1/3 in Houston, 6 handed

Hero ($2k): 30s WG in a ball cap, up on the day, good image.

Main V ($1k): 50's Asian guy who speaks 3 or 4 languages. Limping or raising around 60% of hands. Has been caught bluffing in position via stabs when flops and turns check through to him. Bets and raises with draws. In a generally jovial mood as hes winning due to the loose passives folding a lot to his aggression.

OTTH:

Hero UTG (which is also LJ) opens Q Q to $15 (standard sizing)
Main V in CO calls
Both loose passive blinds call

Flop ($60): J 5 6

Blinds check
Hero bets $20
CO calls
Blinds call

Thoughts: Opening the LJ range here I have all the sets, over pairs, good Jx, some nut flush draws and some combo draws that want to bet but also a ton of misses. The board is generally better for the 3 callers who will have a higher concentration of hands that hit this board. Heads up I may check here a small % of the time but betting small multi-way seemed ok, I didn't want to give up the betting lead to CO and have him check back turns when his flop stab gets called.

Turn ($140): J 5 6 8

Blinds check
Hero bets $110
CO calls
Blinds fold

Thoughts: With no raise otf I assume we are ahead here almost all the time of Jx, club draws, pair and gutters and want to get value while I can

River ($360): J 5 6 8 2

Hero bets $175
V raises to $475
Hero?
$300 to win $1000

Thoughts:
- We obviously beat none of his value but I also cant find many value combos that raise here.
- I see countless bluffs in missed clubs, missed turned gutters or combo draws, 7x blocking straights etc...
- Its 1/3 and river raises are always nutted.
- This and KK no has to be the best over pairs to call with

Would love comments on all streets or the thought process

Tough spot with QQ oop. Preflop standard. I might limp/rr at an aggro table utg.

C-bet maybe needs to be bigger multi-way, perhaps 1/2 psb.

Turn bet is maybe a little too big. But H's reasoning is sound when checked to by blinds, who presumably have to bet their two pairs and sets ott multi-way.

River: H has compressed V's range otf/ott to sticky Jx, missed NFD, 77, 65s and slow-played sets. From H's description of V, I might check to induce a bluff. I think a value bet should be smaller here as I want JT/J9s/QJ and 77 to call.

AP: I'm calling getting 3-1. We're beat sometimes

Yeah, I was going to suggest checking river as well. This guy seems like he will bluff and may even overplay AJ. We can snap-call basically any bet which is nice.

The river raise versus a solid player who has triple-barreled into three other opponents is sooooo strong. You have to think this guy is really capable to call here, because most live low stakes opponents are never bluffing this spot.

34s, 74s, and 79s have all completed too. Guessing someone who VPIP's 60% has all combinations of those hands, even though he should probably fold 34s on the turn (unless of course 34cc, which he probably raises the flop with).

I think a lot of the bluffs you want to find here, the described Villain would have raised flop or turn with.

This looks like you are beat.

I like your play on every street. River line is bet-fold with a club, bet-call with one, so I call this one but expect to lose.

Kind of an old school, or pre gto holdover way of looking at overpairs is to gauge the SPR on the flop, you are deep, effective stack 1,000. The SPR is about a 16 on the flop. When it’s that high it means there’s no way you should be losing your stack over this pot, so keep the pot small. You need to pump the brakes on at least 1 street, the 1/3 cbet on the flop is fine. After that I’d be looking to check either the turn or the River. As played I’m fine with betting the turn bc the blinds have checked twice, it’s 4 way, I’m trying to get some folds. So I think we need to check the River, hopefully check-check or check call. But if villain goes too big on the River we should be willing to drop it.

Compare to my 1/3 game where we are capped at $400 buy in. With the same action the SPR on the flop would have been a 6 and we could choose to try to set it up to get all in.

With the price, beat enough of the time that we can comfortably fold?

We have to consider that on flop and turn, villain was facing 3 opponents including two loose-passive ones. That makes it significantly less appealing to try to run a bluff.

Bet bigger on the flop, 2/3 pot. They'll still call with top pair, open-enders, and flush draws. You don't want to price everyone in when you are out of position. You aren't excited to see many turns vs 3 players who called a small bet.

Turn is bad for you, it fills in some straights and two pairs. All of which are in play because of the down bet on the flop. Bet smaller, 1/2 pot or less, or check.

River Check or bet is fine. Not sure if we can get much more from something besides AJ or KJ. Since you said he is bluffy, you might bet with a club and check without one. Facing the raise, I'd call if I've seen him show aggression late into hands and fold otherwise. Not unreasonable for him to have some slow plays on the turn since you bet so big and it's unlikely you have a hand greater than 1 pair.

I would go close to half pot otf. We are 4 ways but it's live poker and we can get plenty of value here.

The turn here looks worse for our hand and range. It actually looks like a nightmare situation with this profile behind us. He will bet or raise on this turn a lot. Like mentioned in previous posts tho, he will not always go ham on the turn when being multiway. I would bet third pot with overpairs no club the majority of the time and check the rest. With a club I would check most of the time while betting third pot the rest of the time. It is very hard to get value from AJ on this board 4 ways when we bet big even in a live environment.

On this river I think we should always bet small 30-40% with our overpairs in order to get paid by a good J but also allow him to raise vs the blocker bet. When he raises he is saying he has a straight or nothing. I dont think he ever arrives on the river with sets. He also is never raising with worse. Have you seen hem attempt a bluff facing agression or is it always when facing passive action? He has lets say all combos of 97 and 4 of 74s for a total of 20 value combos. He will have near the same amount of combos in missed flush draws/straight draws/combo draws. While he might not bluff with all of them he will only need to bluff 30% of them. I am calling here with all overpairs with no club, half overpairs with a club, and AJ no club. It feels like AA/AJ with Ac should all be folds blocking a good amount of draws.

edit: we do have a bunch of sets here too that all have to x/call so maybe folding all overpairs with a club is good.

*correction: he needs to bluff with a little over half his bluff combos otr if we assume he has a 1/1 value to bluffs ratio. I think this profile fits that criterion decently and so we have good hand to call with.

Deep and shorthanded is out of my wheelhouse, but my worthless two cents anyways...

I limp in but that's my style. Although at these stack depths a raise will always create a very playable SPR so whatever.

At this big SPR I think we have lots of options postflop. Against the passive guys that we have position on we could probably just bet/fold a bunch of streets. But having the aggro guy behind us we could also underrep and maybe let him take the lead (although I'm guessing he gets less aggro the more multiway things go). If betting the flop (which I'd probably lean to) I'd probably bet a lot more (at least 1/2 PSB) and then see what happens.

Kinda crappy turn spot being so multiway and this pot now getting quite bloated. Still, I'm not going to hate on a bet as the only one that could really be slowplaying here is the CO (as you'd think the blinds would have check/raised to this flop action on this board). I probably wouldn't have bet so large if I'm betting.

On the river the main flush draw busted (although 43 did get there). Against ABC face up opponents, I'm cool with a small bet/fold here (as they are never going to steal a big pot with the worst of it). However, against an aggro opponent we have to be very careful betting into a big pot and possibly having them attempt to steal it; so I would check. We'll miss value from Jx some of the time but we'll probably make up for that in bluffcatches, and meanwhile we don't risk losing a huge pot.

As played, it is a gross river spot that I would attempt to avoid. My guess is that enough missed that we're forced to call here (plus you'd think he raise better hands by the turn this multiway on this board).

GcluelessNLnoobG

flop $40, you want HU vs Jx or a FD. you dont want 5x, 6x, gutshots calling

because you bet small on the flop that turn card is dangerous vs multiple players and id check. if you were HU on the turn id bet 1/2 pot

id check river or bet tiny like 1/4 pot. i dont see Jx calling much more.

I'm seeing a lot of this in threads here, and I get the thinking. If we have a club, we block more of the busted club draws, so his range has less bluffs, but it seems holding the Qc here would only come into play in a very marginal situation, or am I missing the math, where it's actually much more important?

The thought with your blockers here is it will help you in precisely such a marginal situation.

Like here: you have two options (call or fold) of roughly similar value. But if you call in this spot EVERY time or fold EVERY time, you’re clearly making a mistake. So how do you “break the tie” in a particular hand? You use Blockers. When you get reach these spots and your overpair blocks his flush draw, that pushes his range ever so slightly towards value, so you fold. When you don’t block his flush draw? It pushes his range ever so slightly towards a bluff, so you call.

It’s a better system than using a Random Number Generator!

With the Q of clubs in our hand we would reduce the number of bluffs he can have by 4 or 5 combos