Hero mid 20s TAG image

Main V middle aged Asian reg, seen him a lot but only played with him once and nothing crazy happened. Other 2 have no info on.

1/3 NL hero straddles his BTN for $6 (Mississippi straddle), I bought in about and hour ago stuck $100 have the effective stack at $300. It folds to V in BB who makes it $30. This is the third time he’s done this in an hour, other two times it folded around. This time UTG+2 calls, HJ calls, folds to H with Qc Jc.

Do I just flat for 10% of my stack with position? Is there ever a case for pushing it here? I had only raised one straddle out of about 6/7 and had not 3! Yet since sitting down.

3rd time he's raised a straddle? raised 2nd to act? or just raised preflop in general?

I can't tell from your description if he's raising often here. But even if I was going to 3bet jam a little light it wouldn't be with this hand. I'd rather play a multiway pot on the button with QJs.

Just call. You have a good multiway hand and position.

Flat.

Fold? Postflop SPR will be 2.25. Your flop choices will be limited to allin or fold, your position will be virtually worthless as a result. Not that keen to invest 10% of my stack trying to make top pair, third kicker 4 ways and then hope it's good. If our hand is not good enough against the raiser's range to shove over his raise and try to steal the dead money, that's a pretty strong hint that we shouldn't be playing an SPR 2 pot against him, either. We're in shortstacking territory here after the preflop action, we should be playing a shove or fold game.

Me Personally think JG suited is a little too light to 3bet as and JQ high flops that you get called on flop and turn your likely no good , would like to have at least KQ , also someone raising straddle 3 times in hour is not necessary out of line in my opinion , I would probably just nitfold pre here and wait for better spot , I personally hate straddling as I feel people may play back at me just because I'm in the straddle and I tend to not play well with hands I'd usually open with ,

Another reason to flat or even fold is that you don't block the three ultra premium hands V could have, so fold equity is likely fairly low (wrt V)

don't fold please, that's just terrible you have position and a strong MW hand, i definitely don't mind shoving but in all honestly I'm going to raise to like 100 here and let them decide if they can continue at 0ev, there should be enough flops to get you close enough, people will play passively and check it over to the aggressor so we can look at 4 cards cheaper also we can easily call it off if anyone jams, but the vast vast majority of the time they do not have a big pair as there were no re-raises over an aggro BB so i would be using my range advantage and position advantage and make it indifferent for anyone to call

I think this is mostly a 0ev to slightly -ev play but it's for a lot of chips and these days you have to take thinner edges for the big money

in short, make it 100 to go and call it off if jammed on (bring a lot of buyins to the game tho )

I never straddle but that's me.

One of the reasons I don't straddle is cuz here we have a nice multiway hand on the Button which would love to see a flop, and yet thanks to blindly putting in $6 and increasing the preflop raise size, we've now priced ourselves out of seeing one (imo). Guy hasn't done anything moronic as far as we've seen, plus the two callers can easily have us dominated and aren't necessarily folding to a 3bet. Putting in a huge 10% of stacks with a speculative hand that will see an SPR of lol 2.3 ain't great, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

SPR is in our favor here, in fact we want to be short on the button MW with QJs, folding here is really really bad

if we had 40bb this would be a high five the dealer jam, we actually would love to shorten the SPR, that's why re-raising small is the best play, we would then only need one low club or back door draw to shove the flop for example, the best flop for us might be any one where the highest card is the 9 of clubs

this is a spot where we actually want a low SPR

Flat

Personally not a fan of the straddle since we're only 100bb effective.

Completely disagree with this.

Speculative hands want high SPR pots so that they put in very small percentages of stacks when behind preflop/flop to reap the benefits of large stacks behind when they move ahead on later streets. High SPR pots also favour position where we'll have lots of room to move postflop when we whiff (possibly stealing pots) which won't be possible in small SPR pots.

Jamming preflop is probably a lot more complicated than that, but unless we're up against wide ranges / lots of FE, it's also kinda meh (although likely not too horrible), imo. A quick stove against an opening range of 88+/AT+/KQ has us at an EV of -$15 at 40bb stacks, but that is assuming raiser always calls and callers always fold (each with their pros and cons if this isn't the case).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Forget SPR for a minute, we're getting 4:1 with QJs on the button closing the action. We probably wouldn't want to call all-in but SPR >2 is gravy. We have nearly direct odds against reasonable ranges and we are going to overrealize that equity with position.

This is why raising 100 is bad -- you're never folding to a jam, but raising 100 lets opponents make the correct preflop call getting great odds.

There's $96 dead out there, if you're going to 3bet at all then jam.

Id just shove or fold, flatting here isnt that great this shallow and if he’s opening that wide shove should get thru him pretty often

Imagine suggesting fold here. You guys don't actually play poker live or online or anything right?

Flat for sure. Ok with shoving with right reads and villain. 3b to anything but shove isnt good.

But you're completely ignoring RIO; or are you somehow not committing on Q high flops vs AQ/KQ/overpair / J high flops vs AJ/KJ/overpair in an SPR lol ~2 pot?

And how are we going to realize our equity? Even when flopping a good draw we'll have no IO to call a big bet due to lol remaining stacks behind.

ETA: Chris nailed it in his post, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Yeah, that

We can fold if BB, who raised pre 7 off the button, cbets into 4 people. We can fold to a bet and a call. We can call a weak bet by a player in later position. We may overcall with a draw, we may semibluff jam a draw vs a weak range. We can check behind when we whiff.

These are options we only get by being on the button.

But just a small 1/2 PSB (from anywhere, keeping in mind opponents are allowed to check/raise) leaves us with just $210 left in what will be a minimum $240 pot by the turn (let alone the lol size of the pot facing a bigger bet / another caller, and good luck with FE in these spots). We're facing our commitment decision ASAP (pretty much preflop).

Calling preflop is leaky (in spite of our admittedly good relative and absolute position).

GimoG

I will say that i bring 10-15 buyins for my games and 100BB ain't sh--t

Imo we can make the absolute 0ev play here and use our stack and position to make a profit

the most +ev way to play it is to flat, or jam, but I'd rather give the opponents a smidgen of that ev back to play the pot IP on a short stack where I have total options, people will almost never come over the top if we make it 100 so it's going to be a .5 SPR to the flop and that's gotta be +ev to us

I don't trust monte carlo sims but I suspect we are the equity favorite heading to the flop, we might have up to 27% equity while everyone else sits around 20-25, small edge for us

also, if you can stack up you have some utility, if you have 200BB instead of 100BB you have better prospects to make money, more room to meneuver, more money for your double ups, that's why i'm going to be gambling it up here and raise it to beg people to call

I'm not meaning this as an attack KT, but I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I couldn't even guess what "make the absolute 0ev play here" means. This all makes no sense as well:

For the record, I think flat, shove and fold are all OK here. The main thing I think is that there is no advantage to flatting over shoving. That is, I think people who look at this hand and think "not good enough to shove, so I'll just flat" are kidding themselves. This hand has RIO against strong ranges. We're a 2 to 1 underdog against a range like { 88+,ATs+,KJs+,ATo+,KQo } and are pretty much going to be in big equity trouble anytime BB is interested in continuing on Jxx or Qxx flops. Flatting isn't a get out of jail free card in terms of dodging the fact that BB has a range advantage against us. You can take your poison in the form of shoving immediately and hoping BB doesn't dominate you, or you can take it in the form of hoping for the best when BB cbets like a Qxx flop, where you're going to see AA/KK/AQ/KQ a lot. (This is without getting into AQx and KQx flops). Again, calling and shoving are fine, but neither of them is some kind of obvious choice.

I think OP was kind of vague with the description of V. KT upthread described him as an "aggro BB", that's not my interpretation at all, I'm interpreting it as that he's on the tight side of TAG. It's hard to say though, like, are those 3 times he's raised in an hour the only time he has VPIP? "Only played with him once and nothing crazy happened", OK, a bit more information? Is he aggro? Tight? Passive? Loose? The thing is, the reason I'm interpreting this as him being sort of nitty is that OP has played with him twice and has no comment to make, I'm assuming this means the guy doesn't really get involved. Bolstering this impression is the fact that it folded around the last two times the guy raised.

I agree that BB has a strong range here and often dominates our hand -- you can fold if BB cbets after this preflop action. You're not forced to call a bet just because you make top pair.

If the flop comes, like, J62r or Q62r and BB cbets, you're folding?

"We'll just fold if we're beaten" doesn't really solve the problem, that's just agreeing that it's often going to be difficult to realize our equity postflop. I feel like I'm re-litigating here that you can't flat raises and play fit-or-fold when shortstacking, which is kind of foundational to short-stack strategy. (And again, I think this spot is marginal whatever you do and maybe call is fine. I definitely don't think it's a clear call).

To a reasonable bet from specifically BB, probably. To anyone else, probably not.

I don't care what stack sizes are, if you aren't defending your BTN straddle to a 5x raise with QJ suited then just don't straddle to begin with. Standard flat IMO.

Like to give you an idea of the headwinds we're up against here, some back of the envelope math with made up ranges has us about even money to have the best hand on a Q62r flop. Feel free to try it yourself with your own ranges. So our plan is: flat pre, flop top pair about a quarter of the time, then try to figure out if this is one of the 50% of the times we're good. That doesn't on the face of it sound profitable.

The answer to this is basically "yes but then postflop we will play expert pokah in position and make teh monies" which, maybe. IDK if I'm convinced or not. I'm definitely not convinced that this is an obviously profitable spot.