Hero ($184): Relatively new to the table. Late 30's. Wearing button down, khakis and sunglasses.

Villain ($250+): Mid to late 50's. Wearing sport coat, button down and jeans. No read from him at this point.

1/2

I limp in EP w/ 77. Villain raises to 7 in LP. 3 players call. I re-raise to 42 hoping to take the pot down right there. Villain calls, all others fold.

Flop ($105): 962

I have $142 left behind. What's your line?
Check? Half-pot size bet? All-in?

check and pray it checks through. I am not a big fan of your line here with 77. I am assuming that we are trying to set mine when we limp in with 77 UTG which is fine. When someone raises to 7 and 3 players call this is EXACTLY what we want when we are set mining. In fact I often put out a pot builder bet with a hand like 77 for exactly this type of situation. A nice juicy pot with multiple callers to make it easy for us to get the money in if we hit. I prefer a squeeze here with a slightly weaker hand not a hand with a TON of implied odds.

Dont squeeze pf:
- with 77
- when the eff is < 100bbs

Bet/fold flop small.

Don't turn 77 into a bluff pre in that spot... just take it 5 ways to the flop and hope for a set.

Even before that, raise pre yourself.

I like the limp preflop. At weak tables (and most 1/2 table are weak, so if you are new you may as well assume so) limping pp in EP is profitable. More profitable than raising I think, because we risk less and our implied odds are higher.

Hate the squeeze though. Don't squeeze before you know your table & villains because you won't know how to play post flop. Also wait until you have a good image to squeeze.

And why squeeze with this hand? We can play 77 a lot more profitably by set mining. We are closing the action getting great odds...this is the perfect spot to set mine. We are even doing well when it comes to flopping set over set. Why turn such a valuable hand into a bluff? I'm much happier doing this with KTs, Axs type of hands when we have blockers. Although I would just call with those if closing the action...squeezing is much better from LP or the blinds than UTG imo.

Well, now that we did it, we may as well continue repping the l/rr AA and bet a standard $65 on this average flop. He will often believe you have aces or kings and fold if he can't crack 'em.

Folding if raised and shutting down if called, obv. If he pushes you off it on the flop or turn tank a few seconds and sigh like you have AK. (Or if the turn was an ace, like you have KK.) Honestly I'd almost rather this happened than checking it to showdown, but if you show it down I guess you can just tighten up since people will think your FOS for a while.

Raise pre.
Or limp call. Don't squeeze.

Bet/fold the flop for $60 or so.

I dont really like bet/fold the flop there. Lots of hands with good equity against you will call and leave you in an ugly spot ott imo.

I think it's a pretty rare villain who will flat the flop with $75 behind.

But you might be right.

GRUNCH

One of my biggest leaks by far is being too aggressive when I'm too new to a table. Before we put on our hoodie, beats by Dre headphones, sunglasses, and cloak of 2+2 awesomeness we need to get at least a general understanding of the table dynamics and our villains' competency levels and tendencies.

So for the first 2 orbits we should play ubber basic ABC poker or super solid nit-TAG poker until we develop the above reads. Once we got the table dialed in THEN we can be awesome and exploit the leaks and weaknesses we've observed.

So I don't like your squeeze attempts for the reasons stated above.

Okay, so what do we do on the flop?

Well, I'm of the firm belief that in many spots in poker, if we decide to take a line that it's more profitable to continue the line and to continue telling the story. So normally in this case I would say play the hand exactly like a typical rec-fish would play QQ. However, we have a problem...

eff stack sizes

You don't have enough to fire two big convincing bets in such a way to push out 9x or TT or JJ hands (also, V shouldn't have many 9x hands in his range)

Also, since V was the original raiser I think his range is going to be exclusively ATs+, TT+

If he has AT+ we can fold him out with a decent flop bet.

If he has TT+ he is never folding.

So we can fire off one strong c-bet and if called, give up

I lead out $70 and hope for a fold. If called, maybe we can try to rep an A or a K if an A or K hits on the turn or river. IN that case, I'd shove and hope to fold out TT, JJ, QQ type hands in V's range. But because of eff stack sizes and us not having enough chips, I think it cuts our success rate in half. I'd still do it though since that would be our only way to win the pot and by that point, we'd only have to fold him out like 30%-ish of the time to be profitable...

^ TT JJ QQ etc is almost never just calling or calling/fold there. The problem is OP's stack does not leave him much room to manuver on later streets. It's also bad idea to try and rep a pair of A/K there when it hits given the board.

Limp-squeezing with 77 isn't awful (you have ~35% vs a jam range and only PFR is uncapped -- everyone else should fold nearly all of their range), but you really want reads before doing something like that. If PFR is strong enough that you'll get jammed by JJ+ only a significant amount of the time, you just lit your stack in fire.

Also, your sizing sucks. If I limp-squeeze bluff here, I'm making it $55, leaving myself a PSB behind so that I can jam most flops.

I like dgiharris's 2 orbits rule. I modified it tonight and made it a 15 orbit rule for me .

Really hate the limp/squeeze. Yes, we're repping huge. We should have a ton of fold equity. But this is 1/2 NL. We shouldn't be making fold equity dependent plays like this in vacuum, especially when we have a separate profitable option. Villain may be a mega passive goof only raising TT+ AQ+ and not folding anyways. We also need it to not only be profitable, but more profitable than set-mining in this 5-way $35 pot with an SPR of 5. Doubtful IMO.

Flop : Bet $65 and hope for rain.

Just did an exhaustive EV calculation, and I take it back. There's virtually no way to make a limp-sqz profitable here. Especially not in a vacuum.

I like the squeeze and I like the fact that I am new to the table.

Win = $$$

Lose = good image

What's better than setting up a decent image right off the bat?

Shove flop.

Best time to squeeze...

When short, threat of AI is always there.

^ It makes it easier to put you all in with a wider range while you are stuck with a very marginal hand with most of your chips in.

When you squeeze and the eff is deep, there is more play post flop. They are less likely to just shove/reraise you without a hand that you likely have blockers to.

How big do your normally raise in your squeeze?

The idea of a squeeze is to end the hand right there, not to play post-flop.

When deep, squeeze is less effective simply because implied odds allow for a wider range.

^^^This.

The essence of short stack play is squeezing where everyone else is stuck with little implied odds. They just have to have a hand that is going to win on the flop. That said, I don't like the l/rr with 77. Maybe it is the mod's curse, but I need lots of FE to win, because it is extremely rare for me to have a big hand. I want people folding, not calling me.