2/3 game on a Friday night. Table is much more weak-tight than average. Open raises to $12 or $13 are routinely getting through. Most of the table is LP and will limp/fold or limp call, and stacks vary from $150 to about $500. Two younger competent players to my right that seem to be playing TAGish; we're all sitting on $400 at the moment, and they've been at the table for about an hour. Guy to my right is talking about WSOP, we've been chatting it up a bit. We're not talking too loudly or anything so I don't think my image is that of some huge grinder. I usually find that I get much more respect for made hands than the average player, and as such I like to look for great spots to exploit that image.

V1 had just sat down 4-5 hands ago and has about $230 in front. He's a quiet middle-aged hispanic guy from first glance. He bought in for $250 and I believe called a flop bet in a limped pot but did not win the hand. No other reads.

V2 $150 Loose-passive, high VPIP, pretty weak-tight post flop.

V3 $400 Young guy who has been taking down a few pots pre and post flop. Has made a couple of good folds on bad boards to aggression.

V4 $400 Similar profile to V3 but less info. Made a poor lead/call play from blinds OTF in one hand, got value with TP on another.

Hero has $400 behind.

V1 straddles to $6, V2 calls in HJ, folds to V3 who calls on the BTN, V4 completes from SB, Hero in BB has KQ.

At this point I feel like V1 didn't plan on straddling to check this spot, and I have a potentially great squeeze spot if I complete, V1 raises the straddle and gets 1 or 2 callers. Yes, I would be raise/calling. Thoughts?

Your story would make 0 sense. Much rather squeeze right now in the BB.

It's interesting that your plan was to "limp re raise" I would of thought opening was fine. As played I really need to know hat size bet V1 raised to. I would have to know that before I decided it was an ok spot to 3 bet.

Also I'm not sure I like the plan to 3 bet call, you are turning KQ into a bluff. If someone 4 bets you you can rest assured that they have KQ in bad shape with the exception of 1010 and JJ. Maybe you can get it in vs v2 with the overlay profitably but I think its optimistic. If V1 made it something like 30-35 I think the squeeze is meh. If he raised to say 20-25 I think I like it more because we are likely to get more folds IMO.

In a vacuum I don't like giving 1/2 randoms a high percentage pf folding. Any raise size commits us and I really don't want to play a 200-300 bb pot with KQ off.

I'll be generous and give it a 7 out of 10 just because I think we are over estimating our fold equity vs random bad players. Depending on the raise size I can go up some or down some.

Just bet $35-$40, provided that your image is fine.

I make it $45 on BB, and if 1 caller, I am betting $45 in the dark

No I am NEVER completing to induce a straddle to raise, WAY too much can go wrong in that scenario

Pretty decent squeeze spot 7.5/10

What's your plan after you limp/reraise, get called and have an SPR of <2?


Bluff spot potential: 0.5/10

At a weak passive table with a relatively new guy that in 5 hands called pf and on the flop once, you make the assumption he's going to raise ATC as the straddle? If you want to post facto justify some FPS, then OK I guess. FWIW, people who back raise pf in this situation often have a medium high strength hand. If anyone at the table is any good, raising will narrow your range considerably.

You're cbetting flop the same amount as your PF raise/less than half pot hoping to get a fold? Don't you think you need to go slightly higher atleast?

how does bolded not also apply to underlined??

Hello ... ++++

The squeeze spot is now, plenty of dead 1-2 chips out there the first time around ... 8.5

The squeeze (if) after the straddle raise is 4.0 at best and would put you OOP in a bloated pot or folding to an immediate 3-bet. GL

Yeah, I like raising KQo to $40-45 in this spot. I don't like my SPR going for a limp-reraise. If the straddler makes it $45 and gets one caller, there will already be ~$120 when it comes back around to you. That means you'll want to raise another $100-150 on top. If he calls, then you're basically playing for stacks on the flop, with a line that doesn't tell a consistent story.

There is no way we have enough of a read on V1 after lol 5 hands such that we know whether he's going to raise his straddle or not.

I just can't believe V3/V4 have much of anything if they're just limping in here with all this dead money, although it's possible they are getting tricky. I'm raising big now, probably to like $35 (although $40 does allow us to stack of with TP against V3/V4, although I probably wouldn't feet great about it). The only thing that might prevent me from doing this is if I feel V3 is often always going to come along on the Button and perhaps give me problems postflop.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Agree with others. Squeeze the first time around. Limp-squeezing risks too much money with a hand that is going to be dominated if you do get called.

C bet sizing in a 3 bet pot doesn't need to be big. Most fish are going to be fit or fold on the flop, not "did he bet full pot or half pot?"

Yes, I am Cbetting so small to fold out all the hands that wiff, or small pairs when multiple overs come out for a pretty low risk. I will flop top pair a decent amount of the time and have 2 overs/ straight draws. Depending on board texture I will bet the turn as well. Fish tend to weight a Dark bet much stronger than a C-bet.

Before I get to the hand update, I want to address a couple of points made so far.

1) General consensus is to raise now to about $40. This would set up an SPR of over 1 with V2 and about 4 with V3/V4. I don't mind this spot either, and we're betting $34 to win $26 so we're giving ourselves a really good price if we can take it down here a decent percentage and we'll win a lot of pots uncontested postflop.

2) A limp/rr line is unnecessarily risky and makes no sense.

This is where I tend to disagree- this is a spot (BB in a straddled pot) where I love to l/rr close to 100% with QQ+ and sometimes JJ/TT when the straddler is raising the straddle more than say 35%. The reason for this is because so much dead money is created by everyone else calling and we're effectively the button in terms of relative position. You also have a greater point of stack leverage if everyone's closer to 100BBs (i.e. they're put to a r/f situation). So there's a lot to like.

My thought was, if I thought it would be a poor spot to do this in this exact spot with AA/KK, why not take the same line with blockers?

Hand update:

V1 straddles to $6, V2 calls in HJ, folds to V3 who calls on the BTN, V4 completes from SB, Hero in BB has KQ, completes, V1 raises to $21, V2 folds, V3 calls, V4 folds, Hero raises to $90.

So here I was laying $84 to win $53, but I feel like I'm taking it down WAY more often than an open raise from the blinds would. Like 4 times as often.

^^^ I really dislike this play. You are now committing your stack with K high.

you have blockers for AK/AQ/KK/QQ, but the problem is that a majority of Vs limp/calling/re-calling range isnt going to include those hands anyway so blocking them is kinda pointless.

what are Vs continuing range in this situation? imo it's going to look like {22+, Axs}, which we are not really doing that well against. are Vs calling with dominated Kx or Qx here? are Vs calling with dominated unpaired card here that aren't even Q high?

what is your plan on a flop that doesnt have a K or Q on it??
what is your plan on a flop that has an A and either a K or a Q on it??

I just feel like we're in a world of hurt if we ever see a flop...




also, unless i missed something, how do you know V is a guy who raises his straddle more than 35%??? he just sat down 5 hands ago. he could just as easily be a guy who only raises his straddle with {TT+, ATs+}

Given your sample size of exactly zero, you can make no assumptions about the utg straddle raising range.

The only assumption you can make is he must be fond of straddling since he literally did it at the first opportunity.

I am amazed at the number of people i see straddle a lot that play the straddle super fit or fold like any other blind. They rarely raise their option. And they will straddle constantly.

If I saw a guy straddle his first utg I would assume he was one of those and I would range him ahead of our hand....UNTIL I saw a showdown. There is little to no reason to go for this play before gauging his straddle raising range IMO.