Just finished up a session (same session as my other post) but had one question from my last orbit -

End of the session and I'm up just about 2/3 of a buyin (stack at 525).

Straddled pot by (I don't know how to describe this Villain) a straddle-loving? player, he's straddled 10+ times and has been raised off his straddle every single time. One caller immediately to my left, and I've got 79 on the button. I raise to 20, there's a very fair chance that the limper folds pre-flop, as my only other pre-flop raises in the past hour or so have been KK and AQ. Of course, both call and we see a flop. Pot 60.

AK8

So I'm flipping through my notes and I find dejavu from the same session (posted a little bit ago..). This hand is different because I have a good positional advantage and at this point in the session I'm regarded as a thinking, winning player who has taken a lot of good lines and has made some very unexpected (but correct) folds.

I decide to lead this flop for 50 and I get one caller. Pot 160

Turn T

Villain has about 200 behind.

Hero?

What do you know about the caller? His stack size and play tendencies make a difference here. Default is to check turn behind. You may be able to bet some villains off a single pair here, but without stack sizes and more information on villain there is no way to know. Betting again also raises risk of being raised, which will probably price you out of the pot. Another bet is building a big pot and you don't have a huge draw here. It is unlikely a pair is good here and there is a good chance a jack isn't a clean out. The risk of flush over flush is low but depends heavily on villain.

Preflop is somewhat questionable. Most of the guys who love to raise their straddles are very loose and not likely to fold preflop. I wouldn't raise a suited one gapper here all the time, and against a villain who loves to raise their straddle I just let it go more often then not.

A $20 raise to a straddle is typically a very small raise, no? Heck, this is pretty much my standard raise in a non-straddled pot. I'm cool with the preflop plan, except I would make it $30 to have a much better chance at accomplishing it.

There is no reason to bet so much on the flop. They either have something worth calling with (i.e. Ax/etc., which they are never folding to almost any flop bet size), or they don't (i.e. T9hh/55/etc., which they are almost never calling with to almost any flop bet size). I would bet $25 to see if this gets the job done. Plus if we're raised we'll most likely get good odds to chase our draw thanks to typically very poor raise sizing versus small bets.

On the turn, if pot was like <= stack size, I think I'd go ahead and shove with our monster draw as our FE + hand equity will probably make this profitable. However, with the pot size being a little more than stack size, I don't know if a shove is going to be as profitable (and we are more-or-less shoving cuz we'll have to shove the rest in on the river if we whiff as I doubt 9 high is going to win). So with this remaining stack, I would just take my free card and try to hit.

GcluelessNLnoobG

You're not first to act on the turn. What did V do? Check?

Turn action depends on quite a few factors. Has Villan been getting to the river a lot. Wha sorts of hands will he fold to a double barrell? Will he fold strong 1 pair hands? I think that we really don't get many foods on AKx boards after 1 call. I think I'm ok with checking to see the river. I think I'm betting river for value around 1/2 -2/3 pot and potentially bluffing river for1/3-1/2 pot to get random missed draws and weak 1 pair hands to fold.

Again this is all based on the very little info you gave and has little value unless we have more details of villan.

GG pointed out some important things regarding your bet sizing which is valuable even with the little info.

im all in. two thirds of the deck is gona miss us, get it in now to mix in some FE.

edit: betting so much on the flop kind of narrowed our options considerably. He is probably more likely to call it off at this point anyway, if you wana take the easy way out check behind on the turn and see a free river.


.

+1

If you bet 1/2 V will call with a one-pair hand and you won't be able to bluff him off on the river. I think shoving maximizes FE and maximizes your chance of folding out one-pair hands.

Pre flop is meh, but possibly ok. We can't really expect to take down the pot against this guy, but with our image we should be able to get some good FE going post flop on good boards (like this one) and we will make a lot of disguised hands on flops that normally miss our tight pre flop raising range.

On the flop I think we need to decide if we are trying to stack off here.
And if we are trying to stack off, we need to decide over how many streets.

If we want to shove the turn ever, I think we should actually pot the flop and shove the turn. Would be much closer to what we'd do with a strong Ace here imo.

If we want to stack off in 3 streets (as a bluff assuming we don't hit out hand) I would rather 1/2 pot, 1/2pot and shove the river for $160 into $210 to get more FE on the river. There should be a decent number of weak and strong draws, plus some AX and KX hands that we can fold out given that line.

If we ended up binking on the turn I'd make the turn bigger (for value) and so that we can shove the river for a smaller realtive bet size (something like $80 into $120 ott) so that we have only $140 to shove into $280 on the river making it harder for villain to fold getting almost 3:1.

If we are not trying to stack off then I'm still $30 on the flop, and checking behind on the turn so that we can realize our equity and have lots behind to capitalize on and keep our IO high. I just don't want to middle our selves and not generate a high amount of FE and also not leave our selves room to move.

My goal in the hand post flop was to stack off on a turn card. My image was such that I thought an AK board would go through regardless of their holding, barring AK. Turn whiffed but brought me 6 more outs, with the increased outs I opted to check back and attempt to realize some SDV.

River was a complete whiff, and I think that betting here is getting looked up by so many Ax that didn't believe the story (checking turn is fos if you've got AJ+, as I should definitely be betting TPGK to fold out draws) or worse if they believe they've got a good read. This is half the reason I checked on the turn, because I wanted to be able to get a crying call from a good river shove (if I hit a 7) or a good 3/4 pot sized bet from the last remaining club. Hands turn over and Villain has 55.

I guess I'm winning against him so often in these spots that I'm okay with his bad play but I really doubted my turn and river decisions on this board.

you turned great equity tho daft punk and he's not hero calling your turn jam off with fives. people love to float with things like medium pocket pairs to see if you give up on the turn, this is why it's important to size your cbet out correctly to leave room for a turn barrel.

How do you take notes in a live session?

Sent from my SM-G900T using 2+2 Forums

Looks good to me up until this point. Now ship.

How many players are left to act after us preflop? What has the standard iso been of the straddle? can't say I've ever before in my life considered l/rr'ing the button, But that might be a play here

Anyway, I'm really not sure what preflop accomplishes.

OTF: if we plan on barrelling, we should bet smaller to keep his range wide. A $50 cbet is hardly going to get calls from Kx.

OTT: If we're going to barrel, there's no reason to make it any more than 120. The absolute value is high enough to hold weight, the size relative to the pot is plenty to be a vbet, and we've made it clear that we're playing for stacks. It looks much stronger, and we'll save ourselves $40 every so often.

And for the tr-tr-triple post, I'll stop using all this hypothetical language.

I am, in fact, inclined to double barrel this board because:

1) I think a small cbet will get a lot of calls from things that are willing to c/f the turn to a big bet (Kx, non combo club draws, some stubborn split pairs, some TPNK).

2) we are very far from the nut club draw. This means two things: a) pot/check back blank turn/shove river when the club hits looks a wholllle lot like a flush, so anything we beat is going to tank (even baby flushes). he'll still call enough to shove for value, but 1/2 pot, 2/3 pot, shove is much harder to read and will get more stubborn calls from TPGK+. b) getting non - combo club draws to fold on the turn is a good thing because the value of securing the pot against them outweighs the small margin ghat our IO outweigh our RIO. If we had QJ, obviously we would loathe to price out draws.

3) I don't often have a non-value hand that I'm willing to fire into this board. Obviously recognizing cbetting board texture is giving villain too much credit, betting twice into a board with two Broadways looks very strong to live fish, and they're going to put us on AK and fold a whole lot, so it's a ****ty spot to have an overly value - heavy range.

Since you already blew all the lesser hands out of the water with your cbet size I'm inclined to ...... sure, I'll still barrel here. I expect him to tank most the time, but on this turn, we don't need a lot of folds to make a profit, and as I said above, I don't even think seeing a club river with 160 left behind is even that massive of a money printing spot. As I said, I make it 120.

Pre is o.k dont mind it at all

On the flop...im checking sometimes...unless you plan on just barreling the turn and river.

If i check im b/r the turn depending on reads texture etc shoving river

Obviously it's okay. 97s OTB with no one expressing interest in their hand in front of us is a pretty decent situation and there are several ways to make money of it. I'm just not sure what raising actually accomplishes that makes it superior to overlimping. As played, we're seeing the flop with 3.25:1 SPR, severely limiting our positional advantage and raising the onus on how often our hand has to flop well for it to be worth it.

Sure, there's dead money, and we can raise pre/cbet flop and turn a profit with any two live cards, but we can do that with a wide range of hands, and I'd rather save our ammunition for hands like Q9o that prefer low SPR pots. Also, OP still hasn't answered where the straddler is, and if we're acting in EP preflop, then this isn't a very good idea anyway because there are too many players left to act behind us for us to have any idea if the table likes their hands. So if that's the case, we'll probably have to play a pretty tight iso range, like 87s+.

Incidentally, if the straddler is near to our right, then we're either going to have to start restraddling and/or ask for a seat change button. You can't be acting EP or even MP every single time preflop and expect to have many options at your disposal.

Sorry for the late response -

At this particular card club the straddle is only allowed UTG - I probably could have expressed that. I really wanted to flex my image a bit as well, take advantage of a straddler who hasn't called a single one of his straddles pre. 20 has been the goto bet size that has gotten folds, I wasn't going to put 40 in and fold to a shove the time he picks up a hand when 20 will accomplish the exact same thing with this player.

We're on the button, indicated in the OP, so we are last to act during this hand which I thought would be a huge advantage to our playing style and image as tight and winning. An AK board that gets floated was very disconcerting for me because I figured 55 would give my hand a ton of credit given my propensity to be a patient player, particularly in this session.

Ahhhhh, I see. I thought you might he had been there for a dozen hands, had straddled 10 times from all positions, and was yet to see a flop.

I'd still like a seat change button because it's pretty bad luck to have the game automatically turned into 2-3-6 every time we have the button (basically chopping effective stacks in half and giving 3/2s as many players the chance to act behind us preflop).

Anyway, for the time being, I'd still plan to flat this hand. Again, I don't at all think that raising to 20 is "bad," and we'll certainly turn a profit doing so, but we want to make our button iso range as wide as possible without people playing back at us, so we're better off saving this play for hands that we don't really love to play in limped pots. You'll feel grateful to have your PFR / cbet image still clean when you get dealt T6s / K8o / 85s type hands.

(I think it goes without saying, but we can't rep a l/rr in this scenario, so scratch my first post ITT.)

Meh, you could also argue that turning himself into the Super Blind, UTG is basically chopping up 2bbs and sharing it with the other 9 players at the table, and surely BU is going to be the biggest benefactor of his blind contribution. We have our finger on the pulse of how the table has reacted to it, and our readjustment plan is most favorable from the button, so we're actually pretty cozy in our seat.

Intuitively, I feel that the MPs benefit the most because they were only planning on playing a strong range anyway, and now they can build a pot fast with their TPGK type hands in 2-3 way pots, but I'm not so sure.

Sorry for dominating this thread so much. It's just not often in this sub that we get to talk about something other than how to play KK+ and sets.

I guess my follow up question to that would be this:

If I can represent pretty strong from having a tight image, and an AKx board comes off on the flop, how much should I bet if I wanted to stay in line with my perceived range? The pot before the flop is 60, and I was the preflop aggressor, straddling aside.

about half pot. you don't wana bet quarter pot when you hit it and bet pot when you miss otherwise the good players will start to pick up on that.