1/3 game in Mississippi

Button straddle to $6

Hero (me) in BB calls $6 with 45 diamonds
Villain raises to $25
Fold
Fold
Fold
Call $25
Fold
Fold
Button calls $25
Hero calls $25

Flop comes 4H 5H 2C

I am first to act and have top two. I check
Villain (PF raiser) bets $75
Fold
Button calls $75
I then raise to $215
Villain calls
Button shoves and has me covered for my remaining 500 and change
I call
Villain folds

Turn is 2S
River is K of Clubs

Button flips over AK of Hearts and wins large pot of about 1600

My question is did I do anything wrong here???? It was literally my 3rd hand after I had sat down at the table. Thoughts??

Would fold pre, bet flop but since you didn't c/r flop...If you got a cr over yours you can likely fold, hard to get 6:1

Welcome to the forum!

We need some more info to provide any useful thoughts.

Stack sizes for you and villains. Understood you've been at the table for only 3 hands, but any comments on V appearance or general table conditions at the games you play can be useful.

Don't give results as it tends to bias answers. Just leave this at the river is Kc and ask your question. If you want to post results, do so after the discussion has basically died -- at least 24 hrs.

It's really helpful if you give pot size on each street.

Anyway, OTTH.

I'd fold this pre. The straddle is cutting your implied odds already and if someone raises it's almost certainly going to mean you have to fold. Even if you do get to see a flop, you're OOP.

OTF, there's ~$250 in the pot when it gets back to you. It'll be $325 with your call and you put $140 on top, leaving you $500 back. You're basically committed, so I'd make it a little larger. You still want calls, but let's make the turn shove an trivial decision. I'd make it $300, planning to shove the turn.

AP, when V shoves you have to call. There aren't many sets he can have, so it looks a lot like an overpair or maybe a big draw. You're happy to gii against either of those. If he shows up with a set, A3s, or 63s... oh, well.

Even though it looks like we're deep (next time state stack sizes up front), 54s is just too weak a hand to be seeing a flop with in EP (and possibly even in position, although that is more debatable). This hand has huge RIO, in that it can make really good second best hands (flushes, straights, trips, two pairs, all of which can easily be beaten by the same type of hand). We really need position and most likely really bad opponents to make this hand profitable. I fold both times preflop.

Postflop really illustrates this. Villain has a huge hand (overs + nut flush draw + gutshot) and yet unless he's a complete idiot this is the absolute bottom of his range that he's willing to get it in with us; everything else that a sane person is willing to get in these huge stacks in with (even though we are admittedly in a smallish SPR pot thanks to preflop) is likely crushing us. Even as played, Villain only got it in as about a 44:56 dog (and again, unless he's an idiot, most other times he's crushing us).

GcluelessNLnoobG

fold turn, i would maybe call flop and fire a safe turn but the way it played out fold on 4th

Main answer is don't worry about...standard spot on the flop and you just happened to lose slightly better than a coin flip in a really gross way.


That said, in these specific spots (2 pair on a 3 straight flop) I have started to play a lot more conservative when 3+ handed. Just seen too many sets and flopped straights. I tend to go into check call mode and be willing to get away if board gets worse, or pounce if villains show weakness on later streets.

Just a variance thing, depends on how comfortable you are flipping coins for hundreds of dollars vs. waiting for more sure spots

All of this. I would have edited out the results, but it was too late as lots of people have already seen and commented on them.

Preflop is the mistake here, once you see the flop you are committed with top 2. It's just too likely you are facing a flush draw with Ah to fold.

As annoying as it is, fold for $3 dollars to begin with. The button straddle puts you way OOP and with the straddle in play you are not that deep. The risk of a raise after you is just too big.

It's okay. Maybe find a fold after he shoves, his hand was the only hand really that you have best equity against and you lost the coin flip

That's the problem with 45s, even when you flop a flush or 2 pair, your hand is very vulnerable.

I'd fold pre, especially after the raise.

Check raise on flop is good imo. You have the best hand here almost always but you aren't going to 3 barrel a lot of runouts. C/r allows you the opportunity to get it in good. Lots of turns (2, 3, h) are going to put you in awkward spots if you donk and get called.

Villain UTG bets $25, in a 1/3 game, damn that looks strong asf. Fold Pre.

No its not the problem but after he shoves he has sets and the wheel sometimes.. only hand you have decent equity against is flush draw and he got there so basically just fold flop hes not shoving with A5

Fold preflop. That trash hand has no value in a raised pot unless you 3! pre and take the pot down on the flop. That little value is the "folding-equity"

45s makes only 3 straights and a worthless flush that cost your entire stack. Worse, when you get lucky and flop one pair it's usually no good by the turn/river. If you flop two-pair it can be counterfeited by any overpair or even by a single over card (3 outs like in this situation) if that card comes down on any of the streets after the flop.The smallest suited connector that sometime, I stress one more time, sometime is playable is 56s that makes 4 straights and one of that beats the wheel made with an Ace and gets action. Especially in a raised pot if you make a straight with 56 you not gonna by nutted by the big cards because they are all clumped on the top of the pack where the raiser and the callers are all together one against another with big cards intermingled between their hands and almost no outs for anyone ...haha ...haha

I can't understand why people that are aware of 2p2 forum site where poker strategy is discussed they come here to see what's what and how things are moving and what's going on ever play trash hands. When I'm out at the tables I hear people talking about 2p2: "Oh, you don't know about 2p2?" or "Jeez, you should go to that site and see what they say about this and that... .., But man,.. not one of them ever plays trash hands because all the trash gets filtered out by the preflop raises.

I see so many posts here dealing with Q8o, 54s, K9, A6, J7.. etc. Why is that?

After he shoves, there's 1105 in the pot and it's 500 to call. We need to be good 31% to call.

He could be shoving an overpair, especially AA and there are more combos of AA than there are of sets (6 AA vs 3+1+1 sets). We're 42% against just that range. Adding in any combo draws makes it a bit better. More overpairs makes it better.

Folding to the shove would be bad.

C/r seems too small. Atleast $275. Probably more.

First completion of BB to match the straddle is questionable, but fine if it´s a limpy table or only small raises are expected.

as played, we need to call 19 to win 82, we get over 4 to 1 closing the action and let´s give those guys ridicolously tight ranges for a live game for the sake of the argument:

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

600,000 trials (Randomized)

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
4h5h	22.59%	134,302	3,465
12%	32.15%	185,859	15,424
5%-20%	23.74%	134,866	16,498
5%-30%	21.51%	121,867	15,752

preflop equities aren´t the end all be all, but we have a pretty clear maths call here, you can argue against numbers if you want, but I just refuse to believe pre is a mistake after completing. maybe close, but not a mistake, not BAD, not a TRASH hand etc, and even if it´s a mistake (which numbers would argue against), it´s only a pretty tiny one.

postflop is perfectly fine. there is 250 in the pot when it gets back to us, we have 715 behind, c/r is good. and now people wanna fold even AFTER c/raising against his shove, really? he all of a sudden has A3, 63 and 22 a lot here after opening UTG?
Ok, this is absolutely ridicolous and illogical, simulations should not even be needed here, but still, let´s play devil´s advocate and give him all these very unrealistic combos of A3suited, 55, 44 and 22 with only AA as overpair and only one AKhh

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

15,840 trials (Exhaustive)

board: 452

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
4h5h	35.33%	5,398	396
AA, AdKd, As3s, 22, 55, 44, Ad3d, Ac3c, Ah3h	64.67%	10,046	396

even against that (insane) range it´s a call, against anything normal we are a decent favourite.


ah wtf, he certainly has all 63 suited combos as well in his UTG opening range and is otoh such a nit that he only stacks off with one overpair and one flushdraw:

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

19,800 trials (Exhaustive)

board: 452

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
4h5h	31.79%	6,079	432
AA, AdKd, As3s, 22, 55, 44, Ad3d, Ac3c, Ah3h, 6s3s, 6c3c, 6d3d, 6h3h	68.21%	13,289	432

even then it´s a call.

Honestly, we are getting to a point where people advocate folding hands in Holdem I´d be pretty tempted to get in in PLO, it´s nittery taking to a whole new level by some.

in my humble opinion.

edit: sorry, didn´t see button shoved. makes my postflop rant a lot less relevant now, but still not a fold I believe. we get even better odds to call, there is an additional 215 dead money in the pot from PFR as well. it´s closer now though, but really still not close.

OP, there are four elements to winning a hand in poker: Hand strength, Initiative, Position and Skill. You aren't ahead in hand strength, you're calling so you don't have initiative, you're in the BB so you don't have position and it is your 3rd hand at the table with no reads, so you have no clue if you have a skill advantage. With everything working against you, this becomes an easy fold pre-flop. Which is why most people are telling you to fold.

I think you want to take a step back and do some reading and thinking about why position is important. I'm sure you've read about it, but the message has not really been understood yet. Limp/calling with mediocre hands pf is a slow bleeder of leaks that it takes a long time for live players to close. If your thought process included even a hint of, "I might get lucky and hit a big hand so what's a couple of buck the play," you should be folding.

Ugh. No it doesn't. It makes 4.

A 2 3 45
2 3 45 6
3 45 6 7
45 6 7 8


As for the hand itself, fold pre the first time around. Fold the second time around. You have no idea if this hand is going to get raised, but I usually count on hands getting raised and I count on the straddler to raise when there is a straddle.

It makes no sense to use all-in equity when you're not all-in. Your next decision won't be whether to tip the dealer, it'll be on the flop.

Against those ranges 4h5h is ahead on the flop less than 8% of the time. We're not getting 11 1/2 to one. It's an easy fold.

Agree with your first sentence but not the second.

The whole point of a 4h5h type of hand is not realizing equity of the PF bet, it is the implied odds of the villain with QQ+ that can't get away from a 954 board or a 10 5 5 board (which is a lot lot of people at these stakes).


OP yes pre is high variance but not as terrible (IMO) as everybody said if you have villains who struggle with folding overpairs and stacks are reasonably deep.

That said if you are going to play this style (I have found it to be highly highly profitable in many but not all 1/3 games) you have to know that it is high variance and you are going to stack and get stacked a lot more often than playing nittier pre-flop.

If you are not supremely confident in your post flop ability vs the table (i.e. ability to get away from 2 pair or know when to pound stacks against an overpair) then just fold pre.



Personally on this type of board facing this type of action at 1/3 I go into check call mode, I just don't want to get stacks in when I am at best getting called by a hand that is 50/50. I would have called the $75.

At 1/3 a LOT of just flush draws would slow down on the turn afraid to stick in stacks with only 1 cards to come. So if somebody pounds the turn for 200+ I am probably folding this deep knowing sometimes I am wrong. If I only have to call one more moderate bet across the turn or river I probably will since a lot of overpairs may bet one more street.

A much higher amount of my profits at low stakes are made from these types of hands than premium hands. But also have to play them carefully and be prepared to live with the consequences when you get counterfeited!

I guess you looked at the Hand vs Range graph to come up with that number. well, if absolute preflop equities aren´t the end-all be-all, this simulation surely ain´t either. it means that in 8% of the time we flop a hand which is over 50% vs combined villain ranges, and surely that is not the only time we can continue profitably in the hand.

If 8% and 11 1/2 to 1 means something different, please explain.

as a side note, you could just have deleted the rest of the post, dunno why you felt it was necessary to delete it and then come up with the sneaky remark "lots of rambling deleted", pretty ******* move tbh.

Yes, is my bad the way I said that. Actually the last one is almost worthless.
This one 45678 is the low end that can cost us the stacks if we don't play it well. The 9T is the nuts and if the turn brings a 9 pr T for a board like
6789/678T we lost the betting power and if villain is a "player" he can take the pot away. I know on paper when we do this thing with a pencil it looks like we still have a str8, and we do have it, but in real live play the tings are a little different and we get a bet of 3/4 pot on the turn. Is he got it or not on 6789 or 678T....? Now, T9s is a very legitimate raising hand from EP mixed with the premium and the A5s. Since villain raised in EP with T9s we put him on big cards and wrongly assume the board missed him. That's why we use T9s and A5s for situations like this one and others to ...., I'm not going in more details but that's my point.

OK, You're right and I'm bad, ....., but I'm still convinced 45s is trash for two reasons:
1) no big card value
2) is located at the end of the wheel and doesn't go over to the next notch higher str8 to grab the nut like 56s.
3) and this is a general comment about suited connectors including the 45s and 56s .. etc. We play suited NOT for the suiteness value but to restrict ourselves of not playing too much trash. So we reduce the trash by selecting only the suited cards but the reality is that very very rarely we are ready to commit on a small flush. Probably NEVER unless of course it's a str8-flush .. haha...haha ..,

Good Luck and Good Flops

Agree that 54s is a fold here, but your reasoning has some flaws.

65s is only very slightly better than 54s. Both make four straights. In both cases, if we make the low end of the straight it's worth much less than making the nut straight. Not worth 0, just worth much less.

It is a nice feature that playing SCs is inherently limiting, since there are only 4 combos for each one. But that's not the main reason to choose suited vs. unsuited. If that were all it was, we could just say only play offsuit connectors when the high card is spade.

Suitedness does matter. It's not everything and reasonable debate about how useful it is, well, reasonable, but flushes very often win pots. Yes, we may not want to commit with a baby flush, but they're still profitable.

We don't have to commit for the hand worth money.

It looks to me that you know your game and know what you talking about.

Yes, suiteness matter and connectives matter too but those two qualities has got to be hooked to big card value too. Suited big cards are way way better vs. 65s, 54s .. 76s .., You know, if you play like 76s and flop comes like 7,3,2, - What you gonna do? - You cannot go with that TP of sevens three streets of betting. If you are not very deep and the pot got raised you got a big problem. If you call with 76s, what happens if you flop a pair or what happens if you flop a draw? Now you have put yourself in a situation to go with it and you risking on drawing your normal stack into the pot on a draw or a weak pair. You are better off with big cards suited if the pot was raise coming to you because if you flop a pair with one of your big cards and a draw, now you got 14 legitimate outs plus some "phantom outs" that you can pick them OTT and can take the pot down right there with the second barrel. ...haha..haha

Some exception we make when we put T9s or 98s, A5s and some pair like 33/44/66 or 77 into the EP like UTG, UTG+1, UTG+2 raising pack but we do this just to trow off villains readings. When the flop comes trash the poor sucker is gonna be in for a surprise.