Game: 3/5 NL ($500 cap)

Villan straddles UTG to $10 ($550 effective) - 50 year old asian reg who is a slight winner in the game. Plays very aggressively when he takes the lead into pots and does not get out of line too often.

MP limps $10, Hero ($800) overlimps with 87hh in the cutoff for $10, folds to villan ($550) who checks his option.

Flop: Qc 8d 6h (pot: $30)
Villan leads for $40, MP folds, Hero calls $40

How often should I be folding on the flop? I figured I should have enough equity to peel the flop to improve my equity on the turn. Ranges are uncapped as we have to treat this as a limped pot. Putting villans range on mostly Qx holdings..

Turn: Qc 8d 6h 5h (pot: $110)
Villan checks, Hero?

I would X back, don't think we have much, if any, fold equity vs QX.

Pre - I raise to isolate ip, or fold with 4 players behind.

Flop - fold, not deep enough to call imho.

Preflop is fine with both raising and folding being fine also. Which is best depends on how aggressive the table is. If you have to be worried about a raise behind you then raise or fold is better.

Flop is an annoyed fold. Your hand isn't good enough vs the over bet. In this situation you have to expect villain to have something when they lead into pot but probably not a great hand. This means hero can't expect to get paid if they do improve to something good so paying a lot here won't be +EV.

Turn is a check back unless villain is prone to betting flop and giving up turn. Against villain likely mediocre QX you probably have to bet too much to get them to fold turn.

Pre is fine for me -- kind of depends on the players behind and how often straddle raises his option. I fold the flop. As played, check and be glad you get to see a free river. He's rarely folding a Q and never better.

I'm usually folding pre, but I do occasionally iso the hand. I'm literally never overlimping though, and I think this is a pretty big mistake.

The flop is also a pretty straightforward fold tbh. He's overbetting the pot into multiple opponents.

I would just check back the turn, but we shouldn't ever be here.

At the right table, I limp with 7h8h in LP. I can get behind raising and folding, too, and I know it's a sin on 2+2, but sometimes limping pays off huge. As always, it depends, but it's kind of like set-mining for me. I'll limp at the right table with 66-88, maybe even smaller.

I think in a straddle, I lean more towards raising here. Straddle is going to be dead money more often than not, and there aren't a ton of flops you really want to see. Plus by limping, og straddler can squeeze here which puts you in a really weird spot to continue, even if closing the action.

I think flop is a super fold. Yeah, backdoor draws, but you aren't getting the odds to draw, and the IO isn't that great here anyway. Turn, I don't have an issue with a bet here, especially as you have some showdown value on brick rivers as he will mostly likely check here unless he's got a monster. But checking is fine as well since this isn't really a great spot to try and get all the stacks in, and V could have almost any two cards in the deck at this point.

Thanks for the feedback gentlemen. Just out of curiosity, at what stack depth do we peel here in position?

Pre is fine. My gosh, are ya’ll playing like 10% of hands from the CO? It’s okay to overlimp our weakest playable hands, assuming we don’t expect an aggressive response from the BTN/blinds. Limp is super standard here at a passive table imho.

Flop is iffy given the overbet sizing and the fact we’re relatively short which reduces any fold equity on later streets. We have 27% equity with our double backdoor draws. It’s close, but I’d lean fold.

As played, in order to make our flop call profitable we probably need to start a bluff here. Size to $80 with plans to overbet river. We can rep 97s/88/66 and Villain is capped at 1 pair. Good spot to set up a river overbet on good run outs.

No one is saying solid fold. We are saying a call is the worst option. Should be raise or fold, depending on table/reads.

Hard disagree. Your statement is way too specific and rigid to be correct for every game type. You’re never over limping small pps from the CO in passive games? I don’t believe you.

Or do you mean you’re never over-limping 87s from CO?

Raise is fine, but I feel quite strongly that fold is the worst of the 3 options in a passive game where players are just limping along with almost all their range in a straddled pot. I’ve seen tables where players will overlimp TT/JJ/any Broadway cards in a straddled pot. In games like this it’s fine to play a quality SC in position as a limp behind.

IMO Raise > Call > Fold.

On this flop? I don't know if there is a particular depth that I feel comfortable with to call an over pot sized bet. You are honestly just trying to bingo him at this stage, with not even a 1 card draw, but a back door draw to the nonnut flush.

That's obvious poker lingo that excludes exploits. Also, pocket pairs aren't the same thing as SC. If you play 55, you are going to hit a set far more often than 87s flopping a flush or a straight.

We are talking about a straddle here though, where there is already dead money, while potentially not playing a hand in position. Passive game or not though, if you have a LP player or blind who even thinks about the game when not at the table, this is a prime squeeze play and while you might have the immediate odds to continue depending on size/# callers before you, you are basically taking a flyer on the flop, and probably folding every time you don't have trips or an open ended/flush draw.

Calling is by far the worse option, without any knowledge of how it played out here, button squeezes, and even if straddle just calls, and not you are in mp with a subpar hand trying to bingo.

My statement was qualified by saying “in a passive game” which presumes the BTN doesn’t have a reasonable squeezing range here. There are game conditions (usually at the smallest stakes games in the afternoon) where the majority of the table isn’t going to have a raising range in a straddled pot outside of JJ+/AK/maybe AQ. My claim was that under such appropriate game conditions fold < call.
I still think this hand plays better as a raise than a call, and I’d pretty much never call here personally. But I just find it ludicrous to claim that fold > call “literally always”, as 67o claimed.

Of course if BTN does squeeze (which I expect to happen rarely in the game conditions I usually see),I’m not calling to play bingo. I’m not playing 87s from OOP.

We can agree to disagree though.

I don't like it because we aren't drawing to the nut flush, rake exists, and in general I'm not big on passive pre flop play

Go ahead and don't believe me, but I only have an overlimping range from BTN and SB

So you’re just straight folding 55 in MP to a few limps, in passive games where there isn’t a lot of squeezing, and even if there is a squeeze you can often comfortably call getting IO (and sometimes even almost Direct Odds) to set mine? That’s wild.

If you flop a set/quads you aren't entitled to someone's stack. Other things happen including not having the best hand and taking it down without getting an additional street of value. We also don't have position. It's actually pretty rare to flop a set and get stacks in.

Pre - I don't like limping. Too many players behind you, not guaranteed position, and your hand is too weak. I fold.

Flop - It's close but fold. You almost certainly don't have the best hand. And you have better combos to peel/bluff with like open enders and double gutshots. It's also not the best spot to open up your peel/bluffing range cuz not only is he heavily weighted towards value but he is also uncapped and can have all 2 pairs + 66 and possibly 88.

Turn - You basically have to bet and blast any non-Q river and hope for the best. $75ish seems good.

Grunch - pre is fine with me. Flop is a standard fold. Move on the next hand. OTT I think over bet like $125 is the move here, but can’t really hate a check back either. If you over bet the turn obviously you’re stuffing the river if called

Pre. Raise or fold. Why are you limping in with 8 high in the cutoff? Make it 40-50 or get out of the way.

Flop. Fold.

As played: 65-75 range on the turn.


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Raising and calling pre are both fine. I guess folding has an argument but I think it's too nitty and I consider this hand marginally profitable. I'd like a raise if we think there's a decent chance of winning preflop, but prefer limping over playing a raised pot with a low SPR with 8-high.

Folding flop just seems straight up bad to me. We're closing action with a pair and great backdoor equity. Calling certainly seems profitable to me and guarantees we see a turn with our backdoors, but raising seems reasonable too since a lot of bluffs/draws either fold their equity or give us value, and some better middle pairs may fold, while we still have pretty good equity to draw out on a Qx. Only continuing with TP+ and straight draws is folding too much. Actually I like this as a continue better than something like QT no backdoor even given there are so many turns we can continue easily on, but QT never really picks up equity and is just a low equity bluffcatcher facing a turn barrel on almost any card. I'd call that also though since we beat more stuff that bets flop.

Qx isn't likely check/folding turn and there are a lot of hands we beat so I think I'm just taking my equity to the river and checking back turn. I'd like a raise if he had barreled. Betting turn can't be bad with so much equity though.

Basically I think anything but folding is good on any street.