Long time lurker, first time poster. Playing $1/$2NL at nearby casino. Sat at newly opened table just over an hour earlier, have a tight image established. Been largely card dead, recently won a decent pot. About even for the session with ~$300 in front of me. With two limpers in front, I raise to $12 holding 55, either only my first or second PF raise of the session, figuring the tight image should considerably narrow the field. Regardless, I get four callers, including both limpers and the two blinds.

Flop comes TdTx5d (jackpot!), action checks to the player on my right, with about an equal stack, who bets $35. He's played solid throughout, has rebought once after his flopped top two lost to a straight draw. I call, figuring him for either a T or a flush draw, and not wanting to scare him off. All others fold.

Turn brings 2d, he leads for $40, I raise to $80, and he calls. River bricks, he checks, I bet $100, and he folds, saying "I guess you turned the flush" and flashing ATo.

What's the best way to play a hidden monster like this? As I've reconsidered it, I believe I should have raised the flop, perhaps from his $35 to $90-100. How to play the turn with the flush 'scare card'? He'd probably put me on an overpair, and if he has the flush draw, he'd call, or if he had the T, re-pop. With AT, there's only two hands beating him (TT and 55; ok, three, if you count T5), and he wouldn't think I'd raise with quads, and wouldn't suspect I'd have 55 given the preflop action and my table image.

I think you raise the flop here, DEPENDING on how spewy the guy is. Does he gamble a lot? If so, he will be happy calling with a flush draw on a paired board.

My line is that the guy has shown strength.

{22-99} could bet here BUT they probs shut down after the flop = no value calling OR raising the flop

{Tx} aint going anywhere but you invite them to either boat up or run away due to the flush peeling off

{TT} gobbles your gold up

{5x} shuts down after the flop (or to flop raise)

{JJ-AA} maybe the odd spew with them, but too many turn cards kill the action for these hands (or maybe they boat up!!!)


I would probably raise the flop and hope that he has either hit the T in which case your playing for stacks, or he has a flush draw and feels that he can outdraw you. Don't see any value in slowplaying this flop tbh... not from aggression


Make it like $90 on the flop.

you can't have quads if he has AT obviously.

unfortunately, the flush hit or you get paid. if you know he has a 10 you can raise the flop. if he has the flush draw, you want to let him in cheaply to make sure he hits it.

i'm going to fastplay big hands for a while and see how it goes.

put him on a range and then ask yourself the same question you asked us.

also, 1/2 players dont like donk/folding for the most part to small raises. i have totally different image but i think a raise to 70-85 would set up good turn/river size. obv scare card for him that slows action is diamond on turn.

why did you minraise the turn?

I would just limp behind with small pocket pairs after multiple limpers. As you can see, raising (even with our tight image) is rarely going to isolate; so, IMO, we'd rather limp for cheap, invite the whole world to play, giving us a better chance of stacking a single person when we do hit.

I'm cool with just calling the flop bet. Hopefully someone else tags along or goes crazy. Stacks / pot are such that we'll have no problems getting stacks in if desired by the river.

I probably do a more typical 3x raise on the turn. It's possible villain hit flush. If he has a T, it's still unlikely he'll fold to the raise cuz he can still boat up. Plus it creates a $370 pot on the river with only $130 behind, so villain might have a difficult time folding a T on the river, plus lets get more money in now before a 4th flush card might totally kill our action.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Raise flop and shove if he pushes back at any point. Raise with better sizing, don't minraise. Don't slowplay big hands, if you have quads or full houses you use your aggressive image to get paid. If they have any decent hand you will stack them, while if you slowplay the pot doesnt get big enough fast enough and you win a crap pot instead like in your example. Does slowplaying when he has air and u win 10$ cause he bluffs weakly at the pot make up for not winning his stack in this spot? No. Dont slowplay

Guys, by slowplaying the flop the pot will be $130 on the turn with $250 left behind, with us in position (and this is worse cases scenario cuz it's possible someone else comes along for the ride or goes crazy). We shouldn't have any problems getting stacks in by the river, IMO. The only issue is whether there are scare cards that could totally slowdown the villain (which, unfortunately, I guess there are).

Is it just me or is villains fold on the river weak when he called a minraise on the turn with 3 diamonds already on the board?? & also that he bets less into the pot on the turn than on the flop??

Calling the flop is best. The pot is five way and you'd like some other people to put money in if possible.

When he does have a ten, its gonna be pretty easy to play a big pot whether you raise or call. However he should have a lot of weak made hands hes stabbing with in his range, and we dont want to blow him off like (5x, 66-99,JJ, small flush draws, random spews).

Raise turn a bit bigger, and you should be all set.

+1 - No reason on earth to raise the flop. You hold almost all the cards that connect, and you have very little danger of being outdrawn.

OP you need to provide some more details, though, regarding your position and the position of the other callers.

Turn raise should be bigger, especially if you put him on a 10, as he may come over the top to "prevent" you from hitting your flush. If he is drawing to a flush, you would like him to connect, but at this point he is only 18% to complete. Other 82% of the time he can't call $2 on the river.

OTR, maybe push all-in and let him think you are trying to bluff the flush. 100 could look like you want a call.

I think everyone that is saying raise the flop is being too results oriented. You have a multiway pot so you want to extract money from all flush draws and worse hands. It just sucks he didn't have a flush or he would have paid you off. Raise more on the turn to get more value from flushes and so you don't give him proper odds to hit a higher boat on you. Min raise on turn reeks of strength.

I really don't understand why you all are promoting slowplay here. If we had AT we would be raising to get value out of smaller Tx hands and to charge flush draws. Same thing applies.

Raise the flop to an amount that doesn't price out flush draws. He'll either call or jam with those and he'll always jam with Tx. Easy game. It's unlikely hes donking out here with something random.

I don't understand calling and hoping he hits. He's going to be way less likely to continue with a FD if he misses the turn since our range looks like overpairs that won't fold and he is OOP. OTF he's likely to think we rarely have a T and he has good equity if we do + he has fold equity vs overpairs and may try bluff you.

You stated you have a tight image, therefore a 10 isn't likely in your range. Your range looks like overpairs and nut flush draws.

Villains who donk flops either hit it hard (i.e. 10x) or have a middling pair and want to "see where they are at" by donking.

I almost always raise flops in these spots. Villain will fold his middling pairs to flop raise but it doesn't matter because I am targeting villain's 10x range who will come along.

Raising the turn here signals that your repping AdKd, AdQd

Incidently, I will make a note about this player that I can bluff in future hands

you see, I put up a post RE the sort of hands villain could have and made a point that the weaker hands in his range tend to either fold on the flop if raised or check-fold on the turn if called. So thats pretty much what you say (middling pair).

BUT, two things I have been thinking about;

1. Do we kill off the potential for another 1 or 2 players to smooth call with flush draws (surely they must fold with 0vpip on the flop facing a bet and raise) ? Villain might be super light {22-44} and just be of the mindset that this board probably helped nobody and he wants to donk bet hoping that he is ahead of your range. If villain is super light, then by isolating we squeeze out other potential drawing hands AND lose our last customer!

2. villian is leading into hero despite hero being pre flop aggressor. Does this not suggest a lower sort of range for villain? I mean fair play to villain to come out firing with Tx here but I see many people going for the c-raise with a T here. Unless the table dynamics are such that hero isn't cbetting many times or something else. I don't know, it is just another thing to consider.


I'm going back on my opinion of this hand and saying;

- With people left to act in this setup, I prefer smooth calling like you did and maybe even vbetting the river after smoothing the turn!

- If it is heads up or 3 handed then i'd just fastplay the flop hoping to stack.

Pot is $60, villain bets $35 with $250 more behind, and we have the nuts. Raise to $85, if called bet $100 on the turn and shove the river. ez game. this is not a situation to slowplay.

Good question...looking for value, I guess, and hoping that he was on the flush draw that got there.

I'm for sure raising the flop here. It's obvious the guy has Tx and I want to get the cash in now. Raise it up to $110. If anyone else has Tx they aren't folding either. Other players still may not fold AdXd anyways if they are shortstacked, so I am happy to raise here.

When you flop a monster and it's fairly obvious your opponents have a very strong 2nd best hand, raise. When you flop a monster and your opponents are spewy/bluffy, that's the time to slowplay.

Nuklear: I don't think that its obvious he has a T here. Vils at this level donk with smaller pairs, flushdraws, overcards etc. Its a good flop to bluff at anyway. I think the call is fine. Raise more on the turn bc a lot of the times he got there.
There's only 2 tens left in the deck so most likely your opp didn't hit this flop hard enough to call any sizeable flop raise. When the d hits and he bets again I'm trying to get it allin on the turn. Turns out he had the T but that's not a huge part of his range on the turn imo.

One problem here is that for most fish, call flop raise turn means the nuts almost all of the time, which makes them go into c/c mode.

Anyone with a ten stacks this flop. It doesn't matter if they have T2s, fish cannot release. But if a diamond comes off, they often can. If an overcard comes off, and then you raise, they could conceivably dump Tx with a weak kicker. The other problem is someone with a ten actually has 4 outs on the flop and 7 on the turn.

In order for us to get paid off by calling, the following must happen:

1) One of the players behind must have a flush draw
2) That player must fold if we raise
3) That player must hit their flush on the turn
4) That player must then pay us off on a paired board when they flush.

I don't think this happens super often. If it's a bunch of guys with 66 and 77 we don't get paid on a turn raise anyway. We also raised preflop. Fish with AA might STILL call a raise because they might think we have an overpair.

So IMO I think there is a strong case for raising this flop. I'm looking to get stacks in ASAP vs strong hands, rather than try to get a few small bets from people with tiny underpairs or a guy bluffing.

This is different than TT on T55 because in that case 5's have 1 out and we have all the strong cards.

Well put. Even if we raise, there's a decent chance a weak player overcalls with a flush draw. Villain is putting you on an overpair, so why not rep it and disappoint him?

I think that's FPS and I'm not sure we can build a bigger pot on flop by smooth calling.

If hero raises villain's flop bet to $90 or more and others fold, we can assume main villain will come along with his Tx range (which is the only range that has the potential to stack off) and his flush draws will (at least) call a flop raise. So even if other players fold, we have $240 in the pot with a high chance to get the rest in on future streets.

Now, if we flat the $35 and all three players come along (very unlikely), pot will be $235

If the pot were head's up, I'd like a raise on the flop, but since the pot is multiway, the flop call is fine. I think:

(a) I'd probably just call with an overpair here as well, so let's try to sell that story. That way, even if the villain only has an underpair, he might try to keep barreling us on future streets.

(b) I think that villain is more likely to have a made hand here than the flush draw. I find that a lot of villains will semi-bluff at orphaned pots if they get to act after the pre-flop raiser, but they are a little more cautious about donking into the raiser because they don't want to get blown off of their draw by a re-raise... they'd rather check and hope that the pre-flop raiser either gives them a free card or makes a small bet that gives them good odds to chase. So, if the turn blanks out, we should expect another big bet (and probably a bet/call) from our villain.

(c) If there is any chance that one of the other two players has a flush draw, I want them to stay in the hand. When I have a hand this strong, I'm happy to have any and all players stick around, as long as they are paying to do so.

Turn play is ok, but (as others have said), I would have raised more... If villain is somehow bluffing (or betting something like a pocket pair), he'll go away no matter how much you raise... if he does have the flush here, a bigger sizing makes it easier for him to 3b! shove the turn (or at least get a lot of money in), and if the villain has trips, he'll call a reasonable raise just to try to boat up on the river.

Overall though, I think you got pretty decent value... there were really only two hands that were going to give you a lot of money after that flop, and you just got unlucky that the board ran out scary for the particular hand that villain happened to have (and that villain was solid enough to lay down trips... in the games I play, some villains wouldn't have even done that)

Are you really raising this board with an overpair? Isn't that putting a lot of money in when you're likely to be in a wa/wb situation? If you raise with AA here, how do you play when one of the blinds smooth calls your raise and then donks a blank turn? Or the blind flats and the first donker jams? I'm a nit (obviously), but I'd probably just be flatting, trying to keep the pot a bit smaller, and using the benefit of position to see how the rest of the hand develops.

(a) is flatting here with overpairs too weak? and (b) if you would normally raise with an overpair on this flop, than I can see the merits of raising when you've got the boat...

Not exactly.

With 55, I'm perfectly fine flatting this and letting anybody with a flush draw come in, not so much with AT.