2/5, 7-handed, for the most part, a very splashy table
5 hours into the session, almost zero 3-bet fold equity and successful blind steals are vanishingly rare.

Hand 1

Villain A (25yo Asian male, $1000, spewy LAG 45/25) open raises to $15 in UTG
Villain B (25yo Asian male, $1000, decent 30/25 LAG) calls in UTG+1
Villain C (50yo Latinx male, $600, 50/10 fish) calls UTG+3
Hero ($700) calls in BB with A3dd

Flop ($62): Kd 4d 2s

Villain A and Villain B check, Villain C bets out for $15, Hero calls, Villain A calls, Villain B raises to $75, Villain C folds

What do you do?



Hand 2

Villain A (from the previous hand) ($1000) opens to $15 UTG
Villain B (from the previous hand) ($1000) 3-bets to $50 in UTG+1.
Folds around to Hero in BB ($500) with JJ

What do you do?

H1:
Preflop is good. I’ve stopped 3betting wheel suited aces in these call happy tables where action is typically multiway. There’s no fold equity and they play extremely well in multi-way pots with stack depth.
Flop: If the PFR had bet you could mix between call and raise, depending on his sizing, but you have to raise flop 100% of the time facing the bet from the preflop caller who has a weak and capped range.
As played, your hand looks face up like a draw and we may find it difficult to get paid if we flat now and hit our hand later. I’m perplexed with what strong value V2 can have here after he checks flop. He shouldn’t have any sets. His most likely hand is a draw of some kind or a weak king (KJ,KT, maybe) or air. Options are: call, or backraise to $250 and jam any turn. Leaning toward the second option even though your line will look FOS. Villain looks FOS too so I think it’s fine. We get a lot of folds on the flop. We also have a hand that’s a slight favorite against KJ, so, we should feel safe raising flop against even the top of Vs range.

H2:
Gross spot. Def 4bet or fold. Think id fold TT. JJ is borderline, probably too strong to fold, lean 4bet, especially 7-handed. $150/fold to jam.

Hand 1: Preflop is meh. The weak AXs is going to flop more draws then anything and those are going to be marginal at a very laggy table from a blind. Your getting a really good price though so seeing the flop isn't bad.

The situation on the flop is odd with villain A & B both checking. This is the sort of flop that a spewy LAG would habitually bet and then a decent lag would likely take a stab at after the preflop raiser checks.

As played mostly fold. Your hand is too obvious as a draw if you flat twice. At a table with a lot of BS raises you should also consider a reraise. Your hand will still be obvious as a draw but the only hands that V2 might have that you really fear are 44/22. He has some air bluffs, some KX and some worse draws that you are in good shape against.

Hand 2: Reraise to $150 and be happy if they fold. If they jam mostly fold but you have to consider going with it at a table where villains might jam AK and occasionally worse.

H1: NFD is a Call almost all the time, absolutely do not fold. Ck all turns.
H2: Call only. V1 has lots of hands, V2 likely iso lots of hands.
Folding is just ridiculous. 4b only serves to eliminate the spot and strengthen up V2. Your call means V1 calls a lot, fantastic setup for post.

+1, although idk that we really need to jam all turns. its kinda image/meta dependent bc as you said neither player should really have much.

folding pre or at any point on the flop would be crazy

imo this is actually a pretty good spot for hero, although its also image/meta dependent. villain A (spewy lag) can be opening pretty wide so villain B (good lag) can also be pretty wide. if hero has an aggressive/splashy image then would definitely 4b here; if hero has a tight image its not nearly as good a spot bc 4b is perceived as QQ+/AK and cold calling is usually like TT-QQ/AK/AQs (so we are playing a narrow range face up with a hand actually in that range)- JJ is still probably strong enough to call though if we play reasonably post.

On further reflection after reading posts above, I was incorrect to say H2 is a gross spot. Perhaps TT is a gross spot and 99 is a fold for me. I think Villain B is probably 3betting a standard EP opening range against the bad LAG. So any suited Broadway, 88 or 99+, AQ+. So JJ is profitable as a flat or 4bet. I say 4bet or fold just because I don’t like having flats from the blinds when I’m not closing the action at this stack depth. If we had 700-800+ back I would start to develop a flatting range. This is a personal preference — I really hate playing a condensed range OOP against a LAG. I feel like I get put in a lot of tough spots when my range is face-up and IP player chooses to barrel off. So I simplify and play my entire range as 4bet or fold.

Edit: Also, side note: my experience in playing bigger games (mainly 5/T) is that you get punished a lot more when you cold call 3bets. Initial opener can put you in a world of hurt by 4betting light with bottom of range hands like KQo. This probably isn’t relevant to this hand because Villain A is a bad player, and I expect he’ll react to the 3bet by just calling too often and 4betting a narrow range.

A couple of previous comments are really off (no offense)

First hand: Preflop super standard, flat>3 bet>fold. On the flop, call/call should be most frequent line although you can raise at either decision point as well. Folding at any point is out of question (contrary to QuadJ), you have a potentially live A, a gutter, and the nut flush draw, you have the odds to continue vs. any hand.

Second hand: Completely disagree with Amanaplan, the only thing I would not do is start developing some sort of cold-call range here out of position that will be super face-up and hard to play postflop. Folding, 4-bet/folding, 4-bet/calling should all have relatively close EV's so I don't hate any option (lean to 4-bet/fold) so wouldn't sweat whatever you do.

H1: Your argument is solid, but maybe the flop isn't stone obvious. We're going to face turn aggression when we check all turns, as we should with our range. And most good rivers will kill action. I think this was Quad J's point and it's worthy of more consideration, as folding is tight but not absurd oop. I think raising might be better than calling the flop.

H2: I had a hand a few years ago almost identical to this one against two LAG regulars. The positional aspect was the biggest problem for me. I think Amanaplan is good enough to play these Jacks OOP against two ranges but I'm obviously not. (In the event, I ended up folding to a squeeze play from Vil A after I smooth-called with my Jacks and exactly as Chaos said, my Vil A showed KQo and the other guy showed ATs. I was kicking myself for not 4b!)

I think to get to a higher level, you have to develop some calling range here in this situation as Amanaplan suggests, particularly against better players. But I agree with you and Chaos that most of us should 4b/fold here with JJ oop until we've constructed a reliable range/scenario for this problem, which is quite common oop.

I wanted to clarify that I wouldn't go around advocating working too hard on developing cold-calling ranges FTB. Still, there are spots that we evaporate when ramming in cold 4s, and this is one of them. I'll also add that while absolute position naturally counts for a lot, relative position means a lot too and this is (non-intuitively) one of those spots where being OOP can benefit us.
The times we call, UTG calls too plenty, and the times he raises, UTG1 is going to have a tougher time bc of our cold call (it's going to force his iso range to tighten up and potentially play for stacks against US not just the Spew. Granted, some might be uncomfortable ripping JJ in for 200bb, but there should be a lot of info to glean before having to make that decision. The times we go to a flop 3 ways, our presence in the hand is, again, going to edge UTG1 to have a more value heavy continuing range, especially if the spot continues. Overall, there are just very few flops that I would check fold, and, well, this is all getting lost in the weeds, I just think that it's just too expensive to Fold too much/4b too much in this setup to the point where folding is actauly spew.

Virtually every higher level pro I know won't develop cold call ranges vs. 3 bets OOP, and most won't even in position unless super deep

hand 1 : getting 3:1 I am definitely highly interested in seeing a turn here. We have almost direct pot odds and plenty of implied odds as well.


hand 2 : fold

curious why you think call should be most frequent on the first flop decision? in practice, the other 3 players are frequently going to have very weak ranges and i actually think it makes sense for a lot of our continues to be raises at this point. villain A (spewy lag, pfr) is probably not checking much when he connects with this board, villain B (also a lag) is incentivized to bet often with non-whiffs given the other ranges/players (protection in 4way pot + start building a pot with better Kx vs villain C) (altho ofc can/will be checking some Kx here), and villain C just doesnt have much when he bets 15 (high level analysis, i know). i like raising at the second point too although i dont feel that strongly about it. agreed on pre and that flop is never a fold.

a lot of players at this stake are not going to be perceived to have any cold 4b bluffs in this spot (despite the fact that its quite a good spot)- if hero is perceived that way then we probably cant call a 5b jam with jj imo, at least against villain B. to be clear tho, i prefer 4 betting here and i think the most likely outcomes are like fold/fold>>fold/call>>>>>>anything else. i do think if we are ranking preflop then 4b>call>fold, but i also would not recommend incorporating an oop cold call range here (with that said, it is much much less likely to get punished than in a higher stakes game imo).

In theory you shouldn't raise that often because villains shouldn't be betting so frequently and you don't have the nuts that often, in practice is a very different story. I don't mind call/raise in either flop decision point, only thing I hate is folding a hand with virtual pot odds to call + ton of implied odds

And to reiterate on JJ, only option I hate is call, fine with fold or 4-bet

These are both hands where 2/3 potential options (raise/call/fold) are roughly equivalent and the 3rd option is significantly worse (fold in first hand, call in second)