This hand happened this weekend at 2/5 at the Borgata.

Hero had been at the table for maybe 3 hours or so.

Reads:

TAG (~$800)- Maybe mid 50s guy. Probably on the weak/tight side, but I haven't seen anything out of line from him. Plays ABC. Has me covered.

Passive Asian (~$900)- Has me covered. Paid me off earlier when I made a value bet. Definitely a thinking player, but I think only gets aggressive with good hands. I think I've just seen him make sloppy calls at showdown. Has me covered

New Asian (~$350)- Brand new young asian male. I've seen a few hands though and seems bad at poker. Has maybe $350, probably bought in for around that much.


Hero has TKs Hearts in UTG.

I was getting ready to leave soon so I was messing around a little. Also the table had loosened up so I thought I'd speculate. I know it's a loose call, that's not that important for the hand and not my focus here.

Hero limps, raise to 20 from TAG, passive asian calls, call from a bad weak/tight ABC passive (likes to pay off), call from new guy, new asian calls, Hero calls

FLOP (~$120)

T68, two hearts.

TAG (who often Cbets) bets $50, passive asian calls (side note, he threw in a $100 chip even though he had like $800 in red), folds to new asian who raises to $135, hero shoves for like $500 total.


Sorry if some of the info is a little incomplete, I wrote down a lot of the details in my phone but I didn't have everything. What do we think of this shove? Is there another line to take? Would a bigger stack from hero make a difference (I might be off by $100-$200 in my stack but definitely didn't have less than $500).

Did I stump everyone?

Bump one time.

As played, you are fine. Its high variance but +EV.

If you are going to call a raise with KTs and flop top pair with FD then you must be willing to play for stacks which you've done.

You have the equity to make this play especially if both villains stack off here. But given the money in the pot, even against one villain this is +EV.

probably the reason you are not getting much response is that this is more or less standard.

Just wanted to check if a call, trying to induce calls (or shoves) behind me would be a better play.

Pretty standard hand. I would expect to get called by worse Tx here, not to mention you're coinflipping with overpairs. If someone had a set they'd probably be raising more.

If you shove and get called by the asian raiser, you'll be risking 330 to win 540 which means you'll need about 61% equity if you are always called by him.

If his preflop range is: JJ-22,AQo-AJo,KQo-KJo,QJo-QTo,JTo,T9o,AQs-A2s,KQs-KTs,QJs-QTs,JTs-J9s,T9s-T8s,98s-97s,87s-86s,76s-75s,65s,54s

And we can narrow his range down if he is only raising the flop with KT+, sets, straights, and twopairs, and calling your shove with his entire range, then your equity is 43%

If you add T9 (TP+GS) to his range, your equity goes up to 52%.

If you add all of his flush draws (Axs, QJs, J9s, 75s, 54s), then your equity goes up to 64%.

I don't think he does this with many hands that fold(Maybe just KT), so I don't think we need to do any math for the times he folds.

So taking the above, it is almost never correct to shove unless he is raising there with a really really really wide range, and then it is only barely +EV even in that case.

PLUS that's not taking into account you might be beat and called by one of the other two guys in the hand. (Again, I'm assuming they won't call you with a hand worse than KT. After they bet and get re-raised and check-re-re-raised, I don't think many people call weaker than KT in that spot)

This is surprising to me because I would have thought shoving would be a decent +EV spot here.


If you call, you're getting 2.6:1 on your call. You only need 2.3:1 if all of your flush and twopair/trip outs are good. I think we'll have to discount a lot of your outs though since there are a lot of Axs hands in our 3 villains ranges, as well as sets and straights.

You'll have $365 left and the pot will be $490 and the other two players will be getting 490:85 or just under 6:1. They'll probably put you on a flush draw so I doubt you get paid off when the flush draw hits (unless they have a weaker flush draw).

Wow.

My first instinct when I read this hand was that it was a standard high variance shove that was probably either neutral or slightly positive.

But now that I've looked over everything, I'm thinking a fold is best.

Yeah... Seems really weak. My vote goes for fold. You hit a great flop, but the action just doesn't bode well for you.

This was my thinking going into this thread, but I'm not so sure now.

Really appreciate the work there. I had a suspicion that this hand wasn't as standard as one might think, which is why I thought to post it, but I couldn't put a finger on why. I had a feeling it had something to do with the re-raiser's stack size.

I like your ranges for RR. I think the one that resulted in the 64% is closer to being accurate. I think he does fold sometimes though. Maybe cut some of the hands from his range, but throw in the times he folds and it comes out to neutral EV, IMO.

I wouldn't be able to find a fold here in the heat of battle. Too big a chance re-raiser has a worse hand than me OTF, or that he folds to me. My read was that he was bad, if only because he bought in for too little, and how he'd played the few hands that I'd seen.

Also I thought there was a good chance at least one of the other villains called. Basically I figured either that, or everyone folds.

Truthfully, at the time I just thought it's best to shove here and not think about alternative lines because they have so much potential to go so wrong.

^ I'm not sure your math is right....

This isn't right. If you are risking 330 to win 540 then you are getting 540/330 = 1.63:1 on your money which means you need 38% equity, not 61% equity...

But the way I think about it is as such:

Pot starts off at $120 with the betting we get 120 + 50 + 50 + 135 when decision gets to Hero.

So pot is $355 when decision gets to hero. If Hero Shoves now and gets one caller then Hero is getting $355 + $500 = $855/$500 = 1.71:1 on his money. (EDIT: Heros odds go down a bit depending on who actually calls since the caller has money vested as relates to hero's shove)

In order for this to be +EV hero does not need 61% equity but rather just 37% equity and that is with just one caller.

If we give the caller the range 66, 88, TT-AA, 2pair combos, straight combos, AT, J9 Hero has 46% equity and this is a fairly nutted range (worse case range)

So, Hero has more than enough equity for a flop shove here to be +EV and that is without adding other heart draws or weaker Tens. I feel the range I assigned is nutted fairly strongly against Hero and is a worse case range. Plus, if Hero gets two callers then even better for Hero.

Limping Pre with KTs kinda sucks, but otherwise pre is pretty standard.

I prefer to lead flop with your hand here rather than going for the c/r. This is a good value bet hand and should be played as such. It's better to bet/3-bet than to c/r. By betting, you not only extract info from the TAG and others, your able to gain value from a wider range with a bet. c/r just turns your hand into a bluff against most TAGs and only gains value from the fish.

Gotta go with dgiharris' reasoning on this one.

Shove > call > fold(lolwut folding is awful).
We def have enough equity to make this shove +ev against a nutty range like you guys gave him. But villain who raised is an asian who bought in short that seems bad at poker. He is going to be calling with all kinds of worse hands, not to mention folding a lot too. (I definitely think he can little-over-a-minraise then fold. (It would be really bad)

I'm normally not a big fan of the good ol check raise, but I like it in this instance.

To me, I like a c/r when

#1 Pot is worth it (pot is > 30% of our stack)
#2 We have lots of equity but our hand may be vulnerable if played straight forward (We aren't thrilled if turn is a non-heart A, Q, J, 9, 7, 5)
#3 We have enough chips to generate fold equity (we have more than pot)
#4 We can fold out hands that can beat us (AT, maybe even JJ)
#5 We can get called by hands we crush (weaker flush draws)

To be clear, leading out is fine, but I can definitely get behind a c/r in this circumstance provided we're fairly sure that we are going to get some decent c-bet action. In this case, we did.

Ah, duh, sorry. Yes 37% is right. Which would make it a shove against even his narrowest range. Glad to see my intuition wasn't off. Sorry to see I didn't trust my intuition enough to double check my math.

And I got the $540 by assuming we are effectively shoving just the shortstack reraisers stack of $320.

Pf is kinda mehbut that's been said already.

Only comment is the deeper you get the less equity you're going to have because when you get it in >$500 deep you're more likely to be against sets, 2 pairs, and straights so you're looking at basically a naked FD.

$320 deep vs a guy who sucks it's an easy shove, especially because you're crushing the nut flush draw which might want to get it in vs you. You're in great shape vs TAG if he wants to call (which he shouldn't) unless he has AA, KK or 88 and ur still not in horrible shape against most of his huge range.

So you only really have to worry about a spot where Passive Asian has 97, 88 or 66 and New Asian shoves with something like the NFD, but if you can get in 3 way you're usually in decent shape anyway.

Still, this is an example of how 1 loose PF call can put you in a sticky spot postflop.

Seems like a good time to post results, thanks for the comments everyone:

As long as you know preflop is a leak no point discussing.

Normally would lead this flop. No reason to expect a c-bet and we can get value.

As played think it's close to a break even play at best. Don't forget there is some small % of the time when one of the other players have a set.

@OP: if you want to improve, you should post ranges/continuing ranges/equities itt. That's how you are going to improve. This is a fairly technical question that other than a few assumptions you should be able to answer fairly well with analysis. Don't forget ranges get stronger with mw action than HU.

best advice itt right here:

fold pf

I think a lot in this thread are discounting weaker hands that call, like Tx.

Reason being, when we shove like this its an OBVIOUS FD so V's are willing to call down light because they think they only have to fade a heart when in reality, KT can beat some of the hands that call. SImilarly, in these spots there is a good chance weaker flush draws come along for the ride and we have them CRUSHED!!!!!

Basically, we don't "just" get called by sets here. The range of hands that call is wider than you think.