I just transferred to a new table but recognize most of the players. Everyone involved in this hand is a reg I have played with enough to have decent reads on them.

V1 - UTG - MAWG, can't cleanly categorize but a little too loose and not aggressive enough, definitely a losing player. Limps too much and gives up really often on the flop, and REALLY often by the turn. VPIP/PFR something like 25/8

V2 - MP - 30ish WG, nit bordering on TP, gives up frequently post flop, capable of limp/folding

Hero - HJ - 30ish WG, I have never done any major bluffs in front of these players and if they've been paying attention should see me as a winning TAG bordering on the nitty side. I have 1100ish and the other stacks cover.

V3 - BTN - MAWG, plays fairly TAG but has some leaks, plays too many hands preflop, of all villains I have most history with this guy and he is my main opponent in this hand. I think he might be a slightly winning player but too many leaks to be a big winner. Every time I've played with him I've been winning and showing down lots of nutted hands so my image is quite solid.

OTTH

V3 straddles OTB, V1 limps UTG, V2 limps MP, Hero has 33 in HJ and raises to 50 hoping to isolate V1 or just take down the 30 dollars. Getting calls is not disastrous either since everyone covers me. So I 50, and V3 quickly calls, V1 calls, and V2 calls.

Flop (200) Q74

I totally miss aside from a 1 card BDSD. V1 and V2 both x pretty quickly. I think they will fold to a cbet unusually often, maybe 75% on this flop for combined about 50%, and BTN calls a little more but I expect a c bet to get through 35 to 40%. Should I just x here? By my math I just need a c bet to get through 1/3 of the time for automatic profit. I expect BTN to bet most of the time when I x regardless of holding so I doubt I'm getting to showdown. Anyway, Hero decides after a few seconds to bet 100. V3 quickly calls and V1 and V2 quickly fold.

My read at this point on V3 is it's extremely unlikely he has a set. His quick call makes me think he was not considering raising, and I think this guy almost always raises 77 and 44 on this flop 4-ways. I don't think he ever flats QQ, at least not with the speed with which he called preflop. He would at least consider a 3-bet with QQ. I think his continuing range is 65s, clubs, A7s, maybe 87s/76s, 88 to TT, maybe JJ if he flats it pre, and QTs/QJs/KQ/AQ.

Turn (400) Q747

He could have a 7 here but there are way more combos of everything else. I consider this a fairly blank turn and thus a good spot for a large double barrel. I think he'll fold his entire range but the 7s and maybe AQ/KQ. And I expect a raise from the 7s. I think about 5 to 10s and bet 300. He goes into the tank. I stare at the board as I always do but I'm in seat 5, he's in seat 1, so I can see him easily with my peripheral vision and I'm completely convinced he's genuinely not strong and is mulling it over whether to continue with what I'm almost certain is now at best QX or a draw. He does call after about two minutes.

River (1000) Q7476

This card strikes me as a total blank. 65 picked up a pair but it's not going to be enough to call a shove. I'm almost certain he has a missed flush draw, 65, 88 to JJ, or QX. Given how long he took to call OTT I am leaning hard toward him having a weak made hand. I have about 650 left. To be profitable shoving I need a fold about 40% of the time. If I x I think I'm almost always losing, but perhaps once in a blue moon he checks back a flush draw and I win.

So...x/give up or shove? Thoughts on earlier streets welcome also.

What on god’s green earth got into you

Every street was misplayed imo.

Limp along pre or fold pre, isoing here with 33 is torching money.

OTF it's a snap give up. I am never in a million years betting 33 on this board 4-way.

OTT i give up too. His range otf is Qx, FD, 65, 7x. We aren't ever folding a Q, and 7x is good. FDs have a lot of equity against you, and there's not much use in betting.

OTR you have some SDV, but not much at all. Against a TAG, i'm okay with ripping it in here but expect to get called off pretty often. AQ should be 3-betting pre at good freq, so the top of his range is like QJs/KQ/Q10s here. I dont really expect him to have 77-JJ too often here. We can also fold 65s.

Not sure about the flop that many ways, but I like the rest if you shoved river.

Hmm...some mixed responses so far. Not sure what to make from Matzah_Ball's response. Minatorr's is helpful but I would appreciate elaboration.

I mean...burning money? Really? How much? Am I just punting away my stack or is this line like slightly -EV? I agree it's super high variance but with my reads and calculations every action appears to be +EV. Perhaps limping behind with 33 is better, but raising even to set mine seems profitable given everyone is 220BB+ and I will pick up the 30 in limps decently often and end up HU in position pretty often as well.

What's wrong with C-betting this flop? I would certainly give up if I had any loose passives or LAGs in the crowd, but against this bunch I expect V1 and V2 to give up about 75% of the time and V3 at least 60% (guess closer to 70%), for combined give-up of at least 33.75% where I need 33.33%. My estimates could be overly optimistic (I don't think so, but maybe), but I also can win by double barreling when I get one caller, triple barreling, or spiking a set/boat 8.6% by the river, so I don't really need 33.33%. I also sometimes win against a busted draw. So I'm not really following why a 1/2 PSB C-bet is burning money here, against these particular nitty, weak/tight, and TAGgish villains. Short of hitting a set (77 and 44, 6 combos OTF, 4 OTT), V1 and V2 cannot have anything that strong here. Same with V3 though he has slightly more QX. V1 and V2 I expect never have AQ and rarely KQ. V1 might have QJ QT and V2 QJs QTs.

OTT I've found these 3/4 to PSB work very well in taking it down. Most of these guys just don't want to call off something marginal for 300 bucks knowing they often have to call another 650 OTR. I need a fold 43% ignoring future equity from triple barreling favorable cards and spiking a 3. I'm giving him these combos OTT: JJ-88,AQs,A7s,KQs,QTs+,87s,76s,65s,AcJc,KcJc,AcTc,KcT c,JcTc,Ac9c,Tc9c,Ac8c,9c8c,Ac6c,Ac5c,Ac4c,5c4c,Ac3 c,Ac2c,AQo,KQo (80 combos)

Now I expect folds from 88 to JJ (24 combos), from flush draws and 65 pretty often since he can win at most 1350 risking 300 (4.5:1) on a PAIRED board. With my value hands he can't expect me to shove river clubs except with my boats, and he loses. With 65 (minus the 65cc) it's even worse as only 6 outs are even semi-clean, given I myself have all NFDs in my turn bluffing range, and my river value range has boats. He's not really getting odds to call and I think (though I don't know) he is smart enough to realize this and will fold most of his draws, particularly the non-nut FDs as the RIO are quite high on a paired board where I can have all AXcc. Guessing he folds his draws (16 combos not counting the OESFD and TP+FDs) ~2/3 the time leaves him with say 5 FD/SD OTR. I expect 7x continues but usually raises. So combined he's folding about 35/80 combos assuming he never folds even QTs no clubs here, but that gets me to 43.75% folds, which is sufficient, particularly since triple barrels will get many of the continuing hands to fold and I can still spike a 3, granting me additional fold equity and real equity OTR.

I didn't calculate all this at the table obviously, aside from how often I need a fold. I guessed by his mannerism and my history with this player that I would get folds at least close to how often I need to.

I don't run these bluffs very often at all. I've done exactly three triple barrel bluffs in my past 100 hours of play. Meanwhile I'd guess my river shoves show up nutted about 30 times. This guy should know I'm hardly ever bluffing if I shove river and I am very confident in my read he's capped at QX, probably not even much AQ/KQ in his range as he tanked TWO MINUTES on the turn.

I'll wait for more responses before revealing river action and results.

If I am indeed setting big piles of money on fire I would appreciate more thorough explanations about why and where my math is wrong. Because I'm just not seeing it. But if indeed I'm burning money, I need to know that, which is why I posted this hand. I'm just not taking it on faith.

Thanks.

I don't like your play pf. In straddled pots where there are already limpers and the straddler having position on me I'm not keen on trying to iso with hands like small pairs because their lack of playability.

As played I would def shove the river. Checking here after you've already played the hand this way is probably the worst line.

This guy is not an aggressive straddler. I don't expect him to 3-bet me much or defend light. Given I'm basically the CO (CO has telegraphed his fold already) you still favor an overlimp? V3 is key here. If he folds I expect V1 and especially V2 fold a lot. I agree 33 is not an ideal ISO and usually I wouldn't try but against this particular group it seemed worth a shot. And yeah I'd rather have AJs but 33 isn't *that* hard to play HU IP vs. a bad player (which was the goal short of just taking it down). And IME $50 takes this down a lot. Getting all three players calling is unusual, but sometimes happens once V3 calls because of "pot odds".

Especially since you say straddler is not aggressive I prefer overlimping here.

Hmm...perhaps you are right. The main downside of overlimping is it's difficult to get stacks in when I hit a set. Generally hard to win any way but hitting a set. I guess from risk/reward perspective to limp 10 I only need get back about 80 on average when I hit to be profitable. Sounds easy but with just 40 in the pot I'll need a PSB followed by a 1/2 PSB called on average. Or 1/2 1/2 1/2 gets me 120 with one caller.

OTOH with a raise once called people fight harder for it, but I need to get back more like 400 when I hit. Though really it's less because I can win in other ways when I'm PFR.

I was stuck a bit and in a mindset of trying to win stacks rather than small pots. Guess that's not good huh? Just led me to take some higher variance lines though nothing I didn't think was +EV

I’m fine with pre.

Flop I just give up 4 handed bc I have a bottom tier bluff that failed pre and now found a bottom tiered flop for my hand to keep bluffing. Remember that you don’t need to find bluffs just because your pot share is minimal, you would like to have some sort of equity outside of straight-completing sets to lean on - that’s far more important than anti-blocking drawing hands and for those reasons this hand makes for an extremely low quality bluff on the flop. You could even check and realize set/as equity pretty often and go from there.

AP once HU, you got a nut runout to triple with AQ+ so go ahead and rep that otr now that you’re there and would like to fold out as much pair equity as possible.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm checking this flop 95% of the time. With this particular group it looked like V1 and V2 were not very interested so I thought my chances of getting a C-bet through were unusually high, and if it didn't get through there were good turn barreling cards.

Results:

So as you probably guessed I did shove the river after about 5s. V3 tanks for about a minute then calls with JJ. I told him "very nice call" but in my head I'm thinking "what just happened? Did he really just call off 220BB with an underpair?" The worst part is this is almost exactly the level of strength I put him on but he calls anyway.

So, follow up questions...

1) Is there some legitimate reason to call with JJ here short of a soul read? I've literally never bluffed in front of this guy and historically I show up with a better hand than JJ about 90 - 95% and air the remainder. He even blocks a lot of better flush draws so I don't know what the heck he thinks I'm barreling. I almost never take this line with low pocket pairs precisely because there's so little equity when called. Here I just felt very confident in my reads of the players involved and that I could blow him off nearly his entire range so equity-when-called wasn't a huge concern.

2) Should I reevaluate my read of this guy as regfish / sticky TAG or do I credit him with some genius read? I'm 99% sure I leaked no information and in fact was quite relaxed during the bluff as I believed he was almost always folding. This is exactly how I would play AQ KK+ on this runout as well as 7x boats and quads.

3) If this guy is hero-calling this light, should I lower my standards for getting three streets of value and if so how much? Like am I happy shoving KQ or QJ or QT here? Maybe even TT - JJ? Now that he's caught me bluffing his standards for calling me down presumably go even lighter. Though it's possible this was a one-off and he called because he was tilted or something. I had only been at the table a few orbits so I don't know how he'd been running that day.

4) Could I and should I have bet-sized differently to maximize chances of success for my triple barrel? I'm thinking if I had bet 200 OTT, river pot is now 800, and I have 750 left. It may be a lot harder for him to call 750 into 800 than 650 into 1000 (though I win 100 less when my bluff succeeds and need it to succeed more often OTR).

How do you play Aces, Kings, QQ, AQ, KQ, in this spot? Would you go for x/r with any of these on any street? Has he observed you isolating in similar situations?

I'm sure he's seen me ISO raise but nothing unusual about that. I'm not raising super wide here. Maybe like 22+,A2s+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,T9s,98s,87s,76s,ATo+,KJo+ at the widest but usually overlimping 22 - 66 and AXs.

I would play all those hands exactly the same on this runout with villain tank calling turn. If he snap calls turn I probably bet smaller with KQ, maybe AQ. Going for a x/r third to act is too risky on this board. It's also not necessary with the SPR barely above 5. I can GII with three bets easily enough.

The problem here is that people often get really sticky with top pair when the frontdoor flush misses. I'd expect to get called by QJ+ quite a lot here. In fact, I'd say that any made hand that called the turn is almost always going to call the river, since this is basically the safest possible river for them.

You're only really folding out 65s here (literally 3 combos) and busted FDs too. And if villain does have a busted FD, we don't mind letting him bluff us off this specific hand, since we have tonnes of better hands in our range to call with. Villain might check back some busted FDs on occassion too, so we can pick it up once in a while.

I like the raise preflop. I don't like the flop Cbet, but I do like the turn barrel as played. I don't like the river bluff though.

Neither street is "spew" though; I just think that flop and river bets are slightly -EV.

Edit: also, I want to comment on one specific thing. You said something along the lines of "my bluff needs to get through 40% of the time to justify it", but that's actually not correct, since that assumes that we always lose the pot by checking. Once you factor in the fact that river will sometimes go check-check and we'll win at showdown against a busted FD, we actually need our bluff to get through about 60%+ of the time to justify it.

Actually I said "To be profitable shoving I need a fold about 40% of the time. If I x I think I'm almost always losing, but perhaps once in a blue moon he checks back a flush draw and I win."

And from how long he tanked OTT, I really don't think he has a missed flush draw often at all. How long does it take to decide to call with a flush draw? He took 2 minutes. Does he take 2 minutes with KQ? I doubt it. My read was he had QT or even weaker and would almost always give up OTR. I mean I was wrong he would give up, but I was pretty much exactly right regarding his hand strength. Though if he tanks 2 minutes OTT and 1 minute OTR, he is considering folding. I don't know what made him decide to call but it's clearly not a hopeless bluff if it takes him that long to make up his mind.

I think you're probably right once he called with a made hand OTT, he is usually calling the river. Probably told himself something like "as long as the river isn't another overcard or a club, I call". Then he gets a blank river and calls.

But it blows my mind a TAG would call off 220BB here with JJ (or even QT/QJ/KQ) when I show up with a better hand 95% of the time. Your standard LP idiot, okay, but this guy seemed pretty sharp. If I'm in villain's shoes facing this kind of aggression from a very tight PFR (bordering on nitty when we've played together) who I have never seen bluff at all, much less for 1100 dollars, no way am I heroing with JJ. I would have to be against a maniac to justify that.

How many flush draws can I even have? Really I'm overlimping most of the AXs so I have about 9 flush draws: AcKc, AcQc, KcQc, AcTc, KcTc, QcTc, Tc9c, 9c8c, Ac5c, three of which beat villain. So 6 flush draws he beats, which I don't always bluff the river with.

Meanwhile I have 54 combos that beat JJ: KK+, QhQs, QhQc, QsQc, 7d7s, 6d6s, 6d6c, 6s6c, 4d4h, 4d4s, 4h4s, AhQh, AsQs, AcQc, KhQh, KsQs, KcQc, QhJh, QhTh, QsTs, QcTc, 8d7d, 8s7s, 7d6d, 7s6s, AdQh, AdQs, AdQc, AhQs, AhQc, AsQh, AsQc, AcQh, AcQs, KdQh, KdQs, KdQc, KhQs, KhQc, KsQh, KsQc, KcQh, KcQs

He has to think I'm triple barreling basically everything here to justify a call, which I'm just not doing.

I have exactly three triple barrel bluffs over the past 100 hours including this one. The reality is I occasionally get out of line if I think it's profitable, but the vast vast majority of the time he calls here I show up with AQ+.

It's really hard to evaluate when bluffs are spewing money and when they're +EV without being results oriented. Knowing what I know now that this guy is sticky with big pairs, it's spew. But with the information I had at the time, it seemed extremely likely he would lay down a weak pair vs. a tight player demonstrating extreme strength in a huge pot. But how do I really evaluate that probability? I can use myself as a baseline--I would fold his entire flop continuing range by the river on this runout. But most players are stickier than I am. I can calculate the minimum folding frequency I need and reason that he folds higher than that, but it's still just a guess. When you do get called in places like this it sure feels like you just gave your stack away / lit a pile of money on fire, but then there are other times with similar circumstances where the bluff does work, and on the whole my bluffs succeed more than they fail. But sometimes it's very hard to figure out why Bluff A succeeded and Bluff B did not.

It's only 110bbs not 220bbs, due to the $10 straddle. And it's pretty common for people to call down with TPWK or even second pair for 100bbs when all the frontdoor draws bust.

Is this the first time you’ve played 2/5? Why are you in such awe that the players are idiots and show up with hands that make no sense? This is why YOLO minimal equity mega triple barrels are not a good idea.

It kind of amazes me that you actually think you'll show up with a better hand 95 percent of the time when you're showing up with 33 here. I feel you're contradicting yourself left and right, probably due to entitlement. Your bluffrange is likely much wider than you think and your valuerange is likely a lot smaller. I don't expect him to believe you're playing KQ/QJ/QT this way, I don't even expect you to believe that. Even with KK+ I'd expect a different, more cautious line a decent percentage of the time. And like I said, you're showing up with 33 here, so you're probably ISO'ing and barreling a lot more than you want to admit.

Apart from that, even if you are somehow right (which you're not imo) and he did make a bad call, why do you seem so baffled about that? It's live low stakes poker, man. Newsflash, people make bad calls all the time! I know, because I'm one of them.

+1 good poast.

The whole hand is spew in my opinion, and lots of pretty weak individual justifications on each street to fire big bullets with close to zero realistic equity.

Empirically I show up with a better hand 95% of the time when I barrel off my stack. I track how often I triple barrel air vs value and it's about 20:1 value. Believe what you want but I have no reason to lie about this. Very obviously in this specific hand I show up with more bluffs...because I've decided to play my hand that way on favorable runouts, but villain can't know that.

I'm only baffled by the call because I've played 20+ hrs with this guy over the past few weeks alone, seen him play a straightforward TAG game the whole time, never seen him bluff catch, and played extremely tight in front of him (zero bluffs shown and no triple barrels even attempted). I assumed he would see me as TAG bordering on nit and therefore not bluffcatch. More than that he showed serious signs of weakness and hesitation during the hand. I don't feel entitled to him folding. It just seemed logical to expect it under the circumstances.

I'm not surprised at all if randoms call me down here which is why I generally don't run big bluffs with low equity hands. Actually I don't triple barrel randoms at all.

How do you know how I play anything generally? Running a bluff once with 33 does not remotely mean this is my standard approach.

I don't know why I bother posting hands on here. It's always a mix of opinions coming from every direction. Useless. I'm the one full of contradictions? Read the various responses I've gotten.

Preflop I should limp. Preflop raise is fine.
The flop c bet is spew. The flop c bet is fine.
The turn barrel is bad. The turn barrel is good.
But the river shove is -EV. But once I barrel turn I need to shove river.

Overall hand is spew. Overall hand is fine.

Luckily I know which posters to listen to and which to ignore, but I have to say I feel sorry for less acclimated posters looking for advice here.

Think of it this way: the fact that villain broadcasted weakness to you on the turn makes him think that you're more likely to try to bluff him. So when he gets a safe river card, he feels compelled to bluff catch, given how much weakness he's shown.

Homey actually makes a good point when he says that often we overestimate how wide our value range is the times when we're bluffing. I remember once triple barreling QJ on an AKKxx board and getting called down by A4s. I thought that his call is ridiculous, since I raised pre and I've got a tonne of monster hands here. But then I stopped and really asked myself how I would play AJ or AK here. And I realised that I don't often go for 3 streets with AJ on an AKKxx board. Sometimes I only go for 2 streets with KT here too. And I sometimes slowplay my AK and either check back a street or bet small. And that's when I realised that my triple barrel stackoff range is more bluff heavy than I originally thought.

OPs biggest contradiction is that he thinks he can get deep stacks in with a set if he raises $50 preflop but also expects to villain to fold when OP himself has nothing.

Thats the key. Knowing who to listen to. People posting and responding have a very wide range of skill level and playing styles. Some people think a certain hand is played fine because that's how they would play it when its really terrible and they just dont realize it. Other players might think a different hand is played well because they are nitty when the hand couldve been won playing more aggro.

That's why I always say it would be great if there was some way to link a players win rate to their posts. Without that, posting hands is just like walking up to a random guy in the poker room and asking for his advice. I ignore everything that come out of the mouth of about 98% of the players in my room.

As far as this particular hand goes, its just one of those that feels great when it works and you want to kick yourself when it doesnt. When you play a hand like this and it doesnt work, dont say "You win" and muck. Always show your cards for 2 reasons.

1) You want to see what they called with
2) More importantly, the hand cost you a lot of money. You need to show so people think you are a maniac and you can use that to recover some of that money later by getting paid off big time. I never leave a table anytime soon after making a play like this.

I really hate your line, but Ive done things like this before so Im not going to act like its beneath me (never this deep though). Sometimes its worked and sometimes it hasnt.

I sort of look at it this way.

In this hand OP blasted off his entire $1100 stack for no particular reason-other than wanting to punish the limpers with a big raise preflop with a baby pair that have terrible playability postflop. Partiularly preflop raise and flop bet is pure random buttonclicking, being aggressive just for the sake of it in the moment.

Preflop mistake gets compounded by alot bigger and more costly postflop mistakes (like very often is the case),and its quite obvious to me that OP sort of seems compelled to barrell off postflop with zero equity in order to defend his original preflopraise.

Now, this $1100 that got blasted off on totally unneccesary spazz/spew in this hand, you got to win back and more in other hands/spots if this is not gonna have big impact on your winrate. That is why hands like this is very important in the long run, cause it doesnt take many of those kind of hands before it eats seriously into your actual winrate.

Each decision gets justified by the last bad decision, so its kind of a domino effect. To be quite honest OP, i think you write alot of good posts on this forum- and i also think you deep down agree that this hand isnt something to be proud of when you get some distance to it. Only street than can maybe be justified is the rivershove,but that is only because you choose to put yourself in a horrible riverspot with nothing and heaps of money in the middle so you are sort of compelled to empty the clip then hope for the best.

I know a guy in my room who plays a ton of hands like this one. He basically raises preflop in position and then keeps pounding hoping you cant call. I call it "spray and pray". The guy built up a reputation playing 2/5 as a great player (before I started playing this room).

Ive played with him several times recently and keep watching him closely (due to his rep). All I see is a spew monkey. He plays mostly 5/10 now when it runs and Ive been told by a reliable source that hes stuck $30K the last 2 months. That doesnt surprise me at all based on what Ive seen. OP, dont become that guy. Pure brute force doesnt work often enough to be profitable over time IMO.