Seems like you can only 4 bet aces against the worst players. I correctly folded KK to a 4b recently. So I'm like, maybe it's time to start trying some 4b bluffs again. So, gonna experiment with that.

1/2. I am the effective stack with $180.

V1 UTG 30s WM looks like he might be leaving. He goes out of his way to gather $1 chips and makes it 8. So, obviously, a classic candidate to be bullied.

V3 UTG + 1 Inexperienced WM, thinks for a while and calls. I'm a bit worried he was thinking of raising. Perhaps the greatest pitfall of squeezing in 1/2-2/3 is all the people who just call with monsters.

V3 MP. Mid 30s AM. Well dressed, confident, definitely played a lot of poker, very unlikely to be scared money. He looks interested the whole time and I think, "this guy is going to 3 bet for sure" and he does, making it $30.

Hero OTB with 10h8h. I'm pretty happy with the whole situation here. You might argue that I'd be better off with a more blocking hand. But I intend to call off to shoves sometimes and I like my hand for those purposes compared to a suited A or KQ against AK or AQ or even if I completely screw up and run into AA or KK. I'm not sure that is correct thinking.

I love my stack size. I have enough that he won't just say screw it and move in with like TT. But I'm kind of short so getting stacked isn't that bad. It also just fits well, as far as my raise size and what I'll have behind.

I make it $80, which any slightly thinking player will see as committing in an attempt to get all in. He should assume I'm never folding at any point going forward. I should get reads in this spot most of the time and can then decide if I want to call shoves.

He agonizes a bit and folds. Another player says he wanted to call with 8c7c and V says, "I would rather have that than what I had," which seems like an honest comment suggesting he did have a strong hand that matched up badly, like AQ. So, either he just happened to have one of his better hands, or I overestimated how much he would 3!

Anyway, 1-0 in 4b bluffs.

^^^^

I did some very quick (and perhaps incorrect) math. Assuming we get shoved on and call when someone has TT+/AQ+, we need this to work about 3 outta every 5 times to breakeven, I think (it gets more difficult to figure out depending on what assumptions you make).

I'll admit I don't play 1/2 NL so I'm not exactly sure how a $180 stack plays (which is leaning towards getting in pretty light at my 1/3 NL game), but in the end it's a 3bet of an UTG open and a UTG+1 call.

GFPS,imoG

This was the biggest 1/2 pot I've played maybe in years.

Leaving details out intentionally. Button Straddle by a loose player. We 7x in MP with red tens and only the button calls.

Floop: 7c8h9h. Seems pretty nice. We bet 3/4 pot. V now 3.5xs our raise.

Easy stuff when shallow. But we were deep.

I had to give him a fairly spewy range, incl ah5h to get us up to 34%.

Many turns suck.

How would you play this vs various Vs and stacks?


Thanks GG. This was helpful. I do think it works 60% of the time, though, and that he usually folds TT and often JJ and AQ. Maybe better. I am a MAWG cold 4 betting. What would you do in his shoes?

Yeah, that's fair enough. But the 3bettor isn't the only guy in the hand. There's still an UTG raiser. There's still an UTG+1 flatter (you said yourself how easy it is for this to be a monster). And the 3bettor is still allowed to have a monster.

I dunno, I just feel if we're 4betting here a lot then we're 4betting in a bunch of other cases with T high just cuz OMC-4betting. I'm not convinced that's going to work out great long term.

Plus, this: My last session out I limp my JJ UTG cuz doing anything else is completely stoopid. A guy raises his 33 in EP to $15. There's 3 calls. I limp/reraise my JJ to $100 of my $270 stack and it's like the only hand I've been involved in like 2 hours. The raiser *snap* calls my limp/reraise cuz, I dunno, he knew the 3 was going to come on a 9 high flop? This is LLSNL poker.

Gmakesureyouhaveahand,imoG

I’d check the flop with 1010 deep

Checking flop seems resulty, like I understand the theory, but unless this player is known to be aggressive I want to be betting. There are certainly circumstances where I want to go three streets with the hand.

It looks weird but I think just muck to the raise. It's hard to imagine a situation short of a J turning where I'm happy to put a lot of money in the pot. This is a hand that changes drastically in value going from shallow to deep. It's good shallow because it's not in awful shape against very many hands, but it's bad deep because it's not actually soundly beating anything, either.

1/3
loose gambly game folks calling 3bets OOP with trash etc
stack sizes based off $3 blind, but hand has a straddle
V1 250BB
V2 160BB
V3 <100BB
V4 150BB

hero has KK both red covers villains in the SB. There is a straddle from EP
V1 calls V2 calls V3 calls V4 (CO) calls, BU folds hero raises it up to 35
folds back to V1-4 who all call.

$184 Js 4c 3c
Hero...

2 questions:
If leading, what is our bet size? Reads: half the field are loose gambly asians so hands like 34s are possible but not as loose as to have J4/J3 here

Is there a reason we should never be check/raising here given that we do need to sometimes put a moderately strong hand into our ch/raise some % of the time and KK with no club is vulnerable to more hands than say something like 44, even though we dont ever really have a hand like 44 squeezing form SB in this loose/gambly game. If the reason is just "why do you want to turn KK into a bluff?" can i just follow it up right now with - please extrapolate some more.

Mixing up BB and $ in the same post is kind of confusing.

Eff stacks on flop:

V1 $715
V2 $445
V3 < $265
V4 $415

I'm fine with x/r there, especially since the deep guy is probably least likely to bet, being in EP. x/ring the deep guy would be a little awkward but should be fine. Leading is fine too, and you'd probably want to lead like 120 to make a turn jam comfortable against the $400ish guys. I think I prefer x/r but nothing wrong with leading.

I'd need to be comfortable that villians will bet a FD before x/r here makes sense. Obviously we aren't x/r to turn our hand into a bluff. So the only other option is we are doing it for value. Unless I'm comfortable that they will bet a FD here I think it's a little thin, sure we MIGHT get value from some of the good J's.

I don't do this much so I'd likely just bet about $125-$145 here. I tend to bet strange numbers so look for me to bet $137 or something dumb like that.

I'm expecting this to check around ~never, this is a good flop to steal on if it checks to you in position.

How often would you be 3b in this spot?

100-150bb deep.

2 loose passive limpers, a laggy but not maniacal player raises co to 7.5bb, btn folds and you see A3s.

If btn calls I'm almost always squeezing here with so much dead money. I just don't know how frequently to 3b when no one called the raise yet.

At these stack depths the raise pre needs to be larger imo. It looks like there’s 34 in the pot before your action? I’d be going to $45 ish I think. Playing with a premium hand vs 5 villains out of position is a long way from optimal

Yeah. These are the perils of even 3! light at llsn. Plus, as I mentioned, the times it goes, small raise, call, call, call and the 3rd caller has QQ and never even paused to think about raising because why would anyone ever raise QQ there? And there are some games where I'll very rarely 3! light.

Having said that, I'm going to keep at it and see what happens. The thing with this situation wasn't that I had 10 high (though i liked the hand), so much as UTG had stepped out of a mike caro poker tells vhs tape for demonstrating weakness and I figured a bold Asian player was going to pounce on that.

In general, I'll be looking for places where I would be 3! pretty wide as V and I think V is capable of doing so, and there is some dead money, and not too many people behind me, and nobody is making ludicrous calls, and I like my hand. So, not all that often.

often

Would depend a lot on my image and my read on how often they fold both pre and post but as a default, we have two loose passives and a guy who might call too and that is not a great situation to be 3 betting a marginal hand

5/5, 400eff

Hero with 77d raise to 25 in HJ over one MP limp
BTN (old Asian guy) raise to 50, only I call

Flop (115): 986ddd
BTN bets 120, Hero jams 350?

I don't really see him folding anything he 3! Then cbets this flop. Assuming he is never folding it's just math. If you're up against a range of TT+ AKdd AQdd AKdx and AQdx you are 47%.

So looks like there is enough dead money to just rip it here.

Seems trivial, your FE is zero but rip it in while your equity is high.

1/3 300 eff.
Hero in ep2 raises to 15 with QdQc.HJ and BTN call.

Flop(48) J88cc. Hero bets 50. Is smaller better here? HJ folds. BTN raises to 125. Hero?

Villain on BTN is laggy asian guy. Definitely capable of bluffing. Last hand we played I raised 99 in mp. He called with JTo in MP2. Flop was Q98. I bet he raised all in and I called.

If I don't feel committed (which is a bit questionable given the smallish SPR although in the end I don't due to only getting in 5% of my stack preflop), then I'd either bet/fold if I'm comfortable folding to a raise, or if I'm not comfortable folding to a raise (which will be stack committing) then I'd check/call.

Gmakeyourplanbeforeyoubet,imoG

Do you think he'd raise with just a good jack? If not, I'd fold. Hard for me to think this is a draw given the sizing.

Yep, particularly given OP bombs flop. Flop c bet is way too large because in most cases it’s going to fold out a lot of the hands that we want value from

When betting this large (>PSB) you are targeting a small range of JX hands, maybe TT. However, most of his range is folding to this sizing, which is not a good result.

As played, I'd fold. Seems like there are a bunch of 8X hands this opponent would call a pfr with. If he shows a FD/T9, you can adjust during the session. Maybe request a seat change?

FWIW, if we felt comfortably committed (say we started with just a $200 stack) then I'd have zero problem with the PSB on the flop (to setup a turn shove); we're maxing out value against Jx which likely ain't folding to one bet, and draws never fold to a single flop bet pretty much regardless of sizing. Also not convinced we're losing stuff like 77 at that much higher a percentage from a PSB than a 2/3 PSB to care.

If we're not feeling committed, then I'm cool with the idea of a smaller cbet size (as not working towards commitment with big bets overrides ekeing out that extra bit of value with a bigger bet).

GimoG

1/2. A few hours in. Table as a whole is very loose/passive. I’m likely viewed as fairly tight as I’ve only opened one hand in the past 3 orbits. I have $390 in front and everyone else in the hand has 250-400

Hero UTG+1: red 44. Raise to 12
Villain next to act raises to $26. He’s a young, quiet WM in a hoodie who I’ve played with plenty whose game can play overly tricky.

There are three more callers. I know at this point if I try to squeeze the other 3 callers will fold but I’m not sure about Villain. I’ve seen him min raise with suited gappers and aces so I’m not sure what to put him on with his raise here. I call and am first to act on the flop.

Flop: Js 7s 4c (pot $125)

Hero ? Is this a spot where we want to check/raise or lead? The other 3 callers are your standard 1/2 players that call too much and typically only bet when they have it.