I am in MP with AJhh. $2/3 NL
I have $295
CO has ~$600
UTG+1 has ~215
There is a straddle and a call. I make it $22
CO makes it $60 (he is a very tight player. He likely has AA,KK,QQ and occasionally AK. He will Cbet 80-90% of the time.
All folds to the person who called the straddle. He calls the $60. So it's another $38 for me to call and there is about $150 in the pot. Is a call here OK?
Flop Q84hh. Check to the CO who bets $100. Other player calls (all in) and I push my remaining chips into the pot knowing well I was going to get called 100% of the time.

How terrible is this play?

I think the call preflop is ambitious, AJhh plays very poorly 3 ways in a 3bet pot against a "very tight player". While the preflop odds seem correct, against tight players who tend to bet overly large to protect their hands they usually do a good job of denying the correct odds for you to chase draws. Put that together and folding is going to save you a lot of money long term.

That said if you want to ignore the reverse implied odds of flopping top pair with AJhh 3 ways, and focus on the implied odds of hitting a flush you will often have to get it in on the flop if you want to take all the tight players money.

If you assume you have no fold equity then you can simply say if you shove the effective pot is going to be ~$800, so you are shoving 235 to win 800, with the nut draw you should be very close to break even but you are guaranteed to never be a huge favorite. At best I think your entire line is probably -EV with a flop shove 0 EV to negative, there isn't anything positive to say about the hand. I like the play much better when you actually have fold equity to go with your draw equity.

This makes sense.

Pre-flop is a clear fold. You're way to short to take advantage of CO having a face-up range here.

It's not clear how much the other person has. You say UTG+1 has about $215 to start, but is calling the $100 all-in for less when he's only put $60 in the pot already. I'll assume he had $160 to start the hand. The more he had the better it is for you. When you shove there will be about $490 in the main pot and $270 in the side. Your equity in the side is about 39% against the range {QQ+}. Your equity in the main is going to be slightly less, let's say 37%.

.37*490+.39*270 = $286 > $235, so your shove is about $50 +EV.

It's worth noting that you got a great flop for your hand and you only made back $12 more than your pre-flop call. You're only 11% to flop a flush draw.

Your preflop call is pretty bad. Once you are at the flop, your shove is fine, assuming you get called in both spots (and I am assuming you will, can't see either folding for 135 when they have put 160 in already). Your shove is plus EV since you only need a little over 2-1, and you will have significantly over 3-1 pot odds. FE would be gravy here, but not necessary.

Sorry, missed the one guy was all in already, did you have his stack wrong? Still plus EV.

You are right. I don't know how I got to $215. I should have double checked before sending the initial post. He must have had ~$175 ($60 preflop and he went all in for $110-115 after CO's $100 bet).

Everything you wrote makes sense. I didn't like the preflop call while making it but I made it nonetheless. I am sure being on the 9th hour of the session had a part in it. But I still wasn't sure about the exact math of it the day after. Preflop was only $38 for a pot of $150 but I am aware AJ doesn't play well in this spot but couldn't find the fold at that point.

Thanks for the break down.

Thank you.

pre, it is not very good. From your description of V, you are pretty much lighting 38$ on fire. that is 7 rounds, or about 70 hands of seeing hands for free. that is like 2.5 hours of poker.

but yeah, you are almost getting 4:1 on your money, so it is not horrific. but not good. making this call pre heads up would be really really bad.

after the flop, it is a no brainer, for that price you are never ever never folding. it is an auto shove every time.

so overall, it is meh. not that bad, not that good.

I am going to guess that you won the pot and V lost his ****, telling you what a horrid horrid play that was.

Hahaha.

No, actually result of the hand or other players had no part in creating this topic.

I was just thinking through the hand and didn't know for sure how bad my preflop play was mathematically. I was a bit lost. Even while playing the hand I took at least a minute to call preflop. Flop shove was automatic.

I lost the hand and no one said anything.

PS, I used to have PokerStove before my hard drive died last month. I would use it to find solutions to these types of issues. I couldn't find a link to download it. If anyone knows where I can download it I would appreciate it

Fold preflop; you are not in good shape versus his range. Flop plays itself, but short of actually bingo'ing a flush 1% of the time, this is your best possible result, and you're still getting it in with no fold equity and a 1/3 chance of winning.

Poker Stove is basically gone, though someone hosted a version of it with a jailbreak to keep it from expiring. Most folks use something like Pro Poker Tools online equity calculator now, instead of keeping Stove on their computer.

If you really like Stove though, there's a a link here to the jailbreak version. I downloaded it and can confirm that it woks the same and is virus free.

If you are looking for a free pokerstove replacement try equilab. It has some flopzilla-ish features as well and allows you to easily store standard ranges as well as "carry forward" narrowed ranges.

I gave it a good think, 2-3 minutes, pretty sure you're PF call is bad. You need to win 20% of the time which makes it compelling. But, are you ever happy hitting an A, paid if you do and aren't beat? Are you ever hitting a J, paid if you do and aren't beat? This is all going off the range you give Villain. Seems like it's a flush mine and you really don't have the odds. Stacks don't really support it either. Nope, given range, think this is a fold, a smarting fold (slightly) but a fold.

As for the flop, seems like a math question. He prob has KK, AA, QQ, so ye, this flop is no Bueno. I'm not gonna do the math, but I think it would be a call given your outs. The fact that the flop situation is marginal, shows I think how poor the PF is.

After a straddle and a call and with just a ~$300 stack, I'd make it $30 easy preflop. I also don't think it's a crime to overlimp/evaluate.

I'm snap folding to the reraise. We'll only be in a 3way pot, we'll be OOP to the 3better, and our hand is crushed by the 3betters range.

On the flop, if we *know* that our shove is going to get called 100% of the time, then why shove? We're already getting almost 4:1, so I'd simply call and then hope to bink / get paid off. We might even get a free card on the turn OOP due to the pot being protected. And even though we never know for 100% that we'll get called (i.e. we do have *some* FE against the raiser), even getting him to fold isn't much of a coup since we'll most likely still have to hit our hand against the all-in player (although we might clean up outs against AK/etc.).

ETA: I don't know if I'm missing something or not, but it seems shoving *knowing* that we're going to get called is going to be less profitable than simply calling.

Goverallrettybad,imoG

Shoving is always mathematically +ev assuming pfr calls. There were some silly numbers thrown around like hero is barely neutral to -ev, or that hero is getting 4:1 on a shove. Its actually more like slightly over 2:1 on a shove, assuming pfr calls.

Anyways, shoving is always going to be the superior play, imo, because if we just call, the pot will be $180+ $100 + $100 +$100 =$480 with $140 effective stacks behind. Assuming we brick turn and villian jams, you will be getting about 4.5:1 on a call, so folding would be out of the question. If your plan is always to call flop, call turn, you may as well just jam it all in now. I suppose you could argue it may be better since villian may occasionally check back the turn and give us a free river, but why put ourselves up to more difficult decisions where we have to guess if our Ace is any good when we hit? Because the line that goes bet flop, check turn is often going to be weighted towards AK.

Shoving also has a bonus side effect of sometimes getting villian to fold AK, and sometimes allowing us to stack him when he may have otherwise folded when we get there.

22 is way too small for the first raise. Vs a very tight obvious player it's a pretty easy fold to the 3b. Once you call then flop is easy gii.