8 handed at local casino, 2/5 with $10 straddle on almost every hand.

V1: MWG, relatively new to table, seems NITty ($1000)
V2: Young Indian guy, nice clothes and watch, seems LAG/ with fishy side ($700)
Hero: YWG, TAGish image for most of afternoon but now on tilt lol ($400)

$10 straddle and one limp call UTG +1
HJ V1 raises to 30$.
BTN V2 calls $30
Bb Hero calls $25
Straddler and UTG +1 fold

Flop ($112) Js9c4h

Hero checks
V1 cbets $40
V2 raises to $140
Hero shoves for $375

V1 tank calls, V2 snap folds.
Hero shows T8c, V1 shows JJ

Turn is 6s, River 4d
I know preflop is terrible, so no need to tell me (: I was on tilt and did not get up when I was exhausted. As played, how bad is the flop jam? I thought I could get V1 to fold AJ, KJ, and even some of his QQ-AA. He had been tight and had seen me showdown only nutted hands. Thanks

I would not have much of a calling range at all with only 40BB effective even with decent hands like small pp's or sc's...

just fold your suited gapper from the BB at 40BB...especially with the threat of a player behind re-popping it with so much dead money

Pre is awful as is flop. Flop is probably 4 times worse than pre


Just because you know pre is awful doesnt mean it should be neglected in the posts. If you hadnt made that call pre you wouldnt have burned your entire stack making this awful flop play. That’s like a drug addict going to therapy and telling the therapist “i know drugs are awful so i dont need you to lecture me or tell me how bad they are”

Its not as bad as some people will have you believe. If V1 didn't have exactly JJ you probably take this down.

Thanks for the replies. Agreed on the preflop play. As far as the flop play being horrible, could you elaborate? I feel like I take this flop down except for when I run into a set. I think I have enough fold equity that, when combined with my equity when called, makes it reasonable. Thanks

It's bad because people don't raise/fold that much getting 2.87 to 1. I expect V2 to call if he has anything at all. You caught him on a random bluff apparently. Theres still V1 to contend with who as a MAWG probably has TP+. Do we expect him to fold an overpair or AJ? There are no straights on the board and just one 2p combo so he's not going to be real scared of the flop.

The only reason he tanked is to look weak hoping for an overcall from V2. He may also have been deciding between flatting and reshoving, but obviously never considering folding.

It's just a bad spot to bluff when villains show this much strength and you block nothing but other straight draws.

It is if you’re going to play postflop like this. I doubt we are getting folds more than 30% of the time. We have ten high. Sometimes you just gotta give up.

A lot of pre calls in the forums arent exactly terrible in of itself. But when in a lot of scenarios OP is playing suboptimally post, pre itself becomes a lot worse

Preflop would be fine if we were 100bbs+ deep. We're almost guaranteed to go 4+ways to the flop and the SPR would still be relatively high with a hand that plays well in these situations. We could even consider squeezing to $140 too.

The only reason why I think we should fold preflop is because we're too shallow to take advantage of this hand (only 40bbs deep).

Flop is a bit disgusting but I think I grumble fold. It would've been a nice x/r spot if someone didn't beat us to the raise first.

if it's T8 suited I'm probably playing this the same way but maybe calling the flop is better than jamming, just don't think we ever get v1 to fold, so might as well try and drag v2 along imo

folding pre is never an option for me in this spot but I'm almost always topping up, so never down to 40 bigs but it's a decent gamble here so NH

I mean, how bad could pre be when UTG1 folds getting 6:1 to close the action on a hand he wanted to play?

Once V2 raises he isn't likely to fold to your shove, your stack isn't big enough. And a V2 type villain isn't raising flop with KJ type hands.

More importantly though is that your being tilted is probably obvious and that kills your FE. I expect a tilted villain to show up with hands like QJ/KJ and draws, possibly even some worse and bluffs.

Thanks to everyone who was replied and elaborated. I think one aspect that got mentioned I didn’t think about as well as I should have was how my tilted image factors into Vs thought process in general. As someone said, in this specific scenario V2 snap folded, but he’s the type of player who is fishy enough to raise and call a jam with KJ or QJ, so my fold equity against him is probably lower in the long run than it is against V1, who obviously actually has the stronger range. I do think that I get V1 to fold TP or an overpair, but only because of V2s raise before my action. It’s kind of a paradox in a way, because my raise only works a decent amount of the time against V1 because of the raise in front of me from another Villain, but the fact that there are 2 people repping strength also means my odds of getting this through both of them likely aren’t high enough, even when combining the FE with my E when called. As far as my stack depth, I very rarely play shallower than 150BB (this game allows initial 200BB buy in with table stakes as the max after it starts running). I didn’t want to add on because of my tilt, but obviously that should have been a clue to just get up instead of burning $400 for no reason

If you had 700 or 1000 maybe you can get V1 to fold an overpair but with 400 and the pot already 200+ he is just not folding a hand like AA vs your ship on this board often enough to make it profitable. And V2 sometimes has a hand or a better bluff than you. He might raise/call a hand like QT and beat you with Q high.

V1 bet $40 on the flop.
V2 raised to $140
Hero crai to $375

If V1 has AA and V2 has AJ and neither of them ever folds, hero still has 38% equity. Hes risking $375 to win $860. If they both showed their hands and told hero they werent folding, hero's crai is still +EV.

If they have both have big hands like KK and JJ, hero still has 28% equity. He needs 30% of he knows for sure they are both calling.

We have to throw in some FE, because lets face it, Hero's play looks like he has a monster. Either 44/99 or J9. If V1 cant fold AA after he bet, got raised and then got reraised all in, then hes terrible.

Throw in whatever amount of FE that you want because there's no way they are always calling and like I said, this is not nearly as bad as some will have you believe. In fact, if V2 had called instead of raising, I would love Hero's crai.

Obviously with draw hands multiway this is exactly the scenario we want when called, and rarely the one that happens. If one player is drawing almost dead and all our outs are live vs the other that is clearly great. But if we are called HU by any pair we are behind with about the same equity. HU vs QQ 27%, HU vs J9 32%, HU vs JJ 27%.

And as long as we are looking at best case scenarios let's look at a worst case scenario. Vs a set and QT we have 21%.

So...not quite as bad as I thought initially but I still think this is a -EV play when we have so little FE.

That's what I said....its not as bad as people will think

Also, Im not as convinced as you do that we have such little FE. V2 raised to $140 and still folded. That's the main guy that we should have little fold equity against. I think if V1 didn't have the nuts he may well have folded.

Of course if V1 folded, V2 may have called, but either way, I think we have more FE than you do. There's not even a FD on the flop so a crai over a bet and raise looks like a HUGE hand.

As the hand played out, Hero risked $375 to win $627. He has 10% less EV than needed to breakeven.

He asked in the thread title if his flop jam was terrible. I'd rate it at mediocre but certainly not terrible. Whats terrible about it is that it seems like he did it because he was on tilt and that he probably doesnt understand all of these factors that we are discussing.

You play with a bunch of nits in day games. *You* may have lots of fold equity with this move, but I don't think our tilting hero does.

Judging our FE from V2 folding is pretty results oriented don't you think? He was likely on some random bluff. How often both V1 and V2 are just c betting and bluffing is what determines our FE. If V1 c bets 30% and folds his value hands 25% and V2 raise/folds 30% we get folds .3*.3 + .7*.25 = .265 or about 1 time in 4. My guess this is pretry optimistic given villain and hero descriptions. Most LAGfish villains I would expect to raise/fold here getting almost 3 to 1 almost never. Only their most worthless bluffs. Maybe like 5%. With V1 harder to guess, he could c bet this board basically any %.

The chief mistake of this hand is not topping up. Our low stack size really handcuffs our options.

If you're too tilted to trust yourself with a full stack, quit immediately.

Terrible or bad or somewhat bad, IMO the only thing that really matters is whether we played the hand in a way that maximizes our EV and if we didn't we screwed up to some degree.

But yeah, "terrible" may be an overstatement if OP thinks I mean he's just giving his stack away. No, it isn't nearly that bad but we are losing a not insignificant amount of money and raising our variance with these plays.

Fold pre, though 10-8 suited is fine to play if you're deeper.

Flop jam is pretty bad, but not the worst thing ever. I get that you're tilted and you felt that flopping an open ended was one of three better flops you could hope for, but with these stacks and a bet/raise in front of you, there just much of any fold equity. A big reason to play draws aggressively is to generate folds when we don't have a made hand, and we have our hand's raw equity to fall back on when we're called.

100% agree.

We seem to have agreement on the idea that if Hero was 100bb+, then both calling PF and then shoving the flop are fine.

However, as others have noted, you compounded your PF calling error with shoving the flop when you likely have little FE.

You have exactly no fold equity on the flop. If V1 didn't jam then V2 was calling with a better hand every time.

obvious error PF, no need to beat dead horse.

Flop is either shove or fold, and I doubt you played this hand to fold that flop even to a bet then raise. You have decent equity, even against Top set. Rip it in and run it twice if possible