This is sort of a general question, but do you guys try to set mine with average pocket pairs (6s,7s,8s) when one of the cards has been exposed?

Twice yesterday I've had a card exposed preflop of my PP. First time with 7s, UTG+1, so I open mucked in disgust. Was it wrong to do so? Should I have stilled tried to limp and see the flop? Call the bet?

2nd was pocket 9s in MP and someone open mucked 92o, but I decided to open anyway and took down the pot with a c-bet.

The really low pocket pairs 2-7 I would personally snap fold. Alot of their value comes from hitting sets and being able to value bet multiple streets. They are hard to realize equity when not hitting a set, so spare yourself the trouble.

With 8's and 9's I think those are strong enough to still open BUT only in late position. So in the cutoff or button for example I would decide to open, but in early / middle position I would personally just fold.

(no mathematical reasoning, just my personal 2cents)

1/3 at the Bellagio.

Maniac and huge actionplayer who is sunrunning is pretty much destroying the table, building up a stack of like $1500. He is playing pretty much any hand, either by calling an open raise or to raise the pot himself- and is also firing big bets postflop (forcing you to play big pots all the time) with pretty much any piece,including airballs, gutters, mid pairs and nutted hands- so i guess in this sense he is kind of balanced (lol).

Hero is playing around $340 at this point, mostly observing villains tendencies while being carddead for the first hour or so-trying to map out an adequate strategy/adjustments in order to maximum exploit this villains leaks and weak links.

Hero picks up AK and opens to $15 from UTG. Player in the cutoff seat calls and main villain also calls as expected on the button.

Pot is $49 when we see the 568 flop.

Hero?

Bet / gii?

What am I missing?

Hmm. Bet $25? Check also reasonable but I'd rather build the pot a bit. Against maniacs, the main consideration is playing for stacks when you make a crushing hand, so we're not trying to take the pot down here. We want to make our flush. A raise from villain would be fine too, we can ship.

I know that i have a good hand irtm, you arent missing anything in that regard.

I am looking for thoughts on the most profitable line with this hand against described villain-including betsizing/raisesizing.

Does he raise the flop if we bet? Does he call when we bet big? Does he stab when he's not the pre flop aggressor?
Does he call if we ck/rs the flop?

My reads is that he will:

-Mostly call with his range in position if facing a bet on the flop, with anything remotely playable. He likes to use scarecards or what he percives as difficult scary runouts to apply pressure with his big bet strategy on later streets.

-He may very well call flop if we bet big or even overbet.

-He stabs (with big bets) if checked to at a very high frequenzy.

-He may very well call with decent chunks of his continuerange if we try and check-raise. The guy is not afraid to put money light into the middle in any sort of way.

Then ck/rs to 2.2x - 4x depending is his sizing and lol live reads.

Line check: 1/2 table agreed to round of button straddles. Hero 22 on button, 5 limpers, checks option. Flop 442r. blinds check, UTG, 40s white guy, regular ok but not great player, leads out for 30, folds to hero. Standard raise or flat call and apply pressure later? What hands continue to a raise? Probably just pairs so really just dodging a 2 outer

X/c, petrucci

Raise to 80 at least, depending on eff stack

Anyway: i decide to check to villain to exploit his eagerness to treat checks as weakness and stab with big bets with too wide of a range, and he obliges and fires 55.

I announce allin to kind of get the best of both worlds (fold equity with A high and at the same time give him a chance to call it all off with worse when i have huge equity).

Villain instacalls. I show my hand and villain says he have flushdraw and a gutter without showing. Board bricks out- A high is good for the $700 pot.

It worked out this time, but posted the hand to get some other opinions on the situation- even if it may seems standard and routine to some players.

Missed the reads when I posted my response, still like a x/c unless we are just gonna go with it OTF. We have SDV and a ton of equity, and I don't want him to find a fold with a worse FD. Against this player type I just assume we have no fold equity.

Death Cab- do you mind eleborate little bit of why you prefer a check/call line in this spot against this villain?

You want to give him rope to blast off in position if we make our nutflush for example/rep scarecards like the ace?

Obviously it is childish. But this move never made sense to me. The exposed card saved you money.

Are you upset at losing the chance to gamble in ignorance of the fact that you are -ev?

Pretty much this. We have the nut no pair and if he's stacking off with a weak 12-out draw, he's probably not folding any value hand either. Sometimes you just gotta make a hand and play it straight forward.

I'd expect if we x/c flop he either gives a good price to draw OTT (because lol bet sizing at 1/2) or checks back and we can evaluate rivers.

line check pls

Saturday night 1/3, 4 limps incl V on BTN, H completes T♦️9♦️ in SB, BB checks. We have ~300 behind, field has variety of stack sizes.

first Q: should this hand be in our range to go 25-35 pre as a steal? Decent chance of getting it thru, was initial reaction (don’t doubt yourself) but then decided to take a billionne (BB unlikely to raise)

flop J♠️8♦️3♦️, H checks, BB 6, call, call, BTN calls, H 75, folds to BTN who tanks and finally calls with ~130 behind. BTN is 30s white dude who seems loose/passive but was also asking about button straddles when we opened the table.

turn 6♦️, any other options besides jamming?

no

stealing the limps from the blinds can be close to printing money, so you can argue any reasonable hand is a candidate. I prefer offsuit Aces which play pretty crappy as a limp, while the blocker and the ability to occasionally win at showdown unimproved make them better steal candidates I think.

Nice sizing otf. Shove turn.

I think I lean towards the way you played it.

I think there is some merit to DeathCab's line, but I also feel we get in so many **** situations when missing the turn/river (are we just calling down blindly with A high to big bets?). ETA: It's unclear what Villain snapcalled with, but I do think we have FE against just pairs and obviously air; draws, likely not so much, but A high is good against most draws.

Cbetting often leaves our pants around our ankles if he doesn't raise the flop.

Gnicehand,imoG

After 4 limpers at my table it's going to take a $30+ raise to possibly steal things preflop (and yet there is still a good chance of getting called and even still going very multiway). Too high a price to pay, imo. I just see a flop.

I actually just take my good odds and check/call the flop. There's far too good a chance with all this action that our flush draw might not be any good (and at the very least our outs are likely reduced), and the pot itself isn't huge relative to stacks (the bigger the pot is relative to stacks the more cool we are with risking stacks to win it). Also more FE if we were just HU; against a field, it is far more difficult.

As played we have no showdown value and this guy obviously doesn't have a monster or else he woulda raised over the flop action on this board. Gotta ship now, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

we binked the turn tho

Lol, I missed that; ban small suit icons, imo.

I can't recall what we have left but I'm guessing not much. Doubt he's going to bluff something if checked to. Sorta made our own bed here (for better or worse against some opponents, imo) so ship and live with results I guess.

GcluelesssmallsuiticonnoobG

Yeah, i mean- it sucks when we check-call the flop and bricks most turns and this particular villain very likely fires a pot sized/pot comitting big bet on a brick turn? Now what, do we just shrug and call it off with AK high?

Our equity with this hand peaks on the flop with 2 cards to come, so it makes sense to me to put the max pressure on in order to maximize that equity advantage on this board+fold equity on his weaker holdings or air stabs on the flop.