Hey all, have a hand I played recently at 1/3 I wanna go over.

This is a buy in to big stack game so I’m sitting on around $750-780. Been at table 20 min- ok utg straddle, I’m utg+1 and call $6 with 10-8dd. Mp makes it 25, all folds and I call. I know I shouldn’t prolly flat straddle from ep etc but yea I did. Flop 9-7-2 with two diamonds. I check and villian cbets $33. He has 2k in front of him- he’s a regular I have played against on this trip- seems like a good poker player. I make it $125. He makes it $450. I ship. He calls, he has 77 and we don’t improve.

Is this just standard? Like am I ever supposed to take different line on flop? I assume no it’s ok to get it in. He was a solid player that was prolly TAG mawg. He seemed more regular bc I saw him buy in for max a few times at this game which I feel most people that are just recs don’t do. I feel hand- it’s fine to get all in on flop bc we have all the outs but yea we run into sets a lot and overpairs sometimes. Thoughts?

The preflop action might be bad. Idk if calling straddle is good here utg+1- tables tend to be tight with not much 3! Or 4! Light.

Pre is definitely way too loose. These sort of hands are just not playable up. Post is fine.

When you’re this deep it’s OK to fold preflop. Both times.

If you do see a flop, you don’t have to raise either. I guess as played it’s ok but you can also just call. The deeper you are, the less you want to reopen the action when you don’t welcome a 3bet.

Once it goes 450 I think it's all going in. You could call on the flop but the raise is ok too. Pre is terrible but you know that. It's a fold 9 handed. Raise is better than call. It's not that deep though after the straddle. Only about 120 BB effective

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My decision to fold preflop is more about position than stack depth. I do think we are deep enough to play this hand under certain conditions that aren’t met here.

Yea I know pre is lol bad. I just busted a tourny and was like in my head- I know this bad to flat a straddle with from utg+1 but yolo. Normally this would
Be a snap fold pre for me.

Going forward I will pitch this or open it. Think fold > raise straddle though especially at a nitty table where it’s most likely to get called in multiple spots. It’s bad at aggro table too obv bc it’s going to be raised and I have to fold

I think post you have to raise the flop - you can put a lot of pressure on overpairs, and frankly we don't expect him to have 22/97 based on the preflop raise so 77/99 is such a small % of his holdings. I don't think we can fold postflop at all - even if we know he has a set we're very close to getting priced in and there's a chance he re-raises maybe AA/KK. Really you're only like 120 bb effective to start with the straddle - if we had say 1800 we can just call the raise and make a decision on the turn.

Fold pre as others have said.

AP c/r flop is fine. Unfortunately we ran into the top of his range.

Important to know whether the 2 diamonds on board are the 9 and 7. The SF outs will improve our equity against the NFD.

We have bw 35-45% equity against sets and the NFD. But we have no FE once he 3bets to 450.

Would have been better to c/r a little less OTF. Maybe $100. That way we have the option of calling his potential 3-bet.

If he can overplay overpairs this is a clear 4-bet gii.

Dont bother posting a hand you limped pre. Not only because its bad, but because it warps the ranges and makes the question irrelevant from a theory perspective.

At low stakes, I'm generally not looking to pile money in post-flop against the PFR with any hand that still needs to improve in order to win. So, here, when V c-bets, I think it's fine to just check-call until we actually improve.

Our flush outs aren't clean in that V could be drawing to a higher flush. We'd rather make a straight with an off-suit 6 than an off-suit J that might make V's over-pairs concerned we made 2P with J9.

Check-raising the flop is repping a strong hand such as 2P or a set, but with two diamonds on board, we could have a lot of flush draws. His over-pairs aren't going to be thrilled to get check-raised, and aren't likely to 3B, when they can just call, and look to over-bet a turn brick. When he 3B's, he's saying he's got a VERY strong hand.

Overall, it's just not a spot in which I want to play a huge pot unless we make a nutted hand.

Irrelevant from a theory perspective? What!?

dont call pf raises with these hands esp in your position. if you cant raise/3b them yourself, fold em. they dont play well in multiway raised pots because its too hard/expensive to realize your equity with them. and if big money goes in you are usually 2nd best.

the only exception is if you have position and can take cheap turn/river cards then it might be ok, but you have to be able to fold to huge river bets when you're not nutted.

Yes. The decision tree becomes irrelevant when you make such a massive error on the first node. Why do i (or anyone else trying to improve their game) care to think about or study what the correct line is postflop after a limp/call pre when id never limp/call pre?

He's very unlikely to have a flush draw given he raised pre and he raised our flop raise. I think the big question is when he makes it 450 is he doing that with overpairs? If he can overplay AA/KK/QQ then it's fine, but maybe he isn't and only making it 450 with sets. If he only re-raises with sets then we should just fold to the 450. Either way I still like the flop raise - most of the time he just calls the raise and we keep betting or he folds, but of course this hand was posted for probably the 5% of scenarios where we get re-raised. Think we should be concerned with the 95% of outcomes.

This isn't deep at all with the straddle on. It sounds like you mean it feels like a lot of money, which is a valid but completely different consideration.

You can run in to a lot of nut flush draws when the action gets going. Even so, basically you have a monster draw and you are happy to get the money in against what is mostly going to be a range of overpair/set/nut flush draw. You'd like fold equity to come to your aid here when you have Ten-high. When you get 3bet on a board that probably favours a limp-caller (and especially if MP thinks you're a passive fish) then you are up against a strong hand for sure but you can't get away at this stack depth with two cards to come

Tow things. First, the straddles ruin the game as the rounds where every hand is garbage don't chop. Not to mention how stupid it is to min straddle. I'd suggest finding a table of more intelligent players.

Second, if someone is doing that straddle and you can't do what I said above,t hen steal the straddle and you straddle instead given that you're calling the straddle wide anyways.

The card rooms like straddles as they don't have chopped pots where they get no rake but it's bad for the game.

I think you misunderstood the point I was making.

V c-bet the flop. At this point, hero hasn't raised yet, and V hasn't 3B yet. Hero doesn't know V is going to 3B over hero's raise. Hero still has the option to just call, which is what I'd prefer, rather than raising.

V could have a better flush draw when he c-bets here, so our flush outs aren't clean (as far as we know, before we've raised and he's 3B). I don't like raising here, assuming we have a monster combo draw with 15 outs when it really may only be 8 outs to a straight.

Once he 3B's flop, whether or not our flush outs are clean is moot, since he's not repping a draw when he 3B's.

Even if we don't get 3B, V isn't always going to call if we make our hand after we've check-raised, because all our most obvious bluffs would have gotten there. His over-pairs are more likely to call a turn donk-bet if we just flat call here, whereas those hands might fold to our flop raise. We could also wait and check-raise the turn, for value or as a bluff.

Could V be 3B'ing with over-pairs? Sure. Probably not, but it's possible. But if so, he could also 3B with two overs and a better draw. Probably wouldn't, but he might, if he looks at the board and decides hero isn't limping-flatting first-to-act pre with 99, 77, 22, or 97. Flop check-raises are going to be more bluff-heavy than turn check-raises, so he might put hero on a hand like T8dd or 86dd.

Both are hypotheticals and beside the point. I don't like check-raising T8dd on the flop here, as played, because a competent V is going to pounce on that raise like a fat kid pounces on a candy-bar. I'd much prefer a check-call on flop, followed by a donk-lead or check-raise on the turn, either for value when we make our hand, or as a bluff when we don't.

If you have a massive edge at a table you don't have to combo draws all in. You could just call his flop bet and turn bet to try and keep the pot small. A lot of your edge at low stakes comes from people massively overplaying their hands so having a big stack is pretty nice.

When you hit your hand, he's not gonna fold if he's bad. I play at a lot of games like this where people just over play their hand.

Going all in is fine too, you are at the top of your drawing and can't be too far behind.


Playing T8 in early position is a major mistake but that's besides the point. Not sure why you would limp this, and even worsoe call a $25 raise with it. Even if you wanted to get involved in the hand because the player was a fish this is a pretty big losing play pre flop.

Don't agree with any of this - you have a very strong draw here so the goal is to put pressure on him, forcing him to play a big pot with his overpairs and fold out his middling equity hands. If you call you just make it easier for the villain to play against us - the pot remains smaller for his overpairs, and remember we're OOP here so he's really in control. I don't know why you say a competent villain will pounce on the raise - aggression is where people make big mistakes and that's our goal here. This might be the perfect hand to raise as we have great equity to any range, yet have no showdown value currently. If you're only raising this flop with 2 pair and sets it'll be pretty easy to play against you.

Over-pairs or better will most likely barrel turn. We don't need to worry about building a pot yet.

Check-raising is overplaying our hand here. We have too much equity to fold and not enough showdown value to get it in.

If we get 3B, we're most likely up against a strong made hand, at least sets or better. We're not thrilled to get stacks in when we're only drawing.

Check raising is something we do with thick value that doesn't mind getting stacks in or lower equity draws that don't mind folding to a 3B. It would be better to check-raise if we had one or two over-cards and two backdoor draws.

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Getting 3b on the flop isn't fun but it's such a small % of possible outcomes that it's not that important. I'll give you some numbers - I'm not sure what his raising range pre is here but say 15% - 185 hands. On this flop if we assume he didn't raise pre with 22 or 79 there's 6 combos that are sets (77/99). I also don't know what his cbet % is but I'm assuming on this texture very high - sets make up 6% of his range. I'm not sure why you're concerned with 6% of outcomes - my concern is the other 94%. Even vs a set we have 42% equity - we're also OOP which allows villain to control the hand allowing him to play a small pot with an overpair or get lucky with a hand like KQ. Calling is a big mistake.

When we raise here, if V comes back over the top, it doesn't much matter if he's doing it with an over-pair or 2P+. Even if it's a mistake for him to raise with an over-pair, because we have more sets and 2P+ in our range, our raise is inducing him to make that mistake, and the fact is we DON'T have 2P+, so we're behind.

It's a mistake for us to raise when we don't have any showdown value, and need to make our hand.

Whether V has an over-pair, or 2P+ on the flop, if we're going to raise flop, it should either be with a hand we'd love to jam, or don't mind folding to raise. Hero's hand has too much equity to fold, but isn't strong enough yet to jam.

If you want to over-play all your combo-draws on the flop, you're setting yourself up for a lot of variance.

You're fixated on a situation that rarely occurs - him 3bing the flop. Either way there's no point of arguing further, but if you're playing this passively you're not only easier to play against but leaving money on the table. You're 42% against the WORST case scenario - him having a set, which occurs once every 20 times this hand plays out. The other 19 times he doesn't have a set, this hand doesn't get posted to the forums, and you print money using aggression. That's all that matters.

This. Adding fold equity to a monster equity draw with no SDV unimproved is not a bad thing.

He may not 3 bet flop. He may fold. He may call and fold to a turn barrel. He may call and we bink and get paid off. We have a ton of equity against all his value. Focusing on the worst outcomes only is not the way to approach this.

Furthermore, the title of the thread is misleading. 125bb (given straddle) is by no means “very deep”