I pick up QQ in UTG+2 in a 2/5 game (120 BBs) and open for $15. I get called by the cutoff and BB.

Flop is T76

BB checks.

I thought people could easily have top pair, straight draws or draws to the king- or ace-high flush, so bet 15 into the approx $45 pot (10% rake, max. $15). (Should I bet bigger or just check here?)

A tricky pro in the cutoff raised to $65 and the BB folded. I called and the turn was 3

I checked and the cutoff bets pot size, $175.

I call again and river is 2

I check and the cutoff puts me all in for my remaining $355.

Do I call or give up here?

I don't like the thought of losing my 120 BB stack in a single raised pot with an overpair on a drawy board versus an aggressive line by a professional poker player who is out of position. I think I would check flop.

Villain could have flopped straight, turned straight, two pair, sets, flopped flush.
For bluffs, other than Ax, what could he have? Doubt he's doing it with 88 or 99

Overpairs are easily in your range when you take this line, no?

Given you described the cutoff as a tricky pro, I would call. If he were a straight forward regular, I would fold. His big bets look to be more typical of a draw that would not mind a fold. Since his big bets did not work, he keeps increasing his bet size. He could have AT with A clubs as well.

Now, I cannot fault one for folding, but likely needed to make that decision on the turn. I have said this on other hands. You probably need to decide if you are going to go with it and put him all in on the turn or fold. He could easily have a set or two pair or have flopped the straight. He may be worried you have a bigger club to beat his straight or small flush. So he may have been trying to bet you off the flush draw.

Your hand is pretty face up, especially if he happens to have the Ace of clubs. Your call of his raise on the turn looks to be just what it is, an overpair with a club. He may think he can get you to fold that with a large 3-barrel bluff. After all, if he had a straight or two pair, or a set, wouldn't he want to keep you in especially on the river with a smaller value bet. Unless he knows you will pay him off by calling an all in bet with just one pair, he should be betting smaller with his strong hands in order to get value from one pair.

Now, for future reference, I think your pre-flop open raise was definitely too small, especially with a strong tricky player to your left who may be inclined to call in position a little wider than he should. Most players who play well post-flop will call a small raise very wide in position thinking they can steal many pots with large bets like this.

I'd go bigger pre, I'd play flop and turn the same way (including flop sizing.) Definitely fold river, triple barrels are pretty rare and we don't beat any value.

I'm not folding this river given runout and your blockers.

I def like betting small on flop or checking, I don't think you need to go bigger. Rest of hand seems fine.

Call.

I would call. Agree with the poster that stated the turn was your decision point. Also agree that the tricky pro is calling wide.

$2/$5 in my room, most opens are $20/$25. I am one so doesnt vary my opens based on the strength of my hand, especially oop to a tricky pro. That being said, $15 is just inviting callers. More preflop.

Most people are over analyzing the villain. Sure, Hero made a weak bet on the flop and the villain might be trying to exploit that. However, the villain has bet pot/pot/all in. Unless he's prone to stacking off regularly on bluffs, he's pretty happy with his hand at least 60% of the time. Which means we lose money if we try to bluff catch regularly. He's also not giving us odds to call with a FD. That means if the flush comes in and he can't beat it, he's x/f.

After the mistake with the flop bet, I'd call the raise but then fold the turn.

Agree decision to call or not was to be made on the turn, not river. But in the original question, he did call the turn, and he now wants to know if he should now call the river. My answer to that is a crying call yes. There is 550 in pot when the villain bets 355. Once we call, the pot will be 1260. So we only have to win 25% of the time to break even. The above post commented that they thought our villain would have the goods on a pot-sized 3-barrel bet 60% of the time. If that is true, we win 40% of the time and we have an easy call.

Again, what hands would villain have on flop that would check raise? I suppose any small flush or straight or two pair that is afraid we may make a bigger flush on the turn or river. Those hands are betting for value and protection and want to get the money in before another club comes to kill the action. However, those hands must also worry we already have the nut flush. Those hands should mostly check the river unless they feel confident we would have bet the river with our nut flush.

What other hands would the villain bet like this? Any Ax with A clubs especially, with x being any card from 4-10, all of which make a pair or have some straight potential. Suited connectors that hit this bored, like 78 or 9T or JT. Those make a pair and a straight draw. Again, all these hands have to worry we have the nut flush or even a king or queen high flush, not to mention we could have a set. Most of these hands should not bet the river.

In my experience, those who do keep firing three barrels are often bluffing because it is the only way they can win the pot. They either have to fire a third barrel or concede the pot. They have no show-down value. Their is no tough decision to make. You can often spot this because they do not take much time to think before they bet. If they had a hand other than the nuts, they would slow down and think more about their bet sizing.

Even the nut flush should have likely bet smaller on the river if not on the other streets. Why would the nuts want to risk scaring us out of the pot? As a matter of fact, the more I think about the villains betting so strong, the more it just does not make sense. Even a set on flop should be worried when we bet and call flop and call the turn.

I would go way bigger pre unless you usually get folds for $15. $15 is the normal raise in my 1/3 game.

Flop is fine, but I'd go bigger again. If you are going to bet this small, I think you have to call down described villain. If that's not your plan, fold turn.

I agree with the people saying go bigger pre... idk about your games OP but 3x in my 2/5 games are a pot sweetener. I start with either 4x or 5x depending on table dynamics and players.

As mentioned, the decision point(s) are otf and ott. Once you called, and the river doesn't change anything, I'm calling the 355 into 525 bet.

Arguments should be made for folding the flop raise, and/or turn bet, not the river bet. IMO the river is an easier decision. Do tricky villains just shut things down and c/f once you call the flop or turn? Not usually. Were you calling to hit a flush or a queen? I don't really think so, so in that case you're left calling the river hoping he went crazy with A - personally I most likely (depending on the pro) would have folded otf, and also bet more than $15 which could have induced the tricky pro.

Thanks for the responses guys! Yeh I tend to think now that maybe I should have just folded to the flop 3bet. I didn't know the guy well enough to know his bluffing frequency, and he is making a big raise into two people who could potentially have a big hand. Also I don't think I should be risking my whole stack with a bluff-catcher. Re the river bet I think it was Alex Fitzgerald who said that big river bluffs are very rare according to his database, so a good reason to fold after getting that far I guess. As to preflop raises, I've recently experimented with opening for 4x in the first three seats, 3.5x in MP and 3x in LP. Not sure why I only made it 3x this time - possibly I only had three red chips

I agree your flop bet was also on the small side. I would have bet at least half or 2/3rds pot to get value out of TPTK hands and protect my QQ to overcards and from the draw-heavy board. Had you done so and still got raised, I think a fold on the flop might have been easier. Still not sure I would fold with having the Q clubs in my hand, If no Q clubs, probably easy fold. Our Q clubs block some of Villains better flush holdings such as AQ or KQ. That means if he does have a made hand, it may be a small flush or the straight or a set. Those hands we can still beat with another club. So I would probably still call the raise on the flop. I still think if Villain had the nut flush, he would not need to 3-bet the flop but instead let us bet into him on the turn.

I mostly open raise small from early position when I am deep and I know a larger raise will still get called by multiple players, but a smaller raise will often get a few cold calls followed by a late position 3-bet, which I can call or 4-bet depending on the size of the 3-bet and our relative stack sizes. Problem is I may be deep but there is almost always a few tight players playing with a short stack behind me. By betting smaller from early position, I save money in those multi-way pots and unfavorable flops where I am just forced to fold OOP. I may also induce a LP player to 3-bet with a wider range to try and steal or get that tight short stack to get it all in. Again, when the short stack shoves, I can usually save money by folding. Anyway, there are many uses for small-ball strategy from early position especially if you play well post-flop. Yes you are forced to play OOP more but you are often getting 3 or 4:1 odds and it allows you to open up your range from EP more and maybe play more small pairs. This wider range often means the IP opponent cannot exploit you as often when the board flops three low cards.

Anyway, I think many of you are responding to the other players at the table rather than influencing them. I often find it best to do just the opposite of what the other players are doing. If you try this for half an hour, you will often notice others following your lead and doing what you are doing. Once you learn how to influence the table, you can exploit them by making bigger open raises with your premium hands and then once you have shown down KK, you can make a big open raise with 78 suited and get lots of fold equity and disguise your hand well.

ok ur trolling wp

1) I think the days of opening for 3 BBs are in the past. In the current 1/2, 1/3, and most 2 or 3/5 games, I see a lot RFIs of 4-7 BBs, especially if buy-in for more than 100 BBs is allowed. So yes, a min of $20 and even $25 will still get action a fair amount of the time (at least in the 3/5 games I play in).

2) Even on this board a >1/2 PSB (maybe 2/3 PSB) is better; checking is also fine. 1/3 PSB doesn't do anything and yes, set's up a knowledgeable player to make this kind of play.

3) As played, before acting on the turn, I think you have to have in mind what river actions you're going to take in the various scenarios, i.e. you should've already have had a decision in mind with a relatively safe brick on the river and you could've determined that you would wind up with a pot of just over $500 and $355 remaining, leaving you to call off the Villain's river shove getting about 2.4ish:1 ($855:$355) on a call and needing to be right about only just more than 25% of the time.

4) Now what can you beat when opponent is willing to bet all three streets? I think Villain's river bet is highly polarized between three-barrel bluff and 2P or better value bet. I don't think he's ever betting one pair for value to this size (also, I'm eliminating AA, KK, the other QQ combo, and all AK combos due to lack of PF 3-B; I suspect any type of pro would prefer to play HU IP with any premium holding and less likely to get tricky with a premium holding PF). Therefore there a lot more combos in his LP flat calling range that have you crushed on this flop and/or by the turn as as opposed to your strong hands on this flop while your strong holding are limited to AK and TT and even maybe 77 or 66; I doubt you would play AKo this way multiway on this flop. All the other of your over pairs that include a are now just drawing. And if he somehow has the A then he knows you can't have it and knows he can play the hand very differently, including the way he's opted to play. Randomly by the turn, there's about a 1/20 chance he's holding the A and considering he flat calls your EP RFI I'll upgrade him to about 1/8 chance that he's holding it since you're not holding it and while it's 120+:1 that he's flopped a flush, especially since you're holding Q there's still a lot of different hands that crush you verses only a few or yours that crushing him when he's playing his hand as such.

5) Even with a non-pairing fourth club, you're still only holding the third or at best second nut; hurts to hit draw and find out you're still second best. If you had KK with K you're a little more confident of being best with a fourth , I would accept going broke unimproved with AA including A.

6) As is, I would lean towards folding the turn; forfeit the $80 (16 BBs) and look for a better spot to get stacks in. Opponent's bet size on turn tells me he's willing to play for stacks on the river.

sam7595, just read 4 of your posts including this eye-bleed. you are oblivious, and should be barred from offering any/all poker advice