**Hand**

A5

**Stack**

Approx $700

**Blinds**

2/5

**Position**

UtG, 7 handed.

**Notes / Reads**


It's midnight at the regional casino. 7 handed.

UTG +1 is a home game reg, who plays fairly abc, $1k+ behind. BB has his last $200 out after just getting stacked, pretty loose and splashy. Looks like he's ready to leave.

Standard opens have been around $15-25.

**Preflop**


Hero raises to 15, UTG+1 3-bets to 65. Folds to who BB calls without much thought, hero calls.

**Flop**

743. Pot 197.

Checks to UTG+1 who bets 100. BB does a sigh and puts in 122. It looks more like a frustration, time to go home move, than hollywooding.

Hero???

Kind of inclined to just jam it in there right now, though I think smaller raise is also fine. Don’t love a call because we do want to generate some fold equity against better Ace highs.
Arguments against jamming: betting large into a dry side pot isn’t generally recommended, and I’m not sure if we would play a set that way.
Arguments for jamming: we’re an equity favorite against any hand from UTG1 except AA. Jamming now probably generates more fold equity against overpairs than a raise of 150 on top of the 122, and then jam on turn (actually, this is how I probably play a set).

We're favoured against AA 55.15%, we have two straight draws.

Oh right, I didn’t see the gutter to the 2.
Yeah, idk, doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t call. Jam or raise 150 on top. Still prefer the jam cause I think it generates more FE in practice than splitting your bets across two streets.

I am jamming for value, and we might clean up some outs if he folds. He will over fold as we are never pure bluffing due to the short stack all in

I might be a moron but aren’t we trying to minimize FE with the deeper V? I think we raise here but only as much as we think V will call. Trying to commit him to the hand with smaller, milky sizings? With a protected main we have no FE (obviously) and are +EV on any additional side pot dollars. This draw is big enough to treat it as a made hand.

Getting him to fold KK is a good result. He’s going to hate exactly the cards that make our hand (except the 2) and like the cards we brick (except the 5)

I fold pre and AP just rip it in now.

We’re 60% vs KdKx and 62% against KK combo’s without a diamond. With no dead money against the side pot V, don’t we want a call? With $550 effective on the side is getting a fold $0 EV and a call from KK like +$110 EV?

Again I might be dumb but why would we want folds?

The flat equity picture doesn’t capture the fact that if V continues with black Kings he is gonna play his hand almost perfectly on the turn, folding to our jam on any diamond or A, and calling our all-in on any blank card. If the blank is one of our 6 non-diamond straight outs, we capture turn value, but otherwise on a diamond/A, we let the V off the hook when he holds black Kings.

I understand that. More referencing that we would prefer for all the money to go in now or at least enough to commit V. We’re not looking for FE.

I think I like a jam. In a lot of scenario's UTG+1's range isn't actually going to affect our equity all that often but it's only $22 more to him and he probably isn't going to put much more money in the pot when we hit (except for the 3 offsuit deuces). We're ahead of many of his overpairs, and we're also oop so turn play could get a little messy for us.

@twitcheroo: Oh yeah, I see what you’re saying. I guess my point is backing up what OmahaDonk is saying about how the smaller raise can get awkward on the turn. But that’s not related to FE at all.
I guess FE in the main pot can have value if BB has a split range of FDs and mid PPs. If BB has a FD, there’s a ton of value to be had if we can get the PFR to fold an overpair: If PFR folds we capture like 90% of the $550 main pot versus 50% of the $550 main if PFR calls (if BB has a FD he holds two of our outs, so we have less than 60% quoted above).. If BB has 88, then I agree we want a call from the PFR.

Yeah I thought about possible FD's but how many does BB really have after cold calling a third of his stack pre with hero holding the Ad? KQd, KJd, QJd? Op describes him as potentially steaming so it's certainly possible he could have some random ass 9Td hand and has just decided **** it I'm recovering or going home but my first instinct is def to put him on mid pp's.

Same could be said for UTG+1 as well, He certainly shouldn't have many FD's but he could def have some, and we should want KQd seeing a turn and river with us.

Close spot tbh.

Yeah, BB's range on the flop is leaning towards any two cards with a flush draw, and weak pairs like 87o, A3s etc. Just by his demeanour being quite resigned, it seemed that he knew he was behind the raisers range, but he had hit the board and that was good enough for him to punt it off.

I guess this complicated things a little bit for me. If I was heads up against UTG+1, I would probably check raise or jam the flop. But the bb jam complicated things for me, and I'm not sure if it should have.

My thinking was, if I jam over the top, I'm only getting called by UTG+1's overpairs, and he's folding his bluffs, and then I'm stuck heads up against the BB with a weak made hand, that ends up holding a lot of the time. Did I give too much credence to that part of the situation? Am I unnecessarily taking a high variance route if I jam?

Are we giving the villain too much credence here though? If we flat the flop and then check jam for the last $500 on a made turn (besides the ace), how often would KK realistically fold?

Never.

I never considered that we should just flat flop. Check/jam turn makes no sense. Either raise flop small and jam turn, or jam flop.

Jam flop seems way better to me. I don’t see any other way to play the hand, really, for reasons OmahaDonk laid out.

By jamming now we get our money in against villain while we’re ahead and before a scare card comes out.

This is wrong. We’re between 70-80% equity favorite against the range you assigned to BB.

BB is irrelevant here, you're overthinking it and the main pot is already 400.

'Folding his bluffs' means folding out his pair equity and better A highs.

I include A highs because his already chosen to bet over half pot on a board he cannot have any sets or straights and in this case no NFD. Put another way, he's making the pot huge completely capped and losing money against well constructed continuing ranges even when he is at the top of his own range.

The proper thought process is recognizing UTG1s mistake and you being in the part of you range that can punish his mistake immediately (he's not good enough to fold so we can't use other cool hands to shove). Your continues are 55-66, NFD/combo, sets, 65s, and all are 100% ck-shoves bc you're just not deep enough to mix them as calls. The idea is you want him to call bc his bet calling range is fkd, this time you happen to have a hand a little lower in range, but still flipping w KK. This is how you win at poker.

Fold preflop, jam as played

Thank you, and everyone else, for their good responses.

There is a lot of good analysis here and I agree with the flop jam.

Only thing to add that hasn’t yet been said is OP shouldn’t be concerned about folding out his bluffs with the flop jam. If V is competent, as you said he is, he’s not going to continue bluffing into a dry side pot. As Chaos said, anything less than a jam is helping him play the turn perfectly.