$2/$5 live

Preflop and flop are pretty standard so Im gonna fast forward to the interesting stuff.

EP ($500) limps. Hero ($825) raises to $25 AcKc. Whale (covers) calls in the SB. EP calls also.

Flop ($75) AsQs7d. They check to hero who bets $50. The whale calls in the SB.
Turn ($175) 9d. SB leads out for $45 ....Whats our move?

Looks like either:
- Blocking Bet
- Bait bet (baiting you to raise)

I think our options are:
- Call
- Raise to $200 and fold to an all-in

I like to call turn, call another small river bet.

Love being in position in this spot. Raise to $140

Need some reads

I agree. "Whale" isn't much to go on.

He's a whale. He plays way more big pots than most people. He calls way to many preflop raises. Hes not afraid to pour money into a pot either by calling or by betting big himself. He doesnt need a huge hand to put huge money in. Hes the opposite of a nit. Its hard to tell with these kinds of players but I seriously doubt hes a winner. He has big winning days but my guess is he has more big losing days.

OK, so he's super loose and not afraid to gamble.

That I understand. I've only ever heard "whale" used when discussing wealthy, splashy, table games' players.

With respect to the hand, I want to get to showdown as cheaply as possible, since his range makes it seem like his hand is either already ahead or on an 8+ out draw, and that's not considering the possibility that we might have to face another bet on top of an ugly River card.

call

if he bets tiny otr you can raise/fold but if he bets hp+ just call and get to SD. I'm not raising him, give him the opportunity to barrel the river

In my experience small bets are at least 80% blocking with marginal hands or pricing in draws and 20% or less weak leads with monsters. Problem is our ideal strategy (call, raise, fold) is different for each genre of hand. Since a second flush draw and all kinds of straight draws showed up on the turn I'd come closer to optimizing for the draws while still weighting all of them.

We shouldn't fold. Given this read how confident are we in folding to a 3-bet? That makes all the difference between indicating a smallish-to-moderate raise (say to $120) and a call.

If we blow him off A5 with no redraw here, that's sad, but we've also made it small enough that he can talk himself into peeling (maybe we have one of the 500 draws) and big enough to get extra value from draws that we wouldn't get by flatting. It's also relevant if he's going to barrel the river with draws when he misses; generally "naming one's own price" seems incompatible with repping a monster on the river which argues for changing the draws.

If I think he could put us in a weird spot w/ the occasional 3b bluff (not assuming he overbluffs, but bluffs w/ draw equity enough to be bothersome to realizing our SDV equity/target-SPR), I rather just let the river/action dictate what we do. If not, I don't mind AKQJT suggestion of raising to like $100-110, often getting value now from draws, and basically allowing us to dictate the amount of action on the river. Yeah, it would suck if we raise, he calls, a bad river comes, and he bets a good amount. At that point we'd have to parcel out his busted draws vs made draws & go from there.

I hate calling in this spot, how many times does it have to go call then raise behind before we learn our lesson? If EP is even remotely good he'll know that raising is +EV. I hate capping our range when we are PFR and playing against fish. Even a min-raise is better than a call.

If we do call, we need to know that EP is very passive

EDIT: sorry I didn't realize EP folded on the flop. meh, raise/call is close. I tend to raise when we don't yet have showdown value... so maybe we can call.

Sweet, a MikeStarr thread! Love them, as they usually generate some good discussion.

On to the hand!

I think I mostly flat here. Raising might get whale out of the hand, which we don't want, we're a little too deep to stack off right now with single pair, we have decent showdown value and we only really have to fade a diamond on the river.

If we raise, we might lose a lot of worse Ax too.

If we call, our hand is somewhat underrepped, so I'm ok with going into calldown mode against passive Vs here. If they have a set, we'll lose the minimum

IMO, villain's line is a draw almost always. I could be wrong, but if we plan to proceed as if I'm right, a raise to $120 has to be too small, yes?

The guy is a whale but hes not a maniac. If we raise, hes not going to shove with a draw. He will only shove with 2 pair or better (which I seriously doubt he has). He may or may not fold a weaker Ace to a raise depending on the raise size and size of his kicker.

I would raise ott, other streets are fine

I would raise the turn given its such a draw-heavy board. If it was a dryer board, I would just call and call any reasonably sized river to let the whale whalue-own himself lol

MikeStarr what do you think he does with a flush draw or OESD if we raise him? if he shoves those it's a bit of tough spot but we can maybe just GII. if he flats those hands, i think we def wanna raise now

does he perceive as more tight? or more of a lag?

Raise turn an amount you think he will call. $145-180?

I’m calling.
I think raising folds out most hands we beat, unless we think he can continue with AJ or KQs that he called oop in the Sb. We’re smacked by AQ, 77 and 99 (yuck). If we three bet and he jams a draw/pair + draw I’m hating life.
I like our hand but not enough to get a lot of action in a very big pot.
Yes it feels like he’s buying a cheap river but I call here and call most rivers

250-call

Raise pretty big, probably $200 or so.

Think we have a pretty clear raise against a whale. This is a blocker pretty often so let’s treat it as such.

If he has worse Ax we are better off raising now. I don’t think he’s going to fold for $155 more after putting out such a weak bet. Every now and then he might fold but there are so many action killing rivers it’s not like it’s a slam dunk he calls river if we call turn.

If he has a draw we are better off raising now unless he’s the type to put out a big river barrel if he misses. Based on his turn bet I’m guessing he’s more of the loose passive type whale. There are a lot of pair + draw type hands that we can get value from.

We also rep all sorts of draws on this turn in the mind of a whale so it doesn’t scream that we have a strong hand when we raise his $45 bet..

Being in position is definitely really nice since it makes it tougher for him to bluff river and tougher for his value bets to get paid off. Playing a big pot OOP on this dynamic of a texture would be much more difficult.

Having no blockers to either flush draw also makes this a decent combo to raise.

Yes. If you put him on 80% draws/10 marginal made hands/10 monsters then a bigger raise is in order because so many draws will call. (Also, denying implied odds is an issue because we won't know which draw(s) he has when one of them gets there.) My line was geared toward something like 45/45/10, where he definitely has a range that we want to keep in so we can get calls from AJ, AT, A8 kind of hands.

Mandatory value raise IMO. If he has a weak hand, he'll likely check back river or bet small again. We miss much more value from all the times he's calling our raise here & a potential river bet. If he's drawing, we gotta charge now before he gives up blank rivers. If he'll piece off with inferior pairs, we juice up the pot for some thin river value.

I'd size ~1Fiddy

Put me in the raise turn camp.

If we are able to correlate his weak turnsizing as a blocker bet with a weak/draw heavy range (aka range him very accurate), we exploit that information the best way in charging him on the turn. If we just flat, we let that amazing piece of information go for nothing,wich is a huge waste.

The river also gets alot easier to play, cause i expect him to take over the bettinglead and donklead the river big when he binks whatever hand he is chasing (because afraid that you check back the river if board gets scary and he isnt getting paid), and check it to us whenever he misses or his hand remains as a weak 1 pair hand on the river.

$2/$5 live

Preflop and flop are pretty standard so Im gonna fast forward to the interesting stuff.

EP ($500) limps. Hero ($825) raises to $25 AcKc. Whale (covers) calls in the SB. EP calls also.

Flop ($75) AsQs7d. They check to hero who bets $50. The whale calls in the SB.
Turn ($175) 9d. SB leads out for $45 ....Whats our move?

Hero raises to $200. SB thinks for about 10 seconds and calls.

River ($575) 5d. SB leads $200......????

AdXd got there, though sizing for a flush seems small given turn action. I'd sigh, then call.