2/3 game in Cali

I have history with Main Villian in this hand. Previous to today I had seen him as a bit loose preflop and someone who called to much postflop. Villian was up quite a bit tonight and that may have been changing his playstyle in order to lock up a win. A hand we played earlier in the session:

Villain (800) raises to 15 in middle position. Hero (700) calls on dealer button with A7
BB (irrelevant) also calls.

Flop: K 6 3
BB checks, main villain checks, Hero bets 25.
BB folds. Main villain raises to 100. I call.

Turn: 8
Main villain checks. I bet 175. Villian almost insta folds and shows top set KK. I muck and don’t show. This hand is discussed in length for the next 30 mins by the rest of the table. I never revealed my holding.

OTTH

Main Villian (900) calls UTG+1.
Hero (600) raises to 15 in the cutoff with Q10
Button, SB, BB, and main Villian all call.

Flop: Q J 9
Checked to Hero who bets 35. Button, SB, and BB all call.
Main Villian check raises to 100.

Hero???

Raise to 240 with the intention of shipping all turns if called (maybe except for board pairing) and calling an all-in, or fold.

Some reasoning behind my line:
1) We have great equity on the flop but it drops significantly on a blank turn. We need to realise this equity now.

2) It is quite likely that we do not get paid if we hit, especially if we hit an offsuit 8 or K, especially if the Villain does not have a set, but even then he might just fold it again. We will have trouble extracting value when improving if we do not raise.

3) If Villain folds, that is OK too. While we have good equity vs his range, we do not crush/dominate any part of it, so we do not really mind him folding for example a hand like KK (especially since we will be hard-pressed to get value from it if we improve on later streets).

4) A raise makes it so much harder for Villain to play.

5) We want to raise our sets and straights for value here as well, right? While I do not feel a GTO balanced approach is needed in low stakes live games (exploiting the **** out of other´s mistakes will be more profitable), we still need some sort of balance on these types of boards if we want to get paid off in the future.

I'm applying pressure from here on out in the hand. There's $270 in the pot, and you're being asked to add $65. I'd raise to ~$330 or so, target the $270 as a win and know you have a #$%# ton of equity if looked up. Obviously if you're called anywhere I'm auto-shoving essentially any turn (Maybe a J, 9 or A makes me check) but I'm never, ever, ever folding and if I don't get all my chips in on the flop or turn I feel like I played it wrong. Shove, ship, cram, raise, whatever it takes....

Definitely need to put the pressure on, although I think he has a good hand. It's just that I'm never folding, so might as well gii. Make it $250 to $300.

Shove. There is $315 sitting there. A smaller raise does no good here.

**Also....would help to see stack sizes of all 5 players that see flop.

Rip it in. After your call of $100 the pot is $365 and you have $465 left. You are never folding. So jam.

Jamming here AINEC. We need to maximize FE now because while we are likely a favorite versus his holding/range, he has shown he will not pay us off if we make our hand. If he calls, fine, we extract the max when we pull ahead, which we usually will. If he folds, fine, we're likely behind his exact hand at the moment and our equity drops on a turn brick.

Yep, didn't do the math. With only $465, just jam. (Thought you started the hand with $700, but that was the A7 hand.)

Sorry bout that. Each other Villian had 300-350, can’t remember exact sizes for each.

I'm too lazy to do the math, but what's our equity against the nuts? Cuz that's what Villain has here like 99% of the time given the way he played the HH hand.

Gshovingintothenutsistypicallybad,imoG

I think you should get all the money in here. Because if your hand doesn’t improve by the turn then it becomes less likely to be improve by river. So, jamming all in here gives you opponent some fold equity because he loses to all flushes, and straights on this texture of a bored. So I think jamming and taking down the pot here is good.

I have about 38% equity to win the hand outright with 7% equity to chop if I get to see two cards against K 10 here.

And that’s what I’m thinking here in hindsight. Considering the earlier hand history are we not just turning our hand into a bluff if we shove and only getting called by the nuts or 2nd nuts? We are essentially shoving with a flush draw hoping that we don’t get called.

It’s hard though because if we do just call and we miss on the turn, he’s firing 200-300 and we probably have to fold, not being able to realize the full equity of the hand.
.

We’re getting ~5:1 on a call with other players behind to juice the pot more. We have a decent made hand but nothing I’m eager to shove at this point. I really don’t mind just flatting and seeing what develops. We’ve got a very nice multiway pot brewing with a very nice multiway hand in second best position. I want to see this play out a little bit more.

Well if we hit our hand, it might be hard to get more value out of him (unless he thinks we bluffed him last time and is done with hero-folding).

If we interpret his hand as a shove then we basically only need (550/1205) 46% equity against his range to commit.

Obviously if he flipped over his hand and showed us exactly KT, a shove would be out of the question but his hand has to be wider than just this one hand.

Surely, other than KT he can also have some of the following: J9s,AdKd,JJ,99,Ad9d,T8s
Is he willing to fold some of these to a shove? I think so.

I'm in the shove camp but calling and proceeding cautiously is also fine. With a draw to a straight flush, folding seems wrong.

This is where I am. I think the range above seems pretty good with maybe 75% of it being KT. We certainly can't fold, so the Q really is what wins us the most when we hit? That depends on the other players actions too and if we want them to remain in the hand or not. With our stack size, I think the answer is no, but I am willing to be convinced otherwise. I think shoving is the best play, but it is pretty close (maybe 60/40 in favor of shove V call).

Interesting hand/spot.

At first I was thinking call, because I think most of his range are sets and two pair and KT, so I wasn't sure our range was ahead against those hands. Calling is also a lower variance move, which I tend to like in these soft games where sometimes it's worth passing up small edges because there are so many big ones around the corner.

But then I ran the numbers.

Even giving villain only a made hand (set, 2 pair, KT), we are still ahead, 51-49. And obviously it's even better if he has some one pair hands. (I was thinking of our odds with only the top pair and flush draw, like AQd. In which case we would be behind that range.)

Long story short ... yes, shove right there.

Villain folded top set of KK earlier but now you want to put one pair hands in his x/r range in a 5-way pot? Cmon man.

I'm in the jam camp. The callers can potentially have both of your draws dominated (AT, Axd) but will likely fold to your shove. V has shown he's able to fold big hands, so he might get away from 99, JJ, T8. If he only c/r's here with a set or made straight, you still have 45% equity, and if his range is wider to include two pair hands, AKdd you're a slight favorite.

So between getting the callers to give up their equity to potentially clean up your draw outs and the FE from V I think shoving is the right move.

How bad would a fold be?

With this action, it's highly unlikely we have the only straight draw (we're splitting all winnings at least 2ways, maybe more), and it's also possible we don't have the best flush draw (and at the very least we likely have reduced outs), plus our IO likely ain't great (unless we overflush someone). Given action a T (for two pear) is likely useless (if calling) and even a Q might not be good. And if we put Mr.IFoldTopSetLikeItAin'tNoThang on a huge hand (which I would, as I say, I think the nuts and second nuts make up the majority of his range), we should have 0 FE.

Gnotagreatspot,imoG

We're only crushed if we're up against both a made straight and a higher flush draw.

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

16,830 trials (Exhaustive)

board: QJ9

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
QdTd	50.11%	8,003	862
KxTx,Jx9x,AdKd,JJ,99,Ad8d,Tx8x	49.89%	7,965	862

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

2,970 trials (Exhaustive)

board: QJ9

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
QdTd	42.27%	1,152	207
KxTx	57.73%	1,611	207

I’m never folding here. It’s between a jam or a call when I have a hand like this. If you are folding all spots similar to this I don’t know where you are making your money. I respect your posts but there’s no question your playstyle is uber nitty.

Yeah i agree that a fold is really bad here. Even in the "tight as can be" game you describe, I can't imagine folding this hand.

I mean, we've seen a single limper and then 3 behind us call a preflop raise (i.e. likely strengthening their range of hands they are seeing a flop with), and then seen all 3 people continue on the flop before getting raised by the 4th. This is a crapload of action, no? I mean if everyone is hurp durping the flop with bottom pair + no draw, ok, whatever. But otherwise, we have a crapload of reduced outs at best and can easily be dominated by better draws at worst.

I'm not so sure I can fold in real time at the table. But I'm also not quite convinced I shouldn't.

GcluelessNLnoobG

This is why I'm advocating a shove.