think he would call a raise with a weaker hand than mine, there aren't really any hands he could really have.

Yea, this is a very small friendly game. So I wouldn't expect a world of responses. If you want to get better read other post and keep playing.

As far as this hand I might go for a raise he only bet 3 into a 13 dollar pot. I suspect the players are very readable here so I would like to have some idea of what this player bets in relation to the pot when he has big hands. I strongly feel you have the best hand. Most of these games play abc so it think he would bet more if he had a boat. So I think a raise to around the size of the pot is profitable.
Best of luck

Vs described villain in this game I would raise river, he is not folding any 10

Such a great post.

Last paragraph is exactly right.