Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players -


Hero (SB): $108.16
BB: $51.21
UTG: $100.00 25/20, EP open 17%, Fcbet 76%, Tcbet 42%, fold to 3bet 85% // 1k hands
MP: $105.00
CO: $143.65
BTN: $170.69 21/17, BTN call open 11% (28), fold to cbet 63% (8) / 250 hands

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is SB with Q K
UTG raises to $3, 2 folds, BTN calls $3, Hero calls $2.50, 1 fold

Flop: ($10.00) 8 T Q (3 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $7.16, BTN calls $7.16, Hero calls $7.16

Turn: ($31.48) 7 (3 players)
Hero checks, UTG checks, BTN bets $18, Hero ?

I decided to flat pre, because there was a fish on the BB. Otherwise 3b seems better because both players have kind of weak ranges and i can collect dead money most of the time.

Since i also had relative position on the agressor, i figured that lead wasnt as good as checking since i can see what BTN does.

Pre, I prefer a squeeze. We won't be ahead of AQ, sometimes even not AK, but it's still our best chance at the pot against two tags.
In the hopes, we really have any edge by playing a hand in the worst position against two tags and one (possible) fish, we shall not prosper. Rest of the hand results in nowhere's land as your hand exemplifies.
And fold pre is fine, too.

call, fold and 3bet pf are pretty close in EV, imo.
i think you can fold flop though. UTG is not very likely to cbet totally whiffed hands on this board as it crushes your and BTN's ranges pretty hard. once he cbets and BTN flats his bet, your equity and playability aren't great.

3bet pre has much greater ev than call or fold.

Don't think UTG cbet crushes our range at all on flop. he's going to flop far more pieces of it such as gut shot + overs or pair and straight draws than he does of hands he's ahead of us with. That being said he's still going to have decent equity and us playing oop like this 3 way is going to blow.

I much prefer leading the flop here.

As played on turn, it's a bit of a lame spot. you can just 1) shrug and fold, 2) get in to a guessing game of calling since bb's range should be pretty wide but that is going to suck a lot by river, or 3) boost your redline by raising. Btn almost never has a set/straight as played. drawbacks to this is a) that you too would also very infrequently have a set or straight (make sure villain is too stupid to realise this) and b) that the sizing required will, to all intensive purposes, be a shove. I think Btn's sizing here is pretty telling though.

My standard on turn in game if i got to it like the hand played out would prob be to fold. I do think however, when looking at Btn's sizing (since who bets 0.55x pot with set/straight/2pair on this board), that raising is going to be pretty profitable. Just throwing it out there for discussion.

But yeah, 3 bet pre.

Nice response

On the other hand, BTNs range for betting the turn should be mostly OESDs (AJ, T9s maybe), FDs (few combos since i have Qs as well) and QJ, KQ and AQ, right? if i think of it that way, i could probably call and reevaluate the river as well. I agree that his range is weak, but since he is an unknown, i dont really know how likely he is to fold when i myself, dont rep much..

yeah i agree, the only problem about calling the turn is 1) that we're going to be left in a ****ty guessing game with many river cards. and 2) If we call it will give UTG good odds to call with his marginal drawing hands too which exasperates point 1 again. I think the ev of raising turn is greater than that of calling. But i think arguments can be made for a variety of actions.

That's the first thing I was going to say, was lead flop. No point in letting it get checked around when everyone plays pretty standard in 3w pots. Def lead and go from there. Prolly agree sqz is better than calling...almost rather fold since it's sb over calling.

What's your plan when you flop Q52r or K52r?

Hey Izanagi,

I take it you mean in regards whether to lead or not? I think those flops are still fine to lead, when I talk about leading say the first flop i'm not saying people should lead it 100% of the time... what the actual % break down would be between leading or check calling in this spot (at least in my head may be something like 70:30) but yeah i think it's a mistake to just do 100% one or other in these spots.

Same could be said for the 2 flops you describe. I definitely think the % ratio between leading/check calling changes in those 2 examples. I mean, those flops are great for us and probably allow for a c/c line to be taken a much higher % of the time (again depending on villains etc), LIke c/c lead turn may be nice in both of your examples. I think with better reads on villains (if one was considerably weaker) then i think KQ could be in our c/r range for value... though not sure i really like doing it here vs these villains.

Does that cover it enough? i mean, I don't think there is ever a 100% correct way to play a hand.

I meant when you 3bet pre flop. I was just asking because I could see us getting in tricky spots when we flop top pair unless we're 3betting for value.

Well we're kind of 3 betting as a bluff against utg and for value vs BTN, UTG fold to 3 bet is so high that squeezing here is almost always going to be profitable. If he does call our squeeze then we are just crushed by his range on almost any board (15% of 17% opening range). But this is assuming that he calls 3 bets when he doesn't fold, where as he is likely to have some 4 betting range too, which means i can't imagine this guy flats 3 bets very often at all. In fact if you think he 4 bets AA/KK/AK It leaves him a super low flatting range of like QQ/JJ. But yeah, either way i think if he flats our 3 bet i'm quite happy to try get to showdown cheaply... If he starts piling pressure on us, then I think it is going to be a fairly trivial fold.

Btn's range is going to be pretty wide imo. I would expect him to back raise with AK (if he didn't already 3 bet it pre) so am loving the Kxx flop vs this guy. We're only really worried about AQ on the other one, but again is likely to be a pretty narrow part of his range, if he is calling our squeeze here he probably is going to have a lot more suited connectors, maybe mid pp's than just AQ, so yeah, should feel pretty happy on both flops vs btn.

I would also donk flop as played FWIW. And I really don't think we need to construct GTO percentages, because donking this flop is kinda unexploitable, unless you want to x/c weaker hands which is extremely debatable.