I run into spots like this a lot, and I think I’m losing a lot of value by sizing too large for my opponents to call.

OTTH - $1-3 7 handed. 1 limper, HJ raises $15. We have AJc in the CO, elect to call. BTN calls, SB calls, UTG calls.

I could 3! this hand, but I’ve been playing aggressively and don’t think I have fold equity, and AJ is just a tad too weak for me if we get looked up.

Flop [$75 QcTc6h] All checks to me, I bet $45. BTN calls.

Very nice flop for us, initial raiser checks, all going well. I think our draw is so strong we don’t mind calls. I have blown BTN out of a couple pots (with good hands I didn’t showdown) but I would deem him generally suspicious of me.

Turn [$165 QcTc6h7c]

Easy bet, but how much? I tend to bet proportionally to the pot but wonder if players see the bet in $$$ instead of relative size to pot and fold.

Will post my sizing after feedback from the forum.

What are stack sizes?

Right - $500 effective, V has me covered.

Sizing thoughts are going to require some description of V. Mostly likely some sort of ‘same bet’ can be inducing. Maybe a bit more like 1/3rd PSB. I wouldn’t go crazy. You have most of the big clubs locked up so it’s going to hard really cooler him when the front door flush draw comes in on the turn. Mostly just going to milk a $1/3 V here.

Well, you want the V's to call the most amount of money they will right now depending on what you perceive their range to be. I like to go through the sizings (1/4th, 1/3rd, half, 2/3rds, 3/4ths, pot, overbet) in my head and choose which one is appropriate. There are tons of factors that go into this like V stack size, V player type, how committed V is to the hand/how much they have invested in the hand, and what hands they likely have right now in this spot. If I can't find out a good sizing, I just default to half.

I'd say I'm not really looking for a bet against this particular V as much as I'm looking to find out what the general population $1-3 players will call. I get too many folds when hands like FDs/straights hit so I think I'm betting amounts which are too "scary."

I would still 3 bet preflop. If I were button, I think a flat could be good. But we do have a decent hand and I’d like to play in position if I can help it.

Flop is whatever. You can really do anything you like, your draw is so strong. Just depends what you want to accomplish.

Turn, there’s 440 left and 165 in the middle. I wouldn’t get fancy here and try to bet to “get them to call”. I’d just make proportional bets to get all the $ in. So i think $120 turn, jam all rivers is going to work here. The small % of the time you get a full double is vital for a strong win rate. Much more so than milking a few extra bb of EV through exploitative turn sizings.


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This. But usually we're sizing so that we can GII if he continues.

Don't just worry about getting him to call. Worry about your overall EV, even if his call frequency goes down.

For example, let's say we go 1/3 pot OTT and OTR and he calls both 75% of the time. That means that we will make 75% of 55 plus 91.67, for an EV of $110.

Now let's say we go with jdr's plan of $120 and jam all rivers, realizing that we'll get called much less often. Let's say half as often. Sounds disastrous, right? Wrong. We only get 37.5% of the additional pot, but since pots grow exponentially we're looking at 37.5% of 120+320, for an overall EV of $165, half again the EV of the smaller bet that gets called twice as often.

Do you bluff here every time you have less than a decent pair?

I’d lean toward 3B pre, though I understand lack of fold equity, and no read on the opener.

Sizing turn based on opponent range through flop. We can pretty much underweight sets and top 2 based on the board texture and multi-way pot.
Maybe …
3 combos of KcJx
4 of 98s
3 of J9s
2 of KcQx
3 of JJ
1 of 65cc

Of these 16, only 2 are nutty (98cc/65cc). Except for 5 combos of KcJx/KcQx, the rest are folding to most action.

I’d target those 5 which might think they have as many as 14 outs, ~30% equity. 2 combos will call 100% of the time.
5 of 7 combos will call 40% PSB = 28.6% PSB
2 of 7 combos will call 100% PSB = 28.6% PSB

So, total sizing is ~57% PSB, I’d go $90-95.

Grunch.

Assuming we have A J it's a routine 3 bet to $50 pre. If it's AJo, I'd just fold.

I would just check flop. I'm checking from all positions, but especially when we don't have absolute position, I check.

I have no idea what the effective stacks are, but I tend to half pot as a default when the turn completes the flush, and adjust based on stack sizes and opponents from there.

Lol, the country code for India is 91, so lots of spam gets posted with phone numbers that start with a plus sign followed by 91. Apparently the admins decided to block that combo, so my EV calc above got asterixed out. Fixed now.

After seeing that the effective stack is $500, I like going $100 here to set up an easy river shove.

This is interesting. It gives me a path forward. I can’t think like this yet, but with study away from the table I think I can get here.

A year or two ago I was misapplying range based thinking but now I have a much firmer grasp of it. I think I can do the same over time with equity and EV practice.

semi-grunch

I think calling is OK here pre IP at this stack depth---- if at least one of the players behind us is a spot, AND no one behind us is aggressive/active as well--. If not, we should be 3-betting this 100% of the time for sure, for all the standard reasons.

I would check mostly everything here on the flop. Not for any fancy reasons, just that when you are 5 ways after just calling pre, you're going to want to do a LOT of checking on this texture. Your range is capped and you don't have very many nutted hands here at all, except for 66s and QTs (QTo should be folding pre).

I don't mind the idea of setting up an easy river shove, but if V has a flush I'm pretty sure it will get in on all blank rivers regardless of your sizing scheme because he'll raise you at some point.

I like $60-80~ trying to keep most one pair hands with/without a club in. We don't always have to go for stacks, but I understand it's very tempting. Another benefit of not going too large is that we'll usually get raised more often as well (both by value/bluffs & spazz)

Another thing I wanted to bring up is that people get worried about losing customers on the turn a lot. But really, the hallmark live fish plays too many hands preflop and continues too liberally on the flop. The turn is where a lot of these people begin folding out trash that should’ve never been there. It’s annoying when you make a monster and they fold, but they probably shouldn’t have been in there with T8o to begin with


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Thanks for the replies folks.

Results: I bet $125 on the turn and V tank folded.

Based on replies $125 is higher than anyone suggested, and was only close to a couple replies which said $120. It looks like I definitely need to size down and keep it closer to 1/2 pot than 2/3.

At the table, my thinking for the 2/3 pot bet (and my thinking in these spots in general) is that when the board is draw heavy I'd want to bet to price out draws with strong 2p and sets, so I'd bet my straights and flushes the same way. Looks like this is flawed logic either way. So I should size down my bets with both 2p/sets and straights/flushes.

This is often rough at my tables. I've learned that I kinda have to C-bet flops even if there are 5 callers to my PF bet. Generally when I bet flop (normally 1/2 pot) I'm often getting folds or 1 caller making for easier decisions on the later streets.I'm betting premium hands and strong draws like this one, but having to check most else. If the board is super wet (QJTs for example) I also check almost everything. If I run into players paying attention at $1-3 I'm highly exploitable, but I believe the value of taking down large, orphan pots post flop outweighs the possible exploitation from aware players. There are difficulties though - sometimes I get 2 callers, which makes things tougher OTT, and sometimes it means I'm in over my head when a draw doesn't come through and I'm against a station.

Well, again, do you bluff here a lot with large sizings?

It's funny that we have a recent thread where most people insist villains won't fold top pair on a four flush board and now this one where OP is worried about getting value on a three flush board.

$125 is fine. There's really little incentive to go small IMO. The population is passive in general, and we block the main bluff raising candidate (Ac) if this player is capable of that at all. He have much less incentive to go small if the population is unlikely to raise us.

What is this sorcery?

Not often, but perhaps I should if I'm getting folds so often when I do have it...

I will bet similar spots if I think my opponent is aware and I haven't been caught bluffing or semi-bluffing in a while. I've worked in c/r'es here a few times which has worked great.

The issue is against LAP/unaware players. They can have the Q4s and T3s when I don't, so they have more combos of flushes than I will. I check when the FD hits against these players unless I have a strong hand.

There are aggressive players at these tables who bet large on any scare card and it seems SO obvious. Then again, now that I think about it they are getting folds more often than not.

I'll think about bluffing more often in these spots. Start noting with more precision how often Vs are folding on these 3 flush boards.

I hate to be redundant, but I feel like this got lost in the shuffle:

$125 is sort of bombing this turn. Really great not sets are calling for that. $65-$70 is where I’d be.

Also, if V’s are over folding to your leads when the flush or straight comes in the. Feel free to bluff more.

Noted - and that line of thinking is what has me betting larger than I used to, but I think $125 is still too high. Right idea, but not enough experience for me to use correctly. I’m blasting them out instead of betting just enough so they’ll call.

If he tank folded, he thought about calling. Maybe even raising to be honest (this V was trying to play back at me). It’s the main reason I asked the question. This spot reminded me of similar spots where it seemed like they almost called.

We don’t really care if we get a few extra calls by milking them. We want to maximize. Don’t get tricked by the dopamine kick that occurs by seeing your bet get called when you have a monster


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That's exactly what I'm trying to change in my game. I used to try and milk my nut hands, but started noticing how other good players were getting called on shoves for massive value. I've been shoving more (when stack sizes are appropriate, not as soon as I hit) and that's been working well. But I'm still making an adjustment in spots similar to this where shoving is definitely incorrect, and milking is definitely losing value.

Poker is a hard game, and part of the challenge is the fact that we must actively condition our brains to not react in ways that is normal for a human.

For one, marginal utility is a thing. Take someone with no savings and give them $1m. It’s a windfall of a lifetime and makes them thrilled. Now make it $2m. Well, they’re thrilled still, but the amount of joy they get from going from $1m to $2m isn’t as high as what they receive going from $0 to $1m.

“Deal or no deal” is a great example of this psychology. Like say you get down to the last 4 unknown values: $0.01 (call it $0), $1, $75, and $1,000,000. Your expected value is $250,019. Banker calls Howie, says he will offer $190k for you to walk away. Without external factors governing our decision, we’d never take this deal: it’s barely 3/4ths of our EV and we have a 75% chance of security a better deal next time. However, we also know that if we play it out to the end without paying attention to the deal, we have a 75% chance of coming away with essentially nothing. So because of numerous factors (the marginal utility of the last $60k not being worth the stress of giving up the first $190k being the big one), we may pass on what is the most profitable decision in favor of one that is more likely to result in us feeling joy and not feeling pain.

Similar mental game governs poker. We hate when we finally make that monster and they fold. Or we hate when we run a bluff and get called. So we bet smaller to “get them to call” when we have it, or bomb to get them to fold when we don’t. It feels good because our desired outcome is more likely to happen. But the times they would’ve called more when you have it, or the times that they’ll call any amount you make it when bluffing, can give away so much EV that they become worse strategies overall.

This isn’t to say you can never do these kind of manipulative plays. Like if you know you’re against a weak player who has what’s likely a weak made hand, maybe you do size down in order to trick them into giving the action. Or maybe you’re against an OMC who likely has an overpair on some T96-8-T and you know he will never call a jam. But in a case like this, we can’t triangulate his range down this precisely; he will have anything from flushes to weak draws like J9 that now will fold to any reasonable bet. So we should focus on playing a solid strategy.


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