Around 1:00am in the morning. This 2/5 game is incredibly soft and playing like a 1/2 game. Lots of limping around, everyone is trying to see cheap flops. I've been taking advantage by playing speculative hands in position and punishing limpers with anything strong enough to raise. The strongest two players are to my direct left, including villain in this hand, but they aren't strong enough to give me any problems. This game allows you to straddle from anywhere with the action moving to the player to your direct left.

Hero ($1700): Mid 20's guy crushing the table for the most part. Straddling every button, raising and c-betting good flops, shown down mostly winners for nice sized pots. Only guy at the table raising more than he is limping.

Villain ($1200): Early 30's guy that used to play regularly for years and has just recently started playing again in December (told Hero). I won a nice pot off him earlier. He has mostly stayed out of my way since that hand and is playing pretty passive, probably trying to play stack-a-donk.

OTTH,

Hero missed his chance to straddle the button last hand for some reason so ...

Hero (CO, $1700) straddles $10
Villain (BTN, $1200) calls $10
SB ($1700) calls $10
BB ($500) calls $10
EP ($800) calls $10
MP ($600) calls $10
Hero raises straddle to $80 with AJ
Villain (BTN) calls $80
SB calls $80
BB folds
EP calls $80
MP folds

Ranges are wide here, but the two competent guys to my left likely have all PP's and big suited broadways, maybe the larger SC's like T9s, 98s. Maybe some Axs but I doubt it for $80.

Flop ($335): K Q 4

SB checks
EP checks
Hero checks
V (BTN) checks

Turn ($335): 5

SB checks
EP checks
Hero checks
V (BTN) bets $160
SB folds
EP tank folds
Hero tank calls

After checking the flop and throwing out a semi-weak half pot turn bet, I am ranging villain on mid PP's like TT-66. I think he would have surely bet any Kx and most Qx with all the draws out there after the PFR checks the flop. I was doing some mental math in my head and figured I had 10 clean outs (4 T's, 3 A's, 3 J's) and 10 bluff outs (spades). I was only getting 3:1 pot odds on the call vs. 4:1 hand odds to improve meaning I can only make this call if I intend to bluff spades (I think?)

River ($655): 9

Yahtzee!

Hero quickly and and confidently throws out 3 blacks and 4 greens ($400)
Villain goes into the tank
Hero tries to keep his heart from beating out of his chest

Thoughts?

Love it. I think villain bets most Kx on the flop. He'd probably bet the turn with Qx/55 and even some 66-JJ after another round of checks. The 9s is a perfect scare card because it completes both the straight and the flush. I think he folds most of his turn betting range. Bad luck if he hit with 99/JT/spades or hero calls with Qx.

I hope you were watching villain when the river card hit. Usually you can get some kind of read.

The only problem here is that in your HH you raised pre and cbet your FD. If he's smart enough to realize that you would have cbet a FD here you're gonna get called often. If he's not, then you're probably gonna be good here a ton

That was a HU 3! pot vs. a straddle raise 4-way pot. Kinda comparing apples to oranges.

In general against a compitant villain I absolute hate it. You're repping absolutely nothing imo. Based on your description of yourself, you'd cbet on the flop or turn all your kings, you'd cbet all your flush draws on the flop, you'd cbet all your sets, and you'd cbet your j-10 on the flop (especially with all that dead money out there).

So you're repping exactly 99 for value and maybe turning some type of aq with ace of spades into a bluff but your description makes it sound like youd rather check call that. So in my opinion this bet purely gets the hands you actually beat to fold and any hand that are ahead (any pair) I'm calling with.

Works all day against a crappy 1/2 or 2/5 player if they have a pp, any regs I think should be calling this (all based on the reads you've provides). Still not a bad move if you need to balance your range here but in a vacuum don't like it.

I suppose it all comes down to what V thinks you would do with AJss, ATss, or JTss on the flop, because those are the only spade combos you should realistically have. Maybe A8ss. If you've been as aggressive as you say in OP, he likely expects you to bet all of those on the flop except for A8ss because you have so much equity.

I wouldn't be surprised if V called with Qx. You're repping hands that shouldn't be in your range when you check flop and flat turn. If you had a FD you are almost 100% betting flop with $335 in dead money out there, same with Kx, and you're checking back Qx on river...so you're repping like Q9 and 99.

I generally don't go crazy in small SPR multiway pots without a made hand since your FE is non-existent and you are likely to get check/shoved on by any top pair hand.

Now the villains have no way of knowing this but I'd probably just check the flop and see what develops on the turn with most of my draws (exceptions being AJs and ATs).

wj94, you don't think BTN would bet Qx on the flop after I check?

Garbage buzz phrase being thrown around everywhere. He airballed and is holding A-high, what hand that he beats could justify a call of any amount? You expect J-high to make a crying call?

He has the initiative on the river with nothing and wants to bluff, no player should want any hand to call. Do you expect him to throw out a micro-bet and get "value" out of 78s so that he can table his bluff for everyone to see?

River plays itself once you get there like this. Every draw got there, and now you're repping those draws against a weak range.

I would definitely flat pre in HH1. I'm noticing a trend where you're overly phobic of playing OOP without initiative I like the turn check, though, so good work.

Pre-preflop of main HH: Don't blind raise 2bbs just so that you can gain preflop position on an additional 3 players who are all bad and passive. That 2bb price you're paying is very very real, and what you get out of it isn't that great.

OTF, honestly, I kinda just wanna blast it for like $450. We have such an insane range and polarity advantage, that if someone somehow managed to have any of the 3 combos of 44, then NH. We can practically treat AA+ like the effective nuts and do this with a wide value range, and nut GSSD with no flush blockers is probably the best hand to do it as a one-street bluff.

If the game is playing SO passive that people will show up with KQ, then I guess that's not great.

As played, just x/f turn. Your math assumes that you win 100% of the time that a J or spade hits, which is kinda crazy sauce. BTW, I think a weak K is much more likely to throw out a weak protection bet in this crazy big pot than sixes are.

So you typically check behind the flop and turn with spades, despite a brick turn, nobody showing interest, and only one player behind to act?

Riiiiiiigggghhhhhhhht

I just bet turn myself or c/f, this is just fps

No I just would have folded the turn bc I don't think I can credibly rep much on the river.

If your opponents know that you play your draws slowly or have seen you showdown a lot of made hands that you play slowly then I think this is a great play. Just the way you portrayed yourself (c betting in good spots, trending towards agressive), makes me hesitant to believe someone will give you credit for slow playing a big draw. Also your general image of straddling every button, raising to 80 pre, etc will give most players the image that you'd be firing on most of your made hands here. Once again, all my opinion based on the way you described yourself and the dynamic.

In short, comes down to how you think you opponent views the likelihood of you checking through hands with draws on two streets.

I wouldn't assume hero cbets non-nut flush draws or JT in a 4 handed pot. Why bet when a c/r forces you to fold? Checking for a free card is a very legitimate move with JT/spades in this situation, then betting the river to get value.

I'm willing to bet in a reversed hand history if hero bets the turn with AQ and then villain bets 2/3 the pot when a straight/flush hits the river, most people in the thread would say to fold.

Great play OP.

It is but it isn't. If you had Axss here are you cbetting? I'm not even sure you wouldn't be cbetting many of your FDs. Regardless though, it only really matters if he's capable of connecting the dots. If he's not, I think it's fine. I just don't think it's gonna work against smarter Vs

Interesting dynamic going on here: my perspective was of targeting V's weak capped range vs. the responses here are of villain's perception of my range.

Not sure what to make of it but it's certainly the two sides of the same coin.

I'm taking a bit of a break from posting, and I'm not going to comment on the entire hand, but I wanted to discuss this analysis.

Careful about double counting.

There are 11 spades left in the deck, including the As, Js, Ts.

You were counting the As, Js and Ts as spades outs AND improving outs.

So that's 8 unique spade outs (13 spades - 2 on the flop - 3 from A,J,T).

Also, if villain does have ~66-TT, you likely lose ~0.5 spade outs because 1/2 of villain's pocket pairs have no spade, and so a river spade can give him a set. I don't think villain folds a set (though if you think he has 66-TT... and he's tanking... and he folded 99... then, OK, well done!).

So that leaves us somewhere around 7.5-8.0 spade outs.

I also think it's optimistic to include 10 clean outs.

For one, a J can't always be good. If villain can have a middle pair like 66-TT, then certainly he can have Qx (AQ, QJs), which are fairly equivalent made hands with plenty of combos calling pre. Very reasonable to think he'll sometimes / often check Qx combos on the flop.

For another, from time to time, your A is dirty (villain has AQ).

Also, it's not impossible for villain to have spades himself, which creates RIO (Ts), dirties outs, and undermines your plan to bluff.

I'm not saying all of those destroy your equity - they all exist at various levels of frequencies, none occurring very often.

It's hard to discount it exactly, but maybe somewhere around 7-8 clean outs is more reasonable.

So rather than 10 and 10, it may be closer to 7.5-8.0 and 7-8. And I still think that's a bit optimistic.

I won't get into the line or thought process, etc., but I'll say that since your line is based on this analysis, it may be worth refining it.

Given the size of the pot I think it's a lot more likely that V checks back Qx or FD on flop in position than it is for you to check Kx+ or a FD on the flop OOP...

I agree folding the turn is the preferable play. I also wouldn't count jacks as a legitimate out.

Yes, exactly. Large pot, multi-way, best position.

AQ might well be the nut check back hand. AQ is nut second pair on a board with only one possible overcard... and AQ has a one copy of that overcard in its hand. If an A falls, it gives AQ two pair + implied odds against worse Ax. The A in AQ also blocks a nut straight out.

I just can't see AQ checking 4-way with the flush draw and straight draws out there. AQ is as good as it gets. Collectively three players getting a free card are going to pull ahead of you a meaningful percentage of the time. I also completely disagree with you calling Qx (especially AQ) and 66 comparable made hands as reason for checking the flop.

I forgot to include a live read / pseudo science factor in OP that affected my turn decision. It's hard to assign any reliability measure to this, but I generally just trust my intuition when I get these "a-ha" moments and let the chips fall where they may.

I was playing 10/10 the other night and picked up two black 77's. I raised to $40 in LP. BTN, SB and BB called. Flop was 863cc, I bet $120, BTN called, SB/BB folded. Turn was a 2 (no club). Now I thought I probably had the best hand and he probably has a flush draw so I want to bet for value, but I don't want to bet "too much." So I threw out a 1/2 PSB of $200 into $400 which villain called. River was a Q (non-club). I checked, villain bet $400 and I called hoping to bluff catch.

He had QT and it dawned on me that giving a flush draw + overs 3:1 is giving him perfect direct odds (9 flush + 6 overcard outs). If I wanted to make him "pay," I should have bet $300-350 OTT. It made me remember many other hands I've played with mid PP's where I threw out a weak 'value' bet where it was obvious I had a capped range and where I was unintentionally giving better odds to draw + overs then I intended. Now if I am making this mistake, it is fairly likely other poker players playing a similar limit that I am are also making this mistake, and thus when I saw his weak 1/2 PSB turn bet I made a read that he probably had a mid range PP that was betting for protection but didn't want to overplay his hand.

Now this is just a heuristic that dawned on me in the spur of the moment, and it's entirely possible that he could have had Kx or Qx or spades or whatever, but in poker you gotta make reads and stick with it right? So that was my justification for counting outs and thinking I could push him off a weak made hand.

* PS: you are right, I double counted Willy. So 10 's + 3 T's + 2 A's + 2 J's = 17/46 = ~37%

15 outs out of forty-something (however you want to count it) cards remaining is actually more like 2:1, not 3:1. You double-counted. The right way to do odds is non-outs vs. outs, not total cards vs. outs. You gave him a very good price to call AND you gave implied odds too.

As for the actual hand, I notice that everyone is talking about how any value hand you "should have" here would have bet flop or turn. I will go even further and say that if Villain is a good player, he also should know you probably don't have a big hand because you raised your straddle. How often have you been raising your straddle versus checking it? And have you been using the same sizing every time? With the king, queen, and 9 of spades all on the board, wouldn't you have checked your straddle with tons of the flush (and JT) combos you're now supposed to be repping?

On the other hand, at the end of the day, I am not sure we can give Villain credit for recognizing this. Most people just see a big bet and get worried (which is probably the right thing to do against most players). On the other hand it's possible that Villain is giving you so much credit that he's tanking with a small flush. Whatever he has and whatever the results are, though, I think he played this hand poorly. I have no idea with what hands he would have limp/called his button preflop with bad relative position, then checked back the flop, then made such a small bet on the turn. No matter what he did on the river, he probably made a mistake somewhere else in the hand. So I think it's a bit fallacious to claim this is a bad bluff because you rep nothing (which you kinda do); Villain may not be thinking on this level and so this very well may work.

The real question is why you called 160 on the turn if you needed a scare card like that to bluff the river. Most rivers won't be spades and you'll be out a bunch of money (and you don't even know what your real outs are other than your 3 nut outs, so on some rivers you lose more and if Villain is weak enough that you can bluff, you probably don't have good implied odds on your real outs). So if you're not sure bluffing scare cards will work--which I think you shouldn't be--then you're probably better off just folding the turn.

I think anyone who thinks we're not repping anything on this river is crazy. Downright bananas crazy.

Villain is really going to put us on A5 (or whatever) and snap us off with a bare K? I don't really know what villain puts us on when we call the turn, but whatever it is, it got there.

Also, I would not recommend auto blasting all of your flush and straight draws on this flop, and any unmade hand that checked the flop shouldn't really delay cbet (all of my "bluffs" for delayed cbet would be range mergy type stuff in this spot).

185 otf
fold turn
river is fine if you put him on 66-tt, but i think he has kt, kj, aq a lot; and i dont expect him to fold, and i also think that he may have hit his hand on the river as well

null range

Raising vs. checking my straddle has been about a 50/50 proposition and depends on the strength of my cards. AJo is probably the bottom of my raising range with this many limpers and I didn't expect that many to limp, nor to call $80.

It's all situational though. If players A and B limped, I may just check the straddle with A4s. If players C and D limped, I may raise the straddle instead with A4s and look to barrel.

If someone was paying attention, yes I probably would check those hands. However, very few hands have gone to showdown and the previous OOP 3! with A8 may be mind****ing villain in this hand. Per previous comment, I also occasionally do things for deception like raise JTs OTB here. I try to avoid "standard" lines and just do what feels right in the moment.

That's kind of what I was banking on. I wasn't repping a ton based on an ABC TAG game, however I had shown down some strange hands like K7s two pair that lost to broadway that I raised in MP over a straddle. My actual raising range is probably far tighter than my perceived raising range which is always a dynamic I shoot for if I can help it as it becomes one of those "he can always have it" situations.

I truly thought most of my outs were live, at least the Aces and Tens. Jacks are debatable, but since I read him for a mid PP I have to assume my Jacks are good as well. This guy was pretty passive so I wouldn't expect him to put me to a tough decision anyway on the river. I think A, J and T gives me showdown value and spades give me non-showdown FE value.

I got a little lost in your math, I think regarding double counting or percentages vs. odds/ratios.

11 Spades
3 Tens
2 Aces
2 Jacks

= 40% of the rivers

or

= 1.6:1 odds of hitting one of those cards on the river