1/3 Bellagio, eight handed

V, CO, ~$300: 30s WG, seems pretty tight. Haven’t really seen him play any hands. Quiet, reading a book about crypto.

BTN, covers: my husband. He’s been playing very aggressively. Almost never limps in, raises in position, bets when checked to. This tight semi-passive table is a little fed up.

Hero, SB, $450: 53-year-old woman. Playing much tighter than my husband, but looser and more aggressive than the rest of the table. Husband and I have been in a few pots together, but we always show – at least I do. I have 3bet him a couple of times. Always good hands on my end. You never know what he’s going to show up with, although he does not raise w/ any two. I know this, but not sure the table does.

MP limps, V limps, BTN raises to $20, Hero 3bets to $60 w/ AdAh, MP folds, V flats, BTN flats.

Flop ($175): Ks5h2s

Hero bets $100, V flats, BTN folds. I was a little shocked at the flat. He’s been pretty tight, so I actually put him on AK or a flush draw, but the Ks is out there, so it would have to be AsQs. In the back of my mind I guess he could have KK, but I don’t think he’d limp/call pre, although I’ve seen worse.

Turn ($375): Ks5h2s Js

Not a great card. V has ~$140 left. Hero? x/f, x/c, bet?

I like our 3bet sizing (offering poor 8:1 setmining odds to the hubby). If other guy comes along for lol 1/5th of his stack, he gets my stack postflop if he outflops me.

With an SPR of lol 1.4 against the other guy, I might just open ship. It's going to be difficult to fold TP (that he just called two to the face preflop) to one bet, no one folds a draw on the flop, unlikely anything else is continuing anyways, and prevents craptastic spots (like the one we're in on the turn), so lets just do this now.

Pretty stoopid turn card. But with just a 1/3 PSB left, I think I'm just going with it.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I guess it's x/c. V nearly gets the right price to call H with his naked As/X hands, so I think we have minimal FE here. You get a good price to catch his bluffs. His made hands are betting obviously.

Calling the flop before the BTN, should be with a tighter range. He has 55/22/K5s/A-high FD.

I'd X. Can't find enough bluffs off the top of my head, so wouldn't rule out a X/F.

Pre - imho, sizing is small with $34 of dead $, and being OOP.

Js isn't that bad, it just brings in one additional combo that beats you of AsQs. You still beat 6 combos of AK. Doubt he has 55/22 given preflop, and if he did call off 1/5 of his stack pre hoping to hit a set, 'grats to him I guess...he deserves the double-up. Doubt he has KK given preflop, but I've seen stranger things. If you're beat, the most likely hand is KK IMO, second to AsQs and the unlikely smaller sets.

Can't fold if you check and he all-ins... he might have AsKx and just go with it on the turn. I would just all-in yourself on turn for the remaining small amount left in your stack. You're committed, V is committed. You know that, V knows that. If you all-in he's gonna call with AK cause he thinks you might have AK yourself (even if he regards you as a nit due to stereotypes, he ain't folding AK here for a 1/3 PSB).

Nitpick: Pre sizing is a bit small. I'd prefer 3.5x from OOP, and 3x from IP. Then add a little bit extra to account for the 2 limpers (1BB per limper, so add $6 to the 3.5x, bringing the total to ~$75).

Ship the turn. V should call with 100% but might fold a naked spade which would be a good outcome.

Pre was pretty big for this table. I actually didn't expect any callers, except may BTN.

From reading the replies, it seems I was thinking correctly at the table. I x/c his all in, and I expected to see AK or spades. He had 22. LOL. I think he was just fed up pre-flop and tired of folding. Turns out he was very tight but did pay off a few times.

I was not sure if this was a c/f vs. a tight player, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Not surprised, nevertheless AA at or near the bottom of our calling range for 100 bbs eff. Can't blame you.

Ship turn. 80 pre due to oop

If you decided you aren't folding, you would have been better off shipping it. You gave up some level of fold equity by x/c the turn. He might have folded his set.

Bigger pre and smaller cbet otf

AP idk I’d just shove but u played it so weird with ur sizings now the spot is low key scuffed

Bruh

I can see bigger pre, but as stated, $60 was big at this table.

You would go smaller on flop with a flush draw out there vs. two players? I barely bet over half pot.

I agree with shipping the turn if we feel committed (which I do with lol 1/3 PSB left, which is why I actually would probably just ship the flop at this SPR). But it's to protect our equity if we're ahead and prevent our opponent from drawing out for free in a big pot; definitely not for FE, as no one is folding better.

GcluelessNLnoobG

How many days has it been since you played? I see bottom set in this situation fold multiple times in my games in the last month.

GmaybeyouareloosingyournitcrownG

Hello, my name is GG and it has been 564 days since I've played a hand of poker.

The point is, overall we're shoving the turn to protect our equity when ahead, not turning our hand into a bluff for FE purposes (which we should have very little of at this sizing), imo.

ETA: I also like shoving better than checking cuz I just don't see what busted draws he has at this point to bluff; so he simply checks back too many worse hands for free and gets to realize his equity.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Yeah, what's the point of leaving 1/3rd pot behind? The goal of betting isn't to give FDs an unprofitable call. Most of the cold caller's range is middle pocket pairs probably. Bet something that 88 isn't going to fold to.

With this turn SPR I'm very comfortably shipping and hate anything else. Your hand needs protection from single spade hands and is clearly strong enough to go with.

Yeah I love big sizing OOP and as long as u don’t cross the 1/4 eff stack threshold I’m happy going up to 4x

As for flop, small cbet are nice for fold equity when we’re bluffing, and I also don’t wanna put myself in a turn situation where I have 1/2 pot or less behind... I wanna have a real bet left.

So both signs lead to small cbet.

The sizing pre is fine in the sense that whoever called to set mine or try to outdraw hero made a mistake all the while hero can get stacks in very comfortably.

Hero can do 3.5x OOP or 4x with another villain, but is far more preferable to bet small on the flop.

For me betting large versus small on the flop comes down to SPR and commitment.

In big SPR pots, I'm definitely down with small sizing, where "small hand small pot / big hand big pot" comes into play and the emphasis is on protecting our stack behind.

But in small SPR pots, I would definitely lean to betting large, especially when we consider ourselves committed and won't be able to fold to bad later cards (which it looks like none of us can here). The emphasis in committed spots should be about protecting our equity in the relatively big pot, imo.

In this case I misread our stack size and though we were at $300 as well, and thus a lol 1.4 SPR overall, where I think a flop shove should be considered on a drawy board. Probably can't do that with the slightly bigger SPR that we have against the hubby. But overall, still think the flop sizing should be dependent on SPR / commitment.

GimoG

So, those of you who bet small on flop, what do you bet?

What do you do on spade turn?

If I bet $75 and V calls, pot is now $325 and V has $165 behind. Do I still shove? Bet/fold? Check/fold?

Fine with pre, ordinarily agreed with 3.5x-4x oop but btn's open was large enough that 3x achieves essentially all we need out of our 3bet.

With such a low spr, I don't expect to have to work very hard to get any king to stack off so my concern is maximizing value vs hands like TT or A3 that are drawing very thin. I think $60 will achieve this better than $100 so I like betting the flop smaller.

Push turn imo. V shouldn't show up here with very many flushes at all (maybe AQs and ATs and that's it? Even those don't make much sense) and there's no reason to let V realize equity with any random spade he might have in his hand.