Villain is a pretty loose and aggressive player with a very wide range pre. He is the effective stack at 275.

Limp, villain opens to 21 in the CO. Hero flats on the button with AhQc. I think 3 betting has a lot of merit but he's capable of 4 betting light and think he might spew with a worse band if both make the same pair.

Pot: 45.

Flop:368 all clubs. Villain bets 35 and I expect him to Cbet with the vast majority of his range. Thoughts in what I should do?

I thought he perceives me as tight and will give my raises a lot of credit, I've been card dead so table perceives me as nitty. I got a 12 dollar preflop raise through from UTG earlier that orbit.

I opted to raise to 90 which I thought would fold out any hand he has without a club except for sets, some of which he might limp, 86 which I think he would usually limp, and some overpairs.

Villain calls.

Turn: 7c. Hero makes a flush.

Pot:225. Villain donk bets for 50 with 115 behind. Hero? Just call or ship it?

1/2 live?

Assuming 1/2 live. (I think it actually doesn't make much difference now that I think about it.)

Big open in the CO. Any reads on that?

I'm OK with either flatting or 3b here. More likely to 3b with AQo, but I think playing a pot in position against over-aggro V with a likely better hand can't be a bad move.

I think flop is a clear flat. We want to let V bluff his clubs or air. Raising just lets him gii now if happens to have a big hand or fold out his air.

Also, putting 55 on a 170 pot means V's response will be unclear. If he comes over the top, is he just reacting to perceived weakness, or viewing your small raise as an attempt to "see where you're at"? It also means you're facing a commitment decision with a marginal hand: 225 in the pot, 165 back.

Not to pile it on, but I think this is a classic case of building a big pot with a marginal hand against an uncapped opponent range.

Turn puts us in an awkward spot. We're probably not ahead of V's range given the 5.5:1 odds V is giving us. And if we call here, what's our plan for the 115 into 325 river bet, if it comes?

I think you have to lay it down.

1/3 live sorry.

Villain uses this as his standard sizing when he opens and there are limpers. He will limp some of his weaker hands but his opening range is still wide.

I can get behind your reasoning on flatting the flop, but I don't think we can fold when we actually hit. Calling can't be profitable if we hit and have to fold right?

I would also lean much more toward a call or maybe even a fold against someone who doesn't have as wide of a range and will Cbet less aggressively. I wouldn't say this is a standard raise for me.

kk. I don't think that makes much difference except for making the 21 open a bit less noteworthy.

The problem with raising like that is V could have Ac or Kc and will never fold to that

But yea as played just call lol did he have it???

Easy there, killer.

Let's let some more discussion happen for a while.

As usual, it really comes down to the villain. He opens a lot pre, but what are his postflop tendencies? Does he bluff scare cards?

I'd be inclined to tank for a bit and call here, then call the rest on the river, assuming this guy is bluffy post flop too (or will go for very thin value)

He would bluff scare cards but I think he would size up. I actually think this is either the nuts, or a marginal made hand finding out where it's at. It could absolutely be a bluff but I didn't get that feeling. Donking less than 1/4 pot after I just raised him would be a weird bluff.

3! pre.

As played, the flop raise is spew.

I think 3! is better pre. If V doesn't fold you get initiative advantage added to position advantage most likely.

As played, if you're going to bluff then I'd wait until the turn. Shows a lot more strength imo. Plus, like you did. You can actually hit.

As played. Call turn.

Call most rivers.

Don't raise that flop against a villain with no fold button. If you had the Ac that would be one thing but the Qc is not that great. I probably flat and reevaluate on turn.

AP, flat turn. Flat call on river. If villain shuts down OTR then jam and hope he calls as he doesn't have a club if he stops betting OTR IMO.

Jamming the turn has some merit but I'd rather let villain hang himself. There aren't really any river cards that make our hand any worse, except the 4 and 9, and to a much lesser extent anything that pairs the board. I think he usually has a small flush, 54, or T9, and for any of these the river card doesn't matter. Certainly possible he has a bigger flush though, so I like calling as it keeps his range wider. The more he bluffs and thin value bets, the more likely we are ahead, and it's better for him to put the money in for us.

Between let's flop an Ace or Q and hope that villain has the worst end of the same pair and bets into us and we get paid, and 3betting a lose/aggressive range Pre IP, i like the late option a lot more.

AP, if we have the Ac and we semi bluff then I like our line a lot more. What if V ships, are we calling the flop? Likely not.

Turn is a little confusing for me given lack of V post flop tendencies.

Even if V is lose/aggressive flop, that doesn't indicate his tendencies post flop.


With that being said and w/o having poker stove next to me, I would have to call turn and not be super happy when V ships the river but will have to call off again.


3b this pre IP next time, call flop


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I'm fine with flatting PF OTB against a spewy V. That said, I think you overplayed your hand OTF, and I don't like your raise sizing either.

I know stacks are a bit awkward here and had you raised larger then there would have been only a trivial amount of money behind to play the turn. For me that's all the more reason to just flat though. I don't think your hand is nearly as strong as it may appear to you, and drawing to just the 3rd NF via 1 card seems more like a hand that's good enough to bluff catch against an aggressive V, but not so strong that I'd want to force the issue when it comes to getting stacks in.

Given pot/stack sizes, now that you've made the flush I think you're forced to call it off. It's just a guessing game at this point though as you're still beating mostly just bluffs and if you're behind you're drawing dead. To me there's really no reason to raise turn as there's not many cards that can change the hand OTR, and I doubt you'll get V to fold anything better than 1p hands that you're crushing anyway. I'd call turn, and then hope he gives up OTR and you get to showdown.

3-betting AQ against this villain is not a good idea. If he 4-bet bluffs we fold. When he folds that's not particularly good for us either. He has a very wide range likely including lots of weak Aces that will fold to a properly sized 3-bet. I much rather call and keep in his range all the hands we dominate.

If villain never 4-bet bluffs and won't fold to a 3-bet we can 3-bet for value, but as described it sounds like we're just forcing villain to continue with his strong hands and fold his dominated trash, which is not really a great result.

If we're OOP there's more of an argument for 3-betting, but I see no reason why we'd want to 3-bet something marginal like AQ when we're HU in position against a LAG.

In retrospect I think the flop raise is sub-optimal vs this villain and bad in general as seems to be the consensus here. I want to be raising bluffs that do better vs his calling range if I hit my hand. Since his range will contain more small suited connectors and random bluffs than the average range, I don't mind it as much but don't think the raise is good.

Given that the consensus is to call the turn, I of course decided to ship it with the logic being im calling river anyway, and I want to make sure I get value from small flushes before the board pairs or another club comes. I felt his bet was really weighted toward small flushes and some big flushes that I'm not folding to on the river anyway. I didn't think he had that many bluffs that calling has value to keep his bluffs alive.

Result: villain folded pocket tens without a club. He said he wouldn't have folded any flush on the turn for whatever that's worth.

I'm assuming this is 1/3?

With these stacks (< 100bbs) and an aggro opener in LP vs just one limper (i.e. his range should be super wide here), I think I would lean towards a 3bet. I actually might go fairly large to like $80 where I can then setup a ~PSB shove on any flop (other than perhaps checking back flops I actually hit to induce), and this way I pretty much always get to realize my equity by seeing all 5 cards plus pretty much maximize my FE preflop and flop. I don't think flatting is horrible, especially if we're thinking of just floating a lotta flops against this guy and taking it away on the turn (which I think is a valid alternative). But as stacks get smaller, the more we should be getting aggro here (imo), although these stacks might be in the in-between area.

I think against an aggro preflop raiser / cbetter I'd definitely lean towards raising the flop. We should have good FE and decent hand equity. The only question is sizing. If we go the $90ish, that should give us decent FE on the flop as well as on the turn with a 3/4 PSB (I'd be jamming any turn). Or with the pot already being $80, I think jamming the flop is also fine.

Weird spot on turn. I don't see any benefit to jamming as I mostly see that folding worse and getting called by better (no?) plus it removes bluffs. Against an aggro guy, I would sigh call and make a river decision, although I'm quite worried about what calls a big raise on the flop and now bets out.

ETA: Surprised so many think the flop raise is poor? This guys preflop raise / cbet range is a mile wide, so I think we have pretty good FE and hand equity. And with just A high currently, we'd be pretty stoked about taking down the pot now (which I think with our image and his range we do a lot). Yeah, I'd rather have the A high draw, but against him our hand should still fare pretty well.

Glottaoptionsinthishand,imoG

This was in fact 1/3. Glad I got at least one person on board with raising flop. I felt like given his wide range and how tough it will be to continue on brick turns raising was the better play but I get the arguments against it.

I think you are right that turn is probably a call, but I do think it's close. I don't think we fold out most of his flushes and if they would fold now, they weren't or shouldn't be calling river anyway.

While there aren't a ton of rivers that should kill my action against a smaller flush, the board pairing would. I also was calling a river shove from him anyway which influenced my decision to shove turn.

The next best flush out there is just a J high single card flush. He'd kinda have to be ******ed to go to war with that as it's only a bluffcatcher, no?

GcluelessNLnoobG

The flop raise is bad because we have showdown value and are unlikely to get villain to fold a better hand with the exception of 6 combos AK no club, and unlikely to get him to call with a worse hand except maybe 54 if he's terrible and even that has tons of equity against us.

This is reasons for betting 101.

The flop raise just bloats the pot with a weak draw. Yeah it hits and villain has no club and everything works out but this hand was poorly played at every post flop decision point (no offense intended to OP--I've butchered hands far worse than this)

And making a giant 3bet preflop just to set up a low SPR is ridiculous. This will succeed in making villain fold his dominated aces and queens--why do we want this?? And we're in position vs. a LAG...the SPR of 6 or whatever it is is fine.

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My counterpoints would be:

- I'm not convinced we have much showdown value; we're just going to be calling any turn and river bets UI?

- a flop shove (or flop raise / turn shove) only has to get a pocket pair to fold some of the time to make us a massive favourite; the times they don't fold, whatever, we get there slightly more often than we don't (i.e. a flop shove is still for value against a pair, even though we'd like them to fold)

- the flop raise is fine, so long as our plan is to continue maximizing our FE by following thru with a turn shove UI

- a 3bet to $80 isn't even all that insanely large (it's not even quite 4x thanks to the initial raise being $21 and there already being $7 of other dead money in the pot); setting up a flop shoveable SPR of ~1 also allows us to see all 5 cards (realize our equity) and put massive pressure on hands that are doing fine against us equity-wise (77/etc.)

- seeing a flop against a dominated hand isn't a huge coup if we don't hit the two outer, especially since he has the initiative (although admittedly we'll have position, but a big part of our plan better be floating completely bricked flops)

- I'm not opposed to the flatting route preflop either; as I say, the bigger the stacks the more I think flatting is better, whereas the smaller the stacks the more I think 3betting is better; these stacks are kinda straddling the line and I think either option is fine

GcluelessNLnoobG

Shoving the flop with 130bb is even worse than raising to 90. IME people will put you on AcX and call light. Overpairs are probably not folding A9 may not even fold. We might fold hands like middle pair that were just going to check/fold on the turn anyway. And when called we are crushed with just a weak 1 card flush draw to fall back on. If we have the Ac okay maybe but the bare Qc? Bleh.

Raising mostly just folds out air and worse draws. We beat these hands at showdown usually. Granted we don't always get to showdown cheaply but there's no reason not to flat the flop and see what happens. We often win more this way by keeping villains range wider.

I don't get how you're so nitty preflop but you want to just jam it in with a weak draw OTF... I'm guessing your game revolves around setting up low sprs and jamming flop or turn at latest so you can avoid any tricky spots.

That is a large 3 bet for what is normally seen at this level. We are likely getting called by AK and TT JJ and QQ+ jams. Not a good result and We risk 80 to win like 22 after rake. Villain folding is not a good result either. Of we 3 bet it should be to a size villain almost always calls like 50. We don't need an spr of 1 to put massive pressure on hands like 77. Its called barreling. And I think 77 is folding more often to triple barrels and maybe double barrels than just folding to a flop jam. Villains are usually not complete idiots. They know if the pot is 200 and it's 200 to them to call then pfr has air a lot when jamming (or should) and they can call pretty light getting 2:1

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So which is it? Will they not call with a worse hand or will they call down lite?

Do you seriously think that's a contradiction?

A) People rarely make 4+x 3bets so if we make a huge 3bet we get put on JJ+ AK maybe worse. Villain folds all his dominated hands.

B) If we flat, we are in a separate scenario. Now both villain and hero are on wide ranges. In this scenario, reraising all in on the flop will get light calls, by which I mean light relative to a flop jam, i.e. overpairs TP etc. and if you'd actually read my previous posts completely you would have seen this.

C) Our best case scenario is we get called by something like TT no club and we're flipping. But against a range of TP+ and some bigger flush draws we have about 33% equity. Given the pot is fairly small jamming is not a good move here.

D) An overpair / TP is not a worse hand than AxQc.

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