Villain OMC, nitty, but has been known to bluff. Short stack ($150)

Hero TAG, covers villain

Folds to villain in MP1 who raises to $10, MP2 calls, Hero in CO with 87 calls.

Flop ($34) K87r Villain leads $20, MP2 folds, Hero calls, planning to raise the turn. Should I raise here to protect bottom two pair, at the risk of nitty villain folding a king and any bluffs?

Turn ($74) Kc Villain checks, I check behind.

River ($74) 8h Villain bets $60. Hero?

LOL...no

Raise flop with JTs/J9s/65s. If we start doing that perhaps we could actually get some value when we get a top 3% flop for our hand.

Pre might be a fold.
AP, obviously call. Sorry he had a K.

Pre-flop is an easy fold. You're 20:1 to hit 2 pair+ on the flop and the stack odds are 15:1. You can't make enough money to make up for all the folds you'll have to make agaiinst a nit.

As played, I call since I need to punish myself for calling pf and the slight chance he has AA.

Agreed - pre is an easy fold because of stack depth, and this is an east river call.

I know I am bad - I am trying to learn. Also in a downswing the past few weeks for the first time since beginning to play regularly, and getting a bit MUBSY.

So given the bad pot odds and stack sizes to call with suited connectors, why do authors such as Jonathan Little advocate calling multiway pots in late position with these hands? From reading posts in LLSNL it appears that in late position the policy is to just fold (or 3 bet to get heads up) anything that isn't in the top 5 per cent of hands to a raise. Doing this, on average, you are playing one hand every two orbits, which seems borderline losing strategy unless you are winning by barrelling a lot of streets against sticky opponents.

So I am curious to hear, @Venice10 and other posters, assuming you do play more than the top 5 per cent of hands, what your strategies are for playing non-broadway suited cards, Ace rag suited, pre-flop to a mid-late position open?

Thanks

assuming you're ip and there are no whales in the blinds (which means you flat more)
AXs and JTs/T9s usually 3b, the other scs and gappers normally fold if you want to play solid
there's a case for 3b the lower scs for board coverage but w/e nobody knows what's going on anyway


fold pre is fine in your hand
can't fold river

When did JL advocate calling a raise with a sc 50 BB deep? What I learned from 2+2 and have implemented ever since is the implied odds rule of 15-25-35. This means in order to set mine we need 15 to 1 IO ($150 here) to call with a suited connector we need 25 to 1 IO ($250 here), and to call with a suited gapper we need 35 to 1 IO ($350 here.) As you can see, if we were 100 BB deep, which I don't like to ever be below, we'd be able to call with a pp and sc.

Admittedly, I am not great at short stack play, and I top up automatically if I ever get below 100 BB so I'm not experienced in these spots at all. If I had to guess I'd assume a calling range here would look something like every suited Broadway besides AK and AQ, AQo, and 88-99? Others can give you a much better answer.

not in our best interest to have a calling range here
squeeze smth like 99/TT+, AJs+,KQs , fold the rest

I would think given villain's opening range, which is probably ridiculously tight from what I think is UTG +2, it'd be better to just call with hands like AJs and KQs and not get jammed on top of. Though with a 3.3x raise Idk, maybe that's weakness and it's a loose open for villain.

From 'The Course' 'If someone has raised in front of you with a strong hand, as opposed to a weak, limped hand, reraise with: AA-KK A5s. Against this player you would flat call: QQ-22 ATs+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs-76s AKo'

He doesn't mention stack sizes. MP2 was in the hand as well, and he had about 150BB. Would this make a difference, or do we just assume that shortie is the effective stack here?

I would fold preflop. The raiser is shortstacked so we're not getting great IO, and it's possible this hand actually ends up fairly multiway (where it is highly overrated due to RIO, imo).

SPR is 4 (with us being in just a 3way hand with speculative holdings, which already suggests a mistake). With us in position, we can easily get in stacks whenever we want. Plus board ain't terribly drawy with a lotta scare cards. I would just flat to prevent hero OMC folds (plus encourage continued bluffing if that is what he is doing).

One of the few scare cards that could come on the turn. I'm fine with checking back. It still allows old guy to bluff the river, plus with us in position we can still play for stacks (even on a check where $120 stacks can go in pretty easily at 1/3 NL even with an overbet).

ETA: Lol, erasing my first answer cuz I didn't realize the board double paired. I'm calling as this guy has been known to bluff, plus he might just be clicking buttons with AA/QQ.

ETA#2: Regarding preflop, (a) you never have the IO you think you do and (b) if you're noobish you would likely be better off only playing ~5% of your hands with the possible exception of seeing a limped pot on the Button a little wider (as it highly unlikely that any other situation is going to be profitable for you right now). Once you get your feet under you, then maybe you can think of expanding.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Haven't read The Course, so i don't know the context of this comment, but you need to take villain's range/frequencies into account when constructing your range. You describe villain as a "OMC, nitty", which by my definition means he raises between 3-7% of hands preflop, or roughly ~99+/AK. Vs that range we just can't call 87s, cause we mostly need to flop 2 pair+ to win and as mentioned we arent getting correct IO.

If he was opening a more typical 15-20% range, he has a lot less paired and dominating hands. This means that our IO odds actually get worse since we don't get paid that often when we hit, but our direct odds to win by hitting a single pair or even bluffing actually improve significantly. So in that case we could call pre with a hand like 87s a little bit more comfortably.

As far as the deep-ish caller in between goes, it doesn't change the OMC's range, and he'll be forced to play relatively fit-or-fold anyway. Yes, our (implied) odds go up, but our equity in the hand goes down.

It's probably fine if MP2 had 150BB. Yes, the more people that are in there, the lower the IO you need, as far as I was taught.

Gotta play tight and come in raising with a short stack. You have no implied odds so you need the better hand preflop and flop.