This hand was played at the end of a 12 hour session. I say that because 12 hours is definitely pushing it for me, 8-10 is as long as I typically go. And I can feel it, I'm tired, deep stacked, and I know I'm not playing optimally. That said, a little background on the session:

The table is filled with a few regs and a few droolers. The droolers have mostly built all the regs stacks with little clashing between regs. 3b and 4b preflop have been almost non-existent in this game though. The few times it's happened, hands have not been shown down. The button straddle has been on since the table started, and 80-90% of hands start with one. Standard preflop raise sizes have been around $20. Average stack size is $500-$600 at the table. To clarify, I'm not considering a raise of the button straddle as a 3-bet. Not sure if that's technically correct or not, but w/e hopefully you get what I mean.

Me (UTG+1, $825): Late 30s, super tight image relative to the table. I have been a bit card dead so there's no question I'm folding preflop A LOT more than anyone else at the table. But my hands I've been dealt have seemed to be a bit polarized. I've been dealt AA/KK more times than I should have but also been dealt Q3o and the like more than what's expected. I've not been called down in a bluff. Have shown some nut hands on the river. Have also c-bet flops and c/f turns to some of the regs, including an A high flop to the primary villain (CO) in this hand.

V1 (MP, $400ish): Older gentleman in his 60s, fairly new to the table so not many reads yet. Seems somewhat tight so far.

V2 (CO, $705): MAWG that dresses 20 years younger than he is. Successful restaurateur that's a reg in the cardroom because he can afford a lot of free time. Money is not an issue for him. That said, he's too loose preflop and loves to bloat pots/gamble/put players to decisions. But he does play a lot of poker, so he can pick his spots fairly well. You know the type.

V3 (BTN, $1200ish) Good female player that may be a little too loose preflop but she plays postflop very well. Uses position to her advantage and applies pressure in good spots. Has not had to showdown many hands and no doubt runs successful bluffs. Has been defending her Button straddle fairly often. She will sit in the 2/5 no-cap game that plays really deep. But not tonight, perhaps she didn't like the lineup.

Preflop:

BTN Straddles for $6, blinds and UTG fold to me in UTG+1, I look down at AA...

I realize this may or may not be an interesting decision point to some of you but given stack sizes and table dynamics, I think it's worthy of discussion. Bet sizing will probably be a recurring theme in this hand...

BTN straddle means action starts on the SB, and blinds have already folded so there's really no squeeze possible.

We have a tight image and BTN is competent, so we probably don't want to L/RR (even if to target the whale in CO) and turn our hand face-up, even if we have more trouble building. pot.

Will Villains notice if we open raise to 25-30 instead of 20? It's not much bigger than the 20 and many Vs will call in an inelastic fashion.

Sometimes We could also open smaller, say a min-open to 12, but I don't think we can get a 3bet out of CO/BTN if there hasn't been much 3betting.

I'm leaning toward open raise for 25.

$30 preflop raises have happened in this game, but mostly after BTN straddle plus 2 or 3 callers. But stacks were deep, so it was completely normal for the $30 raises to get 3+ callers.

Open at the upper end of normal sizing. Looks like $25 would be standard here.

Not a good situation to limp/raise and too deep to just open big. Raise something normal, hope you get some callers and a 3bet. I'm guessing it doesn't happen though because if you can come over the top to $100+ this is a boring hand.

Maybe. Hopefully it's not a poor choice for a PAHWM but time will tell I guess. I've been not playing poker for several years now so I'm definitely out of the loop. And my main motivation with posting this hand is to improve my play. Hopefully it will help others that aren't too good at deep poker either. Anyway, I suppose this is a boring spot so we can move along...

Preflop:

BTN Straddles for $6, blinds and UTG fold to me in UTG+1, I look down at AA and raise to $18, MP calls $18, CO min-raises to $36, BTN folds, I...

V2 and V3 seem to be aware so a large EP raise likely folds most of their range. I'd have gone $25. Now click back to $75 to continue building pot.

We got almost exactly the result we wanted: a 3bet from the whale in CO and no postflop threat from BTN. MP is irrelevant at this stage because he's dead money and will likely play face-up postflop.

Unfortunately, we probably would've gotten the same result with a $25-$30 open, and pot geometry would make this way easier to get stacks in going forward.

If we call and MP calls, there will be $118 in the pot before rake, which puts us at 7-8 SPR and OOP the rest of the hand. Do we think CO will fold if we click it back?

I vote for a 3x click-back to 108. If CO calls and we go heads-up, SPR will be just under 3 (trivial to get stacks in on 2 streets). If MP and CO both call, SPR will be ~2 and we could even shove the flop blind.

At this stage, I'm hoping this induces a spaz shove from either V, but that would make it too easy of a PAHWM.

I'm going to speed this up as in hindsight the PAHWM was probably not the right format. Comments and criticism are welcome on my flop decision. Let's get to the turn.

Preflop:

BTN Straddles for $6, blinds and UTG fold to me in UTG+1, I look down at AA and raise to $18, MP calls $18, CO min-raises to $36, BTN folds, I reraise to $100, MP folds, CO calls.

Flop ($223): J 7 T
I lead for $100, CO calls.

Turn ($423): J 7 T 6
I check, CO shoves for his last $505, and I have to call right?

How bad is my turn check?

I suck at deepstack.

With these stacks (deep), these opponents (tricky one in CO, good player on Button), and our image (super tight), this is a trivial limp to reraise here. I feel anything else is just really really bad. A raise is unlikely to thin the field this deep, plus we have zero clue how many players / who are interested in their hand at this point, so all it does is typically turn our hand face upish on the table OOP in a bloated pot to difficult players. If it limps around, whatever, who cares, we play a super high SPR with AA; heck, we could even just nittily check/fold most flops and probably not be making much of a mistake, whatever. But if it gets raised (especially with callers) we setup a trivial spot for ourselves: we reraise an amount which prevents setmining and play for stacks postflop, and if takes down all the dead money, whatever, take down $60 - $70 risk free and move on.

ETA: Was going to say I hate the idea of raising hoping we get 3bet because what idiot is going to 3bet the super tight raiser from EP, and yet here it goes and happens, lol. Anyhoo, we can't flat cuz (a) that might invite the 3rd guy in and things get even more difficult and (b) even it we managed to get this HU that'll create a difficult SPR of 7 where he can just bet/bet/bet for stacks (but are we ok with that having only gotten in 5% of stacks preflop)? So I'd just 4bet to an amount that prevents ~setmining odds, which is about $125. If we take down $60 preflop risk free, whatever. He did minraise, so it's possible he does have a monster and won't fold to the $125.

ETA#2: Pretty disgusting flop (which I again would recommend raising a little more preflop to give more poorish 8:1 odds than slighly better 11:1 odds we gave to setminers). But in the end the SPR is ~3.5 and board is drawy, so I would PSB the flop to shove the turn. Really don't like our very small bet on the flop which leaves way too big a shove for the turn (this is not a board we want to draw out over 3 streets with this SPR). I guess we're betting small / checking turn to induce this guy? Overall I think it's still too risky and I just don't think he's thinking he's going to get a limp/reraiser off his obvious AA/KK enough to attempt things. Probably have to call the shove as played.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Call.

I think the flop bet was too small given SPR. If we had gone for 160-180 on the flop, the turn would've been trivial.

When V flat calls the flop it should mean he doesn't have TT/QQ because we can easily show up with AK here (fish always put us on AK).

When the turn bricks and we check, we're representing whiffed AK giving up, and it gives him free reign to go nuts with KK QQ.

His min raise here is very strong, he has a hand he wants to play. Given his description it can't be pinned at QQ+ the way many can, it's more likely inflating the pot with something that can flop well. He won't want to fold. You should go at least $125 and as much more as you think he calls. If he really likes to gamble I might just shove over his min raise, it gets more calls then you would think.

In any case flop is ugly but against this guys range you are committed. $150 on flop, shove turn. If the board was a little more dry I might go for a check against a guy likely to bet air but this board is too dangerous. High variance/high profit situation.

Yeah I think flop sizing was probably the biggest error in this hand. No doubt it was a high variance situation. I called after getting the clock called on me. In hindsight it is pretty ridiculous to check that turn w/o a clear plan to him betting/shoving. He had 79

So did your hand hold?

It did. Playing with an equity calculator and even giving him a pretty tight range to shove all-in with on the turn it appears this was an easy call. But I haven't used one of these calculators in years so this is what I came up with. Someone let me know if this is/looks wrong.

Ace Poker Drills Poker Equity Calculator
Board: Jc Tc 7d 6h

Equity Win Tie Hand Range
53.0886% 51.8065% 1.2821% [ AcAs ]
46.9114% 45.6294% 1.2821% [ AdAh(100), KK(100), JdJh(100), JdJs(100), JhJs(100), TdTs(100), TdTh(100), ThTs(100), 77(100), 9c7c(100), 8c7c(100), 98s(100), 9c9d(100), 9c9h(100), 9c9s(100), 8d8h(100), 8d8s(100), 8h8s(100), KQs(100), AdQd(100), QdQh(100), QdQs(100), QhQs(100), JdTd(100), JhTh(100), JsTs(100) ]

That may not be the easiest thing to read but I discounted QQ, 99, and 88 to half of their combos. Included the other AA, all KK, all flopped sets, 98s, and available JTs combos, along with his actual 9c7c.

Original open is definitely too small, and flop can be a check with black aces.

Checking the flop for pot control or to induce a bluff/value bet with worse from this player type?

Its hard to explain in a simple post but high level a JTx two tone flop is just always gonna favor the caller ip (his range has more board coverage than ours)

You are going to have to check fold all AK combos except for clubs and diamonds.

There are also alot of ****y turn cards and by checking we keep 100% of his range in (instead of condensing his range to very strong holdings when we bet and he continues)

It's not really for pot control, I don't like that phrase anyway. It's also not to trap. It's sort of thinking about balance a little bit, and it's playing your hand for value in such a way that you fully realize your equity (by check / not folding we can see most rivers).

People greatly misuse the idea of balance and I agree with most that it doesn't belong in live poker, but there are times when we can think about it and how it helps us play certain parts of our range. This is one of them.

Note, this is specifically for 3/4bet pots and wet flops and oop. Don't start checking K72r in single raised pots.

Nice post, thanks for taking the time to make it. Just curious how we respond if we would have checked the flop and villain makes it ~$150 to go? Are we check/calling or check/raising? And this is where I'm a bit weak on poker theory I suppose b/c I can see arguments for both. C/r allows him to get away from hands we crush but also charges drawing hands. Whereas c/c keeps all his betting range in the hand.

As much as I hate this flop, the fact is this guy is very loose (as confirmed both by the description as well as the results); shouldn't we feel committed in this SPR 3.5 pot? If so, does checking any street (just to get to showdown to realize our equity against hands that admittedly will be a weaker range if we check to them versus a stronger range if we bet to them) outweigh making sure we don't allow him a free card on this wet board OOP? In this case thankfully the Villain put the chips in for us, but if he hadda taken a free card anywhere I'm thinking that would have been a disaster, no? The drier the board, the more we can check to induce / get value that way cuz it's so unlikely he'll hit a card that'll destroy us (unlike on this board).

Gcommitwhencommittedonwetboards,imoG

if i check this flop and V bets 150 im check raising all-in to charge his draws and get value for pairs that aren't folding. i think check calling OOP is wrong here. also i like checking the flop because if you play as tight as you say you do villain will be betting this flop pretty wide and assuming that you have AK. they always put me on AK. but once you call they are going to have a good idea you dont have AK anymore.

That is my thinking also. With an SPR <5 and an over pair against a very loose and very bluffy villain I'm not worried about getting to river. All of the money is probably going in at some point no matter which way hero goes, we get to showdown no matter what. I would rather push the action to insure we get the money in against draws that might otherwise check.

I think the kind of situation that Avaritia is talking about is more important as stacks get deeper. At SPR 10+ I'm not happy stacking off with one pair any more even against a loose bluffy villain.

Yeah, much much cooler with a check line when SPR is big and we don't feel committed, and *if* we are going to stack off in a big SPR pot with just TP then much better to check/call it off than bet it off (due to opponents range, especially a bluffy one, being much wider when checked to vs bet at).

But none of that applies at this small SPR on a wet board, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Slightly bigger pre in straddled pot (same size for my entire range). Def bigger 4!

Bigger flop / shove turn.

AP call is obv correct with so many draws / pair+draws.

If this were a single raised pot I'd get behind a flop x. In 4! Pot with this board and this villain I think playing for stacks and folding rarely is correct.


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You guys are thinking about it backwards. It is because this is a 3/4 bet pot that makes flop a check. I'd be much more inclined to bet it in a single raised pot.