Yep, nice post and I’m aligned with this.

Is this fine? 2/5, 9 handed but only 6 at the table, $1.3k effective with main villain.

OTTH

Complete unknown villain opens $20 UTG (is this LJ 6 handed?) One seat over calls, and we call next to act with A♥️ T♥️ , BTN calls and BB calls. I just called here pre because he is a complete unknown and even though it seemed like a standard 3 bet, I'm pretty shy about 3 betting unknown UTG opens - do we still just 3 bet anyways, then fold to a 4 bet?

Flop ($102): K♥️ K♠️ 4♣️. X around.

Turn ($102): 5♥️. BB checks, villain bets $40 and only we call. Raising here makes no sense because wtf are we repping, right?

River ($182): Q♣️. X-x. Thoughts?

Yes re: LJ. I'm pretty much fine with the entire hand. It's up to you whether you'd rather 3-bet or just call this deep, but it doesn't matter a ton, there's benefits to both, even against an unknown.

Regarding the turn -- I don't think raising is wrong, I'd say checking back a king (say KQ or KJ or whatever) on this flop is fine because you don't actually want all $1300 in with trips decent kicker, and the way to accomplish that is to check behind the flop. On this turn, when the original PFR leads, you maybe now feel better about raising your KQ/KJ -- or maybe you peeled a boat and now have fives full. Regardless, I think both of those stories are reasonable and that the PFR betting $40 into $100 after checking the flop seems to me like a pocket pair from say 77-AA more than anything else.

River's fine, after just calling the turn you may be able to fold out the smaller of those pocket pairs on this particular river (since they're now beat by Qx of hearts), so if you wanted to toss like $75 out there as a value-ish looking bet it's a thought, but I think checking back and hoping second best ace-high is good works as well.

I agree with most of this, except I think we really need to 3b here.

We have the perfect squeezing hand and perfect squeezing opportunity.

We can easily fold to a 4b

We will have position and initiative when called by OR.

Or we can accidently iso call behind guy and have him dominated and position as well. Same story with the blinds.

And if everyone folds, we just took down a bunch of dead money.

A tag that doesn't seem to be very thinking or paying close attention to other players' patterns opens in HJ. He fires lots of flops but will give up on turn often. What's a good cold call range if we think we can float this player a lot?

Depends on our position, stack sizes and other player tendencies.

Deep stacked, HU, on the button a strong player could probably ATC for a while.

Going to play 2/5 again tonight; assuming it's like every other night I've played, there are going to be 2-4 extreme loose passive stations spread out throughout the table, so there's a fairly high probability I'll be mainly OOP vs at least one - in these scenarios, how narrow do you tighten your opening ranges?

For example, I remember last time I had ~67% VPIP on my direct left, then a ~95% VPIP two seats over and I notably folded KTs UTG and then 98s HJ. I feel like the 98s hand is more noteworthy, but I just didn't want to be playing at least a 3 way pot OOP with a suited connector. Are both of these folds too tight in these spots? I feel like in these seat selection scenarios my range isn't drastically (but definitely is at least a little) different from UTG-CO, but from BTN it widens significantly knowing I have absolute position.

Yeah, with stations to your left you need to tighten up a bit- at least considering "standard" 100 blinds stacks. Deeper stacks than that i would open both of the hands you mentioned, KTs and 98s. I also ditch some of the trashier offsuit broadway hands i would normally open from MP with stations to my left, hands like Q10 off or K10 off.

I mean, its all about tuning your game a little bit with high vpp players to your left- to make it easier for yourself to make +EV decisions. Tweaking your preflopranges is a part of that strategy approach in my opinion.

Another thing to consider when tweaking your ranges correctly is to assess how good you know your opponents tendencies postflop, aka how many hours you have logged with them. I play most of my hours in underground games environment where i have logged hundreds of hours with most of my opponents, wich of course is a huge plus when i am gonna try to predict how postflop is gonna work out on different boards/runouts.

When you play _alot_ with the same group of players, balance in different spots gets more and more important too, but not so much if playing with strangers in a busy casino on the weekends.

KTs in 9 handed UTG is looser than my default so high vpip/cc behind me won't change me dumping that because it's more about other players to the left at that point.

I don't think 98s needs to be dumped there necessarily. Postflop reads will inform this. If they are suuuper to the showdown station you can wait. If you can barrel them off often enough then 98s picks up decent equity to pad your barreling.

How drastically do you change your ranges though?

Not very drastically. Just a bit of tuning here and there,but my standard ranges arent much out of line anyway.I shave off the weakest/most speculative combos from each position basically. For example i can ditch the suited wheel aces i open from early in other lineups.

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I think it depends less on their VPIPs than their betting habits. If 67% likes to bet flops and can be relied on to lead through 95%, then I'll play 98s and love it (especially with big stacks). If he's going to check to 95% and I'm caught in the middle, then not so much--I'd be better off with big cards and isolation plays.

What I've been doing is shaving off the bottom chunk like you said. My range in these scenarios from UTG is about 77+, AQo+, all suited broadways except KTs and QTs, and T9s. Does that look fine?

That's a very solid point. I resorted back to my normal ranges when the 67% was on dinner break, because I noticed the 95% VPIP would just fold to a c bet well over half the time, leading to some extremely profitable spots. On the other hand, the 67% was a bit more sticky post which lead me to open the UTG range above.

Really, that's not doing a whole lot to my UTG range. The only hands that I was no longer opening were KTs, QTs, and 98s, so I wasn't shaving much off. I would say I definitely shaved off a much larger portion from other positions, but nothing too drastic.

All this is fine/good. But I would add a caveat, I guess you have already hinted at it, really more than hinted. If the players are equally bad post flop, you can exploit by keeping your range broad, or even going broader if a really bad player is likely to call and then hand you the monies postflop (either by folding too much as you stated re 95% guy, or by continuing to call too much post flop). So, the classic fish from days of yore: If there is a really, really bad fish who will call down with any top pair hand no matter how OOP and how multihanded you are, then it can be profitable to set mine OOP with them, for example. This is rare, but your scenario reminded me of times when I would want to play any two against a player even if I'm OOP.

Should we be c betting this flop? If so, how much? 2/5, 9 handed, $500 effective with HJ, $800 effective with SB.

OTTH

Three limps to hero OTB who raises to $40 with A♥️ J♣️, SB who we have one hour experience with, who appeared to play TAG calls, and HJ who exactly one orbit ago was the second limper in a pot, we raised to $35 and only he called and ended up having TT, limp-calls.

Flop ($132): Q♥️ Q♣️9♥️. X to hero.

Line check, please. 2/5, 9 handed, $600 effective. Villain has been playing loose passive pre and aggressive post - we've seen him raise once post with flopped trips and ge took the betting initiative twice post when checked to, once with top pair, other time no showdown. Hero probably has a TAG image.

OTTH

Villain straddles OTB $10, we $35 BB A♠️ Q♦️ and only villain calls.

Flop ($72): 3♠️ 3♥️ 2♠️. We bet $35, villain raises to $80 and we call.

Turn ($232): K♦️. We check, villain bets $125 and we fold. Do you like crai if the turn were a ♠️? Is flop fine?

So this might be too broad but I’m
Playing 1/2 and have made 3 large river bets in a row with the nuts and haven’t been called yet. This makes me nervous to keep Briton aggressive with non nutted hands but at the same time, I’m thinking if my table is playing right, I should keep it up? Curious if anyone has a thought?


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Would lean more towards betting around 1/4 to 1/3 pot. You block a lot of hands that intertwine with the flop and that would call you ('s, straight draws like JQ/JT, etc.) so you are hoping that everyone folds. If you get raised, it's an easy fold. No point in 1/2 or 2/3 size pot bet when smaller can get same results.

Checking is just giving up the pot and the worst play IMO. Turn is where things get interesting if you are called but would probably start shutting down as the hands that would have called your flop bet generally are unfoldable (Qx, flush draws, over pairs, TT, 99).

Would check the flop initially. To villains raise, would fold instantly. Our hand has little chance to improve on turn and odds that V will barrel are high, especially after he has represented a strong holding.

It's a bad board to bluff, generally almost all over pairs to the board will call along with 's and even random hands like 45, 56.

Please yell at me. 1/2.

BTN decent tag 350, over limps a bit often but seems to be abc.

LJ loose passive chaser 450. Likes the two pair. Open limps often from ep.

I cover both.

Hero raise 77 MP 12
LJ cold calls
BTN cold calls


Flop A67hhd $40
Hero bets 20
LJ calls
BTN calls

Turn Qd $100
Hero bets 60
LJ calls
BTN folds

River 8c $220

Hero thinks about making it $100, fumbles a little bit nervously then checks. This is slam dunk bet of at least $100, right?

I'm confused by your bet sizing. If you had AJ, how would you have played the flop? AK?

V's most likely holding is a big A, I would overbet shove against a range I believe is unfoldable.

Same. How big should I make it and why?