$1-2 NL At The Straddle Club in NYC

Game had been running for a few hours. I bought in with $200 and was sitting on $500. UTG raises to $15. One caller and hero calls with J9dd on the button. Bb raises to $50. UTG and next guy call.

I will stop here for now - what do you do on the button? All three other players are regs at this underground game who play a lot of hands, stacks range 400-600.

This is not a strategy forum, but maybe somebody can move your thread to the low limit NL forum.

Depending on stack sizes, the question might more be if you should call the initial raise and not if you should call for close to 5:1 against the 3bet.

Fold or 3bet the first opportunity.

Understood - I will include some wild stories in this thread about the room at conclusion of hand discussion

Easy call in position getting great odds with J9dd, get ready to go ham on favorable flops but do not overvalue your hand if you just hit top pair, I love underground games but be careful of collusion

GL

If you call the pot is going to be around $200. If we assume that everyone else has you covered, the SPR is going to be 2.5. There's no room to maneuver. The good news is that if you hit your hand hard, people are going to stack off with TP. The bad news is that they aren't going to fold TP if you miss and you are 20:1 against hitting 2 pair or better on the flop. There's not enough for you to win to make up for all the times you'll fold on the flop.

Easy fold.

Making me feel a bit better that people are on both sides of this decision...

Pot is $165 when it gets to you. It's $35 to call. Even though we're not really deep enough for the SPR we're setting up, you're getting some very nice immediate odds and have position. I don't hate a call or a fold. In game, I doubt I find a fold, even though it's probably a bit better.

Def never 4-betting. BB is never 3-bet/folding.and our hand does not fair well against his likely range.

If I call, though, I'm looking for at least pair+draw to continue.

You should fold this hand to the original raise and to the reraise.

With only 200 behind, you don't have enough implied odds to call $15 to play a speculative hand in position unless you will be able to steal the pot some decent fraction of the time post flop.

That gets even worse when it's bumped to $50. You have almost no chance to steal and can't make anywhere near enough those few times you do flop big.

These are the types of hands I look to get involved in when playing live poker. Call for the 30 extra bucks to get into a fat pot, pray to flop a flush or OESD so you can shove.

Venice notes some great reason to fold, and in a vacuum that may be the best decision, but this is one of those rare cases where I personally go against the math and just call and hope to flop gin.

If you do miss fold and reload don't think twice about it, can't be making too much of a mistake either way in my opinion. If stacks were deeper this is definitely a call

Also you don't want to be that one guy that folds when the three guys in front of you call right? That can't be good for the game and you don't want to be that one guy that everyone thinks is a nit and gives no action! Closing the action also helps this case because no one can shove and blow you off your hand. Also might want to consider 4B shove if you think 3B may be light.

@Garick's post made me wonder if I was being too hasty, which really bugs Ents.

We'll flop 2P+ 5.3% of the time. When we do, we obviously have an excellent chance to win the pot.

We'll flop some combo draw (FD + pair, FD + OESD, FD + GSSD, OESD + pair) another 5.2% of he time. When we flop one of those, we'll have somewhere around 40% - 50% equity.

There are three other people in the hand, which helps implied odds, but hurts our odds of being able to steal the pot (as does the fact that there's a UTG raise and a BB RR).

90% of the time we're folding the flop. 5% of the time we flop big. 5% of the time we hit something we can continue with.

It gets complicated to really analyze this, since it depends on V's tendencies and our post flop skillz.

I still think it's a fold, but it might well be closer than I originally thought.

To be clear, I started the hand with $500

And V's started with $400-600.

Yeah, if we were $200 deep, snap fold. We're never stealing this pot.

Case I think this is very well thought out but in this spot I don't think about my chances of hitting hand post flop because In some situations u can outplay villains even when flopping gut shot so it's really hard to associate those numbers with any value. The important thing is to realize ur equity and getting 5:1 in what sounds like a good game. I misread and thought u only had 200 in stack, since u have 500 this would be almost criminal to fold.

U don't know how many huge pots or better spots like this will occur throughout the night preflop definitely get yourself in there and try to run it up


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Warning: results inside. Don't look if you plan to comment.

Wasn't the Straddle Club the place some guy got shot in a burglary? Surprised it's still open.

I'm calling the 3-bet but it's probably a mistake.

Playing multiway 3b pots on the button with SCs vs a very defined 3b range is how you make all the dollars. Definitely not folding.

Yes, that was the place. This hand was circa 2007. The Straddle Club was an interesting spot. I'd say 6 or 7 tables operating 24/7 with full time dealers, masseuses, a cage like you'd see in the casino, flat screen TV above every table, cameras on the door at street level and a massive bouncer who gave a full pat-down before going up to the poker room, bad beat jackpot, etc. felt like something From rounders. one too many visits from the cops eventually made them move from this particular location - within a few wks, four armed robbers showed up at the new location and unfortunately a guy dropped his shotgun which killed a guy. They were said to make off with a few hundred k.

In accepting this Reading Fail of the Day award, I'd like to thank the Academy, my family....

With $500 back calling the initial $15 for 3% of our stack is clear.

I think calling the 3b is a bit less so. Now we're putting in 7% of our stack. To some extent this is compensated because there's $165 in the pot already and there are three people. If we call, there's going to be $215 in the pot with $450 behind, which isn't great for stealing, but makes a stackoff trivial if we hit big. Using just our 2P+ equity, we'd need to average $630 = $35 * [1/5.28%-1] when we bink to make it breakeven. $165 + $450 puts us at $615, so we'd need more than one person putting money in the pot. And that's an average win, assuming we win every time we hit 2P+, which isn't going to happen. I'm pretty certain just our 2P+ equity isn't enough.

Stealing is going to be a bit tricky against a PF3b with SPR 2, so not much joy there.

We can flop some very nice draws, though that's not the same as winning the pot. My guess is that our draw EV + our 2P+ EV is enough to justify a call, but I don't think it's necessarily a huge opportunity.

To give some idea why I think this, if we won every single time we flopped either 2P+ or a combo draw, and stacked one person every time that happened, we'd win $615 about 90% of the time and lose $35 about 90% of the time. That's an EV of about $58, which ain't bad. But it's also entirely unrealistic. We're not going to win every time we hit; we're not going to stack someone every time we win. Our actual EV is significantly less than that $58. But I agree, it's still positive.

In conclusion:
I can't read.

Calling $15 is clearly right.

I think calling the $35 is right.