Here is another hand played at £1/2:

Hero is on the button and has a tight image, Villain is very station-y. The table has been loose passive preflop, leading to lots of multiway pots. Effective stacks are £200.

4 Players limp
H (BTN) raises £16 with Ac8s
V (sb) Calls, 2 other players call

flop: Qh 6h 6c

3 Players check
H Bets £35
V calls

Turn: Ad

Check/Check

I think he will fold most Qx hands and lower pps to a bet here. Flush draws may have called and so perhaps I should have fired again but the pot is now £136 so a bet here would commit me to the pot. I intend to bet the river if it bricks and he checks.

River: offsuit 8

V bets £65
H?

Ugh...this is a crying call. You don't block the heart draw. Your line makes you look weak. And you are getting a good price 3:1. Need to call this.

Pot sizes on each street please.

I'd raise more pre, say 20. We need to get this down to HU to maximize our options post. 16 is too likely to get a parade of callers IMO.

Flop is fairly hard to for callers to hit and hits our perceived PFR range. Pot is 66; I think 35 is a good sizing. Maybe 40 since there are three opponents.

I'd bet the turn. V is stationy and can have a lot of hands with which he'll call, like sticky Q's and heart draws. Since he's passive, we're not going to have a tough decision if he x/r or leads out on the river. I'd make it 65, planning to check the river back. I'm not remotely committed. When they make calling errors, bet more often for value. When they make folding errors, bet more often as a bluff. When they make betting errors, check more often to induce.

AP call the river. We're beat fairly often by a 6, but we showed weakness by checking the turn and we're getting 3:1 on a call.

Why are you raising 8x with a garbage hand when multiple players are likely to call? Can't really fold river, V has enough Axhh, whiffed FDs, and Qx trying to push you off a chop that you pretty much have to call here.

After 4 limps, I would prefer folding this preflop.

As played, this is an easy call (not a crying call).

You're chopping, ahead or losing. It doesn't really matter. With these kinds of pot odds you're winning often enough for folding to be a clear mistake.

I would suggest resisting the urge to try and push him off a chop by shoving. It's hard to represent much and I don't think he folds Ax for $84 more very often and we're potentially value-owning ourselves.

check the flop. As played, pretty easy call river, dont need to be good here very often, could be missed FD, Ax chop, maybe even a poorly played Qx.

This. You could consider raising larger pf to get more folds. But I don't like that line with A 8 offsuit. Just a fold pre.

Turn logic makes sense. Seems like a fine spot to check back to me.

River spot you have to call and be right less than 25% of the time to break even. Absent a strong read on villain's tendencies, I'd call.

For people saying fold pre, this is exactly the type of hand that people SHOULD be playing (rather than calling PF raises with KQo). I am raising with somewhere close to ATC in this situation (I would probably raise anything J+ high, anything suited, anything 2 gap or less... so the bottom of my range would be like J2o, 72s, 52o, so ~86.4% range. It might be a bit less or more depending on how weak I think the players who limped in are), hoping to hook exactly one fish. I think 16 is a pretty good raise sizing as well. It will scoop you 11 sometimes, and get you HU IP vs a much worse player pretty often as well. If you think 16 wont get you HU, maybe pop it up a bit more, but I think im normally going 16-20 here, probably 16 or 18.

From time to time you end up going 4+ ways, mostly when one of the blinds call. When it goes 4 ways like this, you end up losing money on average Id guess, so your goal is mostly just to recoup some of your investment, but you make so much in the HU pots and when you scoop pre that it more than makes up for hands that go multiway

Dead money. Absolute position. Bad opponents. Initiative. This is the holy grail of poker. Take advantage.

This is the kind of expert advice you come to LLSNL for!

People love to limp/call. If you're raising ATC in this spot you are burning money, are you really getting everyone to fold more than ~15% of the time?
Probably not. Ok, so now you've raised with A8o and 4 people called, pot is big, SPR is low. The flop is Axx, how happy are you now? Are you even betting it? The flop is K8x, still happy? Unless you flop or make 2p+ you are almost never going to be betting 3 streets and you're really going to have no idea whether you have the best hand or not in almost every runout. You bet one street and get called, now you're mostly checking back turns and rivers. Just fold pre, A8o sucks.

Agree with the fold pre advice at this table. What flop do you want to see vs. multiple players, except maybe X88 or AA8? Maybe A82.

Anyway, check flop. They shouldn't be folding better or calling with worse. What is the point of betting here? I guess to win with A high, which isn't a bad thing. Maybe they'll call w/ a flush draw?

Turn is fine.

River is a call.

You are absolutely wrong. You think that in theory it doesnt work, I actually have considerable experience doing it. i dont just talk about this probably being profitible, I do this constantly, and I win A LOT doing it. Loose passive tables go multiway so often because everyone else is limping or bad wannabe tags raising to 8-12. you make a nice big raise to 15-20 and you see plenty of limp folds, most of the time it goes HU or 3 way, occasionally it goes 4 way or everyone folds. You need to size your bet based on the stickyness of your opponents, best case a few of the limpers are old men, because they limp fold more often, and then you got one young guy you are isolating, but if all the limpers are young, you just go 20 or whatever. I constantly would get the “hey man 2/5 is that way!” after dude folds his limp for the 4th or 5th straight time to my big raise. They want to call anything but simply dont when you size bigger than they are used to seeing. Especially when they know a $25-35 bet is gonna hit the flop like clockwork.

I agree it sucks when it goes multiway, if it happens to you a lot, your sizing sucks, but realistically Id bet that it works more than often enough to make you money but it feels bad the time it goes 5 ways and so you just stop. I cant go thru every hand and how id play it for you, but ill just say this: HU IP with initiative and dead money vs a fish should be printing you money. You shouldnt even need to look at your cards to make money in this situation. If you arent capable of sizing your preflop bets to get yourself into this position, you are leaving a LOT of money on the table.

if the table is loose/passive pre then ya don't need to force action with A8o. At the lowest of the lowest stake this is burning money.

Can someone explain to me why not a single person has entertained the idea of raising this river for straight value? It seems obvious to me the best hand Villian will have here is Qx. Yes it is possible Villian could have a 6X but seems unlikely and he would have bet the turn considering the flush draw on the flop.

I would raise for value here a good portion of the time making it look like a busted flush is bluffing at the end for the win here. Thoughts?

As for the actual hand I would have folded unless it was suited. As for the turn I like the logic but I’m betting regardless. I’m
tired of getting sucked out on with the best hand because I let it happen.

And for the river I’m pretty sure what I would do is obvious at this point.

I agree. Playing this on the button is a losing strategy. Fold it every time in a non-tight game. As played, call river bet. You're winning here less than 50% of the time though.

Please explain your logic that hero is loosing more than 50% of the time? What hands could the Villian have that are beating us. 6X doesn’t seem very probable to me.

It doesn't matter how often we're ahead. It matters how often we're ahead *when he calls*.

If we're ahead 80% of the time, but when he calls he always has a hand that's beating us, we lose money on the bet. Hell, we could be winning 99.9% of the time, but if he only calls with that 0.1% that's beating us, we don't make money on the bet.

If 50%+ of his calls are with a Q or worse, you can bet for value. I very much doubt half of his calls will be that weak.

If V can raise and we'll sometimes either fold to a worse or call better, we need even higher than 50% to make up for that lost EV.

Important note: I see this principle mis-used all the time. While it's an important concept, it applies rigidly ONLY
* OTR
* HU
* IP

There are situations before the river, or multi-way, or OOP where betting is higher EV than checking even if we're only better calls/worse folds.

+1

fold pre

1/2 players tend to limp stronger then expected ranges

A8o doesn't play well enough post flop especially against all these villains

this is -EV in long run

Keep getting yourself into 5-way pots with SPR 2 and A8o and let me know how it works out for you.

There are games I think raising A8o OTB is fine. There are games I think it's not a good idea.

I'm not going to address the ATC issue. If V's are bad enough, skill & position might well be enough to make any hand profitable. Any discussion of that just comes down to how good we think H is and how bad we think V's are. Those opinions likely say more about us than the people they're ostensibly about.

When we raise A8o OTB we should be planning to get HU or perhaps 3-way IP. Obviously, sometimes that won't happen. Part of playing this strategy is to figure out what raise size will get us to that point. Part of it is also dealing well with those times we end up in a difficult spot.

We need a few things
V's that will call raises too wide, but not too too wide. Basically, we want to get HU or 3-way with V's that have relatively weak ranges. If V's aren't wide enough, we get HU against better hands on average. If they're too too wide (e.g. often limp calling even big raises), we'll be multi-way and won't be able to steal often enough.

After that, we need V's that will fold often enough to pressure that we don't always have to make a hand. Note, that doesn't mean they always fold. But if they're hanging on to the river with any piece of the flop, we have to revert to make-a-hand.

At many tables, we can achieve both of these. V's will limp/call with hands worse than A8o -- SCs, weaker aces, PP that will fold if they whiff, broadways, etc. They will then call one or two streets, but will fold to a big bet often enough that we can sometimes make a hand and get paid and sometimes move them off their hands.

At other tables, we can't.

We also need to read hands and textures better than opponents so that we can target bluffs to when they're likely weak (or we look strong) and target value when we think we're actually ahead.

As always, sometimes we'll get it wrong and bluff into someone that doesn't fold or value own ourselves. Sometimes we'll be in a crappy spot. Individually, these events prove nothing.

None of this can be reduced to simplistic A8o bad! No, it's good!


If 16 usually gets you HU, great. If not, raise more or tighten your raising range.

I think this flop is worth a cbet in this spot. I don't hate a check since it's multi-way. If we get called, we're probably not in good shape. There will be some light calls, but more often they'll have at least a Q.

Turn is interesting. Pot is now 136 with about 150 back. We've just gotten ahead of all Q's, but we're way behind a 6. If we bet, Q's might call but might fold. A 6 will at least call. We're chopping with most aces and ahead of any other random cruft he shows up with. Overall, we're not getting much value from worse, folding out any better, or denying meaningful equity. It's not clear our bet would be less than V's river bet, so we don't necessarily save much over checking here and calling river.

We do blow through commitment with a marginal hand. We allow V to put us to a difficult test if he calls turn and then jams river (for a small fraction of the pot).

I think we should check this back. Let's keep V's range as wide as possible and keep the pot from getting completely out of control. We can call a reasonable river bet or check it back again.

OTR, I think we make the call. It's pretty thin. I doubt a Q is leading out here. It might be an ace (with which we'll chop). It might be random LLSNL spew. We're getting more than 3:1 on a call and we showed weakness OTT. There are almost always bluffs in V's ranges, even if they're a tiny fraction.

Not many can play ATC against showdown monkeys and realize >0ev, perhaps you can, but recommending it as part of a routine winning strategy is bad advice. KQo is entirely different as is J2. You also left out range advantage and playability as parts of the holy grail which might be more important than anything else when showdown rates are so high.

AP easy call. You beat all Axhh, he could easily be moron betting a Q, or any number of hands that likely should have folded pre/otf. When he shows you 6x then you lose, but there is plenty worse out there.

Huh, missed that. We don't chop with aces, we beat most of them. Yeah, not a thin call at all.

This just in: We are not chopping w Ax.

Heh, ninja'd.