2:30am at Foxwoods on a Saturday night. Villain is white male, 24 or so. Tall and lanky. He sits down with $300 at 1-2NL, the table max. Hero has $250. This is the 5th hand after villain sat down.

UTG raises to $10 (standard). Villain calls. Folds, calls, calls, folds, calls, calls, to hero in the cutoff. Hero calls with JT. Button folds, SB calls, BB folds. 7 ways to the flop:

KJQ

SB checks, UTG checks, villain bets $25, folds to Hero who thinks and calls. Rest fold. Turn:

7

Villain bets $50. Hero??? What does he have?

Easy fold imo

yeah call again on a non club IMO

Fold flop!

Fold flop or fold turn

This is one of those situations where you will be winning rarely and have a decent chance of winning if straight comes in (depending on villain) but it's just too messy to continue. If villain will bet scare cards his range here is wide, but most of it still beats you. If he is tighter, then you are way behind his range. Catching a straight on river will be very painful if villain does have the flush and if he doesn't the board will be too scary for him to pay off. Paying to chase a draw to what might be the second best hand is -EV in the long run.

The only real possibility for sticking around is raising as a semibluff. However to do this you would have to have a handle on villain's range, that is something you should be telling us.

flop is so so, I'm prolly calling also. turn is an easy much. he can have any 2 broadway cards, sets, flushes, almost all of which beats you...

If you hit, you won't get paid off. If you hit a J and get any action, you will be behind to a straight or a fullhouse. If you hit a straight and get any action you will be behind to a bigger straight or a chop. Or if he has a draw he can play perfectly against you since it will be fairly obvious you hit a straight. Draws that are both obvious and non-nut are not good.

What about calling to bluff a club? Since this play costs a lot of money, you have to either have a draw with lots of equity (JT on an 892 board) or be against someone you have a very good read on (you have to know that they aren't on the draw you want to represent, and you have to know they will fold if you represent it). Since neither of those cases are true, this is not a good spot to call to either hit or rep the flush and bluff.

Fold the flop.

Why would we fold the flop if we called the 5bb preflop with a drawing hand and then hit a pretty good flop for our hand? Especially when it's folded around to us here and we are getting over 3:1?

We don't know much about the villian since its only the fifth hand. He sat down with the max which tells us he probably has some skill. The default read here is to assume (for now) his UTG raising range is AA-TT, AK-AQ, KQs.

Flop: the SPR is 3.6. On the flop he wasn't afraid to bet into 5 players, so he probably has something, and it's likely not a FD unless he has AcQc (maybe AcTc, but would he raise to $10 UTG with this hand). When we call the flop, we should have a plan for the turn. Are we going to stack off 125bb we we hit a straight with the Ac or the 9c? Are we going to stack off 125bb if we hit a J? Call on the flop is good because we have position and we can hit our straight or bluff the flush.

Turn: The pot is $120 and he bets $50 (40%) giving you 3.4:1. You have $215 behind and he has you covered. You've put in 14% of your stack. If you call, you've put in 34% of your stack.

Normally we don't want to put in 1/3 of our stack and fold. If shove will he fold AK or AA? If you shove will he fold KK or QQ? Of course, we don't have any reads except his buy in so we can't be sure if he would fold.

If we just call we are getting implied odds (assuming he will stack off on the river to your rivered straight) of ($170 + $165):$50 or 6.7:1 (13%). We have 8 outs if he doesn't have AA (16%), 7 outs if he has AK (14%), and 6 outs if he has AA (12%).

If we shove now we are giving him ($170 + $215):$165 or 2.3:1. I'm really tempted to shove on the turn representing the flush.

Fold or shove this Turn ... but my guess is that he blocker bet the Flop and is thin value betting Turn. Even if he is not that strong you are missing outs IF you have any to begin with!!

Why not raise PF? You have a very good hand to see a Flop with and why deal with the limpfest? Can't really believe you were the only caller OTF, just shows you what the others are limping with IMO

You could get a fold here quite often but if he has Ac or Qc you will probably get a call and he more than likely has a pair to go with it already.

You could've raised the Flop bet to set up a shove on any club Turn as well. A raise may have allowed you to see a free River as well. The bet was so small that it was almost asking to be raised perhaps.

Fold>Shove>>>>>call GL