Hero has sat down to a local 1-2 game. Only been at the table for 1.5-2 hours. Have not been too active as the deck hasn't smacked me or anything. Just playing my game. The table overall seems passive. Lots of limp calling and some fishy players. I will raise to isolate when i get an opportunity.

Hand begins with the button straddling, a few players cannot help themselves from straddling the pot. SB limps 5$, BB folds, UTG limps, I look down at A6. My stack is 400$ I am certainly not raising this hand, I'm almost certain to get called and playing OOP a dominated ace is not good, could easily fold but i elect on a call to try and see a cheap flop multi way. Planning to act on flopped 2p and NFD hands etc. I call the 5$. the rest of the field calls and the action hits the Villain (700$ stack, covers table.) He raises to 15$. Everyone who limped proceeds to call the 15$, obviously behind here almost all the time but the pot odds are such I can call and maybe get a stack if I hit something. I call the 15$.

The field ends up being 5 players going to the flop (75$) flop rains down
J77. I check my action and action checks all the way to V who bets 45$. Folds back to me.... What does hero do? This is a great flop for my hand.

Info on V, he is a older WM reg player. Pretty typical rec/reg guy. Forks range by limping or calling preflop... Have seen this player make bad bluffs before and seems to overvalue his hands at time. Not that tricky overall.

When he bets here into a larger straddled pot and bigger field I am putting him on a a strong overpair QQ-AA, possibly flush draws but I have the nut spade, possible he have KQ but overall I have him nailed on an overpair with occasionally JJ, I feel V will check JJ here most of the time.

Regardless I assume I am behind here but have sizeable equity against his entire range and am not often drawing dead. Do we want to be check calling here hoping to hit the flush? I feel like xc turns my hand more face up... OR is there a case for putting a raise in and taking the lead in the pot. The fact he bet leads me to believe he is willing to put money in the pot and his stack is so large I need to consider the fact I will need to put my entire stack in to maximize FE. I can easily represent many combos with a 7 and he will almost never have a 7 here. If i hit a flush, great, if not, maybe V will fold his overpair to pressure.

Do we flat or raise, if raise, what sizing?

Overlimping is fine.

Call flop and eval turn card - this is a math problem to draw to a flush.

That's way too narrow. Also, his preflop raise sizing is awful, so he could be really wide here and maybe even weighted towards draws rather than overpairs. Raising might make him fold worse spade draws and call with better only.

Call

your pf logic is sound, however i disagree with your ranging of villain on the flop.

A player willing to make bad bluffs and btn straddles is definitely going to be on the looser side.

a pf raise to 15 after a bunch of limps I find is usually a pot sweetener raise as they call it. He doesn't expect or want folds, and usually it means he has a decent multiway type hand.

I would expect to see stuff like high SCs like JTs-KQs, KJs. Maybe some weaker aces he wants like AT-AJ. A9s. Possibly some middle pairs.

That's not to say he can't do this also with the top end of his range, but I would usually expect to see someone with JJ+ AQ+ make it like 25 here to start building a bigger pot.


Anyways, it looks like you have at least 2 or 3 people behind you after you act on villains flop cbet.

You could c/r this to around 130 with the plan of jamming a non 7 or J turn.

The main value in that play would be the times everyone folds to your c/r, you wont be a favorite after a flop call but are kinda committed to the jam at that point.

I do think it would look to everyone like you just have a 7 here for value, and if you are behind you have decent equity nearly always. There is a nonzero chance someone with a Khi or Qhi flush draw still gives you action too depending on how stationy the player is.

I do think most people would tend to fold a J at some point to that line, depending on your image and their general nittiness level.

You look so strong c/ring through 3 players. If you would play a 7 this way I think this is the perfect hand to balance bluff with.

Another intangible about it is if you end up having to showdown after taking this line it should lead to you getting paid off more in spots where you are pushing the action for value.


The other option is to call, folding isn't viable. I feel like calling leaves us in a pretty awkward spot of not knowing if we have the best hand and basically forcing us to make the flush on the turn to win. And I think it will be hard to extract much value if we do get there as our hand would be fairly obvious if we light up with bets on the spade.


If the villain is actually as tight as you originally thought though I'd go for a call, but I just don't think that's the case based on your description of him.


Oh one more thing. I would tank a little bit and try to gather preloading tells from the players who checked the the raiser. Does it look like they are just waiting to fold after your turn or are they still interested in this pot?

Since the c/r play relies mostly on fold equity any tells picked up would help us a lot.

I think you guys are correct, he probably would be a lot wider betting in this spot. He seemed to bet pretty quickly. I had seen him do the same with an overpair before but not sure how much weight that carries. I just tend to see the older guys just almost auto bet their over pairs especially with a flush draw on board, some bet really big for protection, though his particular flop bet isnt overly large, just a little over half pot...In the moment I just got the overpair vibe. Had he paused for even just a few seconds I probably would have more likely though of him betting a draw. I did not get and preloading tells from players behind. I honestly did not even think to check this. Something I will keep in mind going forward...

I also agree his PFR is terrible. This wasnt something I kept in the forefront of my mind while on the flop. It make sense he has a wider range.

Thanks for the input. I will post the results soon.

Actual results were that I raised to 125$. Villain called pretty quickly. Turn was a brick and I shoved. He called pretty quickly again ... river spade fell and he tabled his QQ before I could even flip my hand over. He appeared to be completely blindsided I had a flush here. It's like he didn't even think about the hand at all. He wasnt scared of a 7 apparently. He tabled like he had the nuts.

good to note he isn't really considering relative hand strength. You will have good implied odds on future hands with him never being able to fold overpairs and likely TPTK hands also.

Now that we've gained this info we probably don't want to target him for bluffs of this sort again.

NH regardless.