Hi all,
Just a quick sanity on a preflop straddeled spot that I ran into last night playing at foxwoods. Effective stack is $300 (V3's stack who is in the BB).
V1 is a reg, in his 20s, seems like a TAG. V2 is brand new guy that just transferred from a different table so no reads besides that he seems south american and in his late 20s. V3 is older dude, probably in his 50s, has some weird lines, wouldn't qualify him as passive or aggressive. He likes to flat wide pre and take weird lines post such as c/c flop and lead turn, I have also seen him flat a utg pfr after several callers and donk lead into mtwp with 2nd pair.

V3 is in the BB, UTG straddles, I look at TT, I make it $50, V1 flats from CO and V2 flats too from the BTN, folds to V3 who instantly shoves all in from the BB.

I have seen some weird non-passive play from this guy postflop but that does not necessarily correlate to preflop behavior. If I put him on a range of QQ+,AK and some combos of AQ then I am behind 18 combos of PPs and ahead of say 16 combos of AK and if we only assume he does this with AQs then that makes it 20 combos. Another thing I considered was, what do V1 and V2's ranges look like and do they have any blocking/card removal effects on V3's range and make this more of a fold?

pot is currently 10+50(H)+50(V1)+50(V2)+50(V3) = 210 and it is another 250 to call. I am pretty confident that V1 and V2 are not calling.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks.

Meh. It's prettty close.
We are a 35% dog vs TT+, AKs, AKo, AQs.
We are a 33% dog vs JJ+, AKs, AKo.
We are a 41% dog vs 99+, AKs, AKo, AQs.
We are a 25% dog vs QQ+, AKs.

Fwiw: you can't really just count 'combos I'm behind and combos I'm ahead of' pre flop as when you are behind you don't have the same equity as when you are ahead. I.e. you are a 54% favorite against AKs, but an 19% dog vs AA. It's not 1:1 comparable.

Generally I'm not going to fold here if I have any reads that V has a small spaz factor.
If we give him JJ}+, AKs, AKo, and 3 combos of something else (in this case 2xKJo, and 1x66) as a 9% spaz factor, we have 35.8% equity which yields us a +$4 expectation.

Well I totally read it wrong so edited whole post! I think its close, lol

If that's our analysis, I think the long term EV of having a shorter stack is worth more than $4. Even if we are 100% correct in our read, this has to be a fold unless his spaz range is much much wider (like any PP).

I'm assuming we can top back off to at least $500 here when we lose.
And that we are well rolled.
If we are on our last bullet, or we are not well rolled, we need to know that to reconsider the situation imo

Thinking that he has to have any PP here is a huge leak.
If he has even 99+, AKs, AKo we have 40.1% equity, returning $284 on our $250 investment. That's a massive $34 return, or 13.6% ROI on our $250 investment. If you're passing up this spot (when we think that his range is even 99+) then you are missing lots of value.

If you think his range here is 22+, AKs, AKo, we are a massive 59.5% favorite, and can expect a huge $422.45 return, or 168% ROI on our 250.

When I get in these situations, I just have to decide if I want to gamble or not. Do you think V3 would do this w/ AK, AQ, or small pp to squeeze you all out? Do you usually fold to such aggression? Are you seen as tight/nitty or loose/aggro? In other words, how does V3 see you? What does he think you have and what does he think you will do?

I think that in live poker as opposed to online, what matters is whether I have a winning or losing image. I have been running bad that session and lost every single pot I have played against him so far.
I actually had a solid image but always lose to this dude where i raise pre, and I completely whiff the flop, he either floats or donk leads and I give up by the turn. So i'd say that from his point of view he's been owning me in this session.

edit: another hand I remember villain from this hand being involved in. Gets folded to him in LP, he raises, folds to BB who 3bets, V calls. Flop is 3J7r BB leads and V insta 3x it. BB is perplexed, tanks and evetually ships and V snap calls, BB has AA and V as AJo.

With this dynamic, I'm gambling.

I don't understand how you can be so sure, the players behind you won't overcall. your 300 eff with vill 3, but what about with the other villains to act behind?

given this this is a most call. the problem lies in the two players behind still to act. I absolutely do not want one of then to over call behind me.

If my read is that they would have 3 bet any monster the first time JJ+, then I would jam myself here.

I'm never folding to V3, but I think the other guys stack size and tendencies are important here. So yeah calling or jamming but never folding.

wanted to say, if your running bad and have a **** image, table change. In a room like foxwoods there is no reason to sit at a table for a prolonged period of time with a less than clean image.

I've really started paying attention to this over the past year or so and it's done wonders for me. For years I used to sit at a table for hours knowing I had zero credibility and would never ever get someone to lay down a hand to me.

I'd think, no problem, I'll make a hand gii and double through, getting value now will be easy. There practically fighting each other to get in pots with me! Unfortunately you have to make a hand first, and it just doesn't happen like that for some reason. Nothing works, and honestly relying on making the nuts as a strategy is a losing proposition.

I know it sounds trivial. You think that since you played with these guys all day/night you have perfect reads, you know exactly what's going on in every pot. Still once your beat image wise, it doesn't go away. You can be by far the best player at the table and some how it's like pulling teeth to dig out of the whole that's been created.

top off before you transfer, take a new seat and start fresh. I can't stress enough how this has totally and completely changed sessions for the better for me.

Your no longer the guy that can't win a pot, that's stuck like chuck and dying a little bit more on every board pair, flush completing river, nit check raise on a dry board etc.etc.etc. Now your a guy heading to the table buying in for the max ready to crush once again.

Why'd you open to 5x pre? Not saying it's bad jw. I'd probly muck here with 2 players behind even if you don't think they are calling. Some of the time they are still going to wake up with something and some of the time you are actually just crushed by the guy shipping. Unnecessary gamble imo.

You need roughly 35% equity for this to be breakeven. If you give him a range of AJs+, AQ+ and 99+, it's close.

I think this is a breakeven call unless he is super spewy. With 2 players behind, even more reason to fold. With JJ+/AKs I probably re-ship, but not with TT.

tough fold, mainly because we are mostly behind here and the villains behind us might be priced in to call after our call.

Stacks of other players behind are pretty important. I'm not folding.

Nothing in Op leads us to conclude that V3 is necessarily going to spazz pre with, say, AQs. I think racing against AK/AQ is the best we can hope for, but more often we're up against QQ+ (thus dead to 2 outs) more often than not. I'd have to be (a)feeling really gambooly; and (b)up quite a bit for the session to make this call. Even shortstacked, even with lots of dead money, I'd usually let this one go.

People shove any pocket pair in this spot all the time. Given description of V his range should be like KQs+/ATs+/22+/AQo+

+1

I snap this off all the time unless vil is a SUPER nit.

We're only a 40% dog (more than enough equity to call) if V's range is {JJ+ AQ+} and I think that's actually being pessimistic given how much is in the pot and effective stacks.

I know low stakes players are generally really stupid about preflop and love to call 1/5-1/3 of their stack rather than just getting it in but I still find it hard to believe a random player never goes "i have a pair|two face cards, gamble gamble" with all that dead money.

You should be thrilled if both players behind call because they are "priced in", if they would feel their hands were otherwise too weak to call. Yes our odds of winning the pot go down but our cash equity goes up. Better to have 30% of $1200 than 40% of $700.

fwiw, I have $450 in front of me, V1 has about $1200 and V2 just bought in for the max of $500.

This is actually a good point. I should be more proactive about changing tables when I no longer have a winning image. Sometimes it's tricky because you see soft spots at the table but you're just running bad against them.

I prob get it in since we mostly ignore those behind and I think someone can def shove smaller pairs.

I don't want to speak too much for another poster, but his point makes sense if he means that if you're calling based on a potentiality for spazz, that spazz has to (potentially) go as low as 22. In other words, the ranges you're giving him are perfectly linear, whereas it's probably more like QQ+/AK 100% of the time, JJ/AQ 40% of the time, and then 22+/AJ/KQ/JTs/etc 10% of the time.

Not that it's exactly that as I mostly pulled that out of my butt, but the point is that if our call relies on villain being capable of doing something weird some %age of the time, then that Weirdness Quotient would have to be multiplied to a wide range for it to significantly affect the EV of our call.

Allllllll of that being said, the fact that V3's been mixing it up enough for Hero to notice, and that he's specifically showndown some weird range-mergy bet, this player is absolutely capable of squeeze shoving over a straddler, a raiser and 2 callers for just 6x's the raise. I don't really think this is close.

I would shove to keep players behind from price-calling their broadways.

RE: OP's question about blockers - I think that can be an interesting/hazy point of discussion in some spots, but described players' flatting ranges are so varied (especially small PPs, mid SCs, Axs and good broadways) that I don't think it's going to have much of an effect here. It's probably slightly more likely than usual that an ace is already out of the deck, but it pales in comparison to other factors, imo. If there were a nit or someone had cold-called a 3b or something, ranges would be static enough that we could maybe start to consider it.

Um it's profitable to jam low pairs in this spot quite often. The question is if the villain would.

Right, absolutely. By weird, I only meant out of the ordinary. Not a value judgment.