1/2, $200 max buy in, $100 max bet.

Villain: $600 stack, young white guy, been quite aggressive, not afraid to fire barrels, has won some nice pots without showing.

Hero: $900 stack, 50's white guy, probably looks nitty, but V witnessed hand where H called $10 raise on the button with 44, then BB raised to $40, and with three callers of that raise H looked at the stack sizes and called also. Flop was Q74, three stacks went in, and H won $900 pot. Much grousing/discussion followed about H's craziness (?) for calling the $30 raise with 44.

The hand:

V is UTG, H is UTG+1, and V posts a $4 straddle. This is the first time anyone has straddled, and H's first thought is that V will fire at the pot pre flop if there are a bunch of limpers.

Hero looks at QQ and limps, the plan being that others will limp, then V will fire. Three others limp, and V raises $30. H calls, everyone else folds.

H's thought on his call is that if he raises it might look like a typical limp UTG/raise of AA, and he wants to under rep, not over rep, his hand.

Flop T73 rainbow. Pot $75.

V bets $100, H calls. Pot $275.

Turn A.

V bets $100, H calls. Pot $475.

H doesn't like the A, of course, but figures he is committed to the pot because of its size and the $100 bet limit.

River 3.

V checks. Hero bet or check it back?

Pre should've been a limp-reraise, not a limp-call. Your thought process for calling is FPS imo.

I don't understand why you played so passively.

The ace kills the chance to get value from worse and you probably can't get better to fold. Just check it back on river. There might be a few TX hands that would call a bet, but there are probably more middle/weak AX that plan to check/call river to control pot size. This is a situation where the cap really hampers you because you can't bet enough to get FE against weak better hands.

Your play in general here is FPS. Under repping a non-monster hand is just opening yourself up for these sorts of guesswork situations.

Because were IP against a weak range. Why would we want to isolate ourselves against the top of his range?

If hero is correct that villain is going to open wide when limped to and barrel off postflop, then limp/call makes more sense than limp/3bet because of how strong a limp/3bet usually looks

pre should just have been a standard open.

You might be able to get away with a $50 bet but then you risk him reading it for weakness and moving in on you. I just check back here. Preflop is fps.

I doubt the Villain is bluffing 100 into a 575 dollar pot. On the hand he'd probably hate to fold for 50-100.

Yes, I'm guilty of FPS here, but I can live with that. I was certain that this guy, after straddling, would make a play for the limps.

After V checked the river H checked it back. Villain said, "You're good", holding his cards face down. Hero showed the QQ, and he mucked.

I checked the river back figuring I was WA/WB, and I'd only fold what I beat and get raised by what beat me. Thinking about the hand later, though, I wondered if I'd lost value with the river check, that if V had caught anything he might have been hard put to refuse calling, say, a $50 bet for a $525 pot.

+1

If we are up against an aggro villain that will fire multiple big barrels if he retains the initiative and/or overvalue his hand and we are monster, there is nothing wrong with being passive.

Yes, being aggressive is usually the more optimal line, but there are times/situations where being a passive trappy nitty biatch is the optimal line and this is one of them.

Turn sucks goat balls obviously

check back river, seriously doubt we get called by worst. I suspect V should have a fair amount of air in his range as well.