Mixed games. UTG is an east coast player that will put in bets.

UTG raises, I 3bet 234x, folds around to UTG who 4 bets. I call.

Pat, draw one. I draw a 9 badugi.

UTG bet, I raise, UTG 3bets, I call(?).

Pat, I break a 9 or pat and call down?

i've only played badugi once like a year ago...., but this seems like a spot i wouldn't ever consider breaking.

I would either pat/call down or fold, probs player dependent. I dont play high stakes but people sometimes go nuts with weak pats to induce breaks, and can also be potentially value raising thin with worse 9s.

You have to be good here ~18% of the time to call the rest down (I think, somebody correct me if im wrong). You're beaten by about 73 badugis, therefore you need him to either be thin value raising worse or going bananas with just 16 worse badugis out of the 642 he has (2.5% of the time) to break even.

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Pat, calldown

I would call pre

Is that to protect flatting range? If he's opening 3cd 7's/6's+ it feels like a 3bet for value

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Yeah I just don’t have a 3b draw 1 range vs reasonable utg openers. I know good players that disagree with me though.

i would prob freeze after the raise and calldown. would never consider breaking cuz i think people with rough hands are treating your raise off the getgo as "i'm gonna make this guy uncomfortable with his rough jack" and the utg pat player is typically gonna react to this initial raise as kinda BS.

if he has something like J654 i would prefer that he not break, and if i did want him to break it would be after i froze and raised the turn or something. but in general against people live i think this plays best just calling down.

i think its more interesting w/ a 2347 or a 2348. 2346 is just kinda an auto-assumed rampage put-in-lots-of-bets but i think theres some creative (?) ways u could play the 2347 or 2348. options to keep reraising, or to call and raise turn.

I would always 3 bet this pre for many different reasons, first is equity advantage but more important is that you really are not doing yourself any favors by letting the big blind in with mediocre tris. With three people in the pot the chance that someone will make a Badugi is quite high and the two tri hands really aren’t making mistakes because they are subsidizing each other. So you are “wasting” your tri. Plus when someone opens with a range even as tight as any six and has a tri you have the best tri around 80% of the time.

As played it is probably a cry call down and pat. It was described by Clayton as a freeze but that connotes to me that we have the best hand much more often than we do here. Just semantics mostly but some substance because another raise would be massively overplaying your hand.

Ranges tighten up fast in Badugi. Attacking an UTG Badugi range trying to get them to break or fold is generally a losing play. Therefore when you raise you should be almost always be real value and a good player should recognize that and yet he reraised anyway. But I’ve seen some real spew in Badugi especially from players described as those who put chips into the pot.

Pat/call down seems like the only way to go here. 3 bet pre is standard imo.

So much this.

I like the 3b pre against this opponent, but there are tight opponents whom I wouldn't split my D1 vpip range vs UTG open against and I'd just cc every non badugi vs them, barring some overriding factors w the SB/BB.

Post draw is a pat/call down. I'm not breaking. Villain could be either turning his hand into a bluff and trying to get you to break or fold by river - or possibly he's overplaying a worse hand (if he continues to bet turn and river). He will almost certainly bet turn regardless, but he might check river and muck.

If you are unsure of how you will respond to the 3b and future aggression, declining to raise flop might be best. This is just about the bottom of a flop value raise range, so you aren't losing much by not raising and it won't be possible to make a drawing mistake. Bet when checked to. Balance by delaying w some nutty badugis, esp if you anticipate playing volume w same lineup.

Wouldn't it seem weird to call the initial flop bet and have the action go pat, pat? I would never break this specific hand with that action and I should never pat A23. That leaves snows and any badugis, nuts and roughs in my range from UTGs perspective.

On reflection, breaking a smooth 9 seems really bad when I only have 5 outs at most in a HU pot and when villain surely has a few worse hands in his range. Thanks!

Your 2nd sentence conveys the concept pretty well - you would never consider breaking this hand if you don't raise flop - and your exact hand would be doing much better against his range.

You are def not repping a snow by just calling flop. Snowing relies on aggression to make a player fold, whereas you would be playing it passively and letting him either value own himself or lose the minimum when he's dealt an 8 or better.

From UTG pov, you're repping mostly middling badugi (9/T/J) and some value badugi that plan on delaying your raise until a later street. If you don't balance by delaying aggression w value badugi sometimes, your range will be too narrow when you just call flop. He is much more likely to have worse hands if you are facing his bet/bet/bet range, instead of being up against his b/3b bet bet range.

Anytime a laggy player is dealt a pat 8 or better, we are usually going to lose some bets once we make our own half-decent, but not nutty badugi.