Been at my new table half an hour. Tough table, two grouchy french pros warned several times English Only, no obvious soft spots except a British guy, 40s, to my immediate right who is playing lots of hands, seems to be a station, and just lost a big pot with his AA to 88 on a J 9 8 J 6 run-out. When I got there he had 160K, now he has 85. I am older guy, button-down shirt, came to table with 40K, now have 65K to start the hand after a couple of reshoves have gone uncalled.

500-1000 (100), all fold to the Brit on the button who opens for 2200. I look down at two black 7s and raise to 6600. BB folds, Brit on Button calls.

Flop is 10c 3d 2d. I bet 9000. After a short while, Brit raises to 20K. I think for 25-35 seconds and shove for 38 more. He has 58 left, thinks for quite a while, and calls.

Thoughts on both streets welcome.

This is a super awkard spot. Not sure this is ideal but I like flatting pre. I feel 3betting just bloats the pot and your lead on flop I feel is strong so when he raises, I feel he has you beat.... and even if he doesn’t he could have a hand such as random dd hands with lots of equity.

I think I would flat pre as a set mine spot. Also with flop, I’m prolly calling 1-2 streets depending on turn etc. I feel you flat pre, flop shown you have to check/ call flop bet and then re-evaluate on turn.

Im interested to see what others say. I don’t like 3 betting here bc we win a small pot if it works, and if he calls or 4 bets we are in odd spot. 4 bet we have to fold to and when he calls, we get to play out of position for a pot we just bloated while we have a really hard hand to play postflop if we don’t hit a set.

Good comment. I didn't like flatting because big blind, a good player, gets such great odds (4.5:1 needing to realize 21% equity) to call and playing 7s without the initiative on a flop with an overcard or two seems awkward as well.

So perhaps I should even have sized it larger, 3.5x-4x instead of 3x to get more folds.

3 bet or call are both fine preflop.

On the flop I think check/call is fine. Betting like 40% pot to get him to fold overcards is also fine.

I think your flop bet is too big and not sure why you are shoving. What hands are raise folding? And what is your equity against his raise/call range?

Interesting spot. Conventional wisdom says this is a 3-bet spot vs. button open, but if this particular player is a station flatting makes some sense because we're more likely to win a huge pot if we hit our set. I do think if we're three-betting we need to go bigger.

I do like betting small (1/3 pot) on flop, especially if we think our opponent peels a lot with second best hands, and then re-evaluate turn. As played we should almost always fold to the raise, even at the great price, unless we've seen this player raise flops and check down turn/river. We have better hands (diamond draws, overpairs, Tx) we can continue with, and we should expect this player's clickback raise range to be pretty strong.

3b pre is fine vs fish
bet smaller on flop and call minraises

vs station I'm flatting pre, just being OOP sucks and we know if we 3 bet he's probably calling ATC which makes post flop difficult for us in our spot. As played betting flop and calling min raise is fine, but then what do we do OTT? There are so many bad cards for us and not too many good ones. Do we think if we just call the min raise OTF and check OTT that villain will just check back? Seems unlikely. So this would lead me to just give up after the min raise.

ya vs. a station I like a flat preflop as well. Probably have to barrel at least twice on boards where you miss your set in order to push him out of pot, assuming he didn't smash it.

You mentioned he lost a large pot earlier with AA vs. a set. I'd be interested to know if his play on this hand gave away any information about his post-flop tendencies.

I like a smaller bet on the flop too. Large bet may discourage floats...but a smaller bet should accomplish virtually the same. You may see some additional hands stick around with the smaller sizing but this is minimal concern. I'm probably going around $5,500 and planning on flatting a raise and evaluating turn. Raising here has a lot of overs+fd and some villains won't barrel again on brick turns so you may get to river and can make a decision then.

On another meta-game note, with the weakest player at the table on my immediate right, I'm not looking for thin spots like this. Find a better one to gii

These must have been Glorious reshoves...open to 2.3x...reship 40x. Why not just cont this strat and shove pre for 65bbs?

This is one of the worst hands to 3bet oop at this eff stacksize unless plan is to induce lite 4ball then shove.

Yea easy flat pre in the main

Given the description of the villain,
I think flatting preflop is better than 3 betting. He is not as likely to be opening as wide on the button.

Once you 3 bet and he calls. The flop bet should be 1/2 pot. You could also check and reevaluate. You are building a big pot OOP. What would you do if he calls the flop and the turn peels off an 8, 9, J? What if a diamond hits on the turn?

I think shoving makes you look strong because you are old but there are plenty of hands that have equity against you that will call you. This guy would have to be an idiot to raise to 20K and fold for 38K more when the pot is so large. When you are called, pray he has 45o or diamonds and misses. Some of the time you are going to be looking at 10dxd and be drawing to 1 out.

Agree. With the 3bet pre hero is practically pricing himself out of set-mining.
If villain is tilt-ish after the AA hand that means he'll call loosely in this spot. There's really not many hands that 77 is a huge favorite over, so building a big pot doesn't seem sensible, here. Playing such a hand where you are continually forced to guess OOP as the aggressor is also extremely high risk.
If villain is on full tilt hero might have even faced a random all-in pre and then what?

In a tournament chasing the 55/45 coinflips all-ins isn't a good strat because your RoR is just so high.

That said if you 3bet pre the continuation bet on the flop seems fine (I would have sized a bit lower...maybe 7k). Since you have a rep for shoving at the table I'd take the raise by the villain seriously - as he's almost pot comitted at that point - and fold.

3b pre is ok
your flop sizing is the issue. its really bad
shoving vs the raise is even worse.
gl

Yeah, great comments in this thread that make me (almost) think that calling pre is best...although that will leave us oop with a hard-to-play hand and let the big blind in real cheap.

As played, when he raises my 9K flop bet (a bit big, yeah, but I AM an old guy) to 20K with no good options. If, as many in this thread and my live friends have suggested by I am by no mean sure, he is on a draw, than perhaps my best bet is to call and shove most non-diamond turns. Results-oriented, that might have worked best.

IRL, I shoved, he called and showed 5c4c with the open-ender and the back-door flush draw. I was very relieved not to be up against 10x but he hit a 6 on the end.

All in all a tough spot, not at all sure I handled it well.

In a vacuum, your reasoning is valid eventhough your postflop sizing isnt (nor is the postflop 4b jam: wht do you crush? nothing). IMHO, we should look at the bigger picture here. Yes, it might be an ok spot to 3b pre. But doing it "because it is tough to play post" isnt the best argument at all as you are playing the ME with the slowest structure possible. Therefore, imho, i think it is better to play a low variance postflop strat' than to opt for a "gto" approach when you agree that this was a tough table and that you were less "experienced and competent" than the rest of the table (beside the brit).
In the ME, i would have played it passively in that precise spot as you are 60bb deep and looking for some much better and more valuable spots to come later.
Cheers and gg tho

You have position on the only spot on the table every hand but one...