Straddler is new to table. White man in 50´s. $200

3rd position is middle aged white man, a bit erratic and wild. Raises before flop from any position with any pair any two big cards. bets at every pot after raising before flop, gives up with nothing on 4th street. Bought in for $100. In a hand he raised AJ to $15 behind some callers and guy in 1st position raises to $100 (Obviously aces) he calls, flop KT3rainbow, guy bets 100 he calls, Q on turn and wins $150 remaining in guys stack. $425

5th position is middle aged Asian man, playing almost everyhand and calling big money with bottom pair, making big bluffs. $800

Hero is young Indian with conservative image. $500

Hero has AQ

first position straddle $5, 3rd position call, hero raise to $25 in 4th position, 5th position calls behind, other guy calls on button, straddler calls

5 to flop of AJ7, Straddler bet $25, 3rd postion call, hero raise to $155 (2/3pot), folds around to 3rd position who pushes all in for $245 more. Hero calls.

Comments?

Looks fine. The straddler making a weak donk bet on this flop is most likely a draw, a weak hand trying to find out where they are or a total fish. Given your description that call behind could be just about anything. So raising is fine.

Has villain been pushing draws post flop or chasing with them? If he is more likely to passively chase then push with a draw it is possible to fold in this situation. Given your description and that he flatted the first bet, I'm putting enough flush and combo draws in his range that you have to call.

Yea I like the call.

When 3rd position calls the flop bet (instead of raising), I think his range is weighted towards draws and weak one pair hands.

He doesn't have AA or JJ, so we can discount sets. Two pair seems unlikely, since he just flatted the flop bet.

AK he raises PF.

AQ feels like the nuts here.

Nope. Cant always call vs everyone; but sounds like you probably knew that. WP imo

Played fine.

Looks fine to me but you will be against two pairs from time to time as straddles could have A7/J7 at times.

I would have played the same way you did

Got what you wanted here .. except maybe the results?

A touch more PF wouldn't hurt, especially with the straddle a short stack. You are ready to gii with him, yes? Game is playing large, so a raise of 'only' $20 seems pretty small after all the limpers. GL

If the plan for the $155 was to call off if he spazzed and shoved, good plan, good hand. If you didn't think about it until after he shoved ... that's a mistake. Maybe the bet isn't a mistake, but lacking a plan is always a mistake.

I assume from your read that you don't expect him to ever have a PP or a big A here since he didn't raise preflop. So what are you targeting in his range? A3s kind of hands? Flush draws? Have we seen him shove with a draw or second pair?

You call him erratic and wild, but you only give us a hand where he basically just called down and hit.

I honestly expect to see 77 here all the damn time given the action. He calls a small raise (straddle) preflop, flats to keep players in, then when the action heats up he sticks it.


I don't hate the play. Projecting my own vision of a "wild erratic" player, I think we're good a lot here, and we're beat or going to get sucked out on pretty often too (maybe 1/3+ of the time).

Looks good.

Excellent post from Angrist.

OP,

1. Do you think your hand is disguised or face-up after you raise to 155?
2. Based on the answer to the first question: What worse hands are you expecting to call your raise?

It's only if: You were correctly expecting lots of worse hands to call or raise then you played it well.

Face up and a flush draw might call.

What should my flop plan be?

The big stack behind me is a concern as is the caller with $400.

I feel strongly the flop is a raise, but I am not sure about sizing.

Well played imo

It's only well played if Hero had decided to call all raises OTF IMO.

We have a blocker bet and a call in front of us. We are the PF raiser, unless I am committed to this hand I can't raise here (certainly not 'go away' style) without the intention of gii and never folding.

This is not the best board, certainly not multi-way. No harm in 'playing along' with the blocker bet to see what happens. We 'only' have 1 pair ... unless we are committed.

Was Hero committed? We don't know, but he certainly shouldn't have been surprised to be up against AJ/77 AND a flush draw if things got wild here.

More PF may or may not have 'solved' some issues here .. but more PF is needed IMO. GL

Hero has AQ

Flop [$122 raked] AJ7
Straddler bets $25?. What a weak blocking bet.

Anyways, I cannot remember the last time I ran into someone dumb enough to flat this flop bet with a set. Or, am I wrong & it's not so much of a dumb flat?

IMO, Mr. Erratic [3rd position], is calling $25 with a draw [many of which are possible], weak ace, maybe a JT[Q]. However, he usually raises pre with any two Broadway cards.......

I don't believe in bloating a pot with just TPGK, but what the hell - $25?! Odds are too good for the drawing hands. So I raise otf.

Now Mr. Erratic goes all-in. 77?. J7? He raises AJ pre. I guess Mr. Erratic could have slow-played here, but really?

There are so many hands that he could have that contain 2 s with some kind of str8 draw, that I have to call his all-in. I think he has QT, KT or J7. He would raise pre with KQ suited.

Or, he's changed up his playing style.

I do not like your flop play. Pot is $175 by the time it gets to you, so a raise to $155 is far more than a 2/3 pot bet which would be closer to $118. A much smaller raise, say to $90 or so, would accomplish near the same thing (give poor odds to draws and hopefully buy position), but also give you room to find a fold, although I probably would not fold vs villain in question.

This is completely wrong. You need to include hero's call of the bet in the pot size when calculating a raise. In this case, there's $125 in the pot + the straddler's $25 bet + $25 for 1 call + $25 for hero. So the pot is $200. A 2/3 pot raise would be (2/3)*$200 + $25 = $159.33.

You can also check your math by looking at the odds the initial raiser is getting to call the raise. If you make a pot-sized raise, the initial raiser will be getting 2:1 on a call (if it folds back to him). If you make a 2/3 pot raise, the initial raiser will be getting 2.5:1 on a call. In this case, if we make it $155, the pot is now $330 and it's $130 for the initial raiser to call, so he's getting 2.54:1, and thus we know that we made a slightly less than 2/3 pot raise.

Raising to $90 would be terrible in this spot, as it absolutely does not deny villains the odds to call with draws. If we make it $90, then there will be $265 in the pot and it's $75 more for the straddler to call if it folds back to him, so he's getting over 3.5:1 on a call, which is nearly direct odds for a draw. The caller in between will then be getting 4.73:1 on a call, which is more than the direct odds to call with a draw.

I think the hand is pretty much perfectly played by OP, other than PF, which can probably be slightly larger ($30-$35). PF is a slam dunk raise. We get to the flop with an SPR of just over 3 against the main villain and we flop TP2K (basically TPTK since AK is heavily discounted given PF), so we should be pretty happy to play for stacks if we feel that our range is stronger than his and nothing crazy happens. We know V is aggressive PF, which means that the part of his range that beats us is pretty much just A7/J7/77, and we don't have the Q which opens up a ton of flush draw combinations, so we should expect our range to be stronger in this spot.

After V flats the tiny donk lead from the straddler, we should expect to have the best hand the vast majority of the time, and we definitely should be raising this flop for value, as we are far more likely to get value from this hand on the flop than on any other street (and our range is much stronger than our opponents' ranges given PF and this board texture). We want to make our raise big enough to deny our opponents the odds to call with drawing hands, so OP's sizing is excellent.

Once V shoves, we're getting almost 3:1. Even if we give V a super-tight range of AJo, A7, J7, 77, KdTd and QdTd, we have 24% equity which means a call is only slightly -EV. Given the analysis of his range laid out above and our reads, I expect him to have far more draws and far fewer made hands, so I'm snap-calling here. If he ends up showing down a flopped two pair or straight, I make a note for future reference and also consider whether I may have telegraphed a raise, which allowed him to flat flop with the plan of shoving over my raise.