1/2. High hand wins 400. For a long time, I always punished the limpers with hands like T8s in the CO. Because stacks were so shallow, I decided to call.

V1 (covers): Based on his actions over seven orbits, V1 seems like a competent but not perfect TAG. He has open-limped once and limped five or seven times, usually after two callers, mostly in position. He has three-bet preflop once. He is calling bets a little too wide, calling preflop with KJo in the LJ. But he’s an observant player and seems to understand the texture of the flop. He also called down an opponent on a wet board to the river with an overpair, and won.

V2 (160): Weak loose-passive.

Other Vs (150-225) are loose passives.

Hero (320) is a TAG.

One limper. V1 in UTG+2 calls. Hero in the CO with Ts8s? Hero calls. V2 on the button raises to 10. SB, BB, limper, and V1 call. Hero calls. Six-way.

Flop (51 after rake): QsJsQc.

Check, check, check. V1 bets 25. Hero?

Call flop. Don't want to raise against maybe trips. You have 1 out to the nuts.

You can both call or raise, and I prefer to raise. A few thoughts:
1. Button is the only person who may have the nuts range AQ, KQ, QQ, JJ for this flop. As for the players at earlier position, even if they have a Q trip their kicker may not be good (excluding QJ) and on the turn you have position to play against them.
2. If you do not raise and just call, someone had Axss called as well, any spade excluding 9s will make you lose lots of money.
3. I am not saying raising will get Axss out of the way, but in the more likely event if you both miss, you have the position to bluff. And if a spade comes, you know you should be cautious coz your flush may not be the better one.
4. Be prepared to fold to 3 bet on the flop, or any aggression from earlier position players on later streets.

Pre - No idea what the charts say to do with T8s in the CO. Should probably be a fold? Once in a while we can get jiggy with it and raise, maybe? Flatting seems pretty loose-passive, so, pot, meet kettle.

Flop - WTF is V1 doing?

I don't like this situation at all, sandwiched between a semi-TAG donker and a loose-passive PFR, with all the other loose-passives still to act.

Have we seen V1 donk like this before, and if so, did we find out what he had?

Assuming V1 has Qx and some stronger Jx for value, and some T9 or KT and AXss for bluffs, he either has us crushed, or he has one of our outs, or we share an out that makes him a higher straight. Assuming he's raising his better AXss pre, he's got A9ss in his limp-calling range, taking away our one out to the pure nuts.

Assuming loose-passive V2 on BTN was raising with a real hand, he might just want to go with it, and put in a raise, especially if you just call in the middle of this mess.

If you raise over V1's donk, it makes it easy for V2 to play perfectly. He can flat call with AA, KK, QQ, JJ, and QJ. He can fold all his AK and under-pairs to the board.

There's also the possibility that one of these other wing-nuts who checked is slow-playing something, or also wants to draw with T9 or KT, or a better flush draw.

With the $400 overlay, and position on V1, I guess we can call, but we'll have to fold if V2 raises, or any of the other V's x-raise, and we'll probably need to fold turn or river if we don't drill the 9s.

When I am on my A-game this is a tight fold for me.

We are out of relative position with multiple people behind us still to act on this flop. The board is paired. More than one person could have QJ, and the preflop raiser could have any boat. Many people could have trips. Someone could have our spades nutted. Someone could have KT.

The prospect of calling and hitting only to lose later is too great to make me willing to continue.

I think fold >> raise > call.

This is a treacherous board. I don't like any option here. I would definitely not raise; you're not getting a Queen to fold and someone almost certainly has one, plus there isn't enough stack depth to run a three street manoeuvre. Calling is OK, but everyone is basically uncapped with respect to nutted hands ie QJ, your position is poor and you can be dominated easily. In real time I would probably squirm and call, but from my pit I think I prefer a fold on a board where there are many paths to losing a lot of money.

I raise pre-flop, but I understand the limp in games like this.

I fold flop. I don't really see the point of continuing. We have one out to the nuts and are dominated by so many hands, even if we hit a straight or flush.

I felt the same way in the hand. You're getting a good price to call. But as javanewt, Vernon, and Doc write, you are also dominated by other hands.

Decisions in the run-out were easy:

Hero calls. V2 calls. Everyone else folds.

Flop (126): 5c.

Checks through.

Turn: 7c.

V1 bets 55. Hero folds. V2 folds.

Lemme guess what happened - hero folds, V2 on BTN folds, everyone else folds, and V1 sheepishly shows a Q.

Seems fine to me.

I think raising preflop yourself is significantly better than overlimp/calling.

Overlimp/calling looks donkish, but I am not sure that raising is that much better.

Otherwise, the hand seems fine. As others said, not great to chase low straights and flushes on a paired board.

seems like a fold pre, i doubt anything outside of pairs, suited broadways, and AK/AQ are profitable in live NL outside of pure steal spots, like CO and btn opens.

yes its boring and you look like a meganit and people hate you, but w/e just wear headphones and pretend to not exist.

I guess there are different styles, but that sounds awfully nitty. I would be playing suited broadway, KQo, and suited aces with good position. Folding this gapper is fine though. Hands like that don't make the nuts or close, and don't play well multiway.

I don't see any problems in the hand. Pre is what it is, I usually fold in my games because I would prefer to come in with a raise pre, but in a weak game I think it's fine to see as many cheap flops as possible because people who limp in with AJ and flop top pair will go broke when we out flop them or compete a draw ott.

Post is whatever, I think you can do a lot on the flop esp. As played is fine.


Pre. is interesting, it almost has to be a slightly losing play to limp (CLP estimates you need to win 35x for one gappers, so you need to win a 70 pot when you hit). But calling might be good for the overall game, and not getting bored and playing wider in a worse position later.
When it becomes a raise to 10 pre. and you are on the direct right of the guy raising, it's a guaranteed losing spot. You need to get 7x the flop pot in, when you hit, just to break even.
Sometimes I might still donk call it for the lolz ... but I def. wouldn't post confidently that my image is TAG.

I think the main takeaway from this hand is to realize that this is not a good flop or scenario for you. Don’t be seduced by the one out SFD. Paired board, the gin card is the only true clean out, minimal FE to semibluff.

Yeah, most people in a 1/2 game would limp/call this hand like OP. This is a small raise after 3 limpers, and I assume OP folds to a larger raise. The raise looks weak OTB with that sizing. If you were the first limper, you could consider a 3! to represent AA/KK, etc. and maybe take it down on the flop.

There are different style, but I agree that the limp and the call pre are probably both losing a little. This kind of hand play poorly multiway. Something like 98s or KTs is also significantly stronger. If you had Axs, that might be good to play as you did, as you can make the nut flush as well as some other hands.

This hand would be an open from the BTN or CO with no limpers. In a tournament, with antes and tight play, you could raise with it to steal the blinds. There are advantages as you can misrepresent it postflop as a pp, ace or king. You could also call a 3! with it fairly deep, as it play OK HU against JJ+/AK and some bluffs. It might be a good resteal hand in the right situation maybe in a tournament, again to misrepresent postflop.

I fold flop and would have folded pre. I dont hate pre for the outcome if the table is this passive but still.

Limping sucks, just stop. T8s is a terrible hand multiway. Suited connectors and 1 gappers are bad hands to play multiway. I dont condone limping period, but what you want is Axs and PPs. Im raising to 15-17.

Onto the flop,

Raise? V2 is loose passive so i assume the raise maybe means something, you should be looking for reads on his interest, and this is typically a near guaranteed easy read. TAG has a Q almost every time, and 5 behind, even if you get a read on most of them, still not great. I cant see you folding V1 out anyway. You saw him limp KJ. QJ is VERY MUCH part of his limping range

Call? Even if you hit a straight or flush but non sf, you dont even know youre good, so you cant extract a lot of value, youre basically just calling down or betting if he checks so i just dont think calling gets you much value

just fold.

Raising may be better than limp/calling, but there isn't a lot of difference. Why does it matter who the raiser is? Making it 17 builds a bigger pot in maybe a $EV losing situation. Raising does have the advantage of making your raising range less predictable and better board coverage, but no one is paying attention in these games.

It may just be a fold, as you don't have a direct suited connector and these hands pay poorly multiway. I would limp behind with suited aces, limp or raise smallish with small pps and mostly raise quality hands, a lot more than AQ+.

I think you have to call the 1/2 pot bet with that strong a draw, but it isn't a great situation.

Even if we ignore the advantages of initiative (which I dont agree with you about, but i agree initiative doesnt mean a lot 5 ways), if i knew for 100% fact that raising would have me go 5 way, i would simply fold T8s, because SC and S1G play poorly multiway. So the reason why raising is better is the prospect of getting heads up.

My opinion on how your preflop limped/folded to you thought process oughta go is as follows:

Step 1) “given the action and players in this hand, what sizing wil make me most likely to get heads up?” If you think $17 is gonna go 5 ways, what about $20? $23? $27? $30?

Step 2) craft a raising range based upon your bet sizing determined in step 1. This range should be tighter the more you are raising by, and looser the weaker the opponents are. So if you chose $23 or $25 in the previous step (which wouod be quite the wonderful table), you would NOT be raising with T8s)

Step 3) if you really want to, you can limp CO and BTN with any Axs or pp which did not make the cut in step 2. But standard table raise sizing ($12-18) you should be raising A2s+ 22+ anyway. DO NOT LIMP SUITED CONNECTORS. THEY ARE BAD MULTIWAY. Youd be better off limping K2s than T8s imo, because it has far less reverse implied odds.

Step 4) fold the rest


I disagree that your draw is strong. You have 1 out to the nuts. If you hit anything else and see significant action, you are probably just getting stacked. Nutted hands are what get you implied odds multiway, not drawing to strong non nuts.

Yeah, there is some merit to raising to like 20 and maybe getting it HU or 3-way with position. Then you can represent AK or JJ+ on a lot of the flops you miss. Either that or fold. I agree with the other posters that limp/calling is somewhat EV- compared to folding.