Hero (480) - Re-bought after getting stuck early on. First hand at table called off (unrelated) spewy regs over shove with A high on dry flop. Correct read, bad run-out. My normal room so I tend to have a loose-ish/gambly image, however UTG has been very active so I have had to tighten up a bit. Image is on the tighter side at this point. C-bets were getting called early on so have dropped my C-bet percentage as well.

SB (43) - Why do people do this, I hate short stackers so much.

UTG (800) - Seems to be aware of position. Opening 20-30% of hands, almost always opening when limped to with position. Seems to understand bet sizing and pot odds, i.e >1/2 PSB with TPTK on drawy boards. Taking down a number of hands with well timed C-bets. Also seems to running good overall.

CO (550) - Old(er) lady reg. Essentially OMC but without the disdain for life. Capable of overplaying over pairs but also able to read board textures and find appropriate folds.

UTG opens to 12, 1 caller to hero who calls with 34
CO calls
SB calls

Flop (60) 25K

SB leads for 15, UTG calls, fold, Hero calls, CO calls

Turn (120) 6

SB shoves for 16, UTG raises to 65, Hero? Pot is 246, hero has 450 behind

So we binked the turn but this is a super draw heavy board 4-way. We hate stacking off with a heart or most diamonds OTR. I have to think there are a ton of draws in everyone's range and not as many TPGK without a raise OTF, right? We should be shoveling it in here, right?

Hero shoves

I think this may have worked better had I been playing my typical LAG-y play style, but at the time I wasn't thinking just how much I had adjusted to UTG. A 3-bet to 160 or so has to look similarly strong and anything more sets up awkward stacks OTR.

After writing everything out I realize not raising OTF here was bad.

Other thoughts?

Equally as bad or worse than not raising after we smash the Flop with 34 is calling pre with 34.

Also, at the risk of biasing discussion, results are interesting and I would like to hear some thoughts.

Fold pre
Raise flop
Shove turn

Is there ever a stack depth at which we can play 34s?

Gotta raise the flop and be pretty happy with playing for it all.

Raising the turn now screams strength and we lose a customer unless he has a set or something. Hate calling here because there are so many scare cards OTR for him, but we may have to try it in order to get max value.

I build the pot OTF though.

Very few 1/2 short stackers are thinking about the game at that level, but one of the good reason to short stack is exactly to make life hard on LAGs. It kills implied odds and forces a tighter, more value game on everybody.

The SB actually hoses you on the flop for exactly that reason. If you raise flop you probably go heads up against SB, which is -EV when your drawing. You have to flat the flop and let some more come along. The real problem is that you binked the turn but the board is now pretty wet. In any case, shove turn. There is a better then usual chance of getting a call because UTG is betting into a dry side pot and thus is likely strong or on a big draw. You can't let UTG get to river cheaply because you don't know which cards are bad.

The preflop call in this situation is the mistake in this hand. Calling a big EP raise from MP with low suited connectors is bad. Considering how deep you are, coming along in LP after a couple more callers would be OK. Here you just paying a lot to play OOP with a hand that won't hit very often.

Raising OTF to an amount that allows the SB to go all in, but caps the actions is pretty awesome actually. Bigger stack is sure to follow.

Yeah, leverage the short stack here. My first thought was to min raise and get at least SB's stack in. Everyone else will call too. Ideally, short stack would have $30 behind to reopen betting (shoving over your min raise) so we could gii on the flop with tons of dead money.

If there's only one or two short stacks at the table you can size your bets to leverage your squeezes and monster value raises to put maximum pressure on trapped deep stack calling stations. As long as you know they're there and roughly how they play you can not only exploit them but use them to exploit others at the same time.

Actually that is pretty ingenious here because of the order of action we can tie UTG to the pot. Minraise the flop so that when SB shove it isn't a complete raise. Since you know your likely drawing against SB when he bets the flop, either way helps you. If UTG folds you get to see both cards and if he comes long your pot odds are better.

The stack depth is not the problem--it's the fact that you're going to have pretty bad position postflop a lot of the time (absolute and relative) when you call from the HJ. Because of how small your cards are, this is actually a hand I don't want to take multiway without a very strong position edge on the field.

If UTG had raised to 12 and it folded to me on the button, or if I were on the button after a couple other deep stacks had called, I'd consider this a snap call. Position is the only problem in my opinion.

CO was not playing a ton of hands, even with position, so I think I may end up last to act here a larger chunk of time than usual. This maybe didn't come across in my descriptions. I'm also not sure I really considered it during the hand, you make a valid point.

So raise to 30 or 40 sb shoves and villan calls we call? I like it, we don't have to get in a situation were we have to call it off. We want our fold equity to push our small edge. I think as played we can't shove, the pot just isn't big enough. I we took this line I like the shove as the pot is much larger.

This is a spot where I kick myself for not thinking about the short stack dynamic in game.

We can't do this once the SB leads though. If SB checked and we bet anywhere from $16-$30, SB's raise ai for more doesn't reopen the betting. Once SB bets 415, if we raise though, SB calls w/e's left and we've reopened it for UTG to 3-bet.

^ Even that doesn't prohibit a raise from UTG actually. The only way to cap it would be for us to bet, UTG to call, then shortstack to not have enough to raise. UTG's call caps the action. But someone shortstacking doesn't prevent UTG from raising before he's acted.

Results:



How does this happen at any poker table ever? Let alone 1/2 on a Saturday at 11 PM.

You maximized your fold equity it would seem. Not ideal when you have the nuts.

Ideal raise size would be whatever will make the river a less than pot sized shove assuming the PFR calls. $150 would leave you $300 left into a pot of $486. Yes the board is a bit scary but we don't want to completely blow everyone out of the pot!

Turn:
UTG shouldn't be raising with a draw here bc there is no reason to semi-bluff a dry side pot. People do dumb things, but I'd weight him heavily towards made hands. Shipping is just massive sizing. You need to get called, but you do still want to get in as much as possible right now because of all the potential scare cards. I'd make it 200-225 here.

Do not worry about awkward stack sizes. Who is it awkward for exactly? Is it awkward being called with the nuts? Be sure to take the time to consider what the river action is going to look like instead of just trying to avoid awkward. This is the best awkward spot you are ever going to be in imo.

When we shove here, we have to think what our hand looks like to our Vs

I think you're living in 2007. Because in 2015, even a rec-fish is folding any set to your massive overshove there given such deep stacks. Infact, anything bigger than $200 probably gets a fold from anything but the nuts.

If I was one of the Vs, I probably might even fold KK here to your shove.

Shoving here is just playing scared poker, imo.

SB bets 15, UTG calls 15, we raise to 30, SB goes AI for 16 (1 more). Is SB relevant here between Hero and UTG ? Does this cap the action for UTG ? my understanding was he can reopen betting. He initially called 15 (BB) and when it came back to him, it was 16 more, >BB..
Or am I missing smthing here ?

Shoving 450 into 250 with the nuts seems like such overkill.

I would raise to something callable like 150, give or take.