Setting: Red Rock Casino
1-2 Cash Game

Players:
This is my very first hand of the session. I have not seen anyone play.
Villain is a chubby and awkward looking 50 year old white guy in a mask.
We all have about $300.

Btn straddle 5 - MP calls 5 - LJ calls 5 - HJ calls 5
Hero has A Q in the BB
- Hero raises to 35
- MP folds - LJ folds - HJ pushes for 288 - Btn folds
- Hero ??

Should I just throw this away and wait until I have some real reads on the table before playing a big pot?
Or is there too much extra money in the pot already to fold this moderate hand?
Please advise.

--CM

Because of the straddle its only 75bb effective. I feels like this is a middling pp most of the time, therefore i'd be more inclined to call this off with TT/JJ. In this case I think you can go either way. Only AK would suck, if you call. I think I call it off in hope of the occasional Ax.

Sure, this is often a medium pocket pair but it can also be AK. So your either a small dog versus a hand like or a major dog versus AK. Your equity versus his range probably isn’t great (I think you need roughly 40%?).

Looking at it another way, he’s risking a lot of money (~300) to win a little (~60), so you can fold a lot of your range (-85%) and it would not be exploitable. I would fold and just defend JJ+,AK.

I agree that this is almost always 88-JJ as played. You have the odds to call. As long as your bankroll is healthy, this is a call. It is certainly going to give you a "gambly" image you can exploit later.

That's what I'd do. That's a huge all-in in the games where I play. I'd be way behind the range of random player who did that. There are some players (most where I'm at) that will only do this with AA/KK/AK. It would suck to call and then not see this guy not play a hand for the next hour and a half. This is why I'll make a stupid all-in raise with AA or KK once in a blue moon when I'm an unknown. People can talk themselves into light calls.

If someone is shoving this with worse than AQ, then they're going to donate their money to the table eventually anyways.

Yah I don’t think it’s horrible but I like having a little read on the player or the game flow before making the call here.

I would make the call, too. Absent reads, the positions of all players give info. Villain's call-reraise came from HJ, which is generally not indicative of trapping with AA. Similarly, failing to raise AK vs. 3 players (straddle & 2 callers) is very bad and unusual. If villain made this same play from UTG, it would be far more suspicious. AND, your raise from BB looks a little funny. Big raise vs. a bunch of callers in straddle pot from BB or straddle with any playable hand is a reasonably good play.

CU may have seen that trick and decided it's the right time to play back. Agree with the crowd that mid-pair is most likely. I'd be shocked if he had AK and think there's a solid chance you're well ahead.

fold ainec

People here are calling a jam for 144 bb's in a 1/2 game with AQ pre? And some people are calling because it's "only" 62 bb's after the straddle? I'm not gonna let that force me into calling it off here at all.

So this is the weird vegas BTN straddle where if it limps to BTN it skips from CO to SB, then BB acts and BTN acts last?


If so I just don't have a raising range as H (looking to small 3bet BTN), way too many BTN straddles will raise and a bunch of those limps can be monsters depending on game flow (and just because of BTN straddling in general). After the shove your life sucks, long term it's probably close between call and fold ... I probably fold to an older guy wearing a mask.

Seen lines like this, many, many times unfortunately.

Its going to be a mix of AK and pairs like TT.


The logic seems to be they are fine calling the straddle, (and sometimes they will flat raises like $20, then back raise a 3!), but once there's more money in, they decide in the moment they should just shove.


Almost exact spot happened last night. A $5 button straddle, calls around to HJ who makes it $20, I have JJ and make it $80 on BTN. Folds to UTG who back raise jams AI for $500 or so. I tank fold and he shows AK. This about what I figured he had, as I have history with this V. Sometimes he could have a smaller pp than JJ. But I decided I didn't want to be playing for $500 in this spot when much better value spots will arise. Theres also the very small frequency when someone takes this line with QQ+.



You're almost always going to be behind here. So, its up to you if you want to flip coins and deal with the variance.





Plays like this always confuse forums and message boards as people aren't trying to understand loose passive logic and want the plays to have meaning and make sense. That's just not how it works for some people. They make up **** on the fly.

Same. People always look at the value betting side and such of exploitive play. But most don't look at the +EV of exploitable folds.

Sure, folding here would allow a good player to just overbet us out of a straddled pot raise. But this isn't a good player. Its a loose passive making up things as he goes. And its going to be very heavy with AK here. And pairs like TT.


Situations like this are where we make exploitable folds and get basically free +EV. Even though V took a weird line, if you're experienced in live low stakes, this line plays his hand face up.

Vs a range of 88-JJ and AK, we are 40%.


V basically showed us his hand and allowed us to fold. If he does have AK, he lost a huge amount of equity on A high flops. And any equity V's don't realize is +EV for us.

I think we need close to 43% equity here not accounting for rake.

If our best case scenario is a middle pair with the occasional AK, I think it's a fold. AQs might be a call though.

I would narrow him down to QQ+ only. Middle aged players wearing a mask aren't gonna be doing this with middle pars or even AK. It looks like QQ/KK but prob gonna be kings.

OK I don't want to derail this thread, but I will bite on this. I don't think the hand that you have posted is very similar to the hand that OP posted. In your hand you have JJ and have to call $420 to win $600 (your $80, the dead $20, and Villain's $500). You need 41% equity in this scenario. You have assigned villain a range of mainly AK, but sometimes worse pocket pairs than JJ and a very small percentage of the time QQ+. How is this an exploitative fold? This looks like a significantly +EV call. JJ has greater than 56% equity against AK and if he has more small pairs than big pairs, that number starts to shoot up. Villain would have to be trapping QQ+ a good amount here for this to be a fold.

In OP's hand, he is in a situation where at best he has slightly less than 50% equity against a small pair and often is dominated by AK. This is a very different situation where there is a clearer argument for making a fold.

I'm in the FOLD camp here, and will offer another reason for doing so that hasn't come up yet. HJ might have been trapping with a big hand vs the button straddler, and then simply changed his target to H once H raised. I've seen many times in the games I play where a straddler will raise 80%+ of the time if it limps around to him. I've seen a common defense against this being to limp/re-raise once the straddler has raised, especially by Vs with this profile. While I agree with many folks' analysis that V will often have 88/99/TT/AK type hands, this approach increases the possibility that V has AA/KK/QQ in his range as well.

I fold first time with this specific hand, calling AK / JJ+.

I definitely fold this without any reads. It's the first hand and you know nothing, Jon Snow. Let him have it.

Anybody still wearing a mask today is so unreasonably risk averse there's no way you are not dominated here.

If this is the rule, I think this play is right. I'd assumed it was a UTG straddle (that's all we do here in CA). Isn't this what they call a Mississippi straddle?

The Mississippi straddle is on the button but action starts on the SB and ends on the button.

Based on the HH, the straddle is on the button but action still started UTG. In that case preflop play is in the usual order but the button gets skipped and acts last. So it’s CO -> SB -> BB -> BU.

If I told you that you could flip a coin now and you have 56% chance......or you could wait a few min or hours and you can flip and its 80%, which would you choose?


Live low stakes isn't a razor thin edge that needs to be exploited to the max. You'll find plenty of spots that are better than 56% very frequently. We can reduce our variance as well as crush the game for a very large $/hr without getting into a bit better than 50/50.


I also stated that I had history with the villain and AK was weighted pretty high.

If your equity against villain’s range is exactly 50/50 it is +$90 in EV to call the jam, right? You have $80 in the pot already plus $20 dead from the original raiser. That is pretty significant, no matter your edge over the rest of the field. Certainly you are not exploiting villain by folding JJ here.

I understand you can get your money in against this villain in a better spot, but is there a reason why you cannot take this spot and the next available one too? If you lose the flip, you can reload. It isn’t a tournament spot.

Your reasoning for folding here makes sense and I don’t doubt that you are winning even while passing up spots like this. I am just saying that this hand looks like a clear call as described, which is not necessarily true of OP’s hand.

Since we're in a cash game and not a tournament and can therefore just reload, I take the 56% chance here (plus dead money because we play in a game that involves blinds) and then in a few minutes or hours I'll take that 80% flip too.

And after I've won that 56% flip my stack is more than twice it was before which is a pretty good thing for our 80% flip.

Even assuming his range has no AA-QQ, but is only 88-JJ, AK,AJs+,KJs+ and throw in 89s to represent spazz factor, we barely achieve 43%. We are flipping as a slight dog or dominated most of the time. Much more than we dominate. I would need a read V is much wider and we don't have it.

One 80/20 for $300 each every 10 hours is +$180, or +9bb an hour.

One 56/44 for $300 each every hour is +$36, or +18bb an hour.

IMO you are way more likely to get a 56% every hour than an 80% every 10.


Note: I don't think we are %56 here, but that doesn't change math like the above from being really bad. Unless you are super deep and can't reload to match stacks then never refuse spots just because a better spot might be along in N hours.