Table: I moved to this table somewhat recently. Upon sitting down the dealer immediately started talking to me, so I clearly am a regular here. He asked me about the previous nights tournament, and I told him of the win. Might make me look like a winner overall. But it might make me look like this is small stakes and I don't care. People also might not even be paying attention so it's hard to say. 1/2, Saturday Evening. 5:30 or so. I only recognize one person at the table. Overall somewhat passive.

Hero: I haven't done much card related to develop an image so far. I raised 4 hands to far, cBet 2 of them, took it down. Shut down on the other two when I got more callers than I expected. I'm about even from what I started. I'm raising 14+ in all my opens. I opened over a straddle once before to $18 and got two callers. ($300)

V1: Reg in the room. Somewhat passive overall. Not too horrible, but does not know how to value bet well at all. Normally plays pretty face up post and pre. Will raise small with quality Aces, and medium pocket pairs. Can make random calls pre flop to try and get lucky. Pretty stationy pre flop when he likes his hand. But he won't play "bad" hands like K4o, Q7o, J3o. It has to be good or look pretty. (Suited Aces, pocket pairs, suited broad ways, suited connectors, off suit AceFace) When he bets post flop his bet size normally correlates pretty heavily with his hand strength. Weak with TPNK, MPTK, things of that nature. ($255)

V2: Mostly unknown. He's been limp calling a bunch pre, folding to most bets post flop. General spot, I haven't profiled him much as it didn't seem worth the effort. I expect to raise pre, cBet and print money vs him. He doesn't seem capable of floating, bluff raising, or anything else fancy. ($200)

V3: He just sat down last hand. I have no idea anything about him. He 40ish, looks like a 'weekend average'. Likely calls too wide pre, calls the flop too wide. But I really don't know. He just doesn't give off the 'good player' vibe. ($250)

Pre:
V2 straddles on the button
SB folds
V3 calls in the BB
1 random call
1 fold
V1 calls
1 fold
Hero raises to $22 with 78
V2 calls
V1 calls
random folds
V3 calls

Flop ($88) 963
V3 checks
V2 donks $25
Hero?

Call.

You have so much equity in this pot and are getting a great price to draw. Calling also allows the other players to come along getting a great price - which gives you more opportunities to get paid if you hit.

While raising is a viable option because his bet is indicative of a hand like T9, which he likely folds to a raise, you can just take the pot on the turn if it gets checked to you.

Thought v2 was the button

humble brag about your tourney win lol...

Just call, your hand is almost too big to do anything else...

Calling lets someone else draw to something worse. I'd love it if a non-diamond 4 or T came and we got it in vs. a guy with the "nuts". We'll get more value from this sort of thing than from taking it down here I think, but I'm not sure how to do that math...

Def not the intention. My bad. It actually bothers me when dealers talk to me about things like that as I try to keep a low profile. But whatever.

Raise to $105 and jam any turn card if called.

Call pre. Raising 87s over 4 players is spew.

Call the flop. You have a monster draw and monster odds but you're 4-way, and a raise probably isn't going to get everyone to fold.

Encouraging others to stick around when you have a monster draw and good odds is also a good thing.

You can see what develops and probably ship all-in if you get raised, or ship the turn, depending on action.

Raising is fine but you accomplish the same with a raise to $80-85. If he has a weak top pair in his range, this weak/passive player is going to fold to a big raise. We're only 100bb deep too so whatever he calls a $105 raise with, he's calling the turn jam with as well.

Also the more we raise, the less fold equity we have on the turn when we jam. So its important to raise as small as we can and still get folds.

I'm fine with the preflop raise as long as we have a good chance at getting heads up to the flop. Our plan then is just to cbet against the weak limp/callers and take down the pot a lot of the time.

Didn't realize Vs both had shorter stacks. In that case I would just shove flop.

So raising pre is spew.

What makes you think raising over 4 players usually gets us heads up?

What makes you think raising over the 4 players as described gets us heads up?

Oh. And I didn't realize how big the flop pot was (re: pre-flop spew) w/SPR ~2.

Yeah, shove the flop.

Nothing makes me think that.

But there are villains who limp/fold constantly. Against those types, I'd raise. Against guys who limp/call with everything, I'd call.

Raise to $100 and get it in. You don't care if they fold or not. The biggest reason for raising here is that you want to push out higher FDs and apply max pressure.

Yeah, thought about it more, and yes, shove flop.

If we call flop, we need to assume at least one or more callers behind. That wouldn't be a bad thing, really, if stacks were much deeper. With much deeper stacks, I'm all for encouraging more callers, maximizing our direct and implied odds against stationy villains, etc. The problem here is that stacks are so small in proportion to the pot.

So again, if we call flop and get 1-2 callers behind (very likely outcome), that gets us to the turn with the pot ~150+. And we'd have just one bet left in stacks. We'd have very little fold equity on the turn because the pot would be so large in relation to stacks.

In addition, we wouldn't act first or have position on the turn, and it's very possible a villain would make a bet in front, which would bring our fold equity down to almost zero because villain would put so much of his stack in already, and he and others would snap off a shove pretty quickly with a wide range of hands.

Finally, if the turn blanks, it diminishes our hand equity quite a bit, as well, so we'd have the double whammy of worse hand equity and worse fold equity on the turn.

So yeah, go ahead and ship the flop. You flopped a monster draw and the flop is the place to grab all the equity you can the way you played the hand, but I'll say it's not like a slam dunk high five spot or anything. Pre is spew.

Why do you say that?

Theres enough money in the pot + whatever we get them to call our ship with to make it +ev against most calling ranges

We're like 46% to hit our draw

Raise.

Well take V2 for example.

He has put ~25% of his stack into the middle. And he probably has decent equity against us. I'd be very happy if he folded a better hand / a hand with good equity against our 8-high monster draw. He'd almost certainly be making a mistake by folding to our exact hand after committing 1/4 of his stack to the pot.

I know, I think his point was that you aren't heartbroken when you're called.

When I ship, I really hope people fold. If they call with T9 - well OK, it's off to the races (we have 52% equity). Against Ad9x, we have 51% equity. I guess that "gives us value" in the literal sense of the concept, but it's very high variance and while far from heartbroken, I'm really not pleased, either. I want them to fold.

I also doubt people have that many dominated draws here (very few possible hands given we have one of the worse possible flush draws).

I think villains fold often to a shove here, which is what we're hoping for, really. When they call, yes we have a strong draw, but I think we often find we have a lot less hand equity than you're thinking. A lot less.

Hero can't possibly have less than 45-50% equity against a entire range of hands that would call. I want someone to call so I can smash turn and crush souls. If they fold that's fine but I want all the money. Heros hand looks more like an overpair than a draw after raising pre and jamming flop.

While I'm not trying to advocate one way or another here I'd like to point out: when we shove, we clearly want V's to fold hands like Ad9x and T9 here. When those hands fold, against our actual hand they are giving up massive value. They are getting almost 2:1 odds when they are ~50% to win. That's a pretty big mistake in terms of $'s of EV.

So, them folding is clearly what we want. If they call, oh well. That's not the best result, but at least we are still getting it in good.


To try and clarify: It's actually a +EV call for them to make against our hand with those types of holdings. So we want them to fold. (This part I know, I just don't know jamming is more +EV for US than calling.)