1/3 NL game

My image is fairly tight. This hand occurred within the first hour and thus far I had played two notable pots. In one hand I had AA > KK aipf and in the other I lost with the second nut flush to nut flush on river.

I had played a few sessions with the villain that made it to the river in this hand. He's generally fairly passive and when he raises post flop he has the goods without fail. Stack sizes were all between 400-500 to start the hand.

Hero is on button with AJ

Player UTG raises to $10, one player calls in MP, hijack calls, hero makes it $30 and everyone calls.

Flop ($120)

QJ10

Checks to hero and I bet $40, initial raiser and first caller call. Hijack folds.

Turn ($240)

9

Initial raiser checks, other player leads out for $60. Hero calls. Initial raiser folds.

River ($360)

7

Opponent checks, hero bets $235.

I am curious about what people think the best play on the turn is. I realize I probably should have made it 40-50 pre and probably cbet maybe 50-60% on flop.

My thought process for calling on the turn was mainly to keep the other villain in the hand. If we were heads up I would have probably made it $140-150 on turn to set up a river shove that would have been about 70% pot, rather than having an SPR of ~1.3 since we flatted.

Thoughts welcome on all streets. Mainly curious about what is optimal on turn (is it really as simple as "you have the nuts here moron, raise") and what the best bet size is on river when we didn't flat.

Raise turn FFS. Best board ever for it.

More on flop. Raising turn is better, but I understand the check. Not too much can call. River is fine.

All the bets seem a little light to me.

I think pre should be closer to $40 (although the result was fine).
The flop is very very wet obviously and will often hit your opponents range really well. This is the time to start planning how you are going to get it all in.
I think about $80 OTF.

OTT... as played, with your blockers villain almost never has Kx. More likely a small flush or even more likely a str8 (perhaps with the K. I think now is the time to raise (just enough to get him to a commitment point). You don't want to check and see another roll off and kill your action.

raise turn to 150

Don't like the raise pre. It's not necessary to sweeten the pot and you're not going to get everyone to fold. It's just putting more money in with a hand not necessarily ahead of PFR's range. If you're going to raise, make it $50 or more. I would just call and play a strong hand IP.

As played, flop bet is tiny: 40 into 120. It seems like you're playing the hand like it's the nuts, which it very much isn't. You have a huge draw and would likely be happy to get it all in, but you're probably no more than 60% to win.

OTT, pot is 300 to you. With your call it will be 360 and you'll have 270 - 370 behind. Put in a good raise so that the river shove/call is trivial. I'd shove. There are a lot of cards that can come on the river to cool the action. Any sizable raise will likely carry the assumption of a shove on the river in any case.

As played on the river, I'd still shove. What's calling 235 that isn't calling all-in?

Note, providing stack size for V would be useful.

I don't like the 3bet pre or the turn flat.

You're IP with a strong hand that plays pretty decently multiway, but it's not fantastic or anything. 3betting isn't really for value and it's not really a bluff. That just kinda makes it meh. So you take the aggression lead against a field that likely isn't going to trim much as a consequence thereof, whoop de doo. It's not completely without merit if you think you can steal some whiffed boards, but I would just flat.

Turn raise is essentially mandatory. If this ridiculous probe bet is a bluff, chances are V isn't putting more $ in the pot regardless. But if he has a hand like Kx, Khx, 8hx, xxhh, or any random 2 pair, you are letting him way off the hook. Hands that aren't calling a raise now are hands you won't get value from either way. Forget trying to keep V2 in the hand.

Strongly agree with all of this. Couldn't have said it better.

Also, as others have said, bet more on the flop.

pre - have no idea what is going on here. absolutely no attempt to take down 30 free dollars, hero instead just bloats the pot and gives other players a great chance to back raise steal the pot pre as hero will never call a shove pre.

flop - flopped the world, no problem with the tiny bet. we are trying to get every dollar we can into the middle.

turn - just call. V is repping a K, most likely doesn't have hearts.

river - V has second nut straight and never has a flush when he checks it to you. bet something ridiculously valuish, like 95. get paid.

Pre is prob a call
Flop is good
Turn is a raise when passive player starts betting this board. He'll be hard pressed to
Ck-f and there are just too many equity/value crushing rivers possible.

Thanks for all of the responses so far, I appreciate it. I am fairly surprised to see that the general consensus is that the pre flop 3! is bad, both because of sizing and because of my hand. I'd like to share a little bit more of my thought process for this hand to see if it changes anybody's opinion on those two streets.

So a little bit of background about this game. While it is 1/3 it generally plays substantially larger. This is at an underground club that generally gets 2-3 tables per night and the game tends to play much bigger. At the game that night I was at table 2 and when this happened there was about 5k on the table. At table one (also 1/3) there was over 10k on the table. I mention this because given how deep this game tends to play the typical pfr is usually to 15 or so, 20 and even 25 is not uncommon. So when an unknown V makes it 10, and then two people flat, I am fairly confident that nobody has much of a hand. In the unlikely event that someone back raises to 100 or 120 I'm completely content donating my $30 and waiting for the next hand. Also, by making it $30, I feel like these players are almost always virtually calling, with whatever mediocre hands they have. Since I'm confident that I usually have the best hand here and that I am probably the best player at this table (that's not saying much, there is a very good player who was sitting on my immediate left, but he wasn't involved in the hand) I don't mind bloating the pot. I think a raise of $40 to $50 would have probably folded out at least one of the players, and while I would have preferred if everybody called I was still happy to get 2 callers.

Onto the flop, I think I could have bet a little bit more here so that I could make it easier to play for stacks by the river. That being said, I really don't mind seeing everybody stick around because I flopped the world, and if the turn is a complete brick I'm expecting to have the action checked to me on the turn and then I can decide what to do (I think I'd almost always take the free card, but that's up for debate). I would be curious to see what people would do if the action to the turn was completely the same, but instead of turning gin it comes 2 and gets checked to us.

Turn is by far the most interesting street. So while I understand that we have the nuts here on a super wet board and that raising seems almost mandatory, I'd like to explain why I just called. When V leads into us here I am almost always putting him on KxXx. He may have a heart to go along with his straight, he may have the king of hearts, but he certainly has at the very least a king. So I flat here for two reasons. The first one is, if I raise the turn I'm virtually turning my hand face up. I'm never raising in this spot without at least the Kh, if not the nut flush. So I don't want to raise here, even to 150, and let the Villain who led into me off the hook. The other major consideration is that there is one person behind me, who called pre and on the flop so he should have at least something. If he comes along for $60 it will build the pot a little bit and my hand is fairly still disguised. By raising, the first V should definitely fold his king and the other player who is behind should be folding any flush except KhXh.

If I just call turn, even if the other player folds (which he did), as long as the river isn't another heart I can still expect to get paid off, largely because I didn't turn my hand face up on the turn. That's why I went with the relatively large bet sizing on the river. I think calling on the turn looks more like a naked AhXx then anything else, or maybe even just a king. The villain on the river did end up paying me off, with just a king, and maybe he was thinking the large sizing was trying to force him off of a chop...I'm not really sure.

After he called the $235 he had about $135 left. So, worst case scenario is that I missed out on that $135. I guess that's not entirely true, because there are several cards that could have prevented me from getting paid on the river, but that was a chance I was willing to take mainly because I thought I could have gotten the other villain to either put money in on turn or river or both. In fact, if he had something like 78, he might even raise turn wanting to protect his flush/get value from straights.

I'm sure some of this thought process is just me leveling myself, particularly because I don't think any of the players that were involved in the hand were very good. That being said, does this rambling thought process make anybody change their opinions on how the hand played out, or am I just trying to justify my suboptimal play in this hand?

I think that in this case one hand that is calling 235 that is not calling a shove is the naked king. V tanked for about 3 minutes, someone called clock, and then he called about 15 seconds after. While there shouldn't be much of a difference between the hands that would call $235 and the hand that would call a shove in theory, I think that in game there is a non-negligable psychological difference between calling off your entire stack and calling off about 60% of it (I think this is especially true vs bad players).

I honestly think he would have folded to a shove and that I was very fortunate to get the call for $235. Maybe I should have bet a little less, like 200 or 175 because of that.

Dude nobody is folding a flush on that turn. They're probably not folding a K either. They're definitely not folding Kh. Why can't you be bluffing when raising this turn? You're repping am extremely narrow range of AK and Axhh which V may not even believe you have and stuff it in your face. You're way overthinking it. If the board pairs of another heart comes it's going to kill your action. You want all the money not just part of it.

You may not even be raising AK on this turn vs some players. Rip some chips in the middle FFS.

3 betting pre is ok, but I don't love it. This is pretty much the ideal flop for our hand. We should be mashing hard here- flop bet should be $80 to $100.

As played, yes raise the turn

I understand the desire to justify one's actions in the hand. I realize you had reasons -- and reasons you thought good -- to play the way you played.

I realize it looks to you like it worked out, suggesting perhaps you did play it fine.

Nonetheless, IMO the way you played this hand significantly reduced your EV overall. Perhaps it worked out better this time, with this runout and this V, but overall this isn't a good way to play the hand. There are clearly better actions preflop, on the flop, and on the turn.

I think you'll be a better poker player if you modify your understanding of the situation based on the feedback you got than you will be if you attempt to modify the feedback based on your understanding.


To address your comment on the river, let's say V has a K or a small flush.

The small flush will very likely call a shove OTR. The K may well fold to any real bet. I believe you maximize your EV across his range by shoving. This may depend somewhat on how big his actual stack is.

You can play with this yourself using Flopzilla to see how many K's vs. flushes he has.

Regarding turning your hand faceup: There is always more uncertainty when you don't already know the answer. To you (knowing the answer), it's obvious. But V may not read hands that well. He may expect that of course you'd slow-play the nut flush on the turn. He may think you're bluffy (or may be suspicious of bluffs in general). He may have 2P and be feeling like he's going to hit it. Maybe he just hates folding. You cannot know that he'll correctly determine your hand, or that he'll correctly act on it even if he does.

Yes, raising the turn may fold out hands that would call a bet on the river. It also may let you get all in on the river vs. a worse hand. Or it may extract another bet from someone playing badly. It almost certainly prevents a river flush card, straight card, or board pairing card from killing all your action.

I'm either flatting or raising huge preflop. If UTG is a tightish positional raiser then our hand doesn't actually fare that well against his range, but the price is cheap and we'll being going multiway in the god seat, so flatting is fine. If this is likely a juicer raise with a speculative hand, then I'm more cool with going after some dead money now and putting in a big raise trying to take it down now or narrow the field so I can win with a flop cbet when I whiff. But even on juicer raises I'm kinda ok flatting here too. Raising to lol $30 with this many people / money already in the pot is the worse move; we won't narrow the field and now we have to hit our hand to win the pot, plus we have RIO situation when someone can easily hit better for this price.

Weird flop. It's good in that we have a zillion outs to most likely the best hand. It's bad in that there's a good chance someone else has hit a hand they are never folding (often a better one) so our FE is low and we're not exactly thrilled if we get in stacks (even with this low SPR). I think an argument could actually be made for all plays, ranging from checking back to shoving. Sometimes multiway pots play a little more honestly, with people simply donking their good hands. Pot is huge and worth winning, so I might actually lean towards a shove. Small bet might be okish as we get decent immediate value with our equity and can probably setup a free card play. I'm really undecided on what is best here.

I'd raise the turn. The bet sizing is lol and will make it more difficult to play for stacks by the river. Plus there are some scare cards that could kill the action. I'd probably make it upwards of $200 to make river shove easier.

I shove the river. Thanks to our turn play this is an overbet, but we just have to hope he has a hand he can't release (and he could have a lotta those hands on this board).

ETA: No one else thinks flop is by far the most interesting part of the hand?

GcluelessNLnoobG