Hi all,

There are two limps to hero otb in this $25 btn straddle $50 SB blind raise 5/5 game, I have QJJTT with three spades to the queen and we raise pot to $250, both limpers call.

Flop ($800): K-J-4r. Mid set nut open-ender, we don't have a bdfd. Checks to hero who bets $450, EP limper c/r pot. Hero? We started $6.5k eff. Anyone checking behind here this deep? Not isolating pre? Now that we're raised, what do we do? V gives an excited speech about finally beating me in a pot after he raises. He's up on this session but usually loses I believe. The other V folds rather quickly.

Thanks,
DT

I don't see how you can justify checking behind on the flop. Without any reads, I don't see any reason to do anything except call the flop, call the turn (assuming you don't hit the straight), and make a decision on the river. In his position, I really don't like check raising anything other than a combo hand (i.e. wrap and BDFD(s) or set + straight draw); if he has anything less, he's liable to fold to any 3-bet anyway, so calling keeps his dominated hands in and gives you a chance to let the hand develop.

You've written it as such that he's giving off as many tells that he can that he has hit KK, which would imply you should fold. But, you've put in 700, you've got $5700 behind, so I'm just going to ramble my thoughts to work on process...

- if you get all in on the flop you've put 5700 more to win ~$7000, so you need 45% equity. Your hand is 66/33 against KK***, which means your -EV, getting only $4200 back on average if he has KK every time.
- If he even has the small possibility of 44***, which you're 80/20 favorite
- If you rip it in and they fold, you win $3300 ($800+$450+$2150).
- You block all the good draws, they didn't raise pre, so I'm discounting AA+, AQT type of hands to 0

Since I want to keep 44 in, and I'm losing to KK anyways, and the only thing I think he might have and then fold to a flop re-raise AI is 44, I would want to flat. But it looks like I need V to have 44 at least 1 time out of every 4 of these spots to break even on the flop.

Yeah, fold the flop...

Don’t want to be results oriented but we have a really good hand to check back and let them stab turn or have them hit something / check call turn with a marginal hand. We don’t need much protection and hate getting check raised by basically a KK only range.

As played I guess fold. What else could he possibly have? We block the wrap hard and that hand doesn’t usually check raise this deep.

I think this hand is actually a good overlimp without much fold equity. It has deceptively poor playability (relative to how nice it looks) on most flops multiway and Hero will underrealize his equity.

Can't recommend a fold unless villain is super-tight, mostly calling but mixing in a few jams for balance.

Agree with overlimping, we will be making a lot of middle set or a wrap that we have our own outs and would prefer smaller pots in both scenarios.

And if we flop top set it won’t be the nuts unless we fill up.

I think that it is results oriented thinking to want to limp pre and check behind flop. We are >100bbs with a top 15% hand on the button. Must pot pre.

On the flop, we are only 3 ways. Such an equity fav vs limped ranges and the odds of facing top set are low. Must bet.

Facing check raise, we still have 9 outs to the nuts and position. I will agree he has KK majority of the time but doubt its 100% of the time. Not folding.

Call and see a turn

His pot bet is 2150, you are gonna call and fold the last 4K unimproved?

Once you call the flop, you are calling the turn. The reason not to raise the flop "if we're just getting our money in anyways", as I see it, is it keeps in the hand(s), 44***, that we actually beat right now.

Yes we have 9 outs, but we need V to have 44 at least once for every 3 times they have KK to break even on our last $5700. I really thought I could find math to support calling the flop, but without fold equity and without V having more hands other than KK, it looks like a fold OTF.

Just call or get it in, don't think it's a huge difference. Call seems better with our hand but given his speech don't know if it matters.

Not folding to a player who "loses quite often", only 1 player I can think of I may fold this to.

Tbh I thought deeper, wasnt paying that much attention.

I did a back of envelope peel and stack EV calc and I get losing call at 4k behind. Need about 4.5k behind for it to be a break even call

Raising seems bad. We can fold K turns, and maybe 4 turns too.

Being a rainbow flop it's not like V can even have AQT+nfd. The worst players love to have rando. KK and play it this way though.
If we are sure V plays all bare KK this way and only with the best combo wraps ... I don't hate a fold, but meh.
It's also "only" ~120bb.


On flop I don't mind a check, or a small bet or a big bet ... half pot seems like the worst option, but maybe not by much.

Reading the thread with complete objectivity it looks like a clear fold OTF. His speech smells like KK with no real back up. You could paraphrase as “I have you beat now, and Id really prefer it if you didn’t call and put my in a tough spot with a straightening card on the turn”.

There’s no scenario he has 44 imo.

Having said that, this is a brutally tough fold in the moment.

Villain can't have AA44?

Not with that excited speech. No-one gets cocky with bottom set and claims to know they’re ahead.

Not sure on the maths on what %ion of 5cPLO hands are DS, but I'm pretty excited about getting to raise this behind limpers. If you're not raising this, what are you raising?

Willing to check this flop with this hand if we're much shallower, but we want to build a pot with this SPR. Given we have 9 full nut outs, some of which our villain may be counting on himself, there's no chance in hell I'm bet-folding. So it's between calling and jamming. Jamming might get folds from bottom set, or some weirdly played two-way hand like KQTT4. If we're ahead, only a K, Q, T or 4 could possibly given villain a better hand. So looks like a clear call and let's play a fun turn in position in a big pot with a really big hand.

Have you.... ever played live?

Please let's not read too much into what he's saying. If we're to fold this, it's because he only has KK, not because he's talking confidently.

It's playability in terms of number of flops it hits is low compared to rundown type hands, but it makes up for that in equity by the flops it does hit, it hits them harder. You don't underrealize your equity if you just play as aggressively as you're supposed to, and even where you do, the idea is that you make fewer mistakes than your opponents who will underrealize their own equity more than you do.

Why do you want there to be a flush draw on the flop? That gives our opponents more equity against our hand. The fact there's no flush draw means it's more likely we'll see AQT** in our opponent's hand, which is good for us. Logic more applicable in 4 rather than 5 card, but still true: if you have middle set, you don't want there to be a flush draw on board. Hell, even with top set you don't want there to be a flush draw.

This is really a live read type of hand - if his speech and x/r are balanced then we're not going anywhere, but if he's unbalanced which most are in live games the decision should be clearer. I would think no one x/r here without KK but could be wrong - this is very deep at 6.5k and we block AQT. Does villain raise KK pre?

This is 113 big blinds deep, which is considered pretty shallow for live games, where you often see multiple 1000bb stacks. In general it makes more sense to think about SPR, which is ~7.5 here.