At the end of this hand, i saw the other guys cards. I was surprised, so I'm posting it in reverse to see what everyone thinks (i am villain, he is hero)

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Pre-hand:
Hero is poker dealer. Villain is casino regular where we normally deal. Is pretty tight, but features a much wider limp-3bet range then most live players. AK, 99+, some AQ, and a number of other hands (55+, the rare suited connectors or suited 1 offs). AK is nearly an auto limp 3-bet for villain. Villain has a perceived tendency to lead out with huge hands with a 1/2 pot or 2/3 pot bet. Villain will also check after 3 betting more then most.

live 2/5 hand

hero has 1K, villain has about 800.

hero (btn) w/ AA. Villain UTG limps for 5. 2 calls to hero. Hero raises to 25. Sb fold, BB call. Villain 3bets to 80. Folds to hero. Hero flats. BB fold.

Flop: Q/J/10 rainbow. Villain leads for 80

Hero?

Hero calls. We have too much equity versus villains range and we have draws to the nuts if we are beat now. With small stacks, hero might fold this.

im so confused

Call here but be prepared to give up on the turn unless you bingo a K (re-eval based on his action if you hit an A).

No need in this particular spot to get cute preflop - Villain likes his hand, so 4-bet him and cause him to put some more in the pot with it.

A fold here wouldn't be bad at all, considering that the board has absolutely nailed a number of hands that are in his preflop range.

As played, call and re-evaluate. I would generally give up given too much pressure. Stacks are too deep for you to be stacking off to a tight player on this board.

Also, preflop - Raise to ~35 over 3 limpers. 25 is too small (even by online standards) over 3 limpers. And I agree with 2Outs. You should 4-bet him to ~200. His range is strong and you have the nuts.

EDIT: meant hero in the last post where "you" is placed.

Also, this board is a terrible board to bluff someone.
BTW - some thoughts:
The limp-re-reraise is not a great line pre-flop for deep stack poker imo. Since live players don't fold to 3-bets as much, your essentially creating large pots OOP and very low stack to pot ratios. This is good for AA and KK since there are many good flops for stacking off with 100 to 150 BB stacks (so we want shallow SPR). But this is not good with hands like AQ or 99-JJ. There are so many flops that are tough to play OOP with large pot and shallow stacks. It's good that you minimize c-bets in these pots, but this is exploitable as well.

If your a good player, you should have an advantage in post-flop poker and this is where your profitability comes from. Why would you want to shallow the stacks and make it easier for fish to play? This is a play that is ok for bad post-flop players, but terrible for good-post flop players.

I agree with the theoretical poker side of this, but at 1/3, 2/5 NL Live, i find that limp-3betting with my very obeservably tight style is +EV. So +EV its comical. It also leads to me being in a bunch of bad spots, but I've gotten used to that. Most importantly it serves to disguise my cards a bit better, which helps against other solid, thinking players.

So you want to get yourself in a bunch of bad spots?

My post may theoretical but it is very much applicable to 2/5 NL games. As you've said, you put yourself into a bunch of bad spots. Even if your used to it, I don't see how that is optimal at all. I'm sure you can make limp-3betting +EV and profitable, but I disagree that it is more +EV and better than open raising. Like I said - I guess it's ok with QQ+, AK, but why 99-JJ, AQ? I guarantee you that all those bad spots are made up of mostly 99-JJ, AQ + bluffs. Theory or practice - building pots OOP with not great post-flop hands = not profitable - no matter how you put it.

Also, this is not that good of strategy against solid, thinking players. If I see someone doing it too much, I'm more inclined to just call their 3-bets or sometimes limp behind when I see you limp EP (which as a tight player - you probably don't do often enough to balance when your gonna 3-bet etc.). Also - it doesn't disguise anything. Your range is clear - strong PPs, AK, AQ - and even better since you don't c-bet air often. If your deep enough, this is super-bad since now good opponents will definately call your 3-bets a lot - putting u in bad spots.

I want to maximize fold equity; downside is bad spots. And i'm used to thinking villains who attempt to auto-float pre and post flop. Against that kind of approach, what is normally thought of as a bad spot feels much more solid to me.

who is BB? That would affect my decision to flat or not, but in a vacuum I like it. Give both of your opponents a chance to flop a pair and stack off to you. It is pretty tough to out flop aces, and it is relatively easier to flop a pair that doesn't beat aces or some weakish draw (like flush draw or lesser).

And then... the flop sucks. Bad. Against some opponents you could probably fold here, but I would call and hope not a lot of money goes in.

I do object though - this hand plays MUCH better with smaller stacks, and with much smaller stacks we would jam here. It is because we are so deep and thus affected badly by reversed implied odds that this flop is so dangerous.

Why do you want to maximize fold equity with your good hands? Don't you want value? Your comments make me think your scared, which may not be the case. Also, there is no floating pre-flop. Your essentially saying your game is loose.

But I don't want to argue with you since you seem very content with your strategy. If it works in your game, do it i guess. If you want to play in Vegas or somewhere else or develop your game, then consider my advice.

I'll give more background. Early on in my poker career I switched to playing tight poker to limit my losses and sometimes show a small gainer. What I thought was good poker back then, was really just scared poker. Essentially, my game just massively magnified reverse-implied-odds, the essence of my game was a treatise on how to felt yourself.
Further, I'd regularly find, that playing ultra-tight poker resulted in people folding all but monsters to me, and that i'd lose value in all sorts of spots. The solution to the problem is simple: bluffing. (F---ing Duh, you might say). That was 4 years ago, when I was a losing player (this has notably and demonstrably changed since then).

As played, the Hero in this story folded AA, and showed them. I was shocked he folded (true). If I'dve flatted the 3bet, on that relatively nasty flop to perceived villain range, i'd call, hope to bink the K, and generally try to limit potsize by checking behind the turn if available, and possibly river if the villain checked.

As an example of beauty, let me repost this hand from my perspective:

Playing at what I think is a decent and somewhat aggressive table. I am playing tight--my image is that i'm the tightest player at the table. I have been card dead for about an hour (miss all pocket pairs, limp fold to a raise hands like A/10o when out of position to the raiser with callers behind), and haven't made it to the turn for an this past hour. I decide to use my image to add a couple profits.

live 2/5 hand
hero has 800, villain has about 1K.

OOP, we limp J/9o. Button, who is a poker dealer, raises. He has been playing what i'd call a wanna-be LAG style tonight. He likes to open pre, especially on the button or one from the button--he's raised 75%+ of his buttons. I say wanna-be LAG because in my opinion he is not quite aggressive enough for as loose as he is, and sometimes he makes horrendous decisions deepstacked. The table has some people who will 3bet with less then the most premium of hands, so when there are a few callers to me, I felt the pot was for sale.

live 2/5 hand

hero has 800, villain has about 1K.

Hero (UTG) limps for 5. 2 calls to BTN. Villain raises to 25. Sb fold, BB call. Hero 3bets to 80. Folds to BTN. BTN flats. BB fold.

As soon as he didn't auto-fold, i was worried I'd stepped in some s---. I know his flatting range is anything he wants to play, from suited connectors through AA (there was earlier in the night a big hand that he won where he'd flatted a 3bet pre, w/ AA)

Flop: Q/J/10 rainbow. Hero leads 80. Villain folds showing AA.

I was thrilled to see that flop, actually, as 1) my mediocre hand now has some equity and 2) all the hands I'm repping appear to have smoked that flop. So I figure another bet of 80 will apply a little pressure and (Hopefully) take er down.

Villain thinks for a brief moment, and folds, showing AA. I play it well, and it never occurred to him (or, apparently the rest of the table), that I was blatantly full of s---.

I agree, villain should've 4bet me, to about 2-300 preflop--it gives all sorts of opportunity to destroy the hands I'm representing, and, as has now been made clear, would've instantly won the hand.

But I was so shocked at the action at the time, I was trying to see if his play made sense to anyone else on here.

I agree - you played post-flop well. It's pretty standard to c-bet when you have middle pair and flush draw. Most likely you will fold a lot of strong hands here including AQ and AA. But this is mainly a function of flop texture. You happen to hit the right board.

Your pre-flop play is not good imo.
Most of the time - when you limp re-raise J9o - your going to hit air or top pair with a J or a 9 or a OESD. What's our plan now? Do we bet? Do we check?

With Air - Do we c-bet? Possibly - but this puts us in bad spot when we get called and have to give up. People who call flop bet in 3-bet pots = not folding turn most likely.

With Top pair - Do we bet or check? If we bet, we only get better to call (value-owning ourselves) and get air to fold. Since we have no kicker, our hand is pretty much crushed when we get called - which is pretty much all over pairs and top pairs. If we check, do we call a bet? Villain might be taking us to value town if we check - who knows? We have a marginal hand - hence the tough spot.

With OESD - Do we bet or check? It's a marginal spot either way.


So most of the time, with J9o - you are getting owned. Some of the time when you hit a big hand or you hit the right flop (your example), you can take down a pot. So most of time, you lose or are in tough spot (negative) and some of the time (you win - pos). Not a good scenario imo.

Just because things went your way this hand doesn't justify the pre-flop mistakes - which are 1. Playing J9o UTG. 2. Limping J9o UTG. 3. Limp-3-betting someone who isolated 3 limpers (hence range is stronger than you expect) with J9o.

As for mastering the art of pot control and bluffs. This is not "pot control" and this is not a great "bluff" spot pre-flop.

Now, I commend your post-flop play, but it's not anything to brag about.

This hand was not a demonstration of pot control, at all. Agreed. That was an unrelated comment.

Though a dealer, this villain is not as subtle as you give him credit for. Unless he has truly trashy holdings, he raises the button. This is observable from that he has raised ~3/4 of his buttons when unraised to him. After a few hours of play with him, this, by itself, is exploitable. Further, the adjustments of the table to this has been to have a bunch of people smooth him preflop--which is, IMHO, perfectly acceptable to Villain's style, as it means he gets big pots whenever he has position--there has been some showing of 3betting him here, slightly more then I'd normally expect for a live game. Also important, this table calls are also exploitable.

Lets look at the possibilities. First, you are only including the ones where I get called. You skipped the possibility that the table folds to me here. This is about half the time (observable), and often villain hand dependent. So my overlay is that 50% of the time, i win 60-70 uncontested, the other half the time is a bad spot, b/c i'm making a play with trash. By itself, this fold equity makes the play profitable, it really helps the overlay of the entire hand.

Alright, lets look at the bad spots. Depending on the villain, i have no problem c/f one pair on any flop. With one pair, I may lead as well, then fold to a raise. Importantly, this villain just simply isn't bluffraising me in this spot when I am repping an overpair or set. So if I flop top pair, i either c/f or bet and shut down if he doesn't fold. My lines, against this specific villain, are tilted towards c/f when i hold just top pair.

In this exact hand, my monster flops likely get paid off. All the times I flop 2pair +, i get paid well, in the 400+ dollar range. Quite simply, he has no clue of my holdings, and this will cause me to get paid on the rare occasion I flop a miracle.

On a coordinated board, I can continue to represent my perceived holdings (as occurred). Apparently this is massively +EV, apparently even against AA. i'm still in disbelief here at the outcome.

on all terrible boards (e.g. 2 overs, or all unders), I can c/f or c/r depending on my feel of the villain and my read of his play.

Look man - I'm just generalizing with my posts. Your play happened to work this time against this opponent. That's great. Does this make your pre-flop play optimal or even good? No. For reasons mentioned above and more, this is just not good from a theoretical and practical point of view. Just because something works once doesn't mean it's optimal. I can limp-re-raise with 72o and do the same thing. Does that make my play any better? Not at all.

There are so many reasoning/logical flaws in your post, but I'm really tired and don't want to argue with you. I could literally write a research paper on it.

This is my last post on this. Clearly, we are agreeing to disagree. You can justify your pre-flop play all you want. But I promise you that the great majority of winning poker players would disagree with you here. It's fundamentally, theoretically, and practically not good. It may show profit I guess. But I doubt it is more +EV than if you play fundamentally sound poker and just open raise. So, if you want to take the less +EV route, that's fine. It's +EV anyways right? If it works for you, you can do whatever you want. Just make sure to PM me if/when your coming/moving to Vegas (and take shots at 5/10 games - more specifically Wynn, Venetian). We need more regulars who think like you.

limping utg with j9 o is not profitable in live FR.

I would probably fold AA here. You got lucky and both hit the perfect flop, and had him hold the only hand in his range where he's not shoving.

That is a TERRIBLE board to cbet. When he flats your utg cbet, what can you get to fold besides a hero fold with AA? Keep in mind that while you are repping a really strong hand, he's also repping a small range by calling a limp/raise from utg.

I actually like limp/raising a pretty wide range from UTG as well, definitely much more than what is standard. I don't think it's massively +EV or anything, but it is fantastic for table image and probably neutral EV in the spots I choose. As you stated before, this puts you in some real awkward/gross spots when you get flatted and you need to know how to play these spots. Betting on this board is not a good way to handle this bad spot you put yourself in. Check/fold here next time and be glad if you can get a free peel to the turn.

A) Dealers suck so all the reads you have on "villain" don't mean a thing

B) this is such an obvious call and peel can you please get on with the hand and tell us how ridiculous "hero's" runner-runner boat was?

oh my bad, i just read the spoiler...yeah it's a call coz you are generally 50-50 on this flop

lol at dealer folding incorrectly but that's what dealers do

I have read two other live threads, one was a player on the BTN folding QQ face up on a 6high board, this fold with AA isnt so bad (but I call and see a turn myself). J9s limp-raise I dont like a lot of the time you flop - nothing or you get into trouble with Jack high flops or you hit a draw but now faced with raise after you c-bet.

I don't understand why hero didn't 4bet preflop.

I had him on a pocket pair--villian flats me with all of them, starting at 2s. probably most suited connectors, but i don't have enough experience against villain to have a clue just how often that is a connector.

I was actually pretty confident, before i made the bet, that it would take the pot down. I could've had ATC for that one.

My image was extra-tight, and i was against a player whose opening range was very loose, and callers who call his opens wide ranges, but would also be very likely to 3 bet any premium holdings. When i got the call, i started to re-evaluate.

Games packed with bright, subtle players require different moves and actions.