I have been a long time NL player, recently (last year) into PLO. While waiting for a table I sat down at 1/2NL w $300, moved to 1/3NL with my stack, doubled up and sitting on $685 after getting paid by a slow-played flopped set with a flush on the river. 20 minutes into the table and I haven't seen seat #1 play many hands but he has about $650 in front of him. This is 1/3 with a $5 bring-in, match stack table, I don't know if he started with close to that or not but I do know he hasn't been involved much. Here's how it went down.

All action folds around to me in the CO with 5s7s. I make it $10 to go, button folds, SB raises to $35, I end up calling. Flop comes As6s5d. SB bets out $45. I thought about it for a minute and just ended up calling. 7d on turn. SB bets out $100 into the $160 pot.

What is his range here? AdKd? Flopped top top, turned nut flush draw? Ad6d? Ah7h? Top 2 turned nut draw? KsQs? KsKd, two blockers to any AK/Kx combo that would have called pre? I feel one of the only hands I'm behind at this point is a set, does SB raise pre w 66? Does he have AA and flopped top set? Does top set bet 2/3 pot w spades and 65 possibly hitting the bottom end of cutoffs range for a pre-flop call, for a flopped straight draw? I have to believe even with bottom 2 and a small flush draw I'm ahead of almost all hands here.

At this point on the turn I reraised to $275, and he shoved all-in. He had about $650 at the beginning of the hand. $295 more to call into a $1k pot at this point. Just under a pot-sized all-in for him.

I'll update in a few hours what I did and what he ended up showing me. After a discussion with my friend I honestly believe my only mistake was just calling pre-flop, if I don't reraise that hand sometimes people will know to narrow my range when I just smooth call a 3-bet. I think most of his range calls a reraise on the flop so it's hard to really narrow his hand range and I'm not going to get him off much except maybe pocket pair under the A and do I want to do that at this point? Maybe I'm wrong? Friend had an entirely different view, which is why I'm posting here.

H in CO: 57
V in SB: ???

Board: A65 7

Fold to the SB raise pre.
Fold to the flop bet.

Edit: didn’t notice that you have two spades, so flop is meh. Still, you really don’t want to put yourself in these spots over 200bb’s deep. You are asking to get stacked by doing this regularly.

Your mistake preflop was not folding to the three-bet. Your hand blocks nothing in a reasonable three-betting range. The only thing it has going for it is a little bit of board coverage. The rule of thumb is that a suited gapper needs to get implied odds of 35x the bet you are facing, i.e., $875, to be profitable, and the effective stack is simply not that big.

SB is risking $34 to win $14, which means that (apart from the equity of their holding) they need to take the pot down 34/(34 +14) = 70% of the time to break even. You therefore need to defend with the the top 30% of your cutoff opening range to not be exploitable. A small suited one-gapper is closer to the bottom of your opening range than it is to the top. Just give it up and move on.

I think I play it the same which means you screwed up somewhere. I like it. I assume you got stacked somehow but V-clowns will pay you off w/ AK or something often enough i’d Guess to make it worthwhile. V being on the tighter end makes it more likely you’re ahead. Should be no higher 2p, no straight and only 1 set in V’s range.

I fold to the 3bet. I don’t like 4betting this hand unless you have a correspondingly wide value range to go with your bluffs and that presents its own issues.

AP I’m calling and calling most bets on most rivers.

He probably has 9s8s lol brutal..

I would raise flop for sure, he cannot have a pair +FD since we have it so either he has one pair a set or a bigger FD. We are flipping vs an ace, have 9 cleans outs vs a set or were a small favorite vs a hand like KsQs.

Turn is meh, I would flat..he almost never has straight draws so either were behind a set or he has Ax with no fd. I doubt he double barrels bigger fds so were either way ahead or way behind.

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Besides pre I pretty much agree with everything. Well played.
Shorter stacks I probably try to get it in on the flop.
Ott you’re really only losing to AA. There’s a million river cards that kill your action and I think you definitely get called by some Ax.
I mean I’m assuming you got coolered or something but this is pretty standard.

Rule of thumb. If you play speculative hands and hit, you shouldn't be doing anything other than jamming money in. If you don't think it wise to jam money in when you hit, you should be folding the speculative hands.

AP: Pre-flop is meh. Better to fold, but deep enough that a very occasional call is not gonna kill you.

Flop: Raise. what a dream flop. You should be raising value, and semi bluffs for sure. This is one of the best boards possible for this hand, get some $$'s in now and put AK to the test. Raise to $130ish.

Turn: If you raise flop you fire $220 and jam river. AP raise here for sure. He is showing big strength, and you can get value from many hands as well as have outs to anything he is beating you with.

River: GII on non K rivers. Possible to check back diamonds as Axdd is a significant chance here.

Also... this is a bad 4-bet bluff pre. You block nothing and are against a tight players 3-bet. Expect him to have AQs+, AK, JJ+ at the widest, a lot of players are AKs, QQ+ on the tighter side. I wouldn't think he would be folding any of that range to a moderate sized 4-bet.

Pre is not horrible this deep.
Never folding flop, could raise for sure
AP raising turn good, and snap AP

I actually appreciate this advice about the 35 to 1 odds, thanks. Only open my range this much near button as stacks get deeper. I don't believe a blocker to his 3-bet range is actually a reason to fold the hand though. It should be mainly high cards and vs those hands my 5s7s has some of the better equity depending on the board texture after the flop. I think the two spade blockers make any lower A combination more unlikely which means he probably has a monster. I can get away from the $45 bet fairly easy if I hit nothing, but I may get paid off big if I hit something similar to T57, 257, some other unseen gutter straight draws, etc. Even As6s5d was a decent flop but I would have preferred maybe K/Q65. The other advantage being if this hand gets to showdown and wins or even loses for the minimum I can also tighten up my range and take advantage of a looser table image. This has implied odds in it as well.

I do have some other math you may find interesting, though, and I'm not sure you gave it any consideration to the significance. A professional such as myself would, however. In my hand I'm holding a 5 and a 7. Multiply them together, and what do you get...? That's right. 35. I call this the Theory of Coincidence (ToC), and based off pure superstition it means that my hand is probably better than his. I'm giving this gem of advice away for free.

Now, he had AA. So obviously there is some variance to superstition, as this is literally the very top of his range and the worst hand I could be up against. But I donked off and binked a 9 on the river for the flush and won the hand.

Thanks for the advice guys, I can actually appreciate every response here as a different line to take. I think all of these are actually viable but maybe stacks weren't deep enough for this type of play yet. Twitherroo gets props for making me laugh. And yes the 5x7 comment was a shitpost I couldn't turn down so take it with a grain of salt

MDF isn’t GTO, especially preflop. In theory we should be defending much wider than just 30% deep and IP.

Grunch. Fold to the 3-bet pre.

Unless defending the bottom of your raise range is some deep stack GTO crazyness I'm not aware of? Don't wanna be caught with a capped range when an 8 hits on the river or something?

I'm curious as to all the "fold-pre" people. If you can raise this in the cutoff and it's within your range to do so, if your advice is to just always fold this then you're really opening yourself up to be exploitable. Scoop up $10 with a small reraise in my SB? Know he's folding the bottom of his range and be able to easily narrow his range down if he calls? If I could get this kind of leak in position every time I played that would be so sexy.

Is it because of the stakes? Do you believe this to be more of a 2-5/5-10 type play? I'm absolutely certain this hand is within an occasional 3-bet or 4-bet range pre-flop, which while I was kind of deep maybe I wasn't deep enough for.

Now, I'm not saying a hand like this should be defended or reraised every time. I'm not saying that is the case, but -if I were to take that line-, which I absolutely should sometimes, could I have done it differently?

I think a fold here 75% of the time is a probably a perfectly good way to play it. I came to 2+2 for hoping for a more in-depth analysis than "fold pre" though. Maybe some reasoning or some different lines to take. Some of these answers are pretty good, but some of you who can only "fold pre" might want to study up a bit more on ranges and not getting taken advantage of. Also maybe how to take advantage of raises from people in SB/BB vs UTG and how different they can be.

I'm pretty confident now from the responses the line I took isn't terrible. It sucks I was against AA but after the flop I'm a slight favorite vs of any hand without a spade in it and less than 10% behind 97% of the rest of his range.

What *are* you opening in the cutoff and folding to a 3-bet? It should be something; every range has a bottom, and a CO opening range, even a linear one, has hands in it that are there only because of the likelihood of taking the blind money down unopposed.

what exactly do you suggest here?

this tends to happen when you absolutely smash a flop. Flopping a pair and a flush draw counts as smashing a flop in my book. I personally raise the flop here.

Fold pre because 3!’s at llsnl are not even close to “balanced” 3! ranges (from any position).
It seems like you’re looking at this hand in a lense that thinks “oh, if I cracked aces then surely call pre is fine.”
What about the times you hit trips on the turn and not two pair?
What about the times the board pairs OTR?
What about the high % of times that you hit nothing, or hit enough to continue a street or two and then fold?
Do you think the very odd time that you crack a big hand here makes up for all those times? (Because very very few players are actually that good)
Sorry fold pre to the 3! isn’t “sexy” enough for you, but it’s the correct advice.

And the times you do see a flop here, I agree with squid that I would raise flop. This is easily a top % flop for your hand.

This game you can open call literally 100% when he essentially 3x you and you're deep, that's his mistake not yours.
Flop, call obviously it's Axx and he cbet. Turn, he just can't bet 100 on this turn with anything but AA, he doesn't know that though and for sure he does it often with dusted naked/fd AK - So much of your range is going to raise this turn facing that bet, often forcing mistakes one way or another.

Not sure what this by this upthread 35x implied odds nonsense is about. 1/3 players will hand you 200+bb stacks w pairs in 3b pots especially. Calling the $25 when deep is just the opportunity cost of playing 25/hr hand poker and it's laughable to start throwing large-sample implied-odds requirements for spots that don't come up often enough but are extremely profitable.

People keep invoking the effective stack. Two hundred blinds is really not terribly deep.

The 35x comes from Bart Hanson, his "15-25-35" rule. Bart says one should look for implied odds of 15:1 to setmine with a pocket pair, 25:1 to see a flop with a suited connector, and 35:1 with a suited gapper.

I don’t take advice from guys that bink 200 dime VP royals on death payback tables while on tilt.

Agree, it’s not deep. I just don’t fold to 3x IP ever when there’s any significant amount (relative to the game) in play.

$10 pre isn't good but for sure can't fold to such a weak 3b size.

I think 15/25/35 is a little overly cautious at lowstakes live games as it presumes the implied odds arent always there. Personally I feel like live players are likely to pay you off 100% of the time with any reasonable holding so we can drop this value to 10/20/25. You hit a set in LLSNL you are almost always winning a 200BB pot.

I think the call preflop is sketchy. I dont hate it but I certainly dont love it HU, especially vs a potential nit, unless we're like $1000 deep at these stakes. As played this is not only the bottom of your calling range, but the highest 3b you will ever call. I'm not really a big fan of raising the flop because you just dont have the FE. What do you raise this flop with for value other than a set? How often should you be hitting sets? Unless they completely whiffed with KQdd I dont like it. At this stack level are we better off taking this pot down on the flop every time vs hitting our monster? Someone do the math on the EV of winning this with a raise vs getting to showdown. My guess is yes but.... cmon lets stack some fish instead!

The turn changes everything. I'm convinced he has at least TP now and he simply cant get away from it no matter what he thinks we have. I just overbet jam to tilt him and get that spite call.

I’d fold to the 3 bet. I’d raise flop looking to take a freebie on some turns and barrel away on others. I’d just call turn now, I think his one pair hands do a lot of bet folding on this turn card.


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Ya, I dunno. Maybe my input for this hand can just be ignored.
It all just feels really meh to me. Granted though, the 3b pre is quite small.

Drawthenuts, no one is taking advantage of us by 3 betting light at 1/3. In theory we are supposed to continue against a balanced range, but when his range is TT+AK and definitely not all TT-JJ and AK. we are likely supposed to fold against that range. It’s possible we can out play a range that strong, but I usually fold in these spots because I’m skeptical that I can.