This hand was played at 1/2NL at Mohegan Sun. I spoke about this hand in the Mohegan thread in the B&M forum but would like some validation about my play.


Hero has ~750, villain to the immediate right has ~650, rest of the table has between 100-200.

PF: UTG raises to $7, standard raise for him, he has been raising probably 30% of the pots. 3 calls included other deep stack at the table, I call with 64 in the cut-off. Button and SB fold, BB calls. Pot 38 after rake.

Flop: 53K Checked to deep villain who bets $40. I assume everyone is folding unless they have 2pair of better which seems unlikely so I raise to $120 with my strong draw.

This deep I have to raise here right? I'm not worried about losing value from the other players and I would love to either win the pot here, get it all in here, or take a free river if I miss the turn.

Obviously you're not folding. I sort of believe that the play is sort of villain/table dependent. I think raising is good either way because if he folds you can win the hand right here or you have 17 (hopefully) outs to win if you get it AI which makes you a favourite against any made hand on this board. The reason to call would be to induce calls behind you and to build a bigger pot which increases your implied odds of making a hand and winning a bigger pot. I think if the table has been loose/passive I might be tempted to call and hope to pick up some other callers. I don't think you'll get priced out on the turn if this happens because the pot will be big and if you have 17 outs (34%) you'll only need 2 to 1 to make a good call to see the river. If you iso-raise and you miss on the turn, checking behind will give you an opportunity to see the river but if an the FD completes then I believe that it'll be hard for you to get paid. I would be more inclined to barrel the turn if I was raising flop to rep a strong hand. You might be able to get the guy to hero-fold some TPTK or bottom 2 pair hands.

Seems like a trivially easy flop raise, for all the reasons you mentioned.