Quote:
Originally Posted by anon1
Why is the flop a fold?
It's rainbow and hero has two queens blocking the high straight, with a somewhat lesser but relevant 7 blocking the low.
In general, don't we expect to be more competitive with a CO Ax? Yes, SB calls but since he didn't 3Bet, we're pretty much eliminating AA, KK and obviously the much less likely QQ, aren't we? So, maybe SB has JJ and is playing conservatively? On the river, I can see not betting the nut blocker vs. two players but on the other hand, it's big pot that's unpaired and the only straight that we're considering is a hand with T97x - maybe JT97? Does a bare straight call a flush bet on the river? Maybe a straight with a Jack high flush? Still, the SB and the CO both checked the river.
Sorry to ramble but I'm just throwing this out there.
I mainly play live, but on the flop I'd either fold or raise as a bluff (rarely). Sure, we have blockers, but CO still should have a range advantage over us on this board and we have another player left to act behind us as well. It is also microlimits, and barring any specific reads, I'd assume that a lot of our opponents will be incompentent and overvalue marginal holdings that still beat us. And maybe the most important thing of all - our hand has no chances of improving to anything reasonable, we don't even have a backdoor flush draw and our queen outs could very well already be dead to AA or KT.
If you want to bluff this, I think you need to raise the flop. We block top set, we block the high wrap and we block the lower end of the low wrap as well. However, on a board like this I think this is spewy too, since CO has all the AA combos and noone will fold JJ on a board like this either. We might get some folds from AJ/88 that have us crushed, and a re-raise could also fold out J8 and A8 combos as well.
When it comes to bluffs and playing past the flop in PLO, I would prefer to go with a hand that at least has some backdoor opportunities in case we get called.