Hi all,

Hero opens AQTT2 A-high spades in EP and gets two callers. BB then 3! me - he has been doing this all night to me especially. He's a fun player but he's been getting better and has been playing relatively solid today. We go four ways.

KKTr. Checks through. We have $700 and pot is $325 with the underfull. I checked once for pot control.

Turn: 3 bringing bdfd. We have Qc only. V in BB now pots. Hero? We have two players behind us to act too.

Thanks,
DT

It’s too likely we are beat imo, and we have very little equity when behind. I would limp this in EP, we are not accomplishing much by raising this hand.

Why don´t we just pot the flop and GII? With this stack depth the hand will play itself - I doubt that AKx, for example, will fold/not GII vs us. OTT we lose to KT (unlikely) and K3 (more likely), however we still beat all other Kx hands. And how many K3 will a player who is playing relatively solid have here? I´d say that not really a whole lot. Could have just as easily checked flop for pot control, but now bets to protect equity/get value of worse kings/just trying to steal the pot since noone seems to have anything. So I don´t really see how we can fold when an blank like a 3 hits.

Hand should be a fine open but calling 3b is a bit dicey. Prob fold to 3b imo

On flop i agree that at this SPR its fine to pot/stack. In general im not an advocate of picking the line thats easiest to play but in this case the easy like is certainly +ev so im gonna take it

Might be an open fold pre-flop.

As played, bet flop/GII.

As played, jam turn.

The SPR is under 2.2 so we need it to check out twice for pot control to be a concept and the only way it is likely to check twice is when we are good. Assuming you put any player on a K they have between 8-12 cards to fill depending upon whether they are paired and assuming they are not already a full house. At this point it is knowing your Vs. Will V bet a AK here or are we drawing to a one outer? Obviously we can't know but we should be able to know if V is so tight it must be a full house or aggressive enough so it can be the AK. Assuming no other player would you want to put in $700 to win $1025 vs this V? Given there are other players and a call here means the last bet would be under half pot I think you either raise to try to drive out a K that has yet to act or fold.

Pot flop, as played pot turn. Initially I thought the turn was Qc.

If I don't think I can play AQTT2ss profitably in a game I'm sitting out from that game. Maybe even sitting out from poker.

Don't pot the flop. Potting means we can't bet very many hands for value, and thus we reveal the strength of our hand - though given we're potentially drawing to only 1 out, we're arguably overplaying our hand even by potting the flop. Bet small, like you would with the actual nuts and an AQKJ type hand.

OP, pot controlling is better done in position than out. Being last to act gives you more control than being first to act.

People tend to play very honestly on paired boards, so call now and fold to any more significant action.