$1/3 6handed
Hero UTG TdTs
Villain 1 (HJ) $155
Hero- $335

Pre-flop: Hero raise $10, HJ call, CO call, BTN 3 bet $75. Hero call, HJ call.
Flop 854r (pot $230)
Flop action: Hero checks, HJ jams all in $80. BTN pretty calls quickly.

I was a bit lost on what to do in this spot. I was feeling good when HJ bet but the BtN call with me still left to act is what got me confused.

I won’t spoil the rest of the hand I just would value input. No lives reads on opponents but seemed like passive table but I was only there 2 orbits

I'm assuming button has you covered?

Depends on villain, but I'd probably just jam or fold vs that sizing pf. Mostly just fold against the general 1/3 population.

Yes button has me covered.

You think BTN is folding any overcards he 3bet with pre. when HJ donk's 1/3 pot? Hell, A5s/A4s bluff 3bets can't be folding either. Maybe if V 3bet KJs or something that folds now.

As Spy said, when you raise to $10 get two callers and thus. with $34 in the pot BTN makes it $75 ... that's the time to fold TT, 100bb deep.
When there's $400 in the pot and you have 260 and an overpair, is probably not the time to fold. Can't think that call is better than shove, but maybe.

Yea. I really messed this one up. With me to act behind I thought he would fold his a lot of his Ace highs.

Pre is a fold or jam spot when V takes 7.5x sizing for his 3B, with just 2 callers, IP. That's "I don't need to see a flop" sizing, which screams JJ+/AK.

You're behind JJ-AA, and flipping with AK. Probably better to fold, not jam.

Once you call pre, flop is a re-jam and hope TT is good spot.

I just don’t know how to play TT from any position hahaha. I folded flop….

I too have been confused about TT lol

With that being said, I think there are more spots where jamming makes sense than you might think. Player read is huge here. I think fold is default, but a very loose aggro player or maniac would warrant a shove. You absolutely don't have enough money behind to make calling this make any sense imo, but deeper it could be fine.

As played there are a ton of sets and two pair that lead shove like that, you can't beat both it and BTN so folding is good.

It's not TT's fault.

Starting with $335 in your stack, and only $155 in V1's stack, you don't have the stack depth to call the BTN's $75 3B.

As a general rule, if we're going to set mine with a pocket pair, we want to have a remaining effective stack depth 15x the size of the raise. So, in this case, that would be $65 x 15 = $975. That's the remaining stack depth both you and the BTN would need to justify flat calling his raise. If you just flat call, that's what you're doing - set mining.

The alternative is to NOT flat call. That means folding, or jamming.

Calling the 3B pre is a mistake with ANY pair, not just TT. When you flat call, you're effectively turning TT into 22, because you're just hoping to catch one of 2 cards that will improve your hand.

Once you call pre, there's around $235 in the pot, and you've got $260 left, so the SPR is roughly 1, meaning you have to just go with any top pair or better hand, which you have.

When you check, HJ jams, and BTN calls, there's now $420 in the pot. You're getting insanely good odds to jam here. BTN is either going to fold (Yay!), or call, and you'll potentially more-than-double-up.

Or you'll lose your whole stack, which is why we should have played jam-or-fold pre-flop.

Look at it this way - would you rather turn TT into a bluff by jamming pre, when V might fold, but guaranteeing you'll see all five cards if he calls, or would you rather turn TT into 22 by calling pre, and hoping this will be the 1 in 7.5 times you flop a set?

Betcha V folds pre more than 1 in 7.5 times.

All great points. I honestly got chickened out on the Jam due to my 5bet debacle last week. I know this was a different scenario. I salvaged my session by playing well after this early debacle and also getting hit by the deck.

There's also a ton of worse 1P hands and total air that shove like that. Folding flop here, getting these odds, with an over-pair to the board, when a short stack V jams and a bigger stack V just flat calls, is not good.

It's just a fold pre, unless BTN is terrible enough to be 3B'ing 99 or worse IP, in which case we can jam, or unless stacks are 3x larger, in which case we can call.

Playing this one as a raise-call-check-fold is just torching money. Might as well just take our bankroll to the club and make it rain, for all the EV we're reailizng.

Honestly I was gearing up to jam preflop but then I thought that not many people really 3-bet much at my card room at $1/3. So I thought calling would potentially lead to the cascade of calls behind.

I also feel my most recent TT debacle influenced my decision. https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...-here-1833790/

I swear I am semi competent despite my horrible HH on this thread.

I was to jamming pre then I stopped myself. Then after the flop I was gearing up to jam. I even counted my chips as I was pondering the decision but just mucked putting his range on high PPs.

I really am awful when someone shows aggression back towards me. I feel comfortable leading the dance, but I make huge blunders in unfamiliar spots like this too often.

Another reason to fold pre-flop: you are not closing the action here and there is a short-stack behind you. This is a scenario you will run into a lot at 1/2 or 1/3. If you call $75, you will often find that the short-stack behind back-jams for $155 which re-opens the action for BTN. You will see short-stacks make this play with hands like 88 or AJo that they feel committed to but don't want to worry about having to play post-flop. Once the action is re-open, BTN will re-jam since he knows your range is capped. Very gross spot for you all of a sudden, and one that I have unfortunately found myself in several times.

Funny you point that out. Later in the evening. I raised a bunch of limpers from the BTN to $25. Get SB and BB call then HJ limp jams for $207. I shrug and call off with my black queens. SB calls too.
SB- AKs
LJ- KK

I got lucky to window a Q. But this is a weird way for the hand to play out. I. My mind LJ has standard open. SB had easy 3-bet versus my hand. If people are not 3-betting AKs from SB I def should fold versus BTN 3-bet for $750 with my TT. I sometimes get lost in the action because people take lines that are illogical to me and I they show up with a lot of things I think are out of range.

This actually sounds like a good game, if players are taking these fishy lines.

Limp-3B'ing from UTG is a classic OMC move, and is invariably a big hand. It's much less common from MP/LP, but I've seen it done in games with a lot of 3B squeezing from the BTN or blinds. In those spots, it could also be a flat-call-back-raise, which is super strong.

In your spot above, with QQ, I would look at it two ways:

1. I have $25 in the pot and don't need to risk 8x that amount guessing what V is doing, when it's a big portion of my stack, so I can fold and find a better spot.

2. I have QQ. I'm only behind AA and KK, and this guy's short stack limp-back-raise-3B-jam range probably has a good number of hands I'm beating, and it's not a huge portion of my stack, so I can call.

I'm not necessarily trying to figure out what V's range looks like, though my read on V will shape that. It's really just about my stack depth and how likely I think it is that V is just spaz-gambling with any pair/AXs and a dream. If my read is he's the trapping type, I fold. If he's stuck / on tilt, or a whale, I call.

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It was a very good game.

With regard to this villain I just saw him call down 3 streets with bottom pair. He was also consistently arguing with the dealer about the blinds. For instance, he would have $5 chip up for the blind and the dealer would ask him if he is checking or folding and this guy would get angry and argumentative towards the dealer. As such, I was willing to call queens for a large size. I was also surprised by SB showing up with AKs.

I fold pre __ __ __ _ he made a big 3bet vs your UTG open, so if we're not deep enough to comfortably set mine, even though we do have SDV vs some of his range, I would just fold being OOP and not knowing what hands he 3bets with (esp vs a passive player).

As played I would be tempted to jam the flop though since I called pre, otherwise there's no sense calling it pre flop since we have an over pair on a rain bow flop and its only about 260 into 390.

Against an opponent who's been playing bad, I'd probably also call off the jam with QQ.

I know good players who will jam QQ or call off a jam with QQ against good opponents, so it can't be a terrible call, even if he shows up with AA or KK, though I could also see the logic in folding, because the player pool at 1/3 tends to have AA/KK when they jam pre.

The twist here is that he limp-3B-jammed from MP/LP, which isn't something we see much at low stakes, with any hand. But if I saw a bad player do it, I don't know that I could fold QQ.

3B-jamming or calling a short-stack 3B jam pre with KK, QQ or AK is one of the more difficult decisions to face at low stakes, because the short-stack 3B jamming range for a lot of players can be pretty wide. I've seen enough jams/calls with 99-JJ and AJs or worse to think QQ+/AK has to be a call.

SB flatting and then calling off with AKs doesn't sound as crazy. I see a lot of low stakes rec-fish slow-playing AK pre, but they're never folding, so the SB double flatting doesn't really surprise me.

It makes me feel like I need to change my response to 3-bets versus the general population in my card room. I think I am discounting premium hands in their range too much because I just think it is a standard 3-bet that everyone knows to make.

This goes to the ongoing and never-ending debate about playing GTO vs exploitatively.

Generally, at low stakes, we'll make more playing exploitatively, particularly when the pots go multi-way. That's not to say we should ignore theory. The best approach is probably a rational blend of properly applied theory and logically-defensible exploits.

But playing exploitatively means you have to observe what your opponents are doing, to understand how most of the player pool plays, and how any one player might be a little different. It also means you have to understand how those tendencies create the exploits, and then apply them.

Many people here will say that at low-stakes, a 3B is always a strong hand, because people don't 3B weak hands at low stakes. I say it depends, because I see many opponents who are capable of light 3B'ing.

By "many" I don't mean "most". I mean "many", as in, probably 1 at every 9-handed table, and sometimes more than 1, which is enough to not think in terms of "always" or "never".

And that's just the guys who are good enough to 3B light and win. I'm not even counting the whales or "random nonsense" contributions from the rest of the player pool, the guys who 3B 77-99 or any suited ace, and lose.

So, you shouldn't change your response to the general population, if that means having a one-size-fits-all approach that assumes everyone is capable or no one is capable. You should strive to be able to make in-game adjustments, when you see who's capable, and who isn't.

I take it it's not good to call and see if you overpair, then?

Just calling a 3B with a pocket pair is set-mining. What difference does it make if we have an over-pair to the board, if we've capped our range, and our opponents' range is uncapped? We might have a nut advantage, but we won't have a range advantage.

Take a look at the first section of text in this article on Bart Hansen's blog, about the stack depths needed to call a pre flop raise, based on our holdings.

https://crushlivepoker.com/articles/clp-list-of-terms

To understand this logically, if we raise with TT, and our opponent 3Bs, and we just flat call, our reasoning for not 4B'ing is that V is usually only going to call with better, rarely worse. V might have JJ+. When we just call, we're capping our range, effectively saying we don't have AA, KK, AK, etc.

At this point, TT becomes just like any other low or middling pocket pair, in the sense that we're just calling in the hopes of improving to a set or better. Otherwise, we're probably not going to continue with the hand. This is called set mining, and we need 15x the raise size to do it profitably.

So, while having an over-pair to the board is nice, it really doesn't change much. We might say, well, V might have been 3B'ing a worse hand, but it doesn't really matter when we just call pre. Say V 3B two overs, or a lower pair. We're still losing when V flops a bigger pair or a set, if we weren't already beat pre flop.

We might continue with TT on low or middling boards that favor our range, and if we pick up a draw to go with our pair, but now we're basically turning our hand into a bluff catcher, or a bluff candidate, depending on whether we're calling or betting/raising.

But this is all prompted by the question of whether or not hero should flat call pre. The quick and easy way to know is to simply see if we're at least 15x the raise size (incremental difference, the additional amowe would have to call, not the total bet size) in remaining stack depth. If we're 15x deep, we can profitably set mine.

Otherwise, if we're not strong enough to re-raise, we should probably fold, especially when OOP. And the more shallow the stacks, the lower the SPR, the more it becomes a jam or fold decision, and the higher up in our range we should be when we jam.

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Thanks for the detailed answer.