1/3 NL Nearing Midnight on a Monday

The table is playing painstakingly slow. Everyone is drunk/buzzed and very friendly. At best 20 hands/hr.

V (240): Middle aged black guy. I haven't played with him in a while, but he's the type of player that sees the potential in every hand. Every pre-flop fold is an ordeal, Every flop that misses his hand is a travesty resulting in a disappointed and time consuming fold. Has shoved pre numerous times, both over limps and occasionally a raiser. Hasn't done so with a real hand. (Ex. J5o, J8s, and A8s)
He's passive with the goods (Didn't raise nut straight on turn, didn't raise turned 2 pair) and very aggressive without.

H (850): Sitting back and playing very few hands. Comments have been made about how few hands I play, and also how I bully everyone out with big C-bets. Only notable hand at showdown was a K high flush I hit when a fourth diamond hit the river. I was the pre flop raiser in CO w/ KJ, made 2/3 pot c-bet on Q high dry board, checked back turn, and bet the made flush on the river.

OTTH: Hero Q9
V in BB, Hero on Button

Two limps, Hero Raises to 25, V calls, and one limper calls.

Flop (75): 982
Both check to hero, Hero bets 50, V shoves ~220, other dude folds.

V: Took over a minute to make the decision. I couldn't decide if this was hollywooding, or indecision. I'm posting this hand, because I've seen thousands of dollars exchanged over the past few sessions in situations very similar to this.(A very meh hand making big calls against a maniac, or because a table has gotten insane). In this case, I'm getting 2:1.

My own post hand analysis is that raising Q9s from the button on this table is super duper thin. Although I had been getting numerous folds all night with my c-bets, the table had changed to gamboosly.

This seems like a snap-call against the described villain.

Would call too

Also no shame in limping along with this hand if this is the sort of table where the limpers are gonna just limp call everything anyway.

I think I just overlimp this. Sounds like we have little FE at this table so best hand wins a lot, and our hand is unlikely to be it. We just end up building a massive pot with a dominated hand (much like thread title suggests).

I mean, this is the problem right here. We flop meh TP with meh kicker and our SPR is lol < 3. Good luck managing that (i.e. if Villain actually flops / makes a better hand there is virtually no way we are going to be able to fold).

As played, our reads against this guy slowplays big hands and shoves with lol hands. So snap call I guess.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Great post sums up and should / thread IMO

grunch:

As described I call it off here. There are several draws that vil could have as well as air (as based on read). You beat some 9x but are losing to two pair, overpairs etc. At least you have a backdoor flush draw and one overcard in the sometimes cases vil has TT or JJ.

Its hard to range vil in spots like these but since your getting 2:1 here I call it off. Sometimes you lose and that sucks but with a vil this loose and bad its very hard (and often wrong) to fold TP and ok kicker.

I fold here - what the Villan is doing seems different behavior from what you have seen so far. He could have two pair already.

call. tons of draws in his range. you need a rock solid live tell to lay that down.

was this in lake charles?

This was Harrahs in NOLA.

Top pair + BDFD and SPR of 3 equals call.

I agree with "best hand usually wins", by this time in the night FE due to being the pre-flop raiser was at a minimum, so raising this hand is super thin at best.
However, would you even limp this hand? With poo hands like this, Id rather raise of fold. Agree?

I really disagree with this, especially in position, especially for cheap (where we can setup big SPR pots where we have lots of room to move postflop), especially with a hand that has the potential to make a strong hand (and possibly get paid off if there are idiots at the table).

I also don't consider Q9s a crap hand. It can make the 3rd+ nut flush (overflushing lottsa hands). It can make a nut straight. 9x has a kicker that can beat a lot of other kickers. It's two pair is bigger than a lot of other two pairs. But it's also not a dominating monster, so I'm not looking to build a pot which puts stacks in play when I hit just one pair. I'm looking just to see a cheap flop with a skyhigh SPR and then play it appropriately postflop.

But I have to admit, I'm a little muddled on my preflop thinking right now as I've been re-addressing it. I used to think that after 0/1 limpers that we should always be raising any hand we are considering playing, but I'm even reconsidering that idea at this point and thinking that open limping / overlimping 1 limper with speculative hands in LP isn't nearly as bad as I once though it was.

Gyes,I'mthinkingofbecomingeven*more*passivepreflop G

I've been playing with this idea too. I usually won't raise a spec hand with more than 1 limper either. I just don't get the folds post to justify it when I miss. However, even when I raise these hands with just 1 limper, and then usually get a blind to come along, I get myself into tough spots where I need to double and even triple barrel. Since the tables Im playing now are really sticky, I've had to shift more to an over-limp/fold mentality rather than raise/fold.

I appreciate the input.

However, this post was more about big pots with top pair. Ive been in so many spots in the past 200 hours where I have TPTK, bet flop and get shoved on to give me at best 2:1 odds. I often NIT fold, or fish call. I never get it right lol.


This one however, was the easiest snap call I've made in this situation. But looking back, I didn't know if this call only felt good cuz I won, or cuz its the right move against this player. Its definitely fairly high variance.

I fold pre, and fold OTF. At best you're 50/50. If you want to flip for $240, call. There are clearly better spots to stack V, though.

50/50 getting 2:1 is kind of a massive edge.

Yeah, good point. Assuming V is on a draw, this is a straightforward call, I suppose. It's the just my inner nit hating the coin flip for a big chunk.

We have to be right in our read, though.

Pretty easy call against this V.