Hand analysis:

2/5/10 (2/5, perma straddle) about 450 effective:

UTG+1 opens to 30. Folds to me in SB with AA. Hero raises it to 115. Folds back to Villain who calls.

Pot. 245

Flop comes 10/7/3, rainbow. Hero bets out about 110. Villain calls.

Pot. 465

Turn is a 5 or a 6, can’t remember, but it brought in a BDFD possibility. Hero puts in the rest (about 200+) and just prays he’s up against top pair and a gut shot or similar.



Analysis:

My thinking was that Villain probably has the 10 after he called the flop, possibly JJ or QQ. He was in position so it’s also possible he was letting me bet KK for him. The table was all playing kinda loose at the time so maybe he was floating with KQ suited or two Broadway type cards looking to pick up some back door equity, but my flop sizing was pretty big for him to be doing that. More than likely I expected villain to have the 10. Possibly 10/9 or J/10, calling hoping the turn would help him. He was UTG+1 so I didn’t expect him to show up with low suited gappers or anything ridiculous so in my mind he’d have a pair and a gut shot or BDSD with this sort of flop.

Honestly, I wasn’t gonna fold with the SPR being what it was so I figured I’d just stick it in on the turn to charge him for any draws if he wanted to continue and if he flopped two pair or a set he can have it. The whole time I was betting I was measuring things out in my head trying to figure out how I could get all in by the turn while still giving him a decent price to call with something like 8 or 9 outs if that’s what he was on.

Thoughts?

Seems good. Not sure there's that much to think about when you have 45bb and 11.5 go in pre.

You could also go for a CR as you are short enough to get stacks in later in case it goes check check.

With flop SPR < 2 there isn't much that is going to make you fold AA. You could argue about your flop bet sizing but with your remaining stack it's fine.
If your losing TT is a likely hand and lower sets possible, with your stack it doesn't make any difference. The board is too dry to fold. An opponent with KK and possibly QQ is likely to feel as committed as you are because you could play AK this way also.

Looks fine

There are other reasonable lines but yours is good.

Played fine.

It was played fine. If you were the short stack I would be raising slightly more pre to around 140 since UTG+1 should have a tight range and also hoping to get the rest in otf or possibly have him come the top and do it for us pre.

UTG shouldn't have very many nutted hands on this board when he opens pre. AA is going to be good here more often than not. Would be helpful to know the suits of all the cards, but even without them, this line seems fine.

Turns out villain had 10/7 dd. As soon as he called my AI on the turn I knew he had two pair. Of course the river bricked and he scooped. Sending me home

Re-assessing with this new info...

I mean...it can't be too terrible to c-bet AA here.

Then again, not being a guy who plays according to charts, I have no idea what the charts say we should do with AA, on this T-high, semi-connected flop, as the pre-flop 3B'er in the SB, facing an EP open.

I would think we should c-bet for value and protection against some of V's draws, but I wouldn't think V would have very many draws on this board after opening EP. Maybe 98s. We can get value from all of V's 1P hands.

The problem with these sorts of dry flops after we 3B pre is that V doesn't need to raise his 2P or sets for protection against our draws, because we really shouldn't have any.

If the solvers like to check here, I'm assuming it's because V has more sets and 2P in his range than we do, or because we need to have some strong hands that check some flops after 3B'ing pre, or whatever. I'm also not much of a solver guy.

If it was a 6 on the turn, that brings in 98s, and could make V some 2P with 76. A 5 or 6 might complete some 7-high straight draws with the 3. We might slow down for those reasons, but the added BDFD potential makes it harder for AA to just check turn.

I dunno. Maybe we should c-bet flop and check turn, even with the BDFD being added to the mix. V's going to have way more 2P+ hands than we will as the pre-flop 3B'er in the SB.

What would V do on turn if you checked? Probably bet. Hard to fold AA to a bet there, but far from impossible.

Candidly - I notice in a lot of your threads, you're starting short-stacked, which I am guessing is also the case here. You're going to find yourself in a lot of spots like this when you're playing 2/5(10) less than 100BB effective.

Theoretically, opponents shouldn't be calling 3B's from short-stacks very wide, because they're not getting good implied odds. In reality, I know a lot of players (myself included) will call in position, when the short stacks are still big enough to warrant the call, but not big enough to threaten our bigger stacks with real damage when we lose. I don't mind calling off 1/15th-1/10th of my stack pre with a decent hand, if I have position and might get 3x more with the right run-out. It's easy to play perfectly against short stacks - we just fold when we miss.

Imagine starting this hand with $1500 or more in front of you, and 3B'ing to $150, instead of $115. Even if V calls, which he may not do at that depth, you can c-bet 1/3 pot on flop, and then just check-fold turn, without worrying about your line or being exploitable.

I probably shouldn’t even have posted the results because the exercise was about assessing V’s range. The reason I posted the results is mostly just to say V’s range was so far off the charts that you can’t always GTO your way out of a spot. I won’t lie, I do like playing short stacked sometimes but that wasn’t the problem here. If anything like you said V shouldn’t even be speculating with a hand like this because the IO is so bad. And yes. 150 could have folded out some of this type of stuff but a determined donkey who has no idea how to fold to a 3! still stacks me, and if I was deeper he just takes more from me.

Sometimes you run the best line and you still get stacked. That’s just how it is. Nbd. With how much money was in there already by the turn the math might even say don’t fold even if V flipped his cards face up because I still had plenty of quite against 2P.

I dont mind playing low SPR pots either, especially OOP. Long sessions can be long and it does make the game easier. As long as I’m able to adjust to how it affects my opponents’ decisions and take into account that people are less likely to fold to my bets for example …it’s all good. I don’t always play to max out my BB/hr. I don’t always have the cash to top off. It’s nbd. Sometimes I just like playing the game and playing short stacked is a lot of fun for me.

T7s is garbage vs the big preflop raise. Villains like this is why good players always have multiple buyins. This sort of villain is very profitable to play but is also going to run up variance. You will win most pots postflop but you will have no idea which boards are dangerous or what cards are bad for you because villain can have anything. Mostly there isn't anything you can do but bet for value and go with it.

So...a lot to unpack here...

First, I'm all for reviewing hands as an exercise in ranging opponents. V raising T7s UTG1 and calling a 3B is fishy AF, but...I'm sure I've done that and worse in my poker journey. After twenty years of semi-regular playing, I'm still astonished to see what my opponents have sometimes.

Second, I'm also all for accepting that theoretically correct plays don't always end up winning. But it's still worth asking if we made the theoretically correct play, and understanding why or why not.

I can't imagine it's not correct to c-bet this flop at a very high frequency with all our over-pairs. Perhaps AA doesn't need to c-bet as often, because it doesn't benefit from protection. But I can understand why it would not be correct to barrel or jam this turn, after our flop c-bet is called. The turn isn't likely to improve any hands in our range, but could easily improve some hands in V's range.

So, maybe we can GTO our way out of this, perhaps. I honestly don't know what the optimal line is here on the turn. But even if it isn't theoretically correct to continue betting turn, I doubt it's terrible to deviate by continuing to bet when we're ahead of every 1p hand and have outs to counterfeit any 2P hand.

We don't know each other, and you're not playing with my money, so take this for whatever it's worth...reading all your threads, I get the strong sense that you're playing in games for which you are not adequately bankrolled, and, if you'll forgive me for saying so, not quite experienced or skilled enough.

The wording of your posts demonstrates you understand the concepts at play. But the lines you've admitted taking, especially when short-stacked in bigger games, make me doubt you've internalized the concepts to the point of using them intuitively. The result often looks like FPS - fancy play syndrome.

As an example, take your hand here. You said the effective starting stack was $450. Was that your stack size, or V's? My guess was that it was yours, and V covered. Your response here seems to be defending the short stack by saying V would have just gotten more of your money if you had started with more.

The point I was trying to make about playing short-stacked is that V may not have been a determined donkey, and may have folded to your pre-flop 3B if you had more behind, for fear that you'd stack him. He may have felt emboldened to call you down light BECAUSE you were short-stacked. Short stacks get a lot of loose calls. It's just a fact of live no limit games.

I've seen it suggested that a pro should have 20-40 buy-ins for live no limit games. I don't know what non-pro regs should have, but I get antsy whenever my bankroll drops below 5 buy-ins. There's no shame in dropping down to 1/3, or even 1/2, until you have 3 or 4 buy-ins to take your shot at 2/5, especially if all the 2/5 games you play end up being 2/5/10. No way I'd be sitting down at a 2/5(10) game with less than $1k in front of me and another $1k-$2k in my pocket.

Maybe do like I did, and play some tournaments to build your roll. I parlayed about $10k in recent tournament winnings to beef up my bankroll, so I could move up from 1/3 and take my shot at 2/5. I played 1/2 and 1/3 for years, developing my skills through less-expensive experience.

All that said - if you're very comfortable playing short-stacked, AND (most importantly), if you're consistently winning in the games you play, feel free to ignore the advice, and you do you. Good luck either way.

Of course it seems that way. I’ve been posting about all the hands that went off the rails. I’m here to get better and not just post the wins. So there’s some observer bias inherent to that perspective.

I appreciate the concern as misguided as it is though. I was playing some 5/10/25 at the end of my last 5/10 session and didn’t feel outclassed at all. I took a pair of 3’s to the river against an op IP and took down a several hundred dollar pot for example. The bankroll is growing and it’s because I’m here, soliciting advice from the forum to correct my plays and tell me what I did wrong. The losses are part of the process, no?

Yes, we're all here to learn and improve. And yes, the losses are part of the journey towards improvement.

Just my $0.02, which you are free to disregard, but in addition to the bankroll considerations, about which you seem defensive (perhaps rightly so, I don't know), you've also seemed defensive about some of your plays, in some threads.

I'm not mad about it, and I'll probably still chime in and try to help, unless or until it just seems like a waste of time and effort. But that's the vibe you're giving off with the recent threads you've started, which is why I asked you, in one of those threads, if you were seeking people's advice, or seeking people's approval.

To be fair, not everyone's advice is worth taking. You gotta figure out what advice you want to use and which you want to ignore.

I duno. I’m up 3k on the month. lol. Things are trending well. Thanks for your participation

Indeed. When I see stuff like that it just makes me want to rebuy and not worry about my bankroll bc I’m getting it in good. I make enough where busting out at the stakes I play just doesn’t matter

If you're up $3K for the month, stop buying in short. Buy in bigger, you'll win more, if you're playing well.

Or, don't. Do whatever you're comfortable doing.

I know it’s hard for some people on here to understand but sometimes I just play because I enjoy playing and not to maximize ev every time. I bought in for max at my last 5/10 game. I’m good for it. Thanks for the concern again!