Hey guys, first post here on 2+2 even though I've lurked for awhile. I don't get to play live that often, but when I do, I like to believe I'm competent enough to usually have winning sessions at 1/2. This hand was definitely the most notable one from a visit yesterday to Foxwoods at a 1/2 table:

The table was a new table formed about 45 minutes ago and so far, people have been playing pretty wide pre-flop, but 3 bets have been basically non-existent with even the most premium hands. People have been playing pretty laggy, and maybe a bit sticky with slightly marginal holdings. However, in most big pots, winners have shown down with the goods, so all-in-all, your standard 1/2 table.

Villain in this hand is an older Russian man who doesn't seem to speak much English. He's been at the table since the start, and in the 3 or so orbits so far, has not been very active. I believe he'd won one medium sized pot so far, taking TPGK to showdown, but otherwise has been very quiet.

Hero is a young white male who has only taken two hands to the flop so far, both of which were folded to a flop bet from the preflop raiser after completely whiffing the flop. Haven't really had any hands to play at this point, so I'm not sure if people at the table have any image of me whatsoever.

Effective stacks ~160, Hero covers.

Preflop: Hero on the button with J9. 2 players limp to hero, including the villain in MP, and hero raises to 8. BB and Villain both call.

Flop (3 players, $27) KQT : BB checks, V bets 15, H raises to 50, V calls quickly.

Turn (2 players, $127) J : V insta-ships for 109, Hero?

Raise a little bigger pf, I like to go to 10 or 12 with 2 limpers from the button.

Good raise otf.

Fold riv, cry on the inside, and reload.

Folds, any half competent V is not doing this without the Ace.

Then again it is 1/2 so is a unknown half competent?

Just fold anyhow our hand is trash on the Turn and cannot improve.

Pre: Raise to $14 (5x + 1bb per limper) since we would rather take this down preflop. And if it goes to the flop, we may as well have a bigger pot to steal, with a hand that hits the flops they think we miss and misses the flops they think we hit.

Post flop: looks good, assuming you folded the turn. The flop raise is very good, getting us fat value from two pairs and pair+straight draw hands.

It's quite possible that he hit two pair with his JT and is overplaying it, but we need a read to go broke here without an ace, which is probably what he has.

Fold preflop. This is not a good hand.

You're putting V on AK or AQ ?

a weak pot-building raise pre with a terrible hand vs a tight limper isn't a good recipe usually

fold turn

I'm usually folding the button with offsuit one-gappers at most tables, even J9. $8 isn't really a big enough raise to fold out trash from loose players.

a/p the flop raise is right.

fold the turn. this is not a bluff.

Grunch

PF raise is too small. I'd go $15-$16 at least. An $8 raise just juices the pot up with multiple callers, which isn't what I'd want with J9o. I'd rather do that with a pocket pair or at least a suited hand. If everybody folds to your raise, that's fine. You don't even have a good hand and got a couple of players to limp-fold, possibly with better hands.

Flop is fine. Turn is a pretty standard fold. Four cards to a straight are out there and people love to play aces. Passive villains are almost never bluffing scary boards like this.

Agree. Because it is not suited! When you flop 2 pair 2% of the time, your J9 works well with a hand drawing to a str8, thus RIO.
You also flop a boat/quads 0.11% of the time.
You can also flop a str8 1% & str8 draw or double belly buster 6.5% of the time. However, 55% of the flops come with 2 to a flush & you often see the SB complete. So, he could be coming in with 63s.
So, chance of hitting a favorable flop: 9.61% or ~9:1 against

Now if you're suited, you flop a 4 flush 11% of the time, or flop the flush 0.84% of the time.
So, now you hit a flop 21.45% of the time, or 3.66:1 against. Of course, the bulk of that is a flush draw in which you may not be able to afford to pay to see the Turn card.

I wouldn't raise PF if I was suited, because the EF is $160, so $2 gives me 80:1 possible on my money, if I can stack someone or get it multi-way. Raising to just $5 reduces that to 32:1. Plus, 1st limper may have done so with AK [which I often see] and then 3 bets PF.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not baggin' close to $20 pr hr as stated is needed in the "Driving Guide to LLSNL" in order to consider moving up in stakes. However, I don't think anyone is in the casino I play at, surrounded by poor neighborhoods.

Thanks for the help guys. As most all of you have stated the preflop play was by far the worst part of this hand. I think I was just getting a little bit antsy and wanted to make a play, but just chose a not so great way to do it.

I was able to find the fold button here, as I just felt that there were way too many Ax combinations in his range that fit with how the hand played out, especially with how he snap pushed despite how aggressive I had been in the hand. I mainly posted this to see if there was any way that there were enough sets (mainly QQ and TT) and two-pairs in his range to somehow find a call here, but I guess not.

To my despair, after I folded, he very confidently flipped over KT like it was the nuts. But even worse than that, the very next hand V shoved again with a set of kings against the drunkest guy at the table (actually got the money in pretty good this time) who happened to be way behind but managed to river a flush against V. He then promptly got up and left the table, never to be seen again. That's poker I guess.

With that hand there was a chance he would have shoved the flop. I'm not too surprised because we were right he wasn't bluffing. Unfortunately you probably couldn't know he was that bad. You would have been kicking yourself though if you made the call and be showed an ace.

Not worth the call to me. 1:1 on my $109 + an extra $27.
This is why a guy I know [who has played for 30+ years] does so much better than me. He wouldn't call in this instance, however, I have seen him make some great calls after taking 2-4 minutes.

He puts out this persona that he's a rec player, talking to his neighbors on occasion, getting up & walking around to the other tables. Talking to the floor supervisors.
He can be talking to someone & afterwords recall the hand he wasn't involved in play by play.
He makes the bulk of his earnings from unsuspecting players [who don't know him] trying to blow him off his hand. Or play a medium hand too aggressively against his better hand. They never realize that he is a very tight player.

If the CO raises to $15 in a 1/2 and he's in the BB, he is calling with a premium hand & AKo doesn't qualify as one OOP.
He sits on his chair with it reversed with his mouth hanging slightly open, making him look like a small mouth bass ready for the graveyard.
A player who has never seen him before is clueless to the fact that he's the best player at the table.

J9off is a pretty bad hand. I'm playing it only because we are on the button, but I'm limping it. I think folding is ok too.

Turn is super standard fold.

before I saw the results I was trying to figure out what he is donking out with and I didn't think he would donk out with a gutter. When a weak(ish) player donks out it's either to build a pot with a good hand or to protect a medium hand imo. The ace and the donk didn't seem to go together especially since he flatted a 50 dollar raise on the flop. It looked a lot like two pair with that flat.

In the long run these folds are going to end up being correct (idk why he didnt just come over the raise in the first place because that was a horrible card for him and our range).

If I decide to play J9 on the button, I would rather come in for a raise than limp it since we would be forcing ourselves to hit the flop (or take a stab at it if limped to) where a raise would put the ball in the other limpers court to try to connect and we can play poker post flop with our button especially if the table is weak passive fit or foldy.

Nailed.

If you're going to play J9 just because you're in position, then you should raise it and raise it bigger because initiative+position is a lot better than pot-building+position.

It's such a losing proposition to call hoping for a tie.

I like limping btn with this hand in 1/2 and even poor 2/4 tables. Those who say fold pre aren't making the correct adjustments to the table dynamic. We do observe that when most players shove (especially against unknowns) it is a very poor value bet with the nuts. We do expect to see the A so often here and our odds never justify a call given how often he has an A to do this with.

I would think that a very good player [on the button] could make playing 55% of all hands profitable, with a proper sized raise & correct table dynamics against the correct opponents.

I don't, however, think it's a profitable play for the average [your's truly] player. Maybe someday.