2/5

******ed game. 2 huge whales sitting at $500-1000. Raising every hand to $20-50. Will put in $100+ preflop with almost ATC. Will call flop bets with any pair, gutshots. Not afraid to bluff. Money flying around and ready to be taken.

Hero sits down with $500 and posts in CO. Looks down at AQo.

Whale 1 (utg, $600) raises to $25, Whale 2 (utg+1, $1000) calls, 2 other nits ($400-500) call, Hero ??


Flat and play a pot in position OR just bump it up for value knowing however that nobody is folding and we will have to hit a pair to be able to win postflop?

In game, I raised to $125, all 4 called...

Flop ($625): K74hhd
Checked around

Turn ($625): Kc
Whale 1 shoved all-in, everyone folded

Whale 1 showed A6ss.

Being results-oriented, I felt that it was maybe better to just flat pre and try to make a hand at this sort of a game, but then, do we just wait to 3bet QQ+ or something? Seems so weak to me.

Pot is big enough, I'd shove flop. Gonna be hard for anything worse than AK to call...

Raise is good but it needs to be bigger. I wouldn't hate even just shipping it in to just pick up the 100 or letting one of the whales call with a worse hand. We are ahead here like, 90 pct of the time.

Didn't think that was true at all. I was getting snapped by any king. I also felt there was a possibility I get snapped with 87o by one of the whales. I was also worried about 2 others in the pot.

Are you really bluff-shoving in a 5-way pot in a game like this where it's going to be super easy to get paid when you make a hand?

I'm ok with the 3! pre.. we crush their range based on descriptions, only if we thought maybe the nits would fold? Or someway it would not go more than 3 ways. If we had a hunch it would go 5+ ways (like if we 3!, then both whales will call the majority of the time, and if they call then the nits will call), then I'm probably just going to have to play it passively and not play a crazy bloated pot 5 ways.

I think you're just going to get some really results-oriented responses to be honest. There is almost no way I just shove this flop into 4 people.. 2 of whom are whales and 2 of whom are nits. The whales will call super light - and if they have any piece, you're behind after whiffing. The nits def have K's in the range - like a KJ/KQ/K10s where they hope to flop a monster in a multi-way pot vs. nits.

I think if you shove here on the flop and get called you'll get a lot of responses like "why are we c-betting?"

Imo, it sucks to get shown A6 here but what can you do. C-betting that flop is dangerous, and it's hard to call that shove even vs a whale/maniac with our hand.



edit: After reading your comments, I guess post fop was not much of a question for you (which is obvious imo). Preflop, I think the question is just: if we 3! do we see it going 3+ ways? I.e. we 3! 1 whale calls, then the other whale will call, then other nits will call? If so, safer to just not 3!. AQ in a major bloated pot 5-ways is a disaster I think, esp vs 2 crazy players.

Not raising here is leaving a criminal amount of dead money in the middle of the table.

It's not dead money.

oh, literal Jim.

How many buy-ins do you have to lose with you? This is where bankroll becomes a real factor in playing poker. Raising preflop will be more profitable in the long run, but if you can't afford to lose 2 or 3 buy-ins today and be ready to reload with another 2-3 buy-ins for next weekend, you may just not be able to afford to play this way.

If you can't, then flat and see what develops. Come in behind with solid speculative hands that can flop well, pocket pairs and suited connectors.

Drop down to $1/2 if you can't

You have to play aggressive this way vs these kinds of whales with 100BB. As played it was fine. Pot is super dry but against 3 other people it's really easy for them to hit a pair, and if they aren't folding not much you can do. I think the hand was played fine. Just because no one had anything and shoving flop would of worked doesn't mean it's a fantastic play.

Shoving pre would of been fine. You pick up a free $100 most of the time and if you are called you are at probably at worst flipping.

I would only flat pre if I had like 200+BB and OOP

Shoving pre is interesting. $150 pre -> shove any flop is higher variance but potentially nets you can extra $350.

Well you have a lot of FE vs hands that are beating you and your hand would look like AK. If 7x calls its not the worst thing in the world. Pot is big enough to warrant the bluff IMO

3betting preflop is mandatory, otherwise, your 3betting range becomes way too skewed and even bad players will stop giving you action on your 3bets, which is bad. Also obviously you are way ahead of everyone preflop so its a good thing to get more money in. Don't doubt yourself again.

Postflop is a bit more tricky between betting and checking. I wouldn't be a fan of betting an exploitable $200 so its kind of just between checking and jamming for me. I think we have a lot of fold equity vs the 2 nits. Sometimes they will show up with KTs and decide to fold that hand vs you. The whales are unlikely to fold a pair that hit the board which poses a problem. In order for you to jam profitably, you need to win 43.2% of the time.

In order for me to "solve" this, I made some assumptions. 1) a small % of time, someone will have made 2P+ on this board. 2) Nits might hero fold 99+-KTo vs you. 3) Whales won't call you some of the time with 4X but will also sometimes snap you with TT/88. 4) Sometimes you gii good vs draws. To simplify this, I simply assume those 4 points magically cancel each other out and I don't have to worry about it. Therefore, you basically have the 2 nits and their cards don't matter. The only math you need to be concerned about is how often the whales hole cards hit the board, which turns out to be around 58.6% of the time, which is slightly more than what you need, but if called, your equity is around 18% vs their entire calling range.

We have a profitable shoving spot here. However, if we bink an Ace or even a Queen ott, we have potentially an even more +EV spot, so its actually prettttty close. Without doing the math, I actually believe checking and hoping to bink is slightly better, but wj94's point is still very valid. Sometimes, its just better to shove and have a super strong winning image going forward or get snapped off light and show the rest of the players you donked it off with Ace high.

As others already have pointed out not 3 betting AQ in these kind of game conditions is close to criminal, and lose you a ton of value.

If you find it hard to manouver postflop if called (and you whiff flop), then just monkeyshoving preflop is better than flatting pre.

IDK, I've been missing my AK-AJ 9/10 times OTF. Not sure why I even 3bet them.

Agreed. You actually got a great flop to cbet-shove. Someone with a K probably donks. You convincingly rep AK.

prefer just shoving pre

Raise more pre, 160 maybe? Fine as played, you can think about calling the whales jam on the turn (don't give us results like that it skews answers) since most people won't jam a K there and the board is very draw heavy.

I like raising to 170 pre and shoving all flops