Hey Guys,

To give a background, I'm a relatively new player. I wanted your opinions on this play at the $1/$3 table at my local casino.

I just sit down at the table with $100. Villain has me covered by a lot, probably has ~$700 or so.

V raises to $24. I'm on button with 77, so I call $24.

Board comes 2 2 4 rainbow, and V bets $24. With an overpaid, and thinking a two pair is out of range, and a 2 is unlikely considering his preflop behavior, I raise to $55, which V tanks for a bit and calls. At this point, I think I may be squashed.

Turn comes 6. I bet the rest of my stack, which is $21, thinking V may fold since I was barreling and he reluctantly calls. River is a K, and he shows 88 and I'm busted.

Did I butcher this play? Was this reasonable? Could I have gotten away?

I am in position, and figured my overpair, despite not being a great, was good. Perhaps I should have pushed all in PF for $76 instead of just $55?

Looking back, I probably should observed the table a bit longer as this occurred probably in the third orbit instead of immediately placing him as a maniac all the time.

Any comments are appreciated.

The two threads you have show you at 33bb starting stack. Not exactly short, not remotely full stacked at 100bb.

When I played 2006-2011, we generally consider a TP type hand worth 40bb. Not sure if current strategy.

That said....please do not call PF with small pairs when sitting on 33bb. Push or fold. You DO NOT have the odds to set mine. Consider either playing a 20bb stack or a 100bb stack. 33-70 is a wasteland (that said, I tried a 40bb stack size for several months in 2009 with middling success over 100K hands)

And again, don't post results.

Thread title might be best with something like "77 on the button vs. a PF raise" and then post the hand up to the decision point (as far as you see it)

Thanks for your feedback.

The minimum at my casino is $100, so a 20bb is not possible I. This case. However, do you really think an additional 7bb, or 21 would have helped me get away in this scenario? Can you explain?

The reason I choose at a lower buy in is that it I am on a position where jamming makes sense, the possibility of losing a lot is not great— it’s capped, so I feel I get the benefits of going all in against an opponent while hedging some of the risk.

Please let me know your opinions on this

7 no. I suggested that 40 was marginally profitable. Full stack 100bb is a better game. And at 20bb, you are playing a much easier game (you fold or you push) without the need to have a great handle on postflop decision making.

So....you play a game with 33bb where you say jamming makes sense and you post a all-in hand that you lose. I just don't see what you are asking. Either be happy with jamming (and its variance of win some/ lose some) or play full stack poker.

Mid pocket pairs like 77 are very difficult to extract equity from when you aren't short stacked and you aren't full stacked. If you are short stacked, you just shove with them. The majority of times a caller will have over cards and you will be the slight favorite. Deep stacked, you can set mine with them ( you need at least 10x, more likely 15x, effective stacks to set mine. So if your call is $21, you and villain should both have around $300 for this to be the correct time to set mine).

With your stack the way it was, I would have folded. I find an 8x raise usually to be defending a midstrength hand like TT-QQ, and shoving for only 33bb might not be strong enough to fold him.

As played, go ahead and shove the flop. You are never folding to a reraise, and it might improve your fold equity.

I'm sorry, I'm still getting used the the language. In this sizing, what do you consider short stacked, and what do you consider short stacked and what do you consider full stacked?

As mentioned, there were a variety of stacks. Buy in caps at $100-$300, but big stack had around $800 behind.

Also, what do you mean by "set mine"

I will let the more experienced cash game players talk about the implications of different stack sizes(I play only tournaments right now, and stack sizes are different)

Set mining is the tactic where you play passively with a low or medium pocket pair, hoping to flop a set. Since the villain is the preflop aggressor, and flopped sets are often well disguised, a set is usually a great trapping hand.

You will flop a set about 1 times in 8. To make the gambit worthwhile, you need to be able to win more than 8 times the cost of the preflop call(usually best to be able to win at least 10 if not 15 times the cost of action)

Set mining without the chance to win enough money is a very common leak

I'd given villain a pretty strong range to be raising 8x the BB, especially if this is not over limpers, but even if it is.

Fold pre.

Fold or shove spots pre tend to be somewhat rare in live poker but this is certainly one of them. Really it's a trivial fold because villains range is nearly fully composed of hands that destroy 77 (overpairs) and hands that are flipping with 77 (AK/AQ type hands).

On the flop you encountered another fold/shove spot. Your raise is silly. With a shove there is a greater chance he could fold some hands that have equity vs us.

In regarding to not knowing things like set mining, you really need to do a lot of studying. Read a book, or what a video or participate in these forums a lot or do simple google searches on concepts that you don't understand.

We'd rather villain did not fold AT or A5.

Not true. If villain folds now we increase our stack by $52 ($48 from villain and $4 in blinds). If Villain calls our ship with ATo we win the pot 74.34% of the time, which equals an avg of $51.65 added to our stack. Vs A5o we have worse odds of 72.83% while we are only 71% vs ATs backdoor flush draw and 70% vs A5s backdoor flush draw. So clearly a fold by AT/A5 is better than a call.


(calculations done without rake)

FWIW, in a game where the standard preflop open raise is 5BB+, a 33BB stack can basically play the same strategy as a 20BB stack in a 3BB open raise game. That’s a very simple and profitable strategy that has only one major downside in live games: rules against ratholing.

For this specific hand with hero on the button we can simply things by looking at a heads-up situation between hero and villain and start adjusting for the unlikely case of SB/BB calling a shove if we get a close result.

Give villain a raise/fold and raise/call range and do the math. That’s a pretty trivial spot. What we obviously don’t want to do is call the raise, unless we have some rock solid reads.

Yeah, but the problem is you didn't. The proper play if you think your opponent is raising a large range is to simply shove preflop. This has a lot of benefits, including not folding post flop if an A shows up and your opponent has KQ or 66.

It's rare to have a flop that is all below 7 so you will rarely be flopping an overpair. You don't have the odds to try for a set specifically. So this is raise or fold preflop. As played, then raising on the flop anything less than all in is quite silly frankly.

It depends on how little the 100bb bots here care to adapt their game. If they're rational people who recognise that they can adapt their game and aren't scared to play against different types of opponent, then 30-40bb maybe? If they're not and consider anything less than 100bb to be effectively cheating, then 100bb minus one cent is a crime against humanity. It's all just meaningless verbiage in the end though

LOTS going on here ... welcome, you will get the hang of the best way to present a thread to get 'mostly' good advice! I could probably post a couple of pages here ...

1) The min BI may be 33bb, but you don't always win right away and they don't force you to add-on. So you will probably find yourself with 15-30bb a lot if you choose this style of play.

2) Did you have a plan for the Flop if you didn't hit a 7 (set)? The odds of an Ace or King hitting the Flop is around 30% ... can you imagine the odds of at least 2 or 3 over-cards hitting the Flop holding 77? The next best thing you could do is have a pair/straight draw and that will be less than 2% of the time.

3) You put in 25% of your stack, so at best you could win 4 times your bet. As others have stated, you only Flop a set 1 in 8 times so you aren't really getting a good return on your risk at 3 to 1 'if' you hit a set. Most players want the potential of at least 10x or even 20x (for small pairs) before they set mine.

4) On a 224 Board 'everyone' who had a pair PF has two pair now, not sure what range you are referring to.

5) On the Flop you raised his $24 bet to $55, a raise of only $31 into a pot of now nearly $130. This gives your opponent better than 4 to 1 on his call, which means he only has to win 20% of the time to break even. If you are going to raise here, make his decision as hard as possible ... go all-in!

6) Once your opponent calls the Flop raise you'd be hard pressed to find very many who would fold on the Turn. And for those that would fold the Turn you just gave them a discount to see the Turn card, don't ... go all-in on the Flop. Yes, he may have reluctantly put in those last chips, but they were going in.

7) Yes, you 'could've' shoved PF for your stack, a raise of $76. But your $55 went in on the Flop, not PF .. just watch your descriptions so we can help you the best.

8) The 3rd orbit can give you plenty of information about the table, especially if you have a maniac. What you didn't tell us was if $24 was a 'standard' opening bet or if it was different during those 3 orbits. You don't mention him as a maniac until the end of your post ... and I'm not so sure that him showing down 88 puts him in the maniac category either. I would not label him this way based on your post ... as he both 'tanked' on the Flop and 'reluctantly' called the Turn. Manics do one thing, put chips in the pot, and he would've been all-in on the Flop after you raised if truly a maniac IMO.

Don't get discouraged, most posters here truly do want to help you ... keep coming back. GL

Fold pre.

You should not be playing postflop at all.

Given your BI, I'd only play 88+, AQo+, mix in some KQs too. Most of your game should be:
3Bet Shove preflop (no small raises no nothing, just jam it all in if someone opens before you)

Can raise EP, but just nutted, I'd most likely limp 88 to JJ and looking forward to jam to any raise.
If by some miracle you get into post flop scenarios without being all in, check fold anything that's not nutted (Given you've invested 1-3BB's)
No need to worry about balance on those stakes as there are always fish to pay off.
GL with the swings.