History: Table conditions have been rather poor for the last 2 hours, and along with being card dead, I hadn't been very active. We have just recently got a few new players, so the dynamics of the table are changing and things are picking up.

Villain UTG ($555) is a white man in his 40s or 50s. I have played with him a handful of times before, but don't have any real reads. He tends to play tight/passive, limping and calling more that betting and raising.

Hero BB ($950)

Other stacks range from $300 to $600.

The rest of the table is filled with other tight/passives, old nits, and two other solid regs. Luckily for me, both of the regs are not in this hand.

Hero is dealt: 96

Pre-flop:
Villain calls UTG, UTG+1 calls, CO calls, BTN calls, SB calls, Hero in BB checks.

Flop ($26): QJ8
SB checks, Hero checks, villain bets $20, CO calls, BTN calls, SB calls, Hero raises to $100, villain calls, everyone else folds.

Normally I would would lead out with a hand like this, but I decided to try for a c/r for more FE..? Villain called pretty quickly, but didn't look confident.

Turn ($283): 3
Hero bets $170, Villain calls.

In retrospect I don't know if this bet was a total spew or what. This obviously sucks if villain shoves, but I really didn't think that he would based on his reaction to my bet. When he calls on the turn, he looks very unsure, almost grimacing. He looks away from the board as the river card comes out. I do not believe that he is acting in order to deceive me.

River ($623): Q
Hero...?

Thoughts on the entire hand appreciated.

Initial response is that a river bet is suicide. I bet he has Q8/Q10/Q9 type hand., maybe QxDD
His stack is only a 1/2 psb left if I am correct, and there just isnt enough room to stack and get a fold profitably. The way the board is designed there diamonds don't fit correctly to put him on a non made hand imo. I would fire non Q rivers though.

I dont mind the way it was played, just hate the river. Puke when he shows j8 sometimes though, but imo there isnt enough FE here. (doubt J8 is in his UTG limp range)

^^ This sounds about right. Its obvious he has the Q, and now that he hit trips, he cannot fold. Shoving/betting is just burning money because we know were getting called.

I think flop/turn is reasonable. Might be better to get showdown reads on what villain is capable of folding before trying it though. The problem with tight/passive players is that they don't typically like to fold once they have a hand that they liked. So their ranges tend to be more inelastic. They will fold out their air/marginals to the first barrel, but rarely fold much of their flop calling range to the second barrel. So a lot of times it's either 1 or 3 barrels with them, depending on villain and board run out. Also, tight players semibluff their draws less, so his flop lead is more likely to be a made hand.

As played I would c/f. Qx+ is a decent chunk of his range. At this point the bottom of his range is KK+ that went for a preflop c/r and didn't get to raise. I don't think a guy like this is capable of laying down AA here. He would tank call a lot IMO.

Back to the turn, I don't see a ton of river cards that are good bluff outs for us on the river. A K or A can easily improve hands like AQ,KQ,AA, KK. So this might be a one barrel type situation where you check turn hoping it checks through. Alternatively, if he bets turn after you check, you could opt for check/shove if you read him as capable of folding Qx OTT. I think the top of his flop calling range is AA, maybe QJ.

Lead flop.

Why?

This reaction, to me, means he has a made hand that he is uncomfortable committing to. He has,however decided to do so and is convinced that only a "bad" river card would complete your draw and beat him.

So, to answer your question about the turn bet, I think yes it was spew. Personally, I don't like the semibluff c/r on the flop with these stack sizes since it left you with this dilemma the many times you whiff the turn.FWIW, I would have just passively c/c the flop and the turn or bet the flop and if called check/call a reasonable turn bet.

Leading flop is bad here. The board is extremely coordinated and we're not getting any folds. Our hand has good equity and we want to maximize FE. We do this by c/ring into a decent multiway field when we are in EP.

The fundamental concept you should be employing here is taking the same line with the top of your range as you do with the bottom of your range. This is the bottom of your range on this particular board, so play it like you would if you had flopped the top. With this in mind, I would c/r a little bigger. When the hand gets back to you, pot is $106. If I have a straight or top two here, I'm probably potting it to price out draws on such a wet board, so we can make it $106 + $20 = $125.

As played, on the turn, villain has $450 behind in a $283 pot. Once again, if we have straights/two pair/sets in our range, we want to price out his draws with the assumption that we're never folding river, so he's getting good implied odds on his call no matter what we bet. For this reason, I like a bet of something like $240, leaving him $210 behind and giving him $730:$240 implied or about 3:1.

River is a horrible card and I'm shutting down. If he shows up with a bigger flush draw and takes down a monster with A/K high, good for him.

For some reason, I get the feeling you checked and he checked back something like A10 and won, but don't get results oriented about this. This is literally the worst card in the deck for you to bluff on.

Personally, I don't like the flop c/r for many reasons. One, we know villain to be passive/stationy. So the fact that he bet out on this board into so many people should raise a red flag. Going off your read of him, I'd say he's only betting made hands here. He would c/c a draw.

Two, c/r a draw is a good play only when we feel we have some FE. Against this type of villain, we don't have that. I mean we already know he likes to call more than bet/raise. So if he's leading out here, he's not folding to your c/r.

Three, what would you do if he shoved over you? How comfortable would you be playing for stacks against this type of player. I'd be pretty scared. You put in $102 so far. Would you want to call off another $453 with 9-high?

I think the turn is a bad barrel card. For one, it didn't change anything. If he called your flop c/r, he's calling this turn. Remember, we don't have FE against this type of player.

Also, we know he's passive. Let's use that in our favor. If we check, there's a strong possibility he checks back and we get a free card. That's a great result.

River is a horrible card. C/F.

because we rep more hands by leading then check/raising.

And what does repping more hands accomplish in this mw situation?

This is probably not going to be the popular opinion. But on the flop we can close the action by calling 20 into 123 -> need 16% equity and we're about 27% to hit our draw with one card. No better flush draws are folding (maybe 10/3 folds) and by betting all we do is ensure we're going to be against a good hand heads-up. It's very unlikely everyone folds with the bloated pot.

Currently we have a large pot with very little of our money in it, and a draw to what we assume is the winning hand.

If we decide to barrel three streets we barely have enough for a credible bet on the river.

I there are better spots to semi-bluff 2 streets.

On the turn if everyone checks to the raiser, either he doesn't raise and we can see the river for free or we'll know our pot odds to call -- and we still have the option to semi-bluff if we wish.

It seems like we're in an ideal situation with the raiser to our left with a chance to win a big pot. If our draw comes in on the turn we can check. If the original raiser raises and several people call we're in a perfect situation with lots of callers between us and the raiser.

If you've seen him lay down TPTK or TPGK before, turn bet is good. Otherwise, I'd just c/c on the turn.

Let's do a quick range analysis. Let's say he's got AQ, KQ, K10 diamonds, A7 diamonds, AK diamonds, A10 diamonds.

For AQsuited, there's 2 combos. KQ suited = 2 combos. AQo = 6 combos. KQo = 6 combos.

For busted FDs, there's 4 combos.

It's say to assume he never folds Q-X, and he always folds busted FDs. So he folds 20% of the time here.

According to this analysis, if we bet $155.75, it's a break-even river bet long term. I would bet $120. Assuming he folds busted FDs as easily to a $155.75 bet as compared to a $120 bet, a $120 river bet should be profitable.

Alright guys, thanks for the advice.

I ended up shoving the river and villain folded claiming to have J8. Immediately after the hand I though to myself "Wtf did I just do?". Probably one of the dumbest plays I have made in weeks.

Yeah, you need to recognize his range is usually only Q-X or busted FDs by this river. Since you hold one combo of a FD, and he's probably not limping like 45 UTG, the rest of his range is big busted FDs. But you need to recognize that there are MANY combos of Q-X he can have. There are very few flush draw combos he can have. Shoving river is a hugely losing play IMO.

Exactly what I said in OP. Once in a while he has j8 but not often since he was UTG. Bad shove and you agreed so also. Phew, at least you didnt go broke =)

Yeah, I think I was on semi-tilt from a previous hand where I was facing an all-in bet from a solid player OTR. I held QQ on a Kc5s6h9h8s board, and based on how the hand played out, I could pretty much remove all Kx hands from his range, so he was basically repping a set/straight and maybe some two-pairs. I was still questioning whether or not I made the correct lay down.