Game is insane loose, its a 2-2 but usually straddle to 10 and sometimes up to 40
I have 1.3k cover most but not all, 8 way

Im utg with AsAc8h4h raise to 40
Co calls
Btn calls
Sb calls
Bb calls
Straddle 10 calls

Flop 5d6c7d checks to me, i check
Checks to btn whom shoves for 230, btn is relatively tight but could still be shoving wide here

Sb (1.2k)is literally his first time playing plo and has no clue - calls
Folds to hero??
Btw co is whale who covers us but is on the phone and seems to have forgotten about the hand already.

Whats my best option here?

limp pre
jam flop, noob can call you with lots of stuff for stacks

consider limping pre in certain game conditions but mostly just open for a raise
flop is a little disgusting but i think you have to jam and pray

I liked your flop check, now fold. I especially liked your flop check when there is a shovable stack like the one the 240 guy has, makes everyone play straight forward to their equity for the most part/often you will get to see what happens infront of you when he shoves and others act. Would have been nice to know everyones stacks tho that's important.

With no one behind I could see shoving if SB is truly super clueless (can have any fd/bad straight/always raises 89 and sets and fds etc etc). I think it's quite a parlay for everything to go right here with CO still left to act and the unknown factor of how these guys are playing, then at the end of the day you are still playing for a protected pot and always have to fade the shorties equity for a large portion of the pot. I heavily lean towards fold

This is a very rough sim what it is showing is 40% of hands minus the top 8% linear (im assuming they would have 3 bet/opened themselves) That leaves 32% of hands they are limping with (this is wide and player/position dependent obv), results were similar as i tightened it up/loosened it up with your equity getting better the tighter they are (less hands that hit this board) and worse the looser they are with diminishing returns until once again your equity goes up. (Has to do with the saturation of hits for the ranges on this board). I found no real change in changing their excluded range from 8% to 15%: TLDR: This is accurate enough to illustrate given I have no real reads.

This has them stacking off with any flush draw, any straight, any set, any 3 pair and for the shorty any "good" two pair.

This is very loose and nowhere close to reality, but it's not exactly accurate since one guy checked to you and didn't take his chance to bet when possibly he would have led top parts of his range. I don't really want to put too much effort into making this perfect because it seems very clear to me, we are cooked.

Here is a slightly adjusted range that makes more sense of the action: Now the cold caller is only going with FDs that have backup/is never slowplaying 89:



Doing a bit better but these ranges are still very loose, taking away bad fds hurt you but removing all his 89s really helped you. I could filter this down more, taking away no backup 34's from the cold caller is going to cost you 1 whole percent, tightening up his fd stacks off going to cost you a bit more as well,having him fold 567 no backup is going to hurt you too. As is even vs that looseish cold call range we are flipping in the side pot

Remember we haven't factored in fold equity that we have on the cold caller (a plus for you) or the CO left to act behind you (a big negative for you; whose odds of hitting this board goes up when others fold)

I think this illustrates what I said, It's all quite a parlay. If CO is for sure going to fold and you have fold equity vs the cold caller with reads like I said above you can jam on him. But it's as simple as him checking his whole range to you and stacking off with the 89 included range and all of a sudden you are losing. Or CO can come in when you didn't expect and sap your equity severely with your money already all in the middle. Even an idiot in CO's shoes is going to be stacking off near perfect to their equity, so it is really going to hurt you if he has calling hands.

That being said it's a bit how I suspected, if you know CO is going to fold and cold caller can truly have anything, shove and win from the fold equity. Still seems like a 5x parlay for a very marginal return and high % chance to incorrectly evaluate the variables.

One last thing, yeah you have the 2nd nuts but this was never your board.



Yeah equity is not the be all end all as you get to see people act/steal peoples equity away from them etc, but this should show you we aren't crushing in this spot even vs random hands. This is why I was all for a check in the first place in my original post:



Now that's an edge worth fighting for. Offsuit 2/3/K/Q/A/J is actually a decent amount of cards, considering you are 6 ways. 6 ways there is no way you are making an equity mistake folding on any flush completing/higher straight completing/board pairing turn, so why not let one peel off. Other good things could have happened when you checked, like multiple people jamming a ton of money in letting you know to fold or only the shorty going all in and you getting to play vs just him. I think betting this flop 6 ways is an absolute disaster and isn't only -ev instantly, it costs you a potential much higher +EV spot that you could have had on a substantial amount of turns.

Now that I think of it, even if you decide to continue you are likely better off just calling and hoping for a safe turn card to jam vs the other guy. I still think its a fold.

Thank you for your reply, very helpful

My bad about stack sizes everyone had around 800-1.2k besides btn shorty and cowhale who had around 1.7k.

As for co whale, ive played with him for many years and was 99.9% sure he was folding and not hollywooding a monster.

Shoving as played.

In loose games I prefer to limp UTG with weak Aces, would much rather be opening with AAJ10/AAKQ ds (or ss).

If the game really is that loose then guys are going to raise everything from middle-wraps to hands like JJ98 ds from every position, so why not just limp and then squeeze when other players make bad calls in-between? In those type of games I tend to raise based on position and dynamics - unless guys are 3-betting you light it's not the best hand to open in early position.

I never want to take a flop with AAxx when I'm OOP against like 5 players and I'm the initial raiser - very unlikely to flop an A and your hand/position are kind of exposed.

As played I think it's a check-fold - best-case scenario button has something with 78 or 10-8 with diamonds (could also have a set with a straight or flush draw), but you could be drawing to a back-door full-house with only $40 invested so why stack off?

BTN is short and shoving any piece. And SB has no clue and might raise 89xx, leaving him with lot of hands we crush. What if he thinks QQ68 is good enough? We need to give him a chance to make a huge mistake

Well yea I prefer monster aces pre to crappy ones too but that's not a reason not to raise his hand.
You might as well say in hold em you prefer aces pre to jacks so you won't raise jacks pre.

The 40 dollars he's invested are irrelevant. All that matters is his hands vs his opponents ranges and his equity in the pot.
Guy could be shoving for 230 with all kinds of trash,and his oppenent who flatted sucks at plo and he's likely 60 percent or better against him.89 from the bigger stack is way less likely than some 2 pair dirt or 34 straight he will call off with.

Trivial shove.

I'd hardly call this a trivial shove. 60% eq in sidepot seems like quite the exaggeration/wishful thinking.

Of course there is a scenario where the button ships anything and the SB is flatting with sucker-straights/sets/combo-draws/etc. But it seems far more likely we just played ourselves into a bad spot that could've been avoided by not raising pre with bad Aces UTG.

If you don't understand the difference between raising UTG with premium Aces and bad ones then I don't know what to tell you - it has nothing to do with what "I prefer" and has everything to do with dominating hands that will call/re-raise and not exposing ourselves to bloated pots out of position with weak drawing hands.

We aren't suited to the Ace and we don't have two other cards that make a nut-straight, so what good flops are there for us really? You need to flop Aces full or the bottom trips and you won't even get action on those flops a lot of the time. I definitely wouldn't feel good making the second straight with no re-draw on a spicy flush-draw board against 5 players that was raised pre.

That's why I prefer limping weak Aces UTG or UTG+1 in looser games, it keeps the pot from bloating unnecessarily and from us feeling committed to stacking off with mediocre holdings just because we raised with AA in the first place.

I guess the $40 is irrelevant if you don't care about concepts like pot-commitment, but I try not to risk 100+ BB's with only 4 committed when I'm praying for what is 50% equity at best against SB.

i do understand the difference b/w good aces and bad aces. saying " i would just limp with bad aces" could be fine. i often do just limp bad aces, although i rarely open limp.

saying you'd rather have super duper premium aces is pointless. obviously you'd rather have super duper premium aces than bad ones.if other people posted like this every thread would include something like "well i have top pair here but i'd much prefer to have top set" no ****. who cares. that's just useless drivel that helps nobody.

also how nitty do you have to be to not raise jj89 ds preflop.you call a game with people doing that a loose game?


again the amount you've committed to the pot already is totally irrelevant when making any decision in poker.the odds the pot is laying you relative to hand ranges is what matters.
you don't have 50% equity at best against the small blind who has been described as a clueless player who just flatted the 230 all in.you have way more than that.

Not true, i played around with sims and its really hard to have more than 50% vs him in the sidepot. Wtf range u giving this guy, qqjt no diamonds? lol

Easy call since better is all in and better and sb range can include many drawing hands, 2 pairs, sets, pair and draws combos. Also, you don't have nuts and have position, so no need to raise.

Obviously everyone prefers "better" AA variations, it's just some of us don't like raising in early position in loose games for the multiple reasons that have been noted prior. All I was trying to get you to consider was what the purpose of raising AA in early position is, but you seem to take it as a personal affront/attack of some kind...not trying to give you "useless drivel" ("it's better to have better cards!") but to think about the game theory of what you are doing.

My logic is - I raise AA when I can dominate hands that can call me or I'm in position and the table dynamics call for it. In your case I'd say everything is against raising (except for the fact that it is AAxx and to balance out your ranges you should be opening crappy AA even UTG sometimes).

As far as "how nitty do you have to be to not raise jj89 ds preflop.you call a game with people doing that a loose game?" It entirely depends on what kind of loose - is everyone opening with a wide-range? calling with a wide-range? 3-betting with a wide-range? So really all depends, can't say without knowing the specific table variables (in my experience unless they are higher-stakes and/or deep-stacked games there aren't a ton of 3-bets preflop in PLO).

I think Eskaborr did an excellent analysis of this hand from almost every angle possible and would cede to his posts expertise.

Results?

I shoved

Sb called with 3d4d75
Btn had Jd8d9d 6x

Turn Qd ... gg

Maybe shouldve called and see a safe turn or am i being too results oriented?

As for pre, i do adpot a 100% open limp strategy if the table dynamic/ stack sizes dictate it favorable, i didnt think it was one of those times. Obv i lose less if i had limped the hand.

No doubt in my mind if u somehow deem it profitable to continue u should start off by just calling.

Yikes he even had the 89 with diamonds... guys in punt all in exploit crowd what say you now?

Btn was short, we have a huge side with the sb and ran into the top of both their ranges

I can't come up with a reasonable range for the guy we have the huge side pot with that makes shoving profitable. I can't really get it higher than 50%... this is without considering bunching effect/guy still left to act behind us. I'm very confident an all in is a torch.