1/3

V young black guy who's stuck $50 to$100 and is apparently trying to play tight but will try and play a few marginal hands (he gave up trying to become unstuck and opened his range a little. - $148

Hero - came from broken table with $100 and folded for about 3 orbits before calling down a maniac betting 3 streets with q6o on a q high board with 3 card flush flop. Maniac had a draw to the nut flush and missed. H now $200. Table definitely read me as a rock but probably has mixed feelings now.

Hero open limps 66 in mp and two more limps behind. Btn raises $11 and v in the bb calls.
Hero 3bets $37, folds to btn who folds and bb tank calls.

$92 pot
Flop 2 9 J with flush draw.

V shoves for $111. Hero?

To me this looks like a desperate bluff and never value. Any set would check and let me cbet as would 9x or jx type hands. I can see over cards doing this like ak but by V's pre flop tells I don't think he ever has any of these types hands here. I think flush and straight draws will shove here too which hit V's range really well. V can do this to fold out my over cards or pp 10's/ 8's and lower and hope not run into over pairs/sets. Like, is this line ever for value from this type of player?

I don't limp reraise small pairs so this is a pretty unfamiliar situation for me but I'll give it a try...

Firstly I don't agree that V never does this with value. if he has JX+ he can easily be afraid of a flush or Q/K/A turning and giving you the stronger hand. Lots of llsnl players are more afraid of being outdrawn than getting their chips in bad for some reason.

Secondly some of V's bluffs can be beating your actual hand: pair plus backdoor draws with TT/88 Aflush9x T9 98 could all shove as tilted bluffs with limited equity vs your perceived QQ+ and inadvertently be beating you.

Thirdly even if V is shoving a draw it can easily be 50%+ vs your hand: OESD all have pair outs for 14 outs in total. Gutshots all have 10 outs. Flush draws mostly will have at least 12 outs.

Basically you are flipping at best and frequently crushed. It's an easy fold for me.

If villain is shoving a flush draw with two overs he is better then 50/50 against you, even an OESD with no flush possible is only slightly behind. Some of his bluffs with 9X/middle pairs and such are beating you. Value is unlikely but if he has JX/TT or such he may feel committed and think his best shot is shove first in the hopes of folding out some better hands and keeping you from checking behind with bare AK/AQ. The only things you are reasonably ahead of is a pure air bluff with AKo/AQo or a pair under 66.

I think this has to be fold just because so much of his draw and bluffing range actually is ahead.

Why did you l/r with 66? Your hand has amazing implied odds in a multi-way pot and you decide to merge your hand into a bluff?!?

If the villain is thinking, he's thinking you're a calling station and you'll easily call his shove with trash like second pair. If he's bluffing, he'll be pleased that a lot of his bluffing range can beat you.

Congrats on calling this down and winning.

A shortstacker calling down with Q6o, no I don't think you're viewed as a rock.

Pre is terrible. Why three bet so small? Why 3 bet at all? Now you're in an unnecessarily tough spot, I guess fold.

This is a fold, against this specific villain I think this is so much more often for value looking to end this pot and not face any scary turn/river cards and bets. Don't over complicate it, you have a weak hand, against someone who even if they are bluffing will have good equity against you. Against this type of player, you will find a similar spot with stronger holdings!

this. if you are going to 3!, make it at least 60.

as played, fold. this is always top pair or a flush draw. you are behind both and if you merge the two ranges, don't have the odds to call.

Thanks for the responses guys. Interesting to here a good number of you think v will shove 9 and j x hands. So what is the weakest hand I can call with here, jx+ ?

Also my pre flop 3bet sizing was pretty bad I know, it was meant to be $45 but I had 2 $1 chips that got thrown out with it instead. My pre flop so far has been extremely tight and was hoping just to steal the pot pre, but still have a hand if I did get called.

Do you bet here if v checks flop?

I guess we're reading the Button's lol small $11 raise after 3 limpers to be extremely weak and just a juicer? I don't mind going after the pot here, but I'd typically like more dead money in there to make it more worth the risk (for example, if the limpers behind us were in front of us and called, I think making a move here would be much more profitable). So I'd probably just lean towards a setmine here and flat. If we are 3betting, we're really looking to take things down now or with a PSB shove on the flop, so I would have made it closer to $50.

We just limp/raised preflop; typically, that is a very strong hand. With the flush draw / straight draw out there, the Villain could easily just be shoving a big hand before the scare card gets there assuming we're never folding AA/KK to a flop shove. In the end, the weakest part of his range is something like overs + draw, which are actually ahead of our hand (although we have enough equity to call), but we're crushed by the bigger end of his range (just pairs, let alone anything bigger), so I'd fold.

ETA: If it was checked to me (as played preflop), I would have shoved myself (protecting against overs / draws, possibly getting better hands like TT/88/77 to fold).

GcluelessNLnoobG

I think another inclination for 3 betting was my stack size, as a short stack I was looking to take down a smaller pot, with less opponents rather than bleed chips set mining oop. I know I should probably just play full stack but I'm toying around with just buying in short and building up which requires changes in strat throughout the session.

The button raiser would normally bet $16+ pre with strong holdings and was able to fold when he thought he was behind.

Setmining should still be profitable here. If we call, it's very likely we're going 5ways, so will already be getting 4:1 and just need to make up ~4 bets = ~$40 postflop to breakeven, which we should be able to do at most tables. Plus, postflop play will be trivial.

GcluelesssetminingnoobG

Given that you only have two outs when you're beat and that your opponent's most likely hands that are worse than yours at present are draws with over cards to your sixes I don't know how we could ever call here.

I have a real life training suggestion for you. Use some kind of equity calculator like equilab and put in any reasonable range of hands you think villain would likely have and see how crushed you are.
Then
Give villain every combo you could give him just based on pre-flop play (not even considering that he jammed post flop) and see if you even have enough equity against that range.
Then
Make villains range, literally, any two cards. Put his range to random. Give him 100% of all starting hands and check to see how much of a favorite you are even against two random cards. I bet 66 is not an overwhelming favorite against even two random cards on this flop.

Just fold this for sure.

Another piece of advice I have for you is to construct some ranges. If you want to open limp some stuff from middle position (which i never do) I'm guessing it's not gonna be all that bad. But figure out what hands you want to limp with and why you want to limp them. And if you want to have a limp raising range from MP (I don't think you really should) then try to construct a range of hands that limp calls, limp folds, and limp raises and see if you can come up with good ranges that have some real incentive to be played in these different ways.

Here's how I think you ought to play the hand;
pre-flop; open raise to maybe $9 (you can win the blinds preflop some of the time, you will get folds from hands like Q9, 87, J8s, Q7s, KTo, etc that will maybe limp in or try to iso raise you but that won't call a raise and that have plenty of equity against your hand.
Using a sizing like $9 is likely to discourage someone making it too high for you to have a profitable set mine
plus, there is some value in your $9 bet building a pot that allows you to get stacks in on the river when you make your set
plus it uncapps your range and allows you to c-bet a lot of flops and win without a show down or a set.

Post flop; if the action checks to you you can either c-bet to fold your opponents equity out or check back to try to get your pair to show down but I slightly favor a c-bet
If you are lead into on the flop I think you can safely just fold your 66 as pre-flop raiser.


Main advice;
Maybe you should just work on polishing up a nice default strategy. Work out some ranges. Plan out some post flop lines. Get some ideas about the type of adjustments you want to make against various villain types. Try playing a more "standard" and even straight forward game until you get that all nailed down and then you can start looking to splash in some unorthodox plays like limp raising and such.