1/3 NLHE, 9 handed.

V - Have seen him once or twice. MAWG. He's loose passive and losing player. He tries to get fresh sometimes and stabs here or there when it doesn't make sense. Was playing better when he sat down but lost a bit and keeps adding 100$ and is now playing looser. 370$ HJ.

H - Has been running over the table. Sat down and kept getting AK and a few other premiums. Only one 3-betting. But also 3-bet a fish with 42s and stacked him on a 7-4-2 flop when he had 88. Just a mix of run good and some good reads. V might not be paying attention though. Covers. UTG+1.

Side Vs - loose passives that are bleeding down, both have about 400. BB and UTG.

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UTG fish straddles 6, Hero opens Q 9 to 25, V calls, BB fish calls, UTG calls. 4 ways.

Flop 100 - Q 8 3

Fish check, Hero bets 35, V calls, Fish fold. HU OOP.

Turn 170 (310 back) - 2

Hero bets 65, V calls

River 300 (245 back) - A

Hero?

Fold pre and it’s not close, I would mostly check flop. This isn’t a 3-street hand since your kicker is so weak so you need to either check turn or river. AP check river.

Fold pre. Check the flop. Check turn once you bet flop. Check river as played your hand is very very face up

Fold pre.

On the flop, are we just going to bet every top pair ever, no matter the kicker, no matter that we are out of position, no matter how multiway we are, no matter how dry the board is? Check flop. As always if betting I would go 25% pot, but here.

Even heads up OOP when we are supposed to have this hand it is supposed to be mainly checked. So is AQ. People Cbet too much OOP. Throw in the multiway factor and the fact that we shouldn't even have a kicker this bad and it is a clear check on the flop.

Check turn after betting flop.

Check river overvaluing our hand on all prior streets.

Agreed. Fold pre. Check flop. If flop was cbet, check turn. As played to river, check river.

For those saying check call flop. Are you check calling down to the river for small sizing? And just folding if the A hits?

I really diasagree with checking the flop. You don't need to balance here vs these guys and you really benefit from getting hands like JT and Ax to fold.

I'm with the small bet to not give free equity with a slew of hands and playing guessing games oop vs multiple people on later streets.

And you will get calls from all worse pairs anyways.

The turn is where I would start checking.

For small size on all 3 streets call down. We aren't checking to fold. We are checking to call. But this is really an unnecessary hand to have in our range.

The idea that we should open-fold Q9s is absolutely insane, of course (in addition to not addressing your question).

I actually think the Turn is your inflection point—once HJ calls your flop bet on a board this dry (with two guys still to act after him), our goal should be to showdown as cheaply as possible. This isn’t a three street of value hand—I’m checking unless we acquire additional equity. (Mostly check-calling, but definitely checking.) What are you looking to get value from—Q4/Q5/Q6 and Q7? A non-believing 8? Seems awfully ambitious.

AS PLAYED: once you get to the River, I am torn. I think we should turn our hand into a bluff SOME of the time, shoving to get him to fold KQ/QJ/QT, with us repping AK/AQ and all the sets.

The biggest problem is that we know he has a value hand (cuz he called twice multi-way), and when we have a Queen it makes it more likely that he doesn’t…and if he doesn’t have a Queen, then he has a set and was trapping, and our shove will get snap-called.

So I don’t know. I think it’s for that reason that a hand like 78/89 makes for a better River bluff candidate than our Q9, and we ought to just check-fold this one. (Also, there’s a chance it just goes check-check and we beat Q4.)

I’m leaning towards check-folding, but I think mixing in a shove on occasion is fine too.

Solvers don't open this hand UTG with live rake with a min raise, let alone 4x. Why do you think it is an open? People are going to be cold calling hands like KQo, QJs, QTs, maybe QJo. A9s. The straddle definitely can easily call with hands like QTo.

The old adage of tighten up when everyone else is loose? That totally applies to this hand. Only, it would not be tightening up to fold Q9s from UTG, it would just be standard.

To the people saying fold pre, I purposely chose this hand because I felt it gets borderline in the sense that my confidence playing post with these guys is widening my range. Throughout the night I was calling UTG fish's cold 15$ opens next to act with all kinds of semi-trash (Q8s, A2o, 96s) because he was just splashing around...this hand is a little different because I'm the aggressor OOP. But I felt QJs and maybe QTs would be opened UTG+1 here for me.. maybe still too loose who knows. For reference, any 3bet at this table would be exclusively AA KK or AK QQ some of the time.

Result:

I think the open is actually fairly close in a vacuum.

At a table where you are almost never getting 3bet and playing post vs a bunch of bad loose passives I think it's fine.

I like it!

I suppose the best argument in favor of doing this is that we can heavily discount the possibility of him having 88 or 33 here simply because LLSNL players so rarely play deceptively post-flop. (But I still think in theory 89 is a better River bluff candidate than Q9.)

if you think he has you beat when you put in 2 bets with Q9 that should show you why everyone wants to check somewhere with it. dunno i disagree with almost of this post but if you want to play with the UTG fish, you should 3bet those hands to iso him instead of calling at a table where people are routinely going 5 ways to the flop and unable to 4b light. i mean really you should fold them but if you're going to vpip them you can't let it go multiway when you're sandwiched with trash

Preflop is a very obvious fold UTG. You can start working in some opens with QTs but even that is situation dependent and partial, and you can happily just fold all of them as well. A Q-high suited two-gapper is a basic fold.

I prefer to check the flop; we don't need protection from much and you're not getting three streets.

As played I don't actually mind the turn small barrel, but it's with the intention of checking almost all rivers. Is this guy going to start bluffing second pair?

River I would mostly check fold personally, but NH as played

I fold preflop. But I simply doubt whether small suited ~broadway hands are profitable for me in EP in my game (I actually only play ATs+/KQs in EP, but I'm a nit obviously).

I'm either/or on the flop. Had we actually had AQ/KQ I'd lean to a check as protecting against random overcards isn't as valuable, but with this hand there is more merit to a small bet.

I'd be checking the turn after being called by the first field player, and against a passive guy on a drawless board I think we could even exploitively check/fold.

And checking (to fold) the river again.

In general, I wouldn't be playing such big pots with such mediocre hands over so many streets against ~mostly passive players.

GcluelessNLnoobG