Hi all,

1/3 MGM National Harbor. Hero playing $650, V1 covers, V2 $350. V1 is TAG MA eastern European and always playing a deep stack. V2 is loose MABG. Hero should have TAG image. I have not really been involved in a hand with V1 yet.

V1 raises to $20 MP, V2 calls, hero 3! SB $80 with AKdd, both call. Pot $240.

Flop: 5-10-9r (no diamond).

Hero kinda hates this flop but there's so much money in the pot and I have all overpairs in my range so hero bets $120. Thoughts?

What's the plan if called and we don't improve? Bomb turn or shut down?

Thanks,
DT

We only have to get them to fold the flop 33% of the time.

They are both going to "miss the flop" 2/3 * 2/3 = 44% of the time.

But they might well call with something that "misses the flop" and still beats us.

This is why many posters here advocate a c-bet against one, but not two, Villains.

C-bet vs two Villains can be potentially high variance.

Because one Villain will "miss the flop" 66% of the time.

All percentages are approximate, your mileage may vary.

Big spew. Give up otf.

^That's fantastic.

As a preface, I see people overplay AKs all the time and maybe this skews my judgement.

V1 as described could show up here with 1010, but not often. I would say that most of the time, this flop misses "the majority" of V1's opening range. V2 either misses entirely or is there with a small piece.

Problem being that if V1 calls, V2 is almost guaranteed to call given price/pot.

If we're playing this oop, I think I might prefer bigger on the flop. I don't think it prices out V1 unless he completely whiffed. Maybe $175-$190? And fold to raise.

I'm not in the "always c-bet" crew, so I think I check here. I don't think anything on that flop is much to fear from a TAG 3! range. I believe the more a c-bet appears to be a value bet, the more likely it is to work. This looks exactly like a c-bet.

"Based on this villain"

I really cant think of a worse hand that would call the cbet, or a better hand that would fold to the cbet

So many hands hit this flop in so many different ways: JJ flopped an over-pair; TT & 99 flopped a set; ATs, KTs, JTs QTs flopped top pair. QJs flopped str8 draw. T9s....

You have 2 over, a BDSD...and that's it.

I would think you have to bet at least $180 to get them to think about folding a draw. Can't imagine V2 folding a nice draw with only $270 behind & $420 in pot after you bet, when V1 folds. He probably GII.

Being OOP and not a huge amount of dead money in the pot and biggish stacks behind, I might just passively lean towards a flat preflop, but that's me.

Are we prepared to double barrel the turn for stacks against the initial raiser? Cuz that's likely what we're going to have to do to get him off his overpair. And we still have the other guy in the mix.

GcluelessNLnoobG

just flat pre given awkward stack sizes, TPTK is really hard to play with SPR 5-6

Need more info on V1. 7x RFI is not common at 1/3.

That was his standard open sizing.

I would check flop, delay cbet if checked through. If you cbet, shut down unimproved on the turn.

3bet is a little small maybe? I'd want to go a little bigger to isolate when I'm OOP. V2 is going to call very wide if V1 flats. Could be wrong though.

I get checking flop here but if we're at all worried about balancing our range we should be c-betting. Given the dry board and STP, I think a 35-40% pot bet in all situations here does the most to balance our range (so thats with overpairs, sets, AK/AQ, when we were pulling a move and got a piece or not). Gives us a good price on our c-bets AND still allows us to easily get stacks in by the river if we want to. Checking here makes it far too easy for Vills to exploit us.

With the above being said - I'm okay with playing exploitably in this instance - as 1/2 vills generally aren't good at exploiting and play their hands pretty face-up in 3-bet pots. Which means a check .

Also - don't bet bigger on this flop than if you had an overpair. That's far too easy to spot, kills your c-bet odds, and makes it super awkward on the turn if you catch a Q/J/or something like a K and any Vil that came along decides to jame

Awful flop for us. HU I can get betting, but 3 way I think you are going to be looked up pretty light. I would only c-bet this flop versus absolute nits who will fold middle and top pair because they are ascared of an overpair. Vs the V's you described, this is a C/F for me.

(OK here comes heresy) Sometimes I might even just flat the open from the SB given the massive positional disadvantage. Or raise much bigger to try and take it down pre.

This is a check and delay cbet for me. The board smashes the two villain's range a lot more than ours, and this is worse against two calling ranges.

You can occasionally find a cbet with boards with a diamond, but with just a backdoor straight draw and pair draw, our hand isn't doing that well and I would go with the free equity.

some boards are a clear cbet, like Q22, but to me this is a clear delayed cbet

I think your pre sizing is ok given V1´s big sizing. But would make it maybe something like 90.
I don´t like the cbet at all given we are oop against 2 players on a flop that hits their range a lot more than our range.

So my thinking was why give either V the chance to bluff by checking. I took the initiative preflop, repping AA KK. Those hands would absolutely bet. So I told my story. It worked this time. Both Vs folded.