9 handed 5-10

Utg (420$) big fish has been losing all night down to his last 420$, he limps

Im utg+2 (2.2k) raise to 40 with QsQh

Btn reg calls (covers)

Sb (2.2k) makes it 130$ he’s a loose passive young guy, haven’t seen him 3bet yet but only played with him for 45 mins.

Utg shoves for 420$

Sb makes an quick « ah crap face » , not sure if he is hollywooding or not…

Hero?

Make it 850 and then watch sb closely.

I don't mind flatting here as we're in position and it keeps in all the hands that we're beating, might even induce a re-jam from SB with a worse hand.

4betting (I know it's technically a 5bet) here seems like it allows SB to play perfectly against us, he'll always continue with better and fold with worse.

death to shortstackers, he has some dumbshit like 44 or 77. We have to call him but we can actually fold if SB jams over us.

Call and see what SB does. If he has a light 3b like AQo/AJ he should fold quickly.

If you call SB should be shoving pretty wide to isolate so I don't like calling and than folding - at least that's what i would do in SB shoes.

Ether decide to fold now, or call the $420 with plans to call the shove.

I don't really like 5betting - you let SB off the hook if he has a hand like TT and you have position on him. I'd much rather 5bet out of position.

Personally I could go ether way with this one, and I don't think you're gonna be making a huge mistake what ever you plan to do.

He's hollywooding much more than he's legitimately concerned with the hand.

If we flat now, we have to have already decided, like djevens said, to call off a jam (220 BB's) and there's no info or reads to really justify that imo.

So the fish limp/jammed from UTG, and a "passive" player just 3bet with a small amateur 3bet sizing. The key question here is the range of the SB, and since he's an unknown and seems passive, I can find a fold here (the l/jam from UTG in general would be a good reason but when you add in the passive player's 3bet from the blinds, it's the icing on the cake to save our $$).

Just a bit more context utg is stuck like 8k and ive seen him do these limp shoves with like 94s, he is on dgaf mode. Sb is new to the table so im not sure if he’s aware yet that utg is on dgaf mode.

If he is aware then that ah crap face is definitely hollywooding now that im thinking back on it.

So he's not a factor then, but he does open up the action to the 3bettor. Whenever I see a sizing like that, I usually conclude he's not that good of a player, which would mean his range is that much more nutted to aa/kk mostly. I would still fold tbh rather than flat and get jammed on, or even jamming now. I would really have to see him personally to make a final decision as to what his 3bet range is, but on the surface it looks like a fold.

Pretty sick spot seeing as how we are over 200bb deep.

If we are raising we should probably just jam because the SPR is going to be less than 1 if we do basically anything else.

I lean towards jamming even though we are super deep.

Yes, if SB calls, we are likely in trouble. But he might call AK/AKs, and even if he is folding worse, that is fine because we deny him equity. Even if he is fairly tight it is possible for him to have hands like JJ, AQ. Even if he folds those hands when we jam, I think that's okay. I wouldn't want to let him see a flop with a hand like AK or AQs and have an A or K come out, or even let him realize his equity a little easier if he flops some kind of flush draw/combo draw type hand.

Probably doesn't matter, everything sucks and you are forced to play a giant pot due to UTG short stack.


Min. raise maybe gets SB to play more passively, but could just decide to shove wider and you can't raise/fold without amazing reads.

Calling gets SB to call with a lot worse, and maybe balanced with both better hands but maybe he decides to shove JJ+,AK,AQs and just call TT and worse. You have position and kind of small ranges, but you'll have roughly 1 SPR on flop so good luck on getting a lot of value from position. You also call it off on almost any flop without an A. Probably the main benefit of calling is getting SB to stack off with worse because you can't hero fold and so are always getting stacked by better.

Shoving directly solves the not folding part, but probably lets SB play perfectly (minus some small amount of "he might be light and trying to get HU with UTG fish).


tl;dr Any strat. involving you making hero folds, at any point, is probably burning money vs. young guy at 5-T.

Call now and fold vs sb jam

Call. If SB is as passive as you say, then he's only going to raise KK-AA if you call the $420. There are many hands like 99-JJ, AJs, AQ-AK that can 3-bet from the SB against a UTG open, but not face a 4-bet. Generally, the only hands that can continue if you 5-bet are going to be KK-AA, and maybe some small % of QQ thrown in. The sizing is pretty standard (3x + dead money from 2-bet calls and limps), so there's not a whole lot we can determine from that.

Just ask yourself what hands can he realistically call a 4-bet with from the SB when he'll have an SPR of ~1.4 going to the flop? The only way he could 5-bet jam with a hand like TT-JJ is if he thinks you're calling too wide hoping that he'll fold everything except his top hands, which he means he has to open up his 5-bet range only if his opponent (you) thinks that he must keep his 4-bet calling range static here. But then, there's some chance you will call off JJ-QQ, so he wouldn't necessarily turn those hands into a bluff here. If you call, you're basically forcing him to fold everything he can't raise with and make very thin calls with JJ-QQ.

If he calls, you're printing more money than if he folds, as his calling EV is going to be negative with a lot of his hands here.

Let's say SB has AK here, UTG fish limps, EP raises, SB 3bet AK because whatever get fish to put money in and/or put pressure on EP raising fish ... but now fish shoves, and EP just calls.

We expect SB to also just call? Why? EP rarely wants to do this with KK, maybe does this with AA more often if they are thinking a lot about ranges and the size of the pot _and_ trapping SB.
Overcalling AK in this spot just sucks, you need EP to check a bunch on 952 flops or you are burning money and it's not like you can just pile money in OOP into a dry side pot.
But EP has in a pretty capped range, and shoving you apply massive pressure to 99-QQ and stop coolers like KJ5 flops vs. JJ.
Most of the time the worst case is that EP sigh calls again with QQ/JJ and you are close to a flip and get to see all 5 cards.

Also let's SB just shrug and call with any random 3bets he made, hoping to hit something.


Not saying we never get what we want, but in general I think I'd be much more aggressive after fish shoves and EP just calls than I would be after fish limps and EP raises.

The dynamic with the fish is an interesting part of the hand. Generally, it should cause both Villain and Hero to widen their flatting and raising ranges since the fish is contributing excess dead money to the pot. Therefore, if we call the $420 I don't think we can fold facing a jam -- our equity with QQ should be in good enough shape versus a range of AK/KK+ plus maybe some other random hands sprinkled in (possibly JJ).

We can also discuss raising over the fish, however, there are some reasons I would favor a call to a raise. Most importantly, (1) I think a raise scares away hands like JJ/TT/AQs in Villain's range -- he might continue these weaker hands if we flat. Also, (2) if we flat and Villain calls, I am happy to play a pot in position versus villain...this is because calling pre grants us some protection if Villain also happens to call with AK. If Vil has AK and outdraws us on the flop, we have an exit route because we did not force commitment preflop. In case the flop comes KJ3 or AJ3, if Villain shows aggression we can safely release our hand since he will be betting into a protected main pot (he has to both beat the fish and also get us to fold, so his bluffing frequency should be reduced). Whereas, if the board comes low like 853, if Villain checks, we can bet in position and put AK in a bad spot. Therefore, our hand of QQ plays relatively well versus Villain's AK if the action goes flat/flat preflop. Put another way, I believe our hand gains more in EV in that branch of the game tree when Vil has AK specifically

Since SB is new to the table, can you say a bit more as to why you think he's passive? Do you have any reason to think he wouldn't 3bet light in this spot? 45 minutes seems like a short time window -- just 20 hands or so. he could have not 3bet yet just because he's card dead.

In game i thought this was a 5bet or fold spot, however it was hard to find a sizing that didnt commit my stack.

If the fish had 500$+ then i could just call or fold my entire range as sb wouldnt be commited with his entire range.

Anyways i jammed , probably a blunder, V snaps with KK (nice hollywood lol) , we flop a Q and hold ha ha

He was mostly limping or calling raises pre, vpiping like 40/10

Do you then think his 3bet range is tight enough to be only KK+/AK and maybe QQ? Do you think he just flats JJ/TT/AQs? If so, that changes the picture quite a bit.

I would say he’s def 3betting tighter than a 5-10 reg , probably not 3bet bluffing Axss or low suited connectors and stuff

I still think he would 3bet value like AQ+, TT+

Like you said its only been 45 mins, so i dont wanna assume that its only KK+ although in this case it was.

Got it. I assume he folds TT/JJ if we jam. Whereas if we flat he continues those hands with a flat or maybe he overplays and 5bets because the pot is getting big and he thinks our flat caps our range. In either case, we extract more value from a wider part of the SB range by flatting QQ here. Thinking about our overall strat, I would also be fine continuing some stronger hands like AA as a flat as well, for balance and to extract more value from the bottom of Vs range.

If we are flatting QQ to call it off I think I would flat 100% of continues ... wouldn't be shocked if robots have a slightly better strat. where they shove ATs/A5s some of the time along with value hands, and have flats, but lol robots.

Even though it’s only been 45 mins we still have some good evidence that his 5b range is likely to be fairly nutted. Some of the things that make someone loose/passive tend to be apparent /converge more quickly (high vpip, cold calling instead of 3b/fold, limping), and we have another good data point suggesting that he’s not a strong player (and may not be used to the stakes)- the size of the 3b. Also if he was the type of player to randomly blast off 5bai with AJ here we’d probably have gotten some hint of that by now. However, it still is only 45 mins and the evidence on the player profile is not strong enough to say that his 3b range is so strong we need to fold, esp with the utg player giving an overlay with a very weak range. Imo jam is defensible but call / fold to jam is better.

Decided to do some ranges, and rough P/L per hand (assumes the 400 is dead money):


Call/fold gives us: -420

Call/call vs KK+: -1336

Call/call vs QQ+: -1206.4

Call/call vs AK,JJ+: +75

Call/call vs AK,AxQx,KxQx,TT+: +368