Playing 1/2, $300 effective with main villain (I cover)

*PREFLOP

UTG (V) opens to $10. (This player has just arrived at the table. This is his very first hand.) > UTG+1 calls (L/P) > Hero in BB calls with 99

*FLOP

Q94

Hero checks > V bets $20 > UTG1 folds > Hero check raises to $100 > V calls

*TURN

K

Hero?

First, welcome to the forum!

In this spot, the spade is far less worrisome to me than the K.

While V is a wildcard, if we give him some generic competent profile, the only flushes he should be able to show up with UTG are AJs, ATs, and JTs. With that said, his range also includes QQ+ and maybe AQ.

Your options here are to try and check it down and make a decision against a shove or open shove. Any bet less than a shove makes no sense to me unless you are calling it off 100% of the time. Checking gives AsAx a free card, and shoving is a risk of running into a monster.

I think we lose this hand a significant portion of the time. I'm probably going to check/eval. If it goes X/X and river is safe, i'm interpreting that as weakness and shoving.

Meh, I'm just shovelling it in now against an unknown. You're only completely dead against KK (QQ would reraise flop me thinks).

Value from AA, AQ, KQ.

+1

So $190 left into $230. Are you ever folding to Villain shove on turn? If so, would you like to come to my regular home game? If not, I agree get the money in now before another flush and/or straight card hits and might kill your action.

If you're behind to straight or flush, you're still drawing live with decent equity. If you're ahead, opponent is probably drawing pretty slim.

If opponent has KK (or somehow is taking odd line with QQ) ==> "Nice hand sir!"..."Floorman, lock the doors and CHIPS TO TABLE X!!!"

Thanks so much all! I was really flummoxed in the moment by this spot.

In retrospect, I now see that combos of AA (6), AQ (12), and KQ (9) outnumber the ~4 flush combos + ~5 straight combos (including some offsuit JT here at 1/2 seems realistic) + 6 combos of KK/QQ that we can assign to the "generic" profile after the flop ... So I think jamming for value is the play...

*RESULTS

You may want to wait a little longer to post results.

The spr is under 1 and you have a good hand that can get called by lots of worse hands. Shove

Yeah, I think you spotted the flaw in your thought process w/r/t ranging. V doesn't always have a draw, especially when you have middle set and there is a high card on the flop = lots of top pair combos to keep getting value from.

Also, why did you think the Ad was a bad river? Seems like a potentially good one since V can have even more 2p combos now.

Welcome to the forum.

Preflop: Fine.

Flop: Against an unknown opponent I would usually raise less than the pot, but going full pot isn't a mistake.

Turn: The turn is gross, but there still are a lot of hands in his range that you beat (AA, AQ, KQ, and worse), you have outs if you are beat, and you have less than a pot sized bet left in your stack. Just shove it in. That's better than just giving up to an unknown player when you have a set in a huge pot, and also better than letting a worse hand draw when there are a ton of free cards that could ruin your hand.

Just my opinion...

After writing my own response and then reading the other responses I 2nd this. Knowing the results can change the responses you get from posters who read the whole thread before responding.

GL. Thanks for posting.

Blinded by pessimism, mostly. You're right - not that awful in retrospect. But AA gets there.

Re: posting results (though spoiler-proofed!) too early - noted. Thanks again.

That turn card is a scary one, but typical UTG ranges don't have that many flush combo's, specially not with the K and Q of accounted for.

I've seen the spoiler and actually don't mind it.
Gotta jam river though. It's not like we are x-folding to his jam anyway. But he is checking back quite a few hands that we beat.