Here's the back story Villain and I have gotten into two very large hands already during this session (I won both hands) and there's been some back and forth chatter. We're playing 8 handed,live, blinds are 1-3 (uncapped game) I'm sitting at $1,100, villain $900 (roughly).

UTG+1 opens to $12
Villain and one other flat
I'm in the BB with pocket KK's
I raise to $52.

All 3 players call.
Pot $208
Flop: Ks, 10s, 6d
I bet out $150 (given the connectedness of this board and flush draw I didn't want it to check through).
Villain flats everyone else folds
Pot- $508
Turn - Qc
At this point I put the villain on a flush draw one pair type hand and I go all in trying to get him off the draw or get it in bad.
Pot is now $1,208 and $700 to call.


I'm curious peoples thoughts on this hand? Should I have raised more preflop? Check raised the flop? Turn shove OK?

Wrong forum. Should be in Live Low-stakes NL. But I'll answer anyway. Being very deep and out of position, I would have probably made it about $80 preflop. There are a number of ways you can play it on the flop: the way you did, by betting smaller, or check-raising, although I'd probably never check/call here. Turn is fine, although you could bet smaller to induce action from more hands, like one pair.

Mods, you can move this to LLSNL if you want.

TBH, you're asking the wrong questions. Win or lose, you should be thrilled to death if the villain called you. Stop thinking that you needed to push him out of this hand when you're ahead like this. That's a huge leak.

Welcome to the forum, OP. Not sure where you posted this originally, but the forum is, indeed the correct one for hand questions. In the future, please don't include results, as they bias people's responses. I edited them out. Please wait until discussion dies down, or at least one day, before posting them in the future.

Flop 3-bet is too small, imo. UTG+1 opened very early, so he should have a strong range. You are OOP and very deep, which is a bad place to play a medium SPR with big pair multi-way. When the pot gets to you, it is already $48 with your call, and you made it just $40 more. Once UTG+1 calls (which is basically inevitable), the other two are easily priced in. I go at least $72 pre.

Flop is fine, given how thoroughly you block TP. As the 4-bettor, they'd likely be suspicious if you checked, and you probably wouldn't get a chance to c/r. Could go a bit smaller, but if they're the types to overpay for draws, why not get that value.

Turn overbet shove is silly. If V has a pair +FD (which is really hard to have here in a 4-bet pot, since the top two board cards are also the suited ones), you are losing a lot of EV if you push him out of the hand. Again, get that value! About $300 sounds good.

Preflop is kinda similar to the 3bet sizing thread, and I think it's a sorta tricky spot. How much have you been 3betting in this spot? Is your hand a little face up? If so, you just offered 3 opponents fairly awesome 25+ IO to stack you while at the same time putting yourself into a very uncomfortable situation (as anyone can trivially commit you postflop thanks to being OOP and an SPR of 4). I personally find these very tricky spots and either aim for a high SPR pot (by lol flatting preflop and playing postflop poker) or mostly in this case with dead money simply raising to an amount that offers poor IO since I'll be committed postflop (although in this case that would by to about $120 and obviously it's unlikely anyone with a tight image is going to get action to that sizing, but taking down 12bb ain't a horrendous result). Anyhoo, just something you should be considering. The more expert you are OOP to 3 opponents in a SPR 4 pot with a perhaps face up hand, the more you might not care about those considerations.

SPR is 4 on the flop and we're committed and board is drawy. Super easy PSB (or even more) to setup a PSB turn shove, imo. You know who's paying $150 to see the turn but not $220? Absolutely no one ever, so we're missing value here plus leaving an awkward overbet for the turn (earlier streets should be overbet to setup less awkward later street shove, not the other way around, imo).

GbutIsuckatdeepstack,sowhateverG

I've been 3 betting pretty aggressively because my table has been extremely loose passive. Thinking back on my line id prefer a much larger sizing $90-115 preflop. To go heads up. UTG+1 claimed to have folded pocket QQ's on the flop. I think given my image and the loose calls this would have worked optimally.

I agree should have raised larger on the flop and then the turn would have been a pot sized bet. As played post flop I'm okay with it but obviously will size up next time. Thanks for the advice guys much appreciated.

Like everyone else says, more pre. You are pricing your opponents in and you are OOP, a recipe for disaster.

I probably bet $100 to $125 on the flop. Yeah there are a lot of draws but there are a lot of made hands to get value from too.

Overbet shoving the turn is lol-bad in a vacuum. If villain thinks you are FOS and you've seen him call huge overbets with marginal hands then it's fine but I'm guessing you don't have that read.

I would bet the turn again to about $275 and shove safe rivers.

Koko, I definitely disagree have to shove the turn I had a read that he was on a flush draw if he has J9 specifically so be it. I can't imagine committing half my stack then check folding to a river shove getting 2:1 on my money with top set. Again I think pre flop could have been better and that would have had him fold everything else beyond that is debatable depending on your style, live reads, player history etc

OP, I know you're new, but I reiterate: "please don't include results... wait until discussion dies down, or at least one day, before posting them in the future."

And this is just ridiculous: If he's on a flush draw, he has about an 18% chance of hitting it. That means that any bet you make that makes his call more than 18% of the pot is a money maker for you if he calls. You want to bet as much more than that as you can get called to maximize your value, but an overbet shove will almost never get called by a bare FD, so you lose a lot of EV by betting that much against most Vs.

Thanks Garick! I also appreciate the advice as well. Probably in a solid 3-5 or 5-10 game only getting called by better on the turn shove and want flush draws to pay me off.

Maybe you're intentionally oversimplifying but this isn't true.

If we put on our magic glasses and see villain has 3s2s, he only has 7 outs and about 16% equity. However most flush draws that show up in a 3-bet pot will also have a straight draw for 23%-32% equity.

Also, just looking at raw equity is wrong because of future action. We aren't likely getting away from spade rivers with a hand this strong and about a half PSB back if we bet 1/2 turn pot, which gives villain implied odds. If we still have our magic glasses we could offer villain better odds than he needs by equity alone, since we'll stack him on spade+pairing rivers and not otherwise.

The biggest problem with this line of thinking is that villain has many hands other than flush draws, and our sizing should not be optimized against one part of his range vs. our specific hand. I don't like shoving with this hand since we double-block the portion of his stackoff range that we beat. I'd rather shove with TT or AJ.

I'm also firmly in the non-shove camp. Clearly raise more pre, then bet half pot on flop and turn. We're deep, people are going to draw, dont try to turn a 500BB pot into a 100BB decision.

Yes, very simplified example to get OP thinking about EV. I just went with "FDs have 9 outs, and by the rule of 2 and 4, that's 18% equity" for simplicity's sake.

The fact of the matter is that FD's will basically always call 1/2 pot bet OTT, thinking they have IOs, so messing around with equities under 25% is a really academic exercise. You should almost never be betting under half pot if your read on V is that his range is dominated by FDs, ldo. OTOH, you don't have to get up to "solid 3-5 or 5-10 games" before an average V will fold a bare FD to an overbet shove. Without reads of spewiness, that bet is too big in any stakes above play money.

I could do an extended EV calc with percentage of equity and chances of folding at various holdings, but it would take a very long time and would likely be less than illuminating for OP. Basic rule of thumb standard betsizing in a situation like this is 2/3-3/4 pot, though obv we want to adjust based on reads, stacks remaining, etc.

Your sizings need a lot of work.

Preflop: OOP this is way too small. My general rule at 100 bb is to go 4x the original raise, plus one for every caller. Deep like this I’d add another 1-2. Like we’re talking $90-$100. For $40 more this deep, you’re asking to get rekt in this hand.

Flop: this is way too much. You have two kings in your hand and there a third one on the board. You’re giving weak hands almost no shot to continue. You’d be better off check raising versus bombing it here. Or betting small and then going for fat turn value.

Turn: I mean I don’t know. We only realistically lose to AJss/J9ss (or other combos if your opponent is terrible). Besides that, this turn gives a lot of his range an excuse to continue, but I also have no idea where your bluffs are coming from at this size. It’s probably not terrible to overbet, it definitely beats betting something like $350.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

FWIW I think OPs flop size has led to this awkward stack situation. Like if our opponent has a flush draw, he now will often have the gutter to go with it (since I assume a lot of his FDs have the As in them). So he’s probably willing to call more than 1/2 pot. But if we bet 3/4ths pot and he calls, we have like what, 1/4th Of a pot left in stacks? Less?

This being said, being OOP in this weird 1-1.3 stack to pot situation on dynamic board is a spot where I tend to err on the side of just sticking it in their faces.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Besides it being “trivial” to commit him as I Hope OP isn’t mindlessly blasting off 300 bb with an overpair, you’re basically right on.

Flatting is horrendous. Making it expensive and embracing the variance is best. It’s also great when hands like 76s or A3 go away. You make that happen by saying “$12? Nah, son. $95”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks to the preflop result (which often happens at these steaks thanks to going multiway), we actually aren't deep at all postflop. The resulting SPR is lol 4, so good luck not getting in all your chips (for better or worse) postflop.

GcluelessNLnoobG

IMO, RaisingLarge (i.e. $95 son) > Flatting > RaisingToTheSizeWeDidHere (commiting ourselves while offering 3 opponents awesome 25+ IO). So if flatting is horrendous (and it certainly isn't my preference of all our options) then OP's sizing is megahorrendous.

GimoG

To everyone saying the mistake was not raising enough preflop...isn't the idea that we get callers when we have premium hands like AA/KK? Do we really want everyone to fold and just pick up a few dollars? Don't we want J9s to call?

This particular hand was going to play itself once the flop hit (whether he raised to 50 or 100 preflop...assuming a call)...top set vs flush/straight draw...it's how big pots are generated in most non-crazy games.

Here’s food for thought: OP made incorrect sizings throughout the hand. And he still didn’t make a -EV decision. Sometimes our hand is just that powerful


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We'll very rarely flop the nuts, but yeah, the times we do it will be hard to screw it up too badly.

But we're mostly going to flop one pair. I'll let the OP decide how often he's likely to screw that up in an SPR 4 pot having given 3 opponents 25+ IO preflop.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Unless you specifically have AA, you actually don’t mind getting folds and putting maximum pressure on hands. And when you have AK/AQs and actually want to get it through, it’s better as well.

The issue with a hand like KK deep, which GG is actually right about (albeit taking it to extreme measures like playing it as passively as humanly possible), is that most of the time you’re going to have “one pair”. Which can get awkward deep. If you have J9s super deep, you can play an ABC strat of going for it when you make 2 pair or a strong draw, and not going for it when you don’t.

Moreover, say you make it 52 and it goes 4 ways. Flop comes 665. You made it so small, that people called you and they could easily have 63s or whatever. So now you’re hamstrung for getting value.

Now you make it 100 and one guy calls and the flop is 665. Unless they have like A6s, 65s, 66 or 55 exactly, you have them crushed and can go for fat fat value.

The problem with OPs size is more than just missing value and not generating folds. We’re at an informational deficit too. Our opponents know we have a big hand and are likely to play well against our range. But we have no idea what they have. Example: in this hand, unless villain is horrendous or has some very specific hands, he’s probably going to play great against the turn jam because OP is going to have like all of the strong hands on this board.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

He’s going to screw it up at the same rate if he calls. How badly do you over fold the turn if you think we somehow lose more relative to our wins in 3 bet pots vs single raised pots? Or conversely how showdown bound are you after calling the turn?

You realize they have infinite IO when we don’t face them with additional action, correct?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Again, for me it mostly hinges on whether we are offering them good IO while at the same time putting ourselves in a situation where we will mostly be handcuffed into putting our stack in the middle postflop. To look at it from J9s perspective (and admittedly this somewhat depends on where he called preflop), it's possible he got 25+ IO in position multiway closing the action to make the preflop call for < 6% of his stack in a spot where the preflop raiser will almost always have to stack off; if he plays well postflop, did he make much of a mistake (if any)? How is he faring compared to OP (who will mostly flop one pair and flying blind OOP against the world where the rest of his stack is trivially in play)?

Another consideration is how well our opponents play postflop. If they are all lol opponents from yesteryear who are going to stack off postflop with lol second pear / no draw against the preflop 3better continuing for stacks postflop OOP against the world, ok, we might not care as much getting ourselves into this situation. In this case here, a guy correctly folded QQ postflop to a single bet, so I'll let you decide how moronic the opponents are.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I realize you're comparing this to flatting (I think we both agree raising large is better), but:

1) If we flat, the SPR will be 18.5, which means it will take at least 4 massive bets and otherwise 5++ postflop average bets to get in stacks. We'd have to be pretty damn horrible to get in stacks with one pair in this case, so it's really just an illusion that we're offering "infinite" odds. If we play postflop well, thanks to not handcuffing ourselves we can see how the board / action runs out and make the best decisions we can regarding building a pot / pot controlling / getting to showdown or not / etc.

2) We can afford to make the postflop mistake of folding the best hand in a smaller flatted pot (or the mistake of letting draws get there by checking or not betting enough). It ain't great (it's a mistake, no doubt), but it ain't a big one as the pot is so small (where it's virtually impossible to make a "big" mistake). We can afford to make these smaller mistakes and we'll still be just fine overall (we won't win as much as if we didn't make the mistake but we can still win). But we simply can't afford to make big mistakes for 300bb stacks (where I would argue OP's preflop sizing gets us on the road to); make too many of those and we simply won't be able to win overall.

But I think you and I disagree on this preflop viewpoint, and that's fine.

GcluelessNLnoobG