Howdy ya’ll, this week’s hand involves trying out a squeeze play (which I rarely do). Firstly, the right opportunity, opponents, and reads obviously must presents itself before performing such intricate plays. Without further ado, let’s get right into it:

$1/3 NL
Wynn Casino (Las Vegas, NV)
9-Max

Hero’s hand: 8♠️4♦️
Stack: $280

* Villain #1: Young asian kid (20’s), foreigner. A bit loose, likes to see flops, doesn’t mind gambling. Bet sizing tells.
* Villain #2 [$230]: Young asian kid (20’s), foreigner. Passive Newbie that likes to limp PreFlop and fold if anyone opens/bets.
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PreFlop

HJ: (V#1): OPEN $10
CO: CALL $10
BU: CALL $10
SB: (V#2): CALL $9
BB: (Hero): CALL $7

Pot: $45 (rake $5)
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Flop: 2♥️3♠️A♥️

HJ: BET $20
CO: FOLD
BU: FOLD
SB: CALL $20
BB: RAISE $70
HJ: FOLD
SB: CALL

Pot: $205
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Turn: Q♣️

SB: CHECK
BB: ALL-IN $200
SB: CALL $150 (remaining stack)

Pot: $505
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Pre: With only $7 more, to complete the action pre, and with a pot that size, I’m ALWAYS seeing the flop here with any 2 cards.

Flop: I read V#1 here for weakness with his under half pot-sized bet. So, I decide to go for the squeeze here. Not only this, CO & BU have folded, thus I mainly target my bluff towards HJ (V#1). This flop (coordinated low) also hits SB & BB harder than it does a PreFlop opener. I figure I also have 3 outs (5♠️, 5♦️, 5♣️) also to come on later streets. My plan was to shove if any non-♥️ came on the Turn.

Turn: As planned, I shove here.
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Questions:

- How would you rate this flop play?
- How would you rate the turn play?
- In your opinion, was this an opportune time to squeeze?
- What are possible advantages/disadvantages?
- Any other things I could have considered or possibly missed?

The impression seems to be that the more players enter a pot “the better odds we have to call” and therefore we should play more hands. I hear this all the time at the table from other players… “if you would have called I was coming along too”. This is actually the opposite of the truth. The more players that enter a pot the tighter our continuing range should be (and the wider our 3bet range should be). So this is an easy fold pre.

As for the rest of the hand, you’ve made a courageous play. However I think you’re up against a strong Ax far too often for this to be a profitable raise on either the flop or turn. I’d just fold this hand on the flop, myself. If you wanted to choose a better hand to semibluff I’d use 42/43/52/53 since these hands have loads more equity against Ax and flush draws.

Preflop is a trivial fold. Yes your odds are getting better and better but 84o is a garbage. That hands that you can call with that you might not otherwise are medium & low suited connectors, medium suited one gappers, medium connectors and low pairs. How wide depends on both direct odds and implied odds. These are hands that you can fish for a favorable flop and trivially give up if you don't get it. Don't call with garbage because they will get you into trouble more often then make a profit.

On the flop the bluff raise is super aggressive but you need a good read on the situation well for it to work enough. One of the two will have a good AX+ or a big flush draw and won't give up often enough. HJ bet into a lot of opponents so this bet will rarely be air. SB can be wider but is also more likely to show up with two pair or better. You really need some sort of live read that HJ is just making an automatic c-bet and SB can be calling with anything because of it.

Turn depends on what you read SB for calling with. If you think he has a lot of flush draws then it's OK but if you think he is mostly on value then you need to give up a lot. He had to expect a shove on the turn a good portion of the time so you won't have as much FE as might be hoped but you also need to carry through some of the time. That your hand has almost no equity pushes towards giving up, the shove is better if you have more outs when called.

A lot also depends on your image. If you have a loose aggro image villains are more likely to read your play for a bluff or a draw and call. With a nitty image you can get away with this more often. Though with a nitty image you can wait for a hand with more potential to make the play.

The goal of poker is to make money for winning players. Your HHs seem to indicate that you believe it is about bluffing people off of made hands. At 1/3, you make money by getting worse hands to call you for big money.

My suggestion is to focus your efforts making sure you have an equity advantage on the flop and figuring out how many streets of value you can get with your hand.

Why is H trying to get a V that is a off of A23hh? When said V already called a 1/2 pot cbet from the opener?

Further, what are we trying to represent here? 33-22? Some A2-A3o that didn't squeeze pre? (Which is I thought was going to happen when I first read the title.) A heart draw that, despite the modestly sized cbet and us closing the action, we're still trying to semi bluff a gamble-y V off of their cbet?

Moreover, if after taking all of this into account, we still want to do this, why are we only 3.5x'ing over a caller when we're OOP? It's 50 to call into a pot of 155. Most people with an Ace, especially with either V description, are going to call this unless they really suspect a set. (So, I guess this would be a decent move against these players if H did have 33-22)

I guess V1's slightly under 1/2 pot cbet was interpreted by H as a sizing tell. But V2 isn't going away as described.

I have no real Las Vegas NL experience, my guess being the games might be different than the ones I play in.

I fold preflop. Yeah, we're getting decent immediate odds. But we have a piece of crap hand (seriously, this is one of the worst there is) and will be playing the rest of the hand OOP.

I check/fold the flop. I don't really care that dude is betting x into y... I'm more concerned that he's betting at all with 5 players in the pot plus someone else has decided they want to continue in a big pot. Plus our draw sucks. Plus our sizing just gave the most obvious draws 3:1 to continue (which no one is going to pass up) and we get to play the rest of the hand OOP, where we'll only have a PSB (or less) left for the turn (which lessens our FE massively). Way too FPS, imo.

But I'm also a nit.

GmoreABC,lessFPS,imoG

Fold pre. AP, c/f flop. AP assuming the c/r, make it a shove, not a less than half-pot raise. AP, give up OTT.

I would welcome a player with open arms at my table any time if I saw them make this play. Seriously. its that bad

This is a terrible board to make this raise on. A large portion of your range here should be flush draws but instead you have an 8 high gutshot. These opponents aren't the type that will throw away flush draws to this flop raise...which is good, except for the fact that you only have 8 high.

Obviously this is a fold pre, but if there was a spot where this type of squeeze was likely to work (perhaps not vs these villains) it would have been preflop, not on this flop.

On this flop if you had a pair like 82 or 83 at least you could get some value out of worse hands. Here you're pretty much hoping your opponent has like 64hh or 56 when they call you so you can turn over 8 high like a boss on the river.

And to try this at Wynn, where you'll meet 1/3 players that have Ferrari collections, seems like a recipe for disaster. After thinking through the hand a bit more, I'd love for you to post some photos of your Ferrari/Lamborghini/Bugatti collection.

BTW, you didn't bet $200 on the turn. The pot was $205 and you bet $150. If your opponent only has $150 left, you can't bet $20,000 and the keys to one of your Ferraris. It doesn't work like that.

This demonstrates poor thinking and the assertiveness you say it with speaks volumes about your play. Fold PF.

This a cash game. You have all the time in the world to play better hands. Pot odds or not, 84o is a complete dog of a hand. Fold.

On the flop and after is way too loose and agressive for a multiway pot. C/F the flop and remember it the next time you think you need to play ATC due to pot odds.

Great responses, I would like to thank everyone for taking the time to help me learn and grow with this ever-so-complex, and, at times, very frustrating game.

After having read through the responses, it seems clear that this was a dumb play on my part. However, it’s easy to jump to that conclusion since I listed V#2’s final action of calling on the Turn. Had I left that part out, maybe a few responders might have opted to defend my plays.

Before we jump into the nitty gritty, just wanted to say this was one of those plays where, if it worked, I would have seen as a total genius (though I wouldn’t have posted it on any forum). And let me remind you, we play poker for future action as well. Had the squeeze worked, I could have showed the bluff and get SO much action on my monster hands later. Now that we got that out of the way, let’s break it down by street.

PreFlop:
I would agree, with practically all of you, that I should have folded here. The lesson I learned here was that, “The more players in the hand, the stronger my range has got to be to get involved.”

Flop:
I just wanted to justify my actions a bit before anyone deems it as a totally wreckless play. Most poker books, when teaching about squeeze plays (in small stakes), say to single out the initial bettor (in this case would be V#1). To me, this logic is very sound, because if caller (V#2) had any strong hand at all, he would have raised, instead of just calling. This is why I was singling out V#1 here (which I read for weakness) and was correct. I must admit, I wasn’t expecting V#2 to call.

Turn:
Being as passive and straightforward as V#2 has been. I put him on some sort of draw. Even if he has Ax here, it would be extremely tough for him to CALL for all his chips ($150) on the turn.

So there you have it, those were my line of thinking. Perhaps, it gave you a different perspective on the way the hand was played (by no means is it the correct plays).

Anyway, until next time guys :-)

Generally, a squeeze play is during PF action. On the flop, you need a much stronger hand to continue in a multi-way pot than most people realize. A three out semi-bluff just isn't strong enough in this spot. Sure, it might work sometime, but anything can work sometime. The question you should be considering is if it is a +EV play over time, and I seriously doubt it is. I'm not going to go through the math, but you need some huge FE to make this profitable.

No, you wouldn't have been seen as a "total genius". What you are showing is results orientated thinking. Whether a play is +EV or not is totally independent of what happened. A bad play is a bad play, whether it worked out that time or not.

The memory of most low stakes players is shorter than the interval between getting monster hands. You'll get little value out of this bluff.