Friday afternoon at the Wynn. A couple action players have busted from a tournament and have loosened up the game a bit.

Villain 1 - White guy in his 60s. VPIP/PFR of 35/5 through 100 hands. Postflop has been leading out and stacking off very light. Not sure whether rest of table has noticed this. In one hand, he l/c UTG with QJo after a SB raise, bet 1/2 pot on flop of AQ5r, was called by SB, and shoved a 7x that put a flush draw on board (SB called and tabled AQ). Starts with $200.

Villain 2 - White guy in his late 40s. 25/1 through 100 hands. Has been complaining about his lack of playable cards. Has played fit or fold and very passive postflop. Starts with $130.

Villain 3 - White guy in his late 40s; friend of V2. 20/0 through 100 hands. Very similar postflop to V2 in being fit or fold and passive, although he stacks off lighter (once with AQ high). Has been rebuying $100 stacks frequently, starts this one with $100.

Villain 4 - White guy in his 50s. Only been here for 20 hands; raised 3, limped 3. Haven't seen any showdowns, hasn't made any big moves postflop other than one c-bet. Starts with $340.

Hero - White guy in his late twenties. 20/15 over 100 hands. Haven't done anything significant since V4 sat down. Won a $900 pot from BB with A3ss on a flop of 335dd when a fish with $400 had called from MP with 32o (I b/4b flop, shoved turn). Also raised/4b pre with AKo for 40bb against a very loose player who called off with AQ. I start with $1000.

On to the hand:

V2 limps UTG + 2, V3 limps in MP, V4 raises to $13 from HJ, hero calls in CO with A T, button folds, V1 calls in SB, BB folds. $62 in pot after drop.

Flop 9 8 6. V1 leads out for $25, V2 calls, V3 calls, V4 raises to $125. Hero ???

Obviously my data is pretty limited, but it seems possible for 99/88 to be within V4's range to raise pre over two limpers. Also possible for V1 to lead out with a hand as good as a set, and not sure whether calls from V2 and V3 indicate that I have less than 12 flush/straight outs. Hard to see many scenarios where I can call the flop and not face a $200 shove from V4 on the turn, so it seems as though I'll often pay $325 to draw to a pot worth as little as $460. If V4 holds 99/88 and some of my outs are unavailable then that would mean I'm paying 1.3:1 as a roughly 2:1 underdog.

Of course, if V4 holds AA and I have all available flush/straight outs I'm a slight underdog, and if he holds KK I'm a slight favorite. A cold 4bet from me might look strong enough to get V4 to drop some of his overpairs while keeping in the KQdd from one of the other players, so I also recognize that there is some merit in that play IF I can read V4 as often holding just an overpair.

Should I like this spot enough to be willing to get stacks in, or is the flop a good spot to bail? Interested to hear what others have to say.

My initial thought was to flat and hope to drag V1, 2 and 3 along. However given V1 and 3 stack off light regardless, and V2 has called despite being fit/fold, I think the only play is to shove. There is a non-zero (but small) chance that V4 folds an overpairs, which alone makes it a profitable shove.

Even in the worst case scenario we have at least 10 outs (assuming 2 diamonds and one 7 are dead), so even if V1, 2 and 3 all fold it will be a break-even or +EV play since V4 may fold.

I don't think shoving or calling increases/decreases the likelihood of V1 and V3 stacking off given their descriptions.

Shovel it in. The fact that V4 was the preflop raiser is key. Much more likely he has overpairs in his range than sets. You definitely have some FE against V4 and not sure you need much. These are fun hands.

One caveat I'll mention is that the light stackoffs for V1 and V3 occurred in situations where they were involved in HU action (although those pots did start out multiway). So not sure how much I can depend on an overlay when these players see bet, call, overcall, 5x raise, 3b. In previous hands they usually got out of the way once they saw that much action.

Folding out the field and picking up $260 when you semibluff w Ace high would be great.

X2. I'm shoving and happy about it

One last detail I forgot to add:

V4 is wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap. As mentioned before, there was a big tournament going on and a lot of players were busting out around this time.

With these observations in mind, can we infer that there's a greater chance that he might overplay/call off light with a fairly wide range? Basically, can we assume that he might still be operating on the tournament mindset of "I have top pair or better, let's push it" rather than the 110bb cash game mindset of "Big hand, big pot, small hand, small pot" ?

Analysis is good. Over-analysis is not.

You should want them all to call

depends on how drunk you are. lol

fold pre, fold flop

Just do the opposite of all of this. Taking super nit to a new level.

Fold pre? Really?

No. I don't mind a 3-bet though.

i could get on board with a 3bet. no calling though

Why not?

I get the whole "we never call/limp. We want initiative" mantra. But ATs is perfectly fine to call IP against a relatively small raise in a pot we know will go multiway. This is not such an RIO hand. In fact it's an IO that can make the nuts in many ways. We don't have to stack off with top pair.

I'm cool with preflop. It's for less than 4% of our stack against raiser and with this table we'll no doubt being seeing a very multiway flop, so we'll be getting great immediate odds, in good position, with some morons in the hand. The only real downside is the morons are all pretty shortstacked. FWIW, I'm not looking just to flop TP, especially against raiser.

My aggressivess/passiveness in pots all has to do with what's in the pot vs what's left in our stacks. In this case, the pot is huge compared to most stacks. So I take the aggressive route and shove here. We're never doing horrible (worst case is up against a set but even then we have lots of outs), and we'd love to exercise some FE by folding out a better hand or a dominating hand where we can free up outs. If the pot was a lot smaller in relation to stacks we could probably just passively call the first bet and try to hit our hand, but with pot size plus the fact that we'll never be able to fold once calling the raise, lets just get this in now and let everyone else make the difficult decisions.

Another thing to keep in mind is that 3 of the Villains are quite short, so we have absolutely no problem getting in stacks against them given our equity. The only Villain who isn't short is raiser, and we should have both massive equity and FE against him (apart from sets). If raiser was super deep like us, this would be a much more interesting scenario, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

FWIW, I think this is a fairly horrible mantra for a typical LLSNL table. (ETA: Note I realize that you're not advocating this here; I'm just making a general point)

Ggettingintoahandforcheapwithmoronsisabreadandbutt erplayG

I think pre is a lot closer than ppl think it is. We don't have much of a postflop read on V4, V2 and V3 could still have better hands in their limp/calling range due to their stats, we have the worst relative position on PFR, there are still 3 others left to act who can blow us out with a 3bet, and the short stacks of the limpers cuts down our implied odds.

Like we're hating life when the flop comes A high and V4 puts out a decent c-bet.

Prefer 3betting over a flat here to increase our fold equity and thus increase the profitability of the hand.

3bet>fold>flat.

I'm ok with pre, although I agree that I'd like other stacks to be bigger, plus we're not in great relative position (being the first to act postflop after the raiser). But if the raiser cbets an A high flop 5ways, pretty simple fold, imo.

GperhapstryingharderthanIshouldbetoseeaflopwhenmor onsareinvolvedG

x2

In a multi-way pot a cbet on A-high boards depends on V's sizing, and even if you call once he's not going to bet big twice on most boards OOP without AJ+ .

My immediate reaction is to stuff $330 in the middle and get ready to celebrate. The fact that you're only risking 110 big blinds makes me feel pretty comfortable about it. It's true that you're likely sharing some outs, but this seems like a great spot to gamble in what could be a very nice pot. V4 may not fold an overpair, but even if he doesn't, I like your chances.

I may approach this hand differently if all four opponents had 200+ big blinds, but as it is, I'm ready to jam.

I don't care if he's wearing a sombrero with a handlebar moustache and a monocle; I'm vigorously stuffing my chips in.

This is the type of situation that makes me tingle down in my plums. Haven't seen a draw+action like this in quite some time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykuTKwbRwF0

Yes, of course, that's where I got that. I almost cried the first time I saw it.