$1/2 NL (9 handed)

MP V1: ($180) 60ish white guy. Typical loose passive recreational player.

MP+1 V2: ($300) ditto

CO Hero: $300 Reg with TAG image. Haven't been particularly active recently. No significant hands or pots.

Button V3: ($400) 30s Asian male. Roulette player with higher status comp card. Raises 60%+ of his hands to 7 (no more, no less) pre. Passive post. Has had a couple big hands to increase from $150 buy-in.

Hero is dealt 55

V1 limps, V2 limps

If CO raises to 7, both limpers will call and it will be 4 way with an SPR of about 11ish. I decide I'd rather raise myself, likely get it HU or 3-way and have more options post. Agree? Disagree?

Hero raises to $18.

V3 calls, blinds fold, V1 calls, V2 calls

$18 has often taken it down preflop or limited it to HU. V's are sticky, but $18 is enough to get them to drop some of their limping range; they've likely got better than junk.

Flop ($70) A J 6 rainbow

Checks to Hero.

I typically don't cbet into 3 LP V's without some equity to fall back on and there are three V's that liked their hand enough to call $18.

Hero checks.

Agree, or should I winch 'em up and cbet here?

Turn ($70) A J 6 2 completes the rainbow

V1 leads $30. V2 calls. Hero?

The bet feels week, as does the call. A raise here could look like a slow played monster.
Fold or raise? If raise, how much?

Would posting up to each decision point and then proceeding after discussion have been OK, or would that have strayed into PAHWM territory?

Welcome to 2+2!

Easy fold ...
1) There is a turn bet into 3 players, a call, with another player behind.
2) The flop likely hit their L/C range.
3) You have 4th pair.

Usually when a passive guy decides to take an aggressive action, they generally have something. Coupled with the read that villains are sticky makes me not want to try anything funny here. Checking and folding is going to be best here against this player type.

As for the flop, checking is good, small pocket pairs play terribly as continuation bets on dry boards as you're never getting folds from worse, though you'll get some higher pairs to fold, an ace isn't going anywhere.

The way this hand plays out shows why the preflop raise is bad. You have a setmining hand, you're going to play it as a setmining hand, but you're voluntarily putting lots of extra money in preflop. You can't rely on getting HU, so you're better off just limping and seeing the flop.

As played, the flop check and turn fold seem right to me.

I'm fine with the preflop raise. I think I'd limp-call with this 70% of the time under these conditions, and raise the other 30% of the time. As you noted, the plan when you raise so large is to isolate down to a single opponent, then c-bet most boards. Given your image and recent inactivity, I think that's +EV.

I like the flop check. You aren't going to drive three people out on the flop.

On the turn... hell, it really depends on how confident you are in the $30 bet and $30 call being tentative. And it'd be nice to have a read on the roulette player.

Standard move is definitely to fold. I'd say fold this about 90-95% of the time. But if you sense that they're both (a) concerned you have a set and (b) not too thrilled with their hand, then I think an occasional bluff-raise isn't the worst idea in poker.

If you're going to bluff here, I'd recommend raising $100 on top. That's a large amount of money in absolute terms.

It's also probably a good spot for you to uncharacteristically ham it up. You're trying to sell your villains on a monster hand. You're trying this move now because you think they've made a tentative bet (and a tentative call) and are nervous that you have a monster. That means they're paying at least a little attention to your behavior. So if you start demonstrably shaking your head, then raise $100, that may reinforce the story they're telling themself -- that you have a monster and they've sussed it out.*




*I know the standing wisdom at llsnl is that 1/2 recs never think about anything ever. Personally, I find that to be at-best approximately true. When bets get big, even the total fish will pause to wonder what's going on. They won't think hard about it, but they'll at least think a little.

I would mix calls and raises preflop. Since you expect V3 to raise anyway, I'm fine with you taking the initiative. $18 seems too high given villains' medium stack sizes. You're fine with a high SPR with low pocket pairs because their real value depends on big implied odds from hitting a set.

Good check on the flop. You're not folding out 3 villains especially with an ace on the board. The turn action confirms your flop check was correct and you should fold. I'd be tempted to squeeze if there wasn't an ace. I find that sticky villains think Ax is the nuts and will call down almost always.

You don't want this. If you're raising so big that Vs fold everything worse and only call with better, that's a bluff. I'd be raising but for initiative in the hand not to take it down pf.

V1 and V2 are the guys to bluff, but not when they have taken the lead. If they raised pre and fired a c-bet, a raise might get a fold. Or if you had the lead preflop and bluffed post that could work. But when these passives limp/called pre and now one of them took the lead, it's a bad spot to bluff.

If you want to play a heads-up pot, you should probably limp and squeeze V3 if he makes it 7.