Three-handed 3/5 with 10 on the button.

H (2500) OTB Straddle -- playing 70%+ hands, running well, betting and taking down lots of small/medium pots.

SB (2000) -- tight middle eastern guy, hasn't been seeing too many flops, playing very passively pre, but can turn on aggression post. Full-ring, he plays quite aggressively and has a tight image, but he doesn't adjust well to short-handed. He's a relatively big winner at these stakes.

BB (1000) -- rec, loose/passive pre, peels flop quite lightly, bets some air, draws and top pairs on flop, but also check/calls monsters sometimes, plays quite scared, level 1 mostly, gets significantly tighter on turn.

OTTH:

SB, BB limp, I check OTB with Qh7h

Flop (30): Qs7c2d

x, x, I bet 20, only BB calls.

Turn (70): 6c, putting flush draw out.

V x, I bet 50, V c/r to 175.

Do you flat or put in another raise here? V feels very strong and this was the first turn check/raise in about an hour.

With description provided on villain (loose passive pre, playing scared/tightens up on turns), and flop being bone dry i am just calling his turn raise 100 percent of the time-never reraising.

If i am on my absolute A-game, and have logged enough history with villain to be confidently tuned in on his tendencies/ranges in these spots i might even just fold to his turn check-raise.

if your read on him is good
fold to the c/r
a scared level one player c/r ?????
AQ maybe but feels more like a set

I probably cry call down given reads. Probably raise back or plan to raise river vs more LAG guy.

Folding is ludicrous. QQ and 77 are basically ruled out by the preflop limp and there's only one combo of each in any case. You're basically putting him on exactly 22. There are 3 combos of that, there are also 3 combos of 76s alone, before we even get into junkier hands.

OP, what's this guy's VPIP, would you estimate? If he can have ATC for his pre play here then I reraise. If he's like top 50% I flat.

Shove when Qc available and raise pre

Don’t fold,I’d probably put in a raise to set up a $500 bet on the river,he can have weirdly played overpairs and all combos of 6/7..you lose to 22 and one combo of 77.But my experience is that people don’t know ranges three handed vs aggressive players and can end up getting sick of losing $18 every round folding,then make stands with hands they wouldn’t full ring.

Never folding. But not raising either.

Like others said. We are behind very few hands, but they forgot 66. Which is likely never folding flop.

I call turn. Evaluate river. Likely calling or raising river.

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His vpip was probably 60 percent or more. He was straddling every button too whereas middle eastern guy was not.

So i thought for a bit and raised another 300. He thought for about 30 seconds and folded. He said he had pocket aces and I believe him. Maybe it was best to allow him to think one pair was good on turn. But I thought he for sure had two pair as he felt way stronger than a naked queen.

Yeah, i mean- thats one of the better arguments for flatting the turn: youre widening opponents continuerange as much as possible, instead of what often happens you isolate yourself to the strongest parts of his range (mostly sets) if you 3 bet the turn and encourage him to make a big laydown due to the strength youre showing. Its alot harder for villain to put you on a hand/range you precisely if you just flat in position when he raises the turn- and makes it alot more likely he is making a big mistake on the river in some sort of way, for example overvaluing AA like he had in this hand. Just because its difficult to have a high enough 3 bet frequenzy on the turn in order for us to not be narrowing down villains continueranges too much.

Grunch. DOes not compute. Scared level 1 money does not bet air nor peel flop lightly.

I call here. V likely has a lot of Q6 in his range, as well as some monsters and some BS hands that are just adjusting poorly to short-handed. Plan is to call most rivers or bet if he checks.

Well, this is 3-handed so even the most passive players end up doing stuff they normally wouldn't do.

Thats what I was saying, I've played quite a bit of 3/5/10 three handed with various villains and its amazing the strange adjustments you see. If he only took 30 seconds to fold, I don't think he had AA but its not the worst outcome and I still think raising is the correct play.

3/5/10 3 handed with a live straddle otb might be the worst format of poker I've ever heard of, slightly worse than full ring 2/5.

Calling turn and playing rivers seems good

What? It can be amazingly profitable and fun. Most people don't know how to adjust to short-handed and I can play nearly every hand. Why would you think it's not good?

Eholeing..What?..My winrate over a couple hundred hours is drastically higher (3x) at 3 handed with a button straddle than full ring.Most of this was in what people would consider to be very aggressive lineups with reasonably good hand readers. If you think its bad, that's because you need to brush up on your shorthanded and HU. My winrate increases so much shorthanded that I force myself to play when people go for walks and try to only go on breaks when the table is full.

I dont wanna hammer on this too much, but still i want to mention that it is indeed quite a disaster if we choose such a strong line on the turn that villain starts folding his strongest 1 pair hands like AA/KK/AQ and KQ to us when we have top two. We are printing fat value on rivers in position in those kind of spots. Either if villain keeps firing on the river (then we can either flat or raise depending on sizing/reads), or if they check on the river we can get a nice fat valuebet in when checked to us and get called a huge portion of the time because villain is in check-call mode.

Those hands is our biggest moneymakers when we hold top two on dry boards, so its certainly very important to try and keep those strong 1 pair hands in the mix moving to the river.

I agree, but the fact is that he didn't show so AA maybe a lie.If he's folding such strong hands three handed effectively 100 bigs pre flop, we can take advantage of this by raising more combo draws and gutters on the turn. Adjustments are all relative and the fact that he is limping aces pre, raising the turn and folding to three bets becomes extremely exploitative. My reasons for raising are 1: that the general population is not folding to these raises with strong one pair hands and combo draws 2: The $500 cap makes it difficult to get full stacks in on the river and 3:Believe it or not there are a lot of rivers that make it difficult to get full value with a lot of recs just going into showdown mode after a call on a perceived bad river..any queen, seven, six or club. All we know for sure is that we have a hand near the top of our range and villain took a limp pre, check call, check raise line on the turn when the board was bone dry on the flop and got a little scary on the turn. This makes me want to CIB + and set up for a cap/max bet on the river. Ive slow played one two many times on these kind of boards and let villains get away from hand that would have put more action in on the turn.Ive played with many recs in this format and have seen some crazy hand strengths get to showdown in aggressive games. Ive seen 5.5k pots with 88 vs 77 on a 7,4,2,10,4 rainbow board and a 4.5 k pot with A-7 vs 10-7 on a A-10-7 board both times with the pro/semi pro putting in multiple caps when check raised, because the rec didn't know how to adjust and liked their hand. Both of these hands were within 10 minutes of each other in this format of 4 hand with a mandatory straddle.

Wat?!?