Villains are all passive fish. They play fit or fold poker and can have a wide range.

Effective stacks are $450


$1/3 NL (9 handed)
UTG
EP
EP+1 Hero
MP
HJ
CO
Button
SB
BB

Hero is dealt KK

UTG calls $5, 1 fold, Hero raises to $20, 1 fold, 3 calls, 2 folds, 1 call

Flop ($100) 975

UTG bets $25, Hero?

Sorry if this is a standard situation, but this is a spot that has been killing me lately. I seem to do well, and then stack off with top pair too often. I'm considering limp/RR with KK+ from early positions, is that a bad play? After all, all I have is one pair with 4 villains, not a good situation.

My SPR is 4.3, so I guess I am commited here? Should I make a huge raise to ~ $250 and shove the river? If I raise smaller and a scare card hits, like an Ace, or straight card, can I check/fold? Being OOP makes it that much worse.

Being an EP and with already 1 limper..open bigger..u mention its a 1/3 game? How did utg call 5?

You can get away with raising more pre, to 30 or so. Makes it a little easier SPR-wise to be able to get it in by the turn plus it'll thin out the herd a bit.

This can be a gross spot against thinking players but against passive weak-tighties it's actually pretty simple. If villains are really playing fit or fold, then you can actually profitably raise/fold the flop. If you raise and one of the other players left to act re-raises, then he's obviously got you beat since he'd never play a draw like that or cold 3-ball a A9 type hand. If you raise and it folds back to UTG who 3bet shoves, then that's also an easy laydown since he'd have to be doing it with two pair or better and never with a draw or like a bare nine.

Raise/folding flops in general usually isn't optimal or at the very least tough to play but here you're a.) only ever getting 3bet by a hand that definitively beats you and b.) you're thus only going to get 3bet a relatively small percentage of the time.

So, make it at least $105ish (possibly more) so that you have a little less than a PSB for a turn shove, and so that you can also have some FE on the turn if you get flatted and then the 9 pairs or a heart comes and one of them suddenly donks out big.

It's a 3/5 game, good catch.

I agree with solfege here, im raising this flop everytime, make it 100 to 120, if shoved on i fold (maybe a leak), if flatted im shoving turn unless i believe villain improves

Meh, it's only a leak if it's against a villain capable of 3betting with a draw and thus leading us to have no idea what the hell to do when we raise.

Like for example if we were deeper and heads up, against a weak-passive I'd probably just raise flop bomb turn and howitzer river if they brick out. But against a thinking player who a.) is capable of 3betting with air or a draw and b.) probably wouldn't pay me off three streets of clean value anyway, I might call flop check back turn vbet river or something similar (wherein that line would be missing out on value against a fish, it's preferable against a tricky player). It's sort of a misnomer that there's always a 'standard' line with a certain hand on a certain board since the villain in question really will influence what the optimal play is so often.

Sorry about that tangent. But yeah.

It's too simplistic to say that the villains will only shove with hands that have me beat. Some villains will shove with TT - QQ. Some will shove with a combo draw or an Ace high FD (they see these hands as fits). A raise to $100 will still give villains correct implied odds for a FD or SD (if they fold on the turn when they miss). It's also hard to know if a draw was filled on a scare card.

Also, I hate to stack off with top pair when the villains hit their sets and two pairs. Preflop, villains totally had the correct set mining odds; I guess there is no way to avoid this if you are to raise pre in EP with KK+

Herein lies one of the limitations of using SPR: An SPR of 4 HU is a lot different than one with 3+ villains. If this limitation was dealt with in PNLHE, I missed it.

Stacking off with KK+ here is probably +EV, but it's painful when you grind for hours and build a profit just to lose it all on one pair. I guess I'm looking for a lower variance option.

Sorry for the rambling , I hope that all made sense.

Yeah I like this... bet/folding here is strong because you want villain to have to pay for draws and you can get away from your hand early on if you're crushed... 25 into 100 is such a "blocker" bet.. raisey daisey

I agree with everyone else that raise/fold is the best option. Calling 1/4 pot is too weak but I don't think our hand is in very good shape the majority of the time when we are reraised all-in. Make it around $120 and shove most non-heart turns. Against passive players your life is made easy because it will become clear what he has after you raise.

if your raising the flop, dont fold if he shoves. thats what we call raising for information. i like raising to $125, thats a drawy board we have to charge the draws. if he comes over the top im getting it in obv.

if your gonna fold to a shove... then just flat the $25, although thats pretty weak. raise/get it in is pretty standard. your not that deep either, only 90bbs. its fine stacking off for 90bbs in this spot.

Raise/folding is bad 99% of the time. This situation with the requisite game conditions is the 1% where it's fine imo. Don't be so quick to just label it as a 'raise/get-it-in' spot and try to think a little outside the box.

Think through the hand and all of the possibilities, how likely they are to occur, and how much you can win or lose in each scenario. Think about a reason for the play you're making. If you're not trying to accomplish something with your play, you probably won't.

well if your raise/folding, just flat the $25 then. by raise/folding we turn KK into a bluff. its never good to do this. there are tons of hands that will shove over our raise that we beat. we risk folding to a worse hand alotta the time if we raise/fold.

You're not looking at the hand for what it is. The villain donked for 1/4th pot, so the raise you make isn't going to be much bigger than the flop bet you would have made if checked to you anyway. It'd be equivalent to bet/folding the flop, which we'd do anyway since we're in a unique spot where, considering how the table is passive and fit/fold, then when we get raised on the flop at any point then it'll be almost 100% hands that beat us and almost 0% draws or weird spazzes with weaker pairs.

The raise would be for value against hearts, bare 9's, PP's, etc. When we only get re-raised by hands that beat us (which considering the strength of KK on this board isn't going to be more than say 15-20% of the time), it makes it really easy to fold to resistance but to bet bet bet when people just flat. When I say we raise/fold it's with the knowledge that we're not going to get raised very often, since in a vacuum KK is the best hand on that flop a decent amount of the time.

raise more pre 30-35

as played it is one of the tuffer spots when have players behind.

I would raise to 65, and see how others respond. Raising for info. is almost always no good, but utg made it possible for us to cheaply (not to mention narrow the villains behind us), and so i would here.

okay i guess im fine with that thinking. lets say he donk bet $65 into $100, can we say its NEVER okay to raise/fold in that case?

i would say it.

Ya that would qualify for the aforementioned 99%.

Is it true that against sets and two pair I have no choice but to stack off?