1/2NL

Hero: 30s WG, TAGish image but playing tighter than normal last hour. ~$500.

V1: 30s WG. Good player, TAG, limps a little too often preflop for my preference but standard good post flop play thus far. ~$1200

V2: MAAG. Lots of limps, lots of draw chasing, not much aggression on draws. Stated out loud several times that he was betting big with made hands to lock out draws. Capable of folding second best hand when it’s clear he’s beat. ~$800

UTG limps, V1 raises to $12, two calls in the middle including V2 in the CO. Hero calls OTB w 77. Blinds and limper call.

Pot $84 7 handed

Flop
8c7c3c

V1 bets $55
V2 raises $120
Hero ??



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Sorry, to give complete flop action:
UTG checks
V1 bets $55
Two folds
V2 raises to $120
Hero ??



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Does V2's declarations match his shown hands? And is his flop raise consistent with his betting because it isn't really a big raise? What would V2 do if he flopped a set or low flush? Can you get any read on what V1 plans to do?

Generally in this sort of situation I would say call or shove with top/middle set but you can find a tight fold with bottom set. In this case though if hero can weight V2's range heavily towards made flushes and V1's range is mostly give up then hero might find a tight fold. I would be more likely to call and see what happens.

Fold.

Both of them are betting an amount that says "I have the flush". Suppose you call, you spend $120 to win $444 if they're both lying.

On top of that, you still gotta dodge all the following players.

It's a bad flop, get out of it.

Fold.

EP TAG V1 did this into 6 players so that should be pretty scary for V2. It looks like V1 has: AcAx/KcKx/QcQx/AcXx/AcXc/KcQc

When passive postflop player V2 raises into 4 other players including another deepstack it does indeed look like he has a made flush. Given the action, I expect villains to continue barreling on every turn that doesn't pair the board. I'm not expecting anyone else to continue without a made flush or set.

We're only going to boat up on the turn around 3 times out of 20.

To make calling profitable, every time we make our boat, we'll need to add more than $680 to our stack to make up for the the 17 times we lit our $120 on fire.

If V1 calls V2's raise and doesn't 4bet, then together with the $84 in the pot preflop, that will guarantee us the ability to add $324 to our stack.

But given how passive V1 is,and how obvious it will be if the board pairs, I don't see how we can be confident of winning the remaining $356 every time we bink our boat on the turn.

Expected value of calling if we can win no extra money

Outcome	Frequency (%)	Effect on Stack of $488	Frequency x effect
Board on turn doesn't pair	85%	-$120	-$102
Board pairs	15%	+$324	+48.6
Total			-53.4

Expected value of calling if we can win an extra $356 every time we boat up

Outcome	Frequency (%)	Effect on Stack of $488	Frequency x effect
Board on turn doesn't pair	85%	-$120	-$102
Board pairs	15%	+$680	+$102
Total			0

He was showing many hands, although just a few up to the point of this hand in question, and they all reasonably matched his declarations.

In the moment V1 bet looked strongly like big pair + single club. He gave me nothing as far as indication of his intentions after the raise with action on me. I felt, as I was analyzing, that if I flat the raise he will come along with all of his pairs + club and his naked Ac but fold big pairs no club.

V2 range felt like a lot of flushes. I think sets were within his line too. Top two, I wasn’t so sure. He hadn’t given me an indication up to this point he would do this with something like Ac8x.




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This is a shove or fold spot. You will likely be called in at least one spot, so you will be risking $500 to win $1139 (at a minimum...if called in two spots, then add $500 to the total, however that likely means some of your outs are gone). So ~2.28-1 against, or you need to be good/get there 44% of the time to break even. 7 outs on the turn (16%) plus 9 outs on the river (~24%) which gets you to 40% so you need to be ahead AT LEAST 4% of the time right now to be 0 EV. I think it is close so I would probably flip a coin to decide.

I thought for quite a while, the correct course didn’t seem obvious in the moment and when that happens I find you start to think too creatively. What happened to me is that I convinced myself the raise isn’t always a flush (it probably is) and after seeing him fold two pretty big hands facing a shove already, I leveled myself into thinking I had some fold equity against a small flush or even top set. Basically turned my set into a bluff. I preach that 1/2 players aren’t going to find the big fold enough of the time to make big pot bluffs a real part of your game but here I was trying just that.

I shove. V1 drops out (later says he has KK w Kc) and V2 snaps with the nut flush. Oops. We agree to run it twice. First board bricks. Second board pairs. We chop.


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Fold is out of the question. Am I the only one that realizes we have decent equity vs made flushes? If you fold middle set here it’s highly exploitable.