1/2 NL at a local card room last Monday night. Table is pretty standard for this setting. Not very active preflop, lots of sticky players calling off too much postflop, etc.

Hero (BB) $420 - Have been up and down most of the night on my initial $200 buyin, but recently doubled up off an over confident regular when I 3 barreled AA and the board ran out trip 9's giving me top boat. I have done my best to avoid talking strat at the table, but I'm sure I have a strong image as I haven't stepped out of line at all and have not been overly active PF.

Villain 1 UTG $480 - Older reg (55+) who I have been chatty with most of the night and tried to be friendly with. Has not opened many pots preflop from EP. Have seen him fold to a 3bet OTF but haven't seen him step out of line yet Seems to know what he's doing. He got busted earlier and took it in stride.

Villain 2 $20 Short stacked Young 20's kid in a Hoodie and headphones. Bought in short with Greens won from Roulette for $100 and has seen it dwindled down.

V1 limps UTG, V2 limps, 2 more callers, SB completes, and I knuckle K2

FLOP $10 (after rake): KQ2

Hero leads for $10. My thinking is that the pot is small, so a pot sized bet isn't going to seem like an overbet here. Also while I love my hand, there are many bad cards for me OTT so I'd rather not let people get there for free. Again while the table was loose, it was not overly aggressive. Standard?

V1 calls the $10 without much fanfare, and V2 ships for $20 (lol) and it folds back to me. At this point I paused to determine the next course of action as the hand is essentially going to be HU the rest of the way. I decide to flat the $20 hopefully to disguise my hand against V1 and take a lot more off of him on later streets. Could go either way between this or raising I suppose and I welcome thoughts here. I could have raised to $65-70, there were not a lot of draws out there other than a JT. By flatting I was risking getting counterfeited by a Q for sure, but I was going for the home run.

Villain then calmly grabs a stack of reds and makes it $100 more. Pot is now $170. FML or ez ship? Given stack sizes and the number of horrible cards that can come OTT I was not considering calling.

grunch. Typed a long post and lost it.

Either way, I think you have to ship or fold here. Calling is bad for the reasons you stated. Seems like he's trying to iso shorty with a random Qx or Kx hand? Doubt he has 22 here.

I think you played it well and I would let this go. It's a limped pot but V1 could easily have limped KQ UTG per your description. We block 22 but there's still one combo left there as well. Also UTG can be a popular spot to limp a big pocket pair with the intentions of 3 betting (although it would seem silly for V to play a set like this). I don't think V1 is bluffing here often enough to make it profitable to continue the hand in any way. The only drawing hand is JT and it seems counter intuitive that he would turn this into a bluff to iso vs a $22 stack. I'd fold and pick a better spot. What hand is calling our ship that we beat? I agree flatting just sets up more pain OTT. After we fold we get to see both hands and only lost $22 in the process. If V had a hand we beat then we can adjust going forward and stack him later IMO.

I've gotten to the point lately where I rarely see older V's who back-raise, limp/rr, etc. to have anything but super strong hands (KK+ pre and 2p/sets+ post).

It's probably exploitative, but you can fold here and see what V does this with and go from there. But against a player who you don't get the vibe of getting out of line much, this feels like a spot to fold and you can use the information profitably at a later time if he comes in with anything that you were ahead of.

If there were two hearts with the KQ, I might treat this differently, but even with you displaying some weakness in just flatting the small shove, this feels like a spot I've been profitably avoiding lately.

Yuck.

Results oriented, but I was kind of leaning towards a raise after short-stack ships it. No harm locking it up with such a vulnerable 2 pair (and seems unlikely you'd really get paid off in a big way by a one-pair hand).

I feel like best case scenario is he has AK (some people limp with it), but he'd most likely raise your flop bet, and/or just call flop raise.

It's painful, but I'm folding here. 22 seems like the hand that fits his actions the most, and any other hands he does this with have some decent equity.

(*edit - I kinda forgot we block 22 pretty hard, but it still fits his actions. Maybe KQo also)

DONT GO BROKE IN A LIMPED POT

DONT GO BROKE IN A LIMPED POT.

Postflop play is fine.

Never folding here with your blockers and having just called the min jam.

Against range of [AA,22,AKs,KQs,AKo,KQo] we have 50% equity and getting 1.6:1...and I don't think 22 raises that much. Sizing really feels like AA that don't want to get cracked.

I just think the fact that old man UTG can have AK and AA here makes this a call and eval.

agreed.

I think we should have 3-bet here on the flop. In a protected pot, there's nothing you can really do to avoid giving away the strength of your hand. All that flatting here does is give your remaining opponent a cheap card to beat you.

It's super close...I think min-clicking back might be highest EV since he has shown he can raise-fold, so it's not bad if we fold out his counterfeit equity.....but for variance's sake I think flatting is OK.

This was going off in my head LOUDLY. I worked hard for my stack and didn't want to turn a good session into an even or stuck one.

RESULTS:

Hero tanked for nearly 5 minutes. I tired staring him down, talking him up, etc. and I got nothing. I put him on KQ or AK and I chickened out and folded.

V1 turns over AKo and scoops the pot against K9 when the board ran out low cards.

Thanks for the input here. I hate myself less for the fold now, although I made notes not to make that mistake again. At the end of the day, this Villain never has QQ, and I blocked KK and 22 - I should have shipped it.

I've noticed a huge leak I have is folding strong but non nut hands OTF when my opponent puts in an absurd amount of chips in unexpectedly. Something to definitely improve on.

It's not a mistake to fold against certain opponents on wet boards when they do a massive overbet - it usually represents a flopped monster.

I can't comment on this one since I already saw the results, but generally speaking if your game is so tight where a V will only do this with QQ/KK, maybe the most EV action here is to table change.

Grunch:

I’m calling and praying I don’t get counterfeited.

I played a somewhat similar hand about 6-8 months ago.

Limped pot and I have K2 in the SB and toss in the extra buck.

Flop KJ2.

I get shoved on on the flop after three-betting. I ended up calling and the B.B. showed J2.

My coach at the time said it’s an easy call.

As for OP hand I’d include AA in UTG range as he could be limp/reraising.


Call.

As discussed the board was pretty dry. and the table was decent, especially considering it was a Monday night. The Villain in question happened to be a solid player but overall there was plenty of $ to be won.

Calling Villain's re-raise was the worst of the 3 options available to me. I'm leaving myself only a pot sized bet OOP and allowing plenty of dangerous cards to hit.

Sorry. I thought you were calling an allin.

When the action gets to you after v2 has gone allin for $20 we need to think about how we construct our ranges for the different lines we take.

ie: we need some hands to flat with and some hands to 3b with. We should not be b/f for that price.

All my Kx hands and possibly JT I would put into my flatting range. So how about contructing a good 3b range otf well good candidates for this are 22,KQ,K2,Q2 (2p+) If we take out 2ps out of our 3b range it starts looking pretty sparse and we only 3b one exact hand which is 22, so we proly don't 3b enough if we flat our 2ps here. So I would 3b $60 otf and go from there.