Hi Guys,

I have a hand with top 2 pair vs a turn raise. I think it's one of those spots that look like a standard stack, but might actually be quite spewey.
I wonder if anyone thinks calling turn and evaluating river is a good option. Folding turn seems super weak. Checking turn for pot control is also possible, but definately not standard.

VS the following range I have 42,5% Equity, allthough 100% QTs and QTo is somewhat optimistic:

ATo, ATs, KJo, KJs, QTo, QTs, A5o, A5s, 55.



Table is 9 handed, Hero is 600 deep, other players cover, 5/5 game.

Preflop:

Hero is UTG with AcTd and opens 20 euro. UTG+3 calls, button calls, SB calls.

Flop (80 euro):

AdQd5s, Hero bets 35 euro, UTG+3 Folds, button Calls, SB calls.

Turn (170 euro):

AdQd5sTc, hero bets 115 euro, button makes 240, sb folds, hero shoves 430.



Background:

I Play 5/5 regulary, allways buy-in min with 250 and play like 300-400 hours a year at my local casino. Vilain knows me, but probably is not that impressed by me and sees me as a std abc reg, probably on the nittier side, which is somewhat true. I think vilain is similiar, someone with a full-time job that plays on the site. he probably beats the game, but his seems pretty vanilla and umimpressive.

I live in Amsterdam and he is from Greece, which might be somewhat relevant. For a dutch person grinding 5/5 on the side is not that great since the city is so expensive, but the money is super valuable in Greece. UTG+3 is a fish, calling station. SB is a fish/regular, probably a small winner due to the softness of the field, but doesn't seem to have any real grasp of the game.

Gameflow:

We are on a tuesday afternoon during the WPT Amsterdam. Atmosphere is very laidback, game is pretty soft and people seem to be just waiting for a hand. I haven't done anything super special and have a timid table image.

Bet sizing on flop and turn:

This is somewhat interesting as these sizings are probably very non-standard and impact the turn decision a lot. In my player pool population tendency tends to be to overfold on cbets and under check/raise. My adjustment has allways been to overcbet in quite a few spots, and decrease bet sizing. I include medium hands for balance and some value as well. This is ofcourse all very debatable, but I was thinking it would be better to focus on turn action. Since the "tuesday afternoon atmoshphere" is there as well I believe I can steal additional pots by over-cbetting.

ATo is too loose to open UTG 9 handed

Yeh agreed this open UTG is not good. As to the hand - he prob has it here and you should fold. People don't bluff broadway boards enough especially 3 way as they usually have SDV, and you can have KJ/sets here yeh he's raising.

I agree in general ATo is too loose, probably fold, allthough I think in some tables you can open, but not really the point of the hand .

Snap-fold is super exploitable and both QTo, QTs, A5o and A5s are hands in his value range that we beat, I don't know if it's a fold, but a snap-fold seems very nitty to me personally.

moving to Amsterdam

————————————

K I’ll bite

You’re smoked

GL seeing A5 or QT combos play like this under this config in 2024 from a guy that “beats the game” unless said game is truly A+

I really appreciate the responses so far, thank you very much.

TBF, I think the discussion is a bit one sided. If I snap-fold ATo here, he can bluffraise this turn with Kx or Jx and make a profit, which wouldnt be a super unreasonable bluff either. SB has a weak range as well, and I have shown strenght, but am still on the top of my range.

I risk 430 to win a pot of 1235(rake 25). So I only need 35% Equity. If I run my hand vs the following range I have 29% Equity. Ofcourse this is not enough, but if he has only some bluffs or semibluffs in his range we can profit, also a fold is unbalanced and exploitable. I have only included 6 QT combos and 6 A5 combos.

Board: Ad Qd 5s Tc
Hand 0: 29.136% 7.50 { AcTd }
Hand 1: 70.864% 7.50 { 55, Ac5c, KJs, QcTc, QdTd, Ad5c, Ah5c, Ah5d, As5c, As5d, As5h, KJo, QhTc, QsTc, QsTd, QsTh }

A couple of points - I don't think he has 55,A5,QT. 55 most likely raises the flop, and the other two hands probably just call. You also cbet 4 way, and now are betting the turn 3 way on a broadway board where people most likely have some strong hands. Your range is very strong here OTT - you can have sets, straight especially since you bet 3 way yet here he is raising. Even vs that range you posted you only have 29% equity, and that's the most hopeful range that probably isn't realistic.

Yeah, I suppose those points are probably true. I think I didn't take into account the strenght of my line correctly and was to optimistic about vilains range. Bluffing here as vilain is probably suicide because of all the KJ and sets in my range, allthough i probably dont cbet KJ multiway all that much.

thanks again for the help.

I would not worry too much about overfolding, being unbalanced, and exploitable. We want to exploit our opponents for a huge win rate, and that necessarily means we will be exploitable.

Do we really think villain is going nuts here with KQ, QJ, JT when you bet flop and turn multiway? I think the most likely bluffs here are diamonds, but even then, if he didn't raise the flop with diamonds, he probably isn't raising the turn with diamonds. He is I position and can just realize his equity. Turn raises are much more value heavy than flop raises on wet boards, even when the turn raise is small.

It is sort of close given we only need 30.6% equity when called to break even and I basically don't expect him to have folds when we jam. Basically if he is ever value owning himself or bluffing here we probablyhave a profitable call. Fairly often though we will be against a villain that is never bluffing or value owning himself here though, and when that is the case, we are drawing pretty slim. This tanks our probabilty weighted equity in this spot. So I lean towards making an exploitative fold.

We do block KdTd, JdTd, Td9d. I try not to overuse blockers because usually it is not that close - they either bluff enough or they don't. But in this case where it is pretty close and we block a few plausible bluffs.

Preflop is close. With a 4x UTG in a game that gets a lot of field callers I probably lean towards folding. Rake is also a factor, but then again with rake high cards are usually better than suited connectors, but that assumes you aren't getting cold called as often and you want to block 3bets holding high cards. That said, if we are opening this hand, we should feel confident that we have a pretty good postflop edge. That means going disrespectfully thin for value, overbluffing lines that are underdefended, and overfolding when villains underbluffed. This is live poker, not a 500z reg pool. Folding turn is the kind of sick fold I think we should make if we want to really make money playing ATo UTG. If you want to play a more theory based, defensive style where you try not to overfold, you may consider cutting this hand from your open range.

A couple of other thoughts that are more nitpicks and a matter of playstyle. Flop I would consider checking or betting quarter pot. Your hand is sometimes not the best hand now. It will often not be the best hand on the river. It is more often the best hand when you check call or bet small. It isn't often going to want to go for 3 streets of value and it struggles to pot control OOP multiway. OOP multiway we might plan for 2 streets of value or to go for check calls by checking flop since we won't get to check back turn or river (unless IP folds and blinds call).

I personally like going 15 as my preflop open in a 5/5 unstraddled, but plenty of winning players go 20.

Really good and long post, I agree with most of the things you say and thank you for the effort.

However if we discount all A5 and QT combo's, all bluffs and semi-bluffs, we are basically saying his range is only KJ and maybe some 55 and a very rare TT and QQ. I think in general from an exploitative angle these can be good spots to bluff in from his position. Vilain is by no means a genius, but he is good enough to make exploitative bluffs. From a MDF point of view AT here is not a fold, so the exploit is pretty big when we fold AT. I think from this position he seems pretty "polar" so I was thinking maybe a call and evaluate on the river would be an option as well. We can c/f a lot of rivers without being as super exploitable as on the turn.

Standard is probably a fold, it's kind of a combination of the table being somewhat weak and passive and a population tendency of under 3 betting. Of course folding here can never be any real mistake. I think you are right that if you are going to open it, post-flop should be impaccable so I should lean more towards folding.

I would say 1/4 pot is too small, I feel 35 is kind of small considering the wetness of the board. I think personally a check is very decent as well, allthough we should be worried about protection our equity vs 3 guys. It's probably never good enough to go 3 streets for value so I think it's important to mention the flop bet is mostly to protect equity and only a little bit for value.

I think you should allways mix 15 and 20 personally. Sometimes I open 25 as well. It matters how deep you are, how much the table 3 bets and how perceptive the table in general is. I think 100% open to 15 is fine, but you will miss some value from an exploitative angle. Ofcourse from a GTO perspective 15 is standard and 20 and 25 are too big.

I don't think shove is terrible. The worst part about is is Hero has Td, combined with qd of Hero blocks too many flush draw semi-bluffs. On the other hand, villain can still have club draws.

Optimistically, villain can still have reasonably value-raise ak, a5 and at we are chopping with. Maybe even aj and never discount villains can always show up with spewy bluffs.

Call and seeing a river should be ok. But lower stakes live its rarely a mistake to overfold vs tighter, abc players.

Id be more inclined to call if the player WAS impressive, where he might jam with KT JT T9dd, its a fold i think, but calling isnt terrible spew, you arent behind his whole range.

Is this at holland casino? Im going to amsterdam in a few months and was considering checking it out, any recommendations/thoughts for an american tourist who only speaks english?

I guess we're kind of going in circles, but I agree with this assessment as well. The problem with snap-folding our hand on the turn is that it's basically based on the assessment that 90%+ of his range is KJ and maybe a small % of AQ/55 since these hands would most likely raise flop. He should in all fairness probably be folding his KJo preflop as well, but who knows if he actually does this.

Put in another way, from a GTO/exploitation perspective we are basically assuming he puts scissors 90%+ of the time, so we should counter with rock 100% of the time. Versus competent competition this is a very dangerous strategy, because excellent players will catch on that you overfold in similiar spots and we could be exploited. I think in hindsight i prefer a fold on the turn, but also some frequency of calling and maybe <5% shove.

I've been living in Amsterdam for ~15 years. The poker is pretty good for dutch standards allthough if you're going just for poker there are better spots in europe. Evryone in the city pretty much speaks english so I wouldnt worry about it. We have a bunch of musea/nightlife if you're into that. If I was visiting from US I would probably just play poker and visit Anne Frank house and 1-2 other musea. Also rembrandsquare has a lot of cool pubs/bars.

Exactly. At 1/2 you can massively overfold exploitatively, people simply dont get stacked shipping with air. And its something to consider in your game as well, you can absolutely bluff the shoes off of abc players in big spots where their range is capped. In the same way that overfolding abuses some players in some spotsl a lot of 1/2 players get crushed by extreme aggression.




Awesome, thanks for the info. Yeah we are taking our 2 year old, so we are just dicking around and doing tulip festival ****. we used to travel a ton, but then covid + baby, we are just desperate to just go somewhere haha.

Ive never played poker in EU, but thought maybe it would be a kinda fun cultural experience, and the kid sleeps 12 hrs a night, so ill probably have 3-4 hrs to kill. I was just thinking of the life tilt id get if i got screwed on a floor ruling cuz im not dutch or whatever haha. Sounds like I dont need to worry about that. Also I dont know the city too well, so idk if id get robbed by carrying around a bunch of cash at night, and I wont have a car.

The rules are pretty clear, you cannot show youre cards during a game like in US, so sometimes a Big hand from an American is declared dead mid-hand, but apart from that you should be fine. You can get a deposit at the casino if you play 5/5+, they are pretty chill about it, if it's at least 2-3k you deposit. Uber is also cheap and convenient in Amsterdam, I use it super often since owning a car is not very practical.

But yeah, the city is nice to visit

i dont think its a standard stack. i think flop is probably bad 4 ways and turn betting large / jamming over a minraise from a guy with another guy left to act is huge torch vs vast majorities of any population. pre also likely mediocre esp in a game thats going 4 ways to the flop

alot of the theory stuff you're saying isn't really right and you're not adjusting at all to this being multiway. will leave it at that but you're overplaying your hand here by a decent amount and if the justification is that you have to stack off with this so random 5/5 vanilla unimpressive guy can't float the flop with 2 behind to minraise the turn commiting himself vs 2 including an extremely strong ep range idk what to tell u

Like I said in the previous response, in hindsight I prefer a fold on the turn, some frequency of call on the turn and <5% shove.

I think both 100% fold on the turn and 100% shove are burning money.

If you think bluff raising this turn with the king blocker never happens you are probably being bluffed a lot in spots where you fold a massive percentage of your range.

this doesn't really make sense either. if you think you should mix all 3 then they'd be equal ev (they aren't imo) and you wouldn't be losing money with any of the actions let alone "burning money"

its also just a spot your range is much stronger than you think or should be much stronger than you seem to think it is given your ep, and betting into 3 and 2 otf for what amount to large sizes bc multiway. also people just dont bluff like this very often particularly a guy you have noted as tight and unimpressive who thinks the same about you.

even the range you described, you have villain described as a nitty reg / winner overcalling a 4x from ep otb 100bb deep with full combos of qto and a5o and ato and then doing this with them. those probably arent reasonable and his value range is likely aq+ and bluffing range likely limited to idk big draws?

PRE - ATo is one of the worst hands I'd ever consider raising UTG.

Is $20 the standard open in this game? If not, and if the standard open is lower, like $15, I'd just open to $15.

FLOP - I'm not c-betting very often in a multi-way pot with opponents in front and behind, so if we do bet, we should probably go pretty large, to continue our story of extreme strength. We raised UTG, so we can have AA, QQ, AQs, and maybe even some A5s. None of those hands are going to love going to the turn multi-way on this wet or a board.

Otherwise, if we're not going to bet big, I might start with a check here, and play ATo as a bluff-catcher, especially with a diamond in our hand, and good blockers to better TP and straight draws. Let one of our opponents bet the flop with all their AX, QX, diamond draws, and Broadway draws. We might check-raise occasionally, but mostly we'd just check-call.

TURN - The turn brings in KJ, obviously. Time to slow down and check-call. How many worse hands can call if we keep betting?

AP, I probably flat call the turn raise, and check-fold the river if V bets huge. It sucks, but that's the problem with raising hands like ATo from UTG, c-betting flop, and barreling turn. We really shouldn't have much ATo or KJ here. The strongest hands we should have would be AA, QQ, AQ, and A5s. BTN can have all the KJ.

You're not thinking clearly about this. As submersible said. You don't take an action at a mixed percentage in theory unless they are the same EV. If you fold sometimes, jam sometimes, and call sometimes, they should all be 0 EV. In reality, the action is either +EV or - EV, and we exploit by always taking rhe highest EV action. That may be folding if continuing is always - EV.

In practice, we can mix our actions when we think they are close and we want some balance vs opponents that we think will exploit us (overfold to us if we always have it, over bluff us if we never bluff catch, etc.)

I play 30-40 hours a week and there are only a handful of pros/regs I play against where I actively try to protect against being exploited.

You are pretty optimistic thinking he calls a raise with A5o or QTo, and hoping he stacks off with them on turn when only better is calling him. You’re toast here and having the Td hurts you too.

@Roelof-88 - candidly, you're overestimating opponents.

Maybe a solver finds enough bluffs and worse hands for value to put in a small raise on the turn, but human opponents are not going to find those worse-value raises or bluffs often enough for us to call the turn raise AND call again if they put in a big river bet.

At this stack depth, his turn raise is repping KJ exactly. I wouldn't even expect him to raise turn with 55. The only bluffs I can find for him would be K9dd, K5dd, or J9dd, and K9/K5 are pretty optimistic bluff-raises, since it's unlikely a K would be a clean out for those hands.

Humans aren't very likely to raise turn and barrel big on the river with worse hands on this run-out when we raise pre from UTG and they just flat call on the BTN. In this configuration, our range is just too strong for our opponents to be over-bluffing in an attempt to exploit us, or over-valuing a worse hand very often.

A solver may stack off with worse 2P, maybe, simply because we shouldn't have much AT here, and the combos of A5 and QT block AQ and AT. But I don't know if even a solver would call your jam with those combos, so, maybe not.

I would think most humans would fold A5, and especially QT, to your jam. MAYBE a tilted opponent will call off with those hands, but that won't happen often enough to make our jam profitable against most reasonably competent opponents.

I would rather raise J9dd here than either A5 or QT, because it's the only combo that would seem to have enough equity (~32%) against your entire range to call off if you 3B jam.

What's the reveal on this one? I'll be very surprised if V doesn't have some KJ combo or J9dd.

Hey Evryone,

Thanks a lot for all the responses.

I agree with the popular opinion that it's definately not a shove on the turn. I think I would just fold turn in hindsight, other streets are not that great either, but whatever. Vilain shows KJ, maybe that's his entire range after all, who knows.

Interesting thread. From OPs original post we learn V is "pretty vanilla and unimpressive". Also V is likely to value the money more highly and view OP as not valuing the money as highly. Yes it is possible that V makes the creative bluff here but the issue is not can he find the bluff but does he do it enough so we should call. If OP believes his description this is a clear fold.

When I started playing low stakes regularly, I had a friend I would talk to about the "bad beats" which cost me my whole stack. More often than not, my opponent sucked out to make a straight or a flush.

When my friend asked what I had when I jammed, or called off a jam, and I told him 2P, he always said the same thing:

"Two pair is a bull$hlt hand."

Respectfully, I think you need to go back and review every decision made in the hand. Raising ATo UTG is somewhat wide. We should check-raise rather than c-bet the flop. Your flop c-bet was way too small. You should just check turn.

Each decision compounds the mistakes made with the previous decisions on earlier streets.