1/3 NLHE, 7 handed.

V - Old asian man. Has been running hot. Seen him in the room but don't really know his game as I never play with him. He's been VPIPing 80% or so and has never 3-bet. He called with JJ pre IP and bet an A-K-Xr flop and then checked down and won the pot. Another hand he called out of the blinds with ATo and donked huge on a dry A-T-5r board and everyone folded whereupon he proudly showed top 2. Covers. UTG.

H - played one bad hand calling out of the blinds and is down a bit, hasn't rebought, has also been card dead. No one is paying attention. H is effective stack. 265$ UTG+1

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BTN straddles, SB and BB fold, V calls 6, H to 25 with K K, Fish1 calls next to act in MP, Fish2 calls in CO, BTN folds, V calls. 4-ways, 2nd to act.

Flop 100 (240 back) - T 8 7

V checks, H bets 25, Fish1 calls, Fish2 folds, V check/raises to 75, Hero?

Check flop. As played I would fold. We are either flipping or crushed.

we size down precisely to avoid being trapped as opponents are compelled to raise for value/equity denial when they bink flops. Folding while sammiched between fish/nits sucks but not really exploitable. A better spot will come along soon.

Why is this fold not exploitable? Because MW?

This is usually a monster 4 ways (min. two pair). I would fold in a heart beat.

As an aside, you say in a lot of your posts that no one is paying attention; I highly doubt that. My guess is that if you asked every player in confidence who the tightest player at the table is, the most aggressive, the bluffiest, the most ABC, the best, etc. that they'd all pretty much give the same answers. Not hatin', just sayin'.

I limp in but that's me. But otherwise we managed to get in ~10% of our stack, so we've setup a commitment spot on non-Ace flops, imo.

Even though we're not in love with being this multiway and commiting, with this SPR I think we just have to sigh to anyways. If the players behind me are at all stabby, I'd check/shove. Otherwise, I'd bet large to get the rest in on the turn. I'd be cool with a small bet/evaluate in a high SPR pot, but I really don't like them at all in small SPR pots if we feel committed (which I think we should be here); we don't want to drag this over 3 postflop streets and yet a call to our small bet size would have us at an awkward $215 stack with a $150 pot on the turn.

As played, gross spot but I just shove and live with my preflop commitment plan. Not loving it but dood has spazzed once with a flop bet before. I'll be honest in stating that I sometimes turn my brain on in this spot and make the exploititive fold, but I'm really not so sure that is best at this SPR (QQ/JJ and pair + draw and overvalued Tx is still in play, plus we have counterfeiting outs against two pear).

GcluelessNLnoobG

You think the old Asian man would answer with "your mom"?

HU the situation looks differently but with the cold calling fish behind us we have to assume that V has a hand that at least wants to get all-in with the fish. Granted there are a couple hands like QQ/JJ that fit the description and are behind us but I'm not sure if there are enough. Worst case scenario to me would be we shove, fish folds and V calls. Therefore I'm more inclined to call and keep the fish in the hand than to shove.

flop bet is bad given spr

id check intending to cr AI vs one player or c/f if there is a bet and a raise

1/3 reg here.

When you're in a game with lots of loose action, I'd open bigger as a general rule, but especially when you're playing a shorter stack. You don't want opponents to think that they're getting the right odds to call and try to stack you with some garbage hand, but if they happen to double you up, it's not that bad for them, because you're short stacked.

Instead, you want them to think that there's a high probability you'll be jamming the flop in a multi-way pot after putting so much money in pre, so calling your pre-flop raise would just be torching money.

In other words, with big pairs on a short stack in a loose game, I tend to just play my hand more face up, daring my opponents to make loose calls. If you'd raised to $30-$35 pre, you probably wouldn't have gotten as many callers, and Old Man Ramen probably wouldn't be x/r-ing your c-bet.

As played, V is in a good position to x/r-squeeze with the dead money from the fish in there. Yes, he could have flopped a set, two pair, or a straight, but your description of his previous play doesn't lead me to think he's playing perfect poker. He could be doing this with JJ/66/JT/QT/AT/76/89, etc.

It's doubtful the fish behind you has a hand that can call the x/r, because if he did, he probably would have raised himself.

I'd probably flat the x/r to see what he does on the turn. If the fish calls, I'd shut it down and hope to get to showdown without having to put more money into the pot. If the fish folds, the pot would be $275 ($350 if the fish over-calls), and you'd have $165 back.

With that SPR, V's probably not going to jam turn as a bluff, because there's so little fold equity, and he can't be sure his hand is best unless he flopped a straight, though he might jam with JJ or some of his better 1P+draw type hands, depending on the turn card.

From his perspective, he's not really "bluffing", because he doesn't know you have KK. He probably thinks JJ or a pair plus a draw is good enough to bet into the PFR, even after you flat his flop x/r.

If he jams turn on a brick or a card that completes all the likely straight draws, and the fish is still in the hand, I'd probably fold, but if the fish folded on the flop, and the turn is a brick, I don't think it would be terrible to call down against this type of V, if you've seen him over-value top-pair and worse over-pairs.

If the turn is a brick and he checks, I jam. If we're beat, we're beat. I re-buy and look to get into as many pots as possible with him.

My observation is that the older Asian guys are either super-nitty, or super-splashy. This guy sounds super-splashy. Guys like that routinely get it in with hands worse than KK here.

$25 is a poor choice preflop. You have two people already involved in the hand at $6, straddler hate folding. Im going $35-$45 preflop depending how the table is playing. Theres $16 in the pot before you enter and $25 live is offering too good a price to come along for the ride.

Flop is a clear check. You are in the middle amongst three other people and all kinds of hands are crushing you after your small preflop size. What are you trying to accomplish by betting (serious question as maybe there is a good answer)?

I cant fold for $50 more even though everyone saying this is two pair or better is likely correct. Im a sucker for a good price and even though this probably a worm on a hook, I will bite.

The raise size really does depend on how loose the game is and the effective stack size. My first thought reading the OP was that $30-$35 should be big enough here. Reading your comment, my first thought that $40-$45 is just crazy. But I've been in games that were so crazy-loose and deep that I eventually got my open up to $45, and I was still getting multiple callers.

Playing KK multi-ways in MP sucks, but if a loose V limps in front of us, and the BTN straddle has a hand he likes, we're likely to be playing it multi-way and in the middle, whether we open to $25 or $35. But at a certain point, when our opens get big enough to earn the correct amount of respect, all we're doing is winning the blinds while we wait to lose a big pot. That doesn't seem like the best way to get max value from our range.

I guess my point is, if we're trying to figure out how to avoid playing KK off a short stack, four ways in a $100 pot, I'd rather raise to $30-$35 and hope to play a $90-$105 pot that's contested three ways, rather than raise to $40-$45 and either win $16 when everyone folds, or get 3B to $120-$150 and hope our K's hold up when we 4B jam.

Okay thanks everyone. I think the problem was I wasn't expecting the x/r and I didn't really have a plan for what to do when that happened. I guess the three options here are:

1. bet small like I did and pull parachute knowing I've boiled off 1/5th of my stack but say oh well.

2. bet chunky and just go with it.

3. check planning to check-raise and just go with it (I like this the least because it would often give 9X a free card and its so MW, people were mostly passive).

Results:

This was the absolute no brained

Curious how he would have played turn if you'd just flat called the flop. Conceivably, you could have flopped a straight, or even a set. Depending on what the turn card was, he may have slowed down, checked, and let you get to the river, or he might have jammed from up front, at which point you might have gotten away from your hand.

Either way, against V's like this, I don't think you should lose sleep over how you played this. He's going to show up in similar spots with worse hands he plays the same way, and you're going to have stronger hands sometimes. If he's playing T8o this way, he's spewy, and you're going to beat him more often than he beats you.

It's harder for our raises to get respect when we're short stacked. You're going to see more jam-or-fold situations like this. If you'd started the hand with $500, you could have called flop, and it still would have only been 1/5 of your starting stack.

i mean spr is 2.4 and people are playing like its spr 15 lol (re the never betting flop, really dont think you want to size down here either - your hand cannot handle majority of turns). honestly think GG is one of the best on the forum at understanding how this affects things

v's line and sizing super scary though ap. i can also see an argument for committing vs 1 but pulling out vs multiple

People are playing like SPR means a whole lot lless when the pot is four ways. Solvers cant tell you how to play four way pots can they? Its a pure check. Best online player in the world there is a video on his flop play where he s monkey in the middle of 3 way hands. In the fairly large databases they have of him, his cbet percentage as monkey in the middle is 0%. Its not rocket science. Check check check check check.

Without having read the results, I think I would jam. Probably low EV but I think it should be positive. Hopefully the fact that V had donked strong hands means he would do that sometimes on this flop with a strong hand and hopefully that weights him more to a Tx type hand, but that isn't necessarily the case. Hopefully the fish who called is not trapping and hopefully folds a hand we are beating but probably has decent equity.

Preflop I like going $30 with the limper.

Flop I think I like checking with plans to either call or raise. Sometimes if we check snd the action goes bet, raise, we might even fold.

Read the results and I still agree with what I said.

I disagree. Description of V makes TX hands or JJ hands a reasonable possibility. And we have okay equity vs 2 pair. We cannot always hero fold. Great players also embrace the variance and understand they cannot be always be right.

I have a question about this as I was thinking about this the other day and had heard in 3way spots the person in the middle has the worst position, something about relative OOP and absolute OOP. Wondering if this is true and how it works 4ways, 5ways etc. I guess it also depends whose got the betting lead too like 5ways 3rd to act when 2nd to act was PFR is the worst position relatvely?

Ewww, why shove? I mean if he's confident with those hands then he'll remain confident on the turn so if you're determined to let him punt then just give him rope. Nobody is so confident with JT that they're going to call their stack off after check-raising. You basically bluffed with KK.

Ahhh man **** if I know. I'm in the moment. Table has been loose passive all night with hardly a raise. Guy has the audacity to checkraise me and for small sizing...I'd played a couple dumb hands. NIT folded 88 pre earlier and wouldve flopped a set and stacked a guy. Now card dead for several orbits. Idk. I kept thinking about the hand where he had AT and just figured its some naked 9 trying to get fancy. He couldve had JJ or QQ even with the way things went.. gah.

Relative position is mostly about playing the flop after someone has raised preflop and there are multiple callers. In an ideal world you not only want to have absolute position to act last but also have everyone else react to the person betting the flop before it's your turn. The most likely person to bet the flop is the player who raised preflop. That concept lost a bit of importance over the years with people not cbetting 100% of the time anymore but the preflop raiser is still the most likely person to bet the flop and "check to the raiser" is still very common in live poker.

Example: UTG raises, MP calls, BB calls. Now BB has the worst absolute position but at least relative position because if he checks and UTG bets, MP has to act before action comes back to BB.

In that example, the person in the middle is UTG. The person with the worst relative position (to the preflop raiser) is MP. He has absolute position though. Now you can obviously expend that concept to more players in the hand. Even with all other 8 players calling UTG's preflop raise, BB is still the person with relative position on him.

Getting your stack in with an overpair in an SPR 2.4 pot (even multiway) just ain't ever gonna be horrible with regards to risk-versus-reward, imo.

Gdon'tbeatyourselfupabouttheresultsinthisparticula rcase,imoG

I didn't say we have to be right all the time, but the more we are the better. He c/r'd only 3x in a 4 way hand on a T87 flop, most random villains would just call 25 with Tx. In my experience in these spots they have at least two pair which is usually the bottom of their range.

But most random villains also don't just flat preflop with JJ to then donk a horrendous AKx flop. That HH alone states that this guy could easily be clicking buttons / overvalueing.

GattemptingtoturnoffmybrainatsmallSPRsG

Not even in a 9-way bomb pot? In a 5x bomb pot there's 45BB in on the flop so if the effective stack was 113BB to start the hand we have 2.4 SPR now. (not even going as far as suggesting we hold 7c7s on a 432hhh board in said bomb pot)