2/5 stacks ~1200

-Hero opens to 20 UTG with 87
-B calls (passive player, sees 3-4 hands an orbit and makes more calling mistakes than betting mistakes post flop)
-SB calls

Flop (65) - 752
-Hero bets 45 and only B calls

Turn (155) - Q
-Hero bets 85
-Villain calls

River (325) - 6
-Hero checks
-Villain bets 130
-Hero?

What do you guys think of my turn bet/sizing and what are your thoughts on the river decision?

On the turn I bet because the Q favors my range and I also wanted to charge flush/straight draws.

Cheers

Why not fold pre-flop?

Flop with a weak made hand and so many villains in the pot I'd size smaller. Want to get away from hand cheaply if I need to.

Turn, ok.

River, bet/fold. The flush draws missed, the only oesd caught a pair. Villain is passive so we can confidently fold to a raise. Against passive players who call too much just b/f b/f b/f.

As played fold river given the read that villain is passive. If he was calling down behind he would check back with relief and if he has a busted draw I don't see a "passive player" pulling it together for a bluff here.

Although this may be true, it really doesn’t matter. The flop favors villains range. If your trying to rep the Q, think about what Qx hands you have that raises UTG pre and Cbets flop. AQ? KQ? QJs? Hero probably checks flop with QQ.

And of those Qx hands, how many would you check river with vs. bet?

QQ you don’t have here. AQ either.
You would likely be betting for value on river.

Also when you say you want to charge straight draws, that doesn’t make sense. Can Villain have 4,3? A3? 4,6? 6,8? Maybe. If so. Probably not many combos. A3 makes sense though.
But you hold a blocker to a straight as you have the 8. Villain likely isn’t on straight draw.

As played fold river.






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Interesting.. I normally open 76s+ UTG and adjust according to the table. Not sure if that's too wide. And maybe open 10,9s+ UTG at tougher tables.

I'd like to hear some other opinions on that too

Depends what we mean by tough, but my open ranges would be steeper at an easy table than a "tough" table. Steepness meaning it starting lower in early and going wider in late position.

An easy table is a table where many players are playing too many hands for too much. Meaning when you open in early position you will get lots of callers. Suited connectors want to see more cards cheaply if they can't steal the pot. You'll rarely be able to steal from EP against a bunch of loose players, so open raising suited connectors widely is going to lose money. If you don't want to take a random internet bro's word for it just start keeping track of what happens when you open those kinds of hands from early position. The fact that hitting top pair ought to be a good outcome but still puts you in a bad situation here should tell you a lot.

Against "tough" tight tables you can raise wider from EP and either get respect or easily fold to a tight 3-bet. If called you'll likely be heads up and get lots of barrel opportunities that you won't get at a loose table.

@reaper yea, that definitely makes sense. Only thing is I wouldn't raise wider from EP against tougher opponents behind me. My thinking is I want to open a tighter range so I can defend with enough frequency against 3bets. So I'll open with the occasional 65s for board coverage but fold most other suited connectors under 10,9s at a tough table. But maybe I need to think about it and reconsider.

On a related note, I'm curious what your approach is with pocket pairs in the same UTG situation. What would you generally start opening with? And do you adjust in the same way at tough vs easy tables?

That's a good question, I don't quite know yet. Ed Miller recommends opening all pocket pairs everywhere. When we're reasonably deep I get the argument for it, if people call you then you can have every set. In the face of aggression on the flop, pp are also easy to play when you hit and still fairly easy to play when you whiff. That's different from suited connectors where you rarely know that you're exactly ahead on the flop and more judgement comes into play when villains get aggro. Suited connectors like passive in position play so they can see more cards. Pocket pairs like aggression and don't care about seeing turns before committing.

That being said, it still sucks to get lots of callers and have to check fold the flop with the initiative. And opening 33 and getting oversetted hurt bad last session (I put a fish on monkey tilt short and he happened to have it right after he rebought deep). I don't want be results oriented though so I'm trying to keep track of what happens with 22 and 33 open from EP (also have a bet with a friend about it). As of right now after doing it 10ish times at 1/3 I think I'm running down $50ish because of the set over set. The only decent pot I won was opening 22, two barreling then check/soul read hero calling a LAG's Ahi bluff. Otherwise it's open raise and take down blinds/small pot with a cbet or I open and x/f because flop went off 4+ ways.

That said even in my tightest of moments I think 99 is a slam dunk open in UTG.

Would of checked turn, folding AP