Hi,

I have encountered this hand earlier this morning and have been thinking about it the whole day. I have tried to understand the logic behind every options which are available and have kind of come to a conclusion. Would like to seek for further opinions.


1/1 game.

Hero(MP1)($200~) : 99p

UTG1, UTG2 Limped.

Hero raised to 6$

MP2, HJ, CO, bb, UTG2 called.

6 way to the FLOP.

FLOP: Js9s8d

Checks to Hero, Hero cbets $20.

MP2, HJ, CO, calls.

bb reraise to $75.

Hero?

Information: bb is a woman, and she seems to be small balling and stuff, pretty tight with her Opening Ranges. Has not seen her bluff before. But sometimes might over value big overpairs on safe boards.

Adds: The rest of the players doesn't matter, they folded the hand. I put them either on a draw or TP.

Hero is a TAG, rather nitty in their eyes. Setmines alot, seldom open with mediocre hand to steal blinds, and plays ATs+, AJo+, 22+. Might raise limpers up with KJs+, KQo+ in late positions, sometimes limping in with it.

Based on your description of BB, she flopped a straight.

You C-bet, 3 callers and she raises $55 more (pot is $136 including call portion of her bet), that's a small raise given the pot size. She has it.

Now pot is $191. You don't mention her stack size, so I'll assume effective $200. If you shove and she calls, you are putting in $184 more, for a chance to win $310 (current lot of $191 plus her remaining $119). That is a break even play if you have 37% equity. In fact, you have 35% equity.

Let's consider calling. It's $55 to call with $191 in there. Your odds of making a boat or quads on the next card (cannot count the river odds) are approx 15%. You need at least 22% for the call to break even.

So... If she flopped a straight and is never folding / always shoving on the turn, you should fold.

If (and only if) her range for C/R into 4 people is wider than flopped nuts, then you can justify a call. As described, this seems highly unlikely.

Does she ever lead? Like if she flopped 2 pair. Would she lead out, or go for the check raise.

Also, is the raise to 6 a pot sweetener? Doesn't sound like it accomplished much other than that.

I would just GII here. If she shows us a straight, we could fold, but there's a nonzero chance she's way behind.

KK nailed it. If you feel confident her range here is composed almost entirely of straights, this is a close fold. If she can have two pair, smaller set (8s), overpair, or combo draws, then it becomes a jam.

Also note: stacking off here when you can narrow her range to made straights is -EV, but not massively -EV. That's the nice thing about all the dead money you're getting donated to the pot at low levels like this.

I'm not in the business of arguing w bobman...

Does vil cover? If she started w like 150 I never fold here

We're still 25% against a flopped straight, and she has some 2 pair and strong draws in her range + $200 is not the end of the world and lots of dead money on the middle.

As sierradave points out, stacking off here is not hugely -EV. Rather marginal.

But... The read is very villain dependent. THIS villain, as described, does not make THIS bet on THIS flop with anything weaker than a flopped straight. We are taught to think in terms of ranges instead of specific hands, and sometimes that leads us to a mistake 'cause the range is only the nuts.

never folding here. i prob flat. she lkkely has a straight. set is too unlikely.
flatting encourages others to call improving your pot odds. obv not folding any turn

In my experience you have to be careful saying that someone only has the nuts in a spot. Can we really say that she would never do this w T8cc or KTcc or 88 or even J8. If not than how do we think she plays those hands facing this action? Gotta remember that she's both BB and a 1/1 player, I'm not saying she doesn't often have the nuts here, but are you gonna give me 5/1 that she never has any of those other hands?

For 400BB I might say that her range starts at T7, however for a hundo people can be pretty naive and unpredictable imo... Obviously that just like my opinion though.

What are you basing this on? We know very little about the villain.

If her range is exactly QT, jamming is about a $2 mistake. If she has JT, folding is about a $185 dollar mistake. Are you really 99% confident in a read based on 3 sentences of description?

Just saw that everyone called your c-bet....
Her raise is silly small... So she either doesn't know what she's doing, or she has the nuts and has the clubs to back it up.

what is the lady's stack size?

if she was a true old lady coffee, wouldn't she be afraid of the flush and raise bigger? This could simply be a "lemme see where I'm at" raise with two pair.

her described "seems to be" range doesn't really label her as a true nit anyway. get the rest of it in.

First of all, even if V's range is only the nuts, GII here is only a small mistake. Calling here, if another player also calls, moves into +EV territory, but it's still marginal.

So in real-time, I probably GII here. But having the luxury of extra time to evaluate, we still can only go with the information provided… so let's look at that again.

Is this a spot where V might be over valuing a big overpair on a safe board? Nope.

What happens here is we start believing what we want to believe, rather than what the facts tell us. We want to believe we cannot (should not? will not?) fold because we're in love with our hand… went set-mining, flopped a set, ain't life wonderful. That is Level 1 thinking. Then we do one of two things: 1) we project ourselves into V's role, and rationalize that since WE might C/R here with two pair, or a flush draw/combo draw, or a set of 8's, or whatever, then we have to include these possibilities in V's range, or 2) we simply reason backwards from the conclusion (the conclusion being… not folding our set!!!) and justify this decision by adding hands to her range that really aren't there. And voila! We've convinced ourselves that GII is mathematically correct, by gerrymandering her range.

Her raise should have been large given the pot size, but that is most likely a function of her thinking it was already a large raise (from $20 to $75) and not having a full awareness of the pot size.

But let's get real. A woman, tight, small balling, tight ranges, on a scary board with this many players in the hand, isn't C/R'ing with 2 pair or draws. The ONLY reason to include non-straight hands in her range is the rationalize a mistake (which, again I say, is only a small mistake anyway).