Saturday night @ MD live. 6 handed.

Hand 1:

There's a UTG straddle to $6 and I'm on the button with QJo. Folds to me and I raise to $20, only the straddle calls. Straddler is very loose, I don't quite know his aggression yet. He's a white guy with a ton of tattoos if that matters. I consider him a little fishy, but capable of aggression. In a previous hand I c/c TPGK OOP for 2 streets against him and he checked back river and mucked. I don't know what he had but presumably not much because when he checked it down he immediately went to muck.

Flop ($40):

T 5 4

I bet $13 here and he calls. Planning to fire certain turn cards.

Turn ($66) T 5 4 Q

He checks and I fire for $35. We get c/r to $75. I call.

River ($216)

T 5 4 Q 9

Straddler bets $100.

Hand 2:

We have AJo UTG 6 handed and raise to $10. UTG+1 calls, MP calls, B calls and SB calls.

Flop($50) A22r

I check here because I didn't want to bet fold but in hindsight betting small here allows me to control the size of the pot, I think if we put it into a GTO simulator we'd be doing a lot of checking here multiway.

Anyway it checks to button who bets $45. Originally I thought it was $35. B is a middle aged Asian guy who I haven't really seen get OOL yet. All I have on him is 2-3 pots where he played relatively straight forward. He's not too loose so I really can't put him on a 2 here. I'm a little cautious of the bet size since I haven't seen him show this kind of aggression though. Honestly, I would have considered folding had I know it was $45 and not $35. I call everyone else folds.

Turn ($140): A225

I check and B bets $65. I call.

River ($270): A225J

I check and B bets $140.

Hand one - I would go at least $25 pre, unless $20 is regularly going heads up. I love the flop sizing. Turn is good sizing, but I would just fold to the x-r. Turn x-r are so nutted. I snap fold river.

Hand two - I would go at least $15 pre, and as large as $25, depending on what it takes to go heads up. I would go ahead and bet $15 otf; we can get value from so many worse Ax, and I expect most pocket pairs to call as well. I would call down given the run out, but I would've folded otr if we didn't hit two pair. Unless he has A2 exactly, which is heavily blocked, I expect him to have AJ-AK.

H1: I prefer to X back rather than bet 1/3 pot, delay cbet if we pickup equity OTT.
If we had QT/JT, would we size the same on this dynamic texture?

As played, calling turn vs. this opponent, folding river.

H2: Since A2s is the most common 2X combination in a raised pot, I’d try to determine via removal, if the opponent can hold A2s.

River might be a raise depending on remaining stack sizes.

Going forward, the suits of your cards are important in getting solid feedback.

Hand one I would use 1/3 with my entire range. Players aren't going to be able to properly defend and we'll just print. I can see why you'd call turn, I more or less auto fold turn raises with one pair.

Hand two - that's really interesting about raising river. I didn't even think of that, but given the nature of the population I actually prefer raise. I don't see them ever getting away from AK/AQ.

I think we are losing too much value with a large part of our range on this texture. QQ/JJ/99/88/TX are a large # of combos whose value could easily wilt on many turns.

That could actually be an argument for betting so small...The turn could change so much, so let's not build a big pot unless the turn is a brick and we only have one street to dodge.

I personally don't like going too big pre-flop because I generally like it when people play bad hands because they're getting a good price. Anyway, your advice is really good here. I leveled myself into a call on the first hand ("oh there are two flush draws on board" "a fold to a min x/r here is super exploitable, etc. etc.) but we all know how that goes down in 1/3. It's just a matter of adjusting from a more online background.

The $10 raise was usually getting 2-3 handed and I guess it's just a stylistic thing but I really don't want to build a particularly big pot OOP. I also just like working with a deeper SPR. I definitely like the small bet too. Again, your advice here is good and I should have done it in hindsight. I just didn't want to b/f but by checking I let my opponent take control of the sizing. I did fold river here more just based off my knowledge of the opponent at the time but we'll never know about hand 2. Hand 1 my opponent had Q5.

H1 is 50/50 call or fold.

H2 is c/r all in time for value.

What do you think we beat hand one?

JT, J9, misses Club or spade flushes, missed straight draws (67/68/78...), air/spazz.... I don’t think it’s a great spot. Could be 60/40 or 40/60. Certain V’s I snap against. Very few I turbo fold against.

I don't see JT ever doing this, and draws and air are doing this so infrequently that we're doing ourselves a disservice by including them in villain's range. Turn raises are so nutted in LLSNL. There are very few opponents that will raise the turn with anything less than two pair.

Maybe. I can only speak to my experience. I’m calling this river fairly often. To be fair though I would have have check/called the turn so the whole hand would have played differently.

For you guys who routinely play with these ultra face up V’s, how do you not crush for like 25 BB’s/hr consistently? Every table I play at has 2 or 3 V’s that will exploit the Schitt out of you if you play this soft. And so will I. I don’t think St Louis has the toughest crowd in the poker world so I’m always amazed at how soft some folks on here advocate for playing. FYI I’m 10 BB’s / hr, > 1,000 hrs. My online game is OK’ish. Mostly low BI MTT’s but average ROI 103% on small sample size.

You are either playing in the toughest 1/2-3 live games that have ever existed, or you are over estimating the abilities of your opponents. At 2/5 I don't think I've ever played at a table with more than two villains that I thought were exploiting other players.

As far as the hand goes, we're in position so we can't x/c the turn. I do like hero's bet on the turn, again, I just auto muck non nutted hands versus turn x-r.

I'm not saying that games don't exist in which we should be calling the river fairly regularly, but in 100% of the 1/2 - 2/5 games I've played in this would be a leak.

Hand 1 I fold to the x/r, then fold river AP.

Hand 2 I call river but I see the arguments for raising.

hand 2 I think CRAI is best. Reeks of Acex with a large flop bet than a small turn bet. Like you said unlikely he would play a 2 and highly unlikely he would have this betting pattern with a 2.

hand 1 I think your suits matter. Assuming hes unblocked, he could have QsXs here quite a bit, thinking he sucked out on the 10 or JJ. These types tend to overvalue turned top pairs a lot. If you call the turn you should call the river IMO. If hes real fishy, I suppose he could have something like q4, q5 here. I would lean to a call down here, you have the best hand enough IMO. This could be a random fish bluff, he probably sees your betting pattern as weak. If I had the Qs, I would fold the turn though.

I would doubt he does this with just a ten on the turn. Otherwise I agree with your assessment of hand 1. I would put in Qs one pair hands in his range though. So enough air and a few "value" hands hero can beat IMO.

To be fair, I do often level myself into thinking V’s are better than what they really are.

H1:

I'm fine with preflop.

I'm fine with flop (might bet 1/2 PSB but whatever, I mostly like betting on the smaller side when not committed).

I would mostly lean to checking back the turn to get one more street of value (either by betting or bluffcatching) on the river. I also don't want to be put in the stupid spot of facing a check/raise + big river bet (especially if we're not comfortable folding, which it seems we aren't).

By the river we're probably getting too good a price plus the main draw busted to fold. But dude shut down his bluffs last time on the river and yet this time he's continuing after a very strong turn check/raise. I just don't think we should be getting ourselves into this spot (i.e. playing a big pot for 5 bets) with just one pear (which is why I check back the turn).

GcluelessNLnoobG

H2:

I fold preflop but that's simply where I draw my line. I think limping is better than raising, especially at tables like this one where raising doesn't create folds and instead just creates stupid SPRs OOP multiway while offering everyone great IO (especially with this hand which is just too easily dominated in passive 3betting games).

I also check the flop this multiway. We've very unlikely to get 3 postflop streets of value from worse after raising preflop and then bet/bet/betting this flop into the world OOP. So disguise our hand by checking and hopefully letting worse hands bet for us. I think it's too early to just check/fold, so I call the flop bet, but I'm not exactly loving life either.

I'm fine with turn, and still not loving life against someone not getting out-of-line.

I would mostly do a smallish blocking bet/fold on the river. Passive guys are checking back TP (even passive AK/AQ that they don't 3bet preflop) all the time so we miss value from those hands. He might not even raise a 2x since it's possible we were slowplaying AA or binked JJ, so we have a decent chance at setting our price. He's not the type to bluff a drawless board this multiway on the flop. If this guy raises, we're toast and can easily fold. I probably $100/fold.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Pretty sure everyone does this

hand 1

**I also think its a standard fold on the river**

A few notes though.

Can we attribute any meaning from the sizing of the check raise on the turn here?

He checks and I fire for $35. We get c/r to $75. I call.

Also, were stack sizes mentioned here? Is the $100 bet an all in?

For hand 1 is there a merit to checking the turn here and eliciting him to spaz bet a lot of stuff we beat on safe rivers?