Here is a hand from a 2/5 game I recently played.

Hero: Mid 20s white kid. Playing tight. Been card dead other than a seeing a few decent hands where I was able to double my stack.

V1: Unknown Asian, mid 40s. Only been at table a few orbits.

V2: Unknown early 20s white kid. 2nd hand at table.

V3: Mid 20s Asian. Seemed to be best player at table. Very aggressive. Was getting hit in face with deck his first few orbits.

Here is the hand:

Hero (~1000) raises to $25 with KhKc from UTG
V1 (~400) calls $25 from UTG+1
V2 (~500) calls $25 from UTG +2
V3 (~2000) calls $25 from lojack.

Everyone else folds.

FLOP: AsKs9h ($107)

Hero leads for $85
V1 snap calls

V2 and V3 fold

TURN: 5s ($277)

Hero?


I have middle set here and I put V1 on a flush draw when he called. V only has about 250 behind. Do I put him all in or bet maybe 100 and fold to a shove? Or maybe even check fold.

What do you mean you put V1 on a flush draw? That's really specific.

Can't he also have plenty of Ax hands for top pair?

Ship the turn. Check/folding is ludicrous.

I'm guessing his insta-call made you put him on the draw.

I don't think you're deep enough to fold the set with just 1 PSB left. You would be getting 1:3 on your money and have 4:1 on your draw, so the odds aren't quite right:

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

220 trials (Exhaustive)

board: AK95

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
KhKc	21.82%	48	0
JsTs, Ts9s, 9s8s, 8s7s, 7s6s	78.18%	172	0

But this is only if you know he can't possibly have AK. If you add any non-flush hand, even the AK which only has 3 combos, our equity goes through the roof:

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

352 trials (Exhaustive)

board: AK95

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
KhKc	49.43%	174	0
AK, JsTs, Ts9s, 9s8s, 8s7s, 7s6s	50.57%	178	0

Adding all JT combos:

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

1,012 trials (Exhaustive)

board: AK95

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
KhKc	72.33%	732	0
AK, JT, Ts9s, 9s8s, 8s7s, 7s6s	27.67%	280	0

Adding other broadways just helps us more and more.

I'm a little torn though. One of my principles is "if you have a read, go with it." But I don't think you have enough history with this villain to know you read is 90% good. So really you should just get it in and suck out against the likely flush.

Tough to say given no reads.

In a vacuum leading out for 125-150 and calling shoves.

It really comes down to Vs PF range, if we expect him to call a PFR with QJ, JTs hands PF from EP or not. Not the best spot with no reads, but AK of the suit on the board in my mind greatly reduces odds of a flush. I feel like Ax makes up a larger portion of his range in this spot given PF action than lower suited hands. I also don't think a FD is insta-calling a nearly PSB OTF.

In the end go with your gut. But personally I need some really strong evidence to the contrary to fold my set. If he has it, we still have 10 clean out. I'm expecting to be good here the majority of the time though vs 2P.

Given how short he is, we need to bet, especially to get value from hands that picked up a flush draw.

Whenever we're in a situation where we are never folding, our default play should be aggressive, rather than passive.

Missing QsJs QsTs Qs9s, 99 AQ with Q of spades, KQ with Q spades, AJ with J spades, KJ with J spades, A9suited,

If we are really going with our gut as advised then just openfold. No? Obviously vs this stack then shove. You bet/fold plan is bad based on stack sizes here. Maybe vs the V3 stack size we can explore all the options but vs a guy who has a pot size bet left options are fairly limited.

What about adding 99 here also?...
Un likely but possible.. and we have fantastic equity against that hand.

Yeah I wasn't being very careful with the equity calculation and missed some stuff. The point I was making was unless we only put the villain exactly on a flush we shouldn't fold; once we add any other hand, our equity skyrockets.

I ignored 99 and AA because they canceled out, but now that I think about it, we should discount AA over 99 since he didn't reraise preflop, so that just pushes us a little more toward getting it in.

No way we could bet/fold...if we bet, then we give ourselves the odds to call. Unless we bet $5 to be cute...

Against an unknown I am never folding unless the river is another spade. After a few orbits though, V1 should not be a total unknown?
- If he is a straight forward type, I may check,and if he bets I figure he hit his flush and I consider folding. But I do have 10 outs to a Boat, so if he value bets me low, and I think he will stack off, I may call.
- If I think he has an Ace, I may still check as I don't want him to think I have the flush and would hate to see him fold Ax because he is scared of the flush.
- The danger is that he may have a singleton spade, so I really don't want to give him a free card in that case, but he is probably not folding to any bet in that case. A with a Q or J of spades is not folding to much of anything.

So I think the smart play is to check call. A shove probably loses value from Ax hands, and loses more money to made flushes, and a flush draw is probably not folding anyways, so no sense in trying to price it out. If I river a boat, I can probably get him to put the rest of his stack in anyways on the made flush. or two pair.

I'd bet something ridiculous like $90 on turn and call a shove. We're playing against a range here. It's hard to make a flush so most of his range is Ax. A flush is never folding so we want to extract value from worse. If he has one spade, he only has 8 outs. A lot of times he has Ax no spade. he possibly could even have two pairs or a set though unlikely

I hate shoving the turn because I think you fold out Ax too often. Even something like AdTs might fold

I agree with slim. It's obviously a bet, but shoving folds out all worse hands.

Just bet $85 again. It looks weak, like you're making a blocking bet because you hate the clubs.

Obviously we're committed after we bet turn...

Agree here that jamming is bad. Villain will be scared of the flush too. $100ish/call, jam any offsuit river.