This hand came up last night at my local card room and I was unsure of what to do so thought I would post it.

1/3 game which is overall pretty lose but this specific villain hasn’t really got OOL pre flop at all. I did call her down with second pair on QK852 and was correct when she showed Q10 vs my QJ.

OTTH:

Eff stacks of roughly 400.

I’m UTG +1 and raise to 20 as there was a post in late position.UTG +2 calls and so down the player beside him.. folds around to the cutoff and she makes it 120.

Now in this spot I don’t really like flatting as I feel it’s just burning money. If I do there’s 300$ in the middle with only roughly a pot sized bet left behind. If I miss the flop I’m forced to C/f I think...

Anyway just curious if 4 betting is ever an option vs flatting. I ended up folding as I was unsure and thought it was the safest play.

20 too much. Routine fold unless you have any significant reason to believe she puts 120 in pre with lots of bluffs.

I would fold here as I don't think she will be raising to 120 with worse than AQ

Agree that you're never calling. If you think is a good, thinking player I can get behind a 4-bet shove. High variance but if V is solid she's stealing here a lot. 4-bet AI and fold are the only2 plays. I would cram AI too often here, but 1 out of every 4 times maybe I think it's fine.

A 4-bet here is basically a bluff, and at these stakes you'll want to avoid 4-bet bluffs against most players, especially someone you don't have a strong read on their 3-betting tendencies. You're right that flatting is bad for many of the reasons mentioned. Just fold and move on.

Fold. Don't learn your lesson the hard way by flopping a Q versus KK or AA or an A versus AK (AA, KK, AK are most frequent 3! hands). Save your money.

pre flop sizing is fine, folding is now best

On the QT hand what were the positions and stacks? Who was the preflop aggressor, and how many barrels were fired?

What was the reason for $20? I know you said a late position post, but still that sizing is a bit large imo.

I agree with the fold though, I need specific villain reads before I start allowing for a wider 3b range.

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Really easy fold, preflop sizing could be slightly smaller

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PF sizing is fine clearly if it got two callers before the 3 bet.

I think limping AQs in EP is a much better play than raising it. I'll get flamed for that.

Trivial fold to the large 3bet. What, we think this is AJ?

GcluelessNLnoobG

You think she raises to $120 with JJ? You'd have 47% equity if she always calls your AI & I think you're putting more than 47% of the money in the pot, so you need some folds.

Why?

Cuz in my loose game you'll often see a very multiway flop with a quite low SPR OOP, which will handcuff all our decisions postflop. This hand plays fine multiway in a limped high SPR pot, and we'll have the option of limp/reraising if we see fit.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Vs a good player shove. Vs the average player fold.

Ok. So you limp UTG with AQ & get 5 callers. The SB folded.
$16-$1 rake = $15

Flop: Q87 BB checks.

How do you proceed to make money OOP, while at the same time avoiding disaster?

SPR question: how low of a "quite low" SPR are you talking about with only $15 in the pot?!

The limped pot is totally easy to play. The SPR is a hugenormous 20+ which gives us all the room in the world to simply play poker postflop over multiple streets and try to figure out what is going on. I would often just check this from OOP and see who does what and go from there, but a small bet/fold line is also fine, whatever. Sometimes we'll make mistakes, and end up folding the best hand, or even putting in some money with the worst of it, but thanks to the pot being small every mistake we make will also be relatively small, and on the drive home there is no way this is going to be the session defining hand that we're going to be losing sleep over.

Now take the raise case. Looks like this was going to go at least 4ways and possibly more. Let's take the "best" case scenario and say it only goes 4ways. Now you've got an $80 pot, OOP, with a stupid small SPR of 4.75, having given 3 opponents awesome 23+ IO. Good luck playing that well, noting that every mistake you make in this bloated pot will be a huge one. This will be the hand you'll be thinking about on your drive home, and it's all because you raised preflop cuz "I haz AQ".

But, that's the way I see it because I know where my wheelhouse is and I try to setup situations for myself which I know I will thrive in while avoiding situations I know I don't handle well. Each to their own.

GimoG

@gobbledygeek, I thought you were saying that a 5/6 way limped pot has a small SPR.

I know 2 guys who open in EP 3x the BB no matter what they hold. If it's a good starting hand for EP, it's $6 in a 1/2NL game. Doesn't matter if they have 77-AA KJs or AKs & they claim it works for them.

I can certainly see arguments for small raise sizing in EP, especially as stacks get deeper. In many ways, a limp (especially with smaller stacks) can be seen as the absolute minimum raise, and the overall concept is kinda similar (creating the desired very high or very small SPRs, and avoiding the handcuffing medium-small SPRs in multiway pots).

With smallish stacks, say like $200 in a 1/3 NL game, I'd prefer a limp rather than a 3x raise, because a 3x raise is going to create a 6way SPR of 3.5 (a horrible result, imo). But with like a $600 stack it'll create a much more playable 11 SPR. So really stack dependent, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I would think that dealing with a small spr is better than letting someone in for free [the BB] and another at 33% off [the small blind], so I would prefer to charge them an entrance fee.

Great looking cards, but let 'em go. Wp, if you folded.

Handcuffing ourselves postflop to uncomfortable commitment decisions for stacks just in the name of charging a nominal preflop entrance fee is pretty meh.

GimoG

Easiest fold ever. What are you ahead of? She isn't 3betting JJ or worse and you don't have implied odds

Correct. So make it more than nominal. In 1/3 I'd routinely go as high as $30-35 pre and still get multiple callers with $200 eff stacks. 4 - ways and that is a SPR of 1.4ish and only IO for the callers of 10:1.

Generally, I disagree with your approach GG, but I do believe that you have valid concern with your main point of moderate SPR, high IO's to callers as being really bad for us.