Here's a bomb pot I just played/butchered.

26bb in the pot, flop comes Tc 8c 2s.

I'm sitting UTG+2 200bb deep holding Td Ts 8c 6h.

A guy in MP bets 14bb and gets called in 4 spots so I figure I'm not ahead by much and call as well. I thought about check-raising and I would probably just do that if I was 100bb deep. Don't like the 8 in my hand which both limits my full house potential and the chance of people betting with mid set so my guess is I'm up vs low draw + flush draw.

107bb in the pot, turn is the 3s so the low gets there, two flush draws, multiple straight draws and a huge low wrap on board.

I check again, the guy in MP pots and gets called in one spot, I have 170bb left and ****ing hate my life lol. I feel like I'm probably getting freerolled big time and most rivers will suck. I would much rather hold Ace high and a non-counterfeitable nut low than my actual hand.

How do I proceed from here?

It sucks, but you ship it. 170*3+107=617, so you are betting 170 to win 617, and only need to win 27.5% of the time. The only time you don't have that is if both players have the respective A4 suited in clubs and spades. Most ranges and guesses I tried has your hand closer to 30%.

Uh, no, he doesn't figure to win 617 if his hand holds up, because some significant portion of the time, someone will make a low and he'll be chopping.

If you figure that half of your opponents are (primarily) on a low draw, then you're fading something like 20 possible low cards on the draw for a chop. And then, you might have to sweat that one of those cards is completing a flush or even some jive-ass straight.

Problems like this are exactly why I fold hands like 101086. These are "middle" cards, meaning that if they hit, you're either on the low side of a straight or somebody has also just hit their low or has a draw to it. Something like 1010A3 would be much, much, much better. As would a high-only hand like QJ1010. (My personal rule is that any hand containing two or more "middles" goes right into the muck and any hand with one middle is at best marginally playable. Keeps me out of situations like this.) And yes, I realize that we're in a bomb pot and were forced to play. But as soon as I looked at the hand I would have said, "Flop the nut full house or this sucker goes into the muck." We've all been dragged to our doom by a flopped set.

Warrior24 is correct of course, while madrobin is trying to solve math problems using beginner concepts. Hinting at folding the flop is insanely bad of course, but to be fair folding the turn is only a very small mistake.

So my wording was ****, cause at best he's only ever winning 1/2 of the pot (as the low is possible and the betting indicates that someone has A4) not the full 617, but the equity calculations are the same. He's got to have 27.5% equity and everything I ran on propokertools had him at 30%.

Maybe I have to word it differently for you: he needs to win 1/2 the pot 55% of the time, and my calculations have him winning high 60% of the time for a profit when shoving.

It's a bomb pot, he didn't choose to play TT86

jesus christ yes please be folding top set in big pots in my games

like is this actually a real suggestion?

I did end up folding. This is by no means my standard play and I tend to get it in bad quite a bit in much easier spots, but I figured I couldn't win much here while the downside potential was huge. As pointed out in the OP, I would obviously just stick it in on the flop if we were playing 100bb deep or I had a least SOME low/flush potential (it obviously wouldn't have to be to the nuts in either direction).

Turns out I had run into the absolute nut low scenario for me. My three opponents held two nut lows with nut flush draws and one big low wrap, a big straight draw for high AND cards that block my full house lol.

(I do realize this is a freak scenario, but hey, I was playing on ACR.)



I only posted this hand because I was pretty lost and didn't know what to do here. I'm not suggesting the actual hands matter much when it comes to what the default play in this spot should be.

Oh I also think c/r flop is better than flatting, even if latter is "standard" especially for intermediate players, because beginner books tell you to do so. The reason is simple - you are pushing equity against 4 villains and IMO your playability improves.

OP i meant to say that about folding OTF, in response to posts intimating it above. you didn't fold flop so you're fine and it's moot to begin with. only thing i think that's interesting in regards to flop is whether to c/r or not. i think once everyone calls you're in a spot where you know you're pushing equity, as amok says. so might as well just do it because turn pot size will be big enough you can close your eyes and put money in.

as far as the turn fold, honestly, as i was reading this, the nit in me wanted to fold so i get why you did it, and i don't think anyone's gonna judge you hard about that.

Assuming we raise on the flop, what's our plan on the worst turn cards? Don't we just have to check-fold unless we maybe by some miracle get to the turn heads-up? Doesn't keeping the pot small now give us more options later and maybe even make this more profitable?

I mean, my plan obviously wasn't to flat again on say a King of spades ...

Just to reiterate, I'm not pretending that I have a clue. I won some money playing O8, but I haven't played it regularly in years ...

Absolutely this. I think it's a tough spot and I don't know what I'd do, but I'd know that it's rather close.

It's not an easy getin because we have the nuts, it's not an easy laydown because we are always freerolled. It's a matter of if we have over 27,5% equity on average.

Depends on the turn card and the amount of callers. Assuming several callers I don't think we can ever fold even on worst cards. If you find this hard to believe just run some propokertools sims.

Keeping the pot small gives more options at the price of not pushing equity on the flop. Getting a lot of money in on the flop also cuts down their options. I mean they probably need to getin even on very bad turn cards, again assuming more than one caller.

Yes, "don't pour a lot of money into the pot with a hand that doesn't figure to be profitable" is one of them beginner concepts that we out in the hinterlands rely on.

Hitting top set is maybe the only outcome other than flopping a boat that would induce me to continue at all with 101086. And I would be well aware that with multiple players persisting to the turn, I'll be very lucky if my hand holds up AND no low gets there.

People bleed off huge sums of money by playing Omaha like it was Hold'Em.

honestly the worst thing about what you're saying is that you keep saying 1010 like a sociopath, instead of tt like every other normal person

yeah, this definitely strikes me as one of those spots where i wish i didn't click the post, because there's a certain agony of knowing we have to deal with it in the future lol. but ya, really close because of the aforementioned reasons. we KNOW we are currently fine, but we KNOW we are getting freerolled, so it's like meh

I like the flop flat and not raise. Having the 8 in your hand hurts your equity a ton, so this is a spot where I would play cautiously this deep. You have about a third of the deck that is instafold on the turn if there is action, a third which put you in this same predicament, and the remaining third you love. I like having options... especially if you do raise that flop, I think you are committed to the pot on even the worst turn cards, since the x/r turns your hand face up to everyone.

well sure the 8 hurts, but the idea is a combination of things

- when you have a buncha players continue even after you c/r, you're straight up pushing equity
- when enough call the turn decision becomes pretty trivial if the pot is big enough
- as such our turn decision becomes fairly simplified.

i also don't necessarily agree that if we c/r our hand is faceup. i mean you should have a decent mix of hands here that aren't just sets. and even if it's faceup, it still kinda doesn't matter as much because when the pot's big enough, again, many turn call decisions are trivial.

also feel like this is just a straight up nifty spot to do a lot of things. like say it checks to BTN who bets, and everyone just folds back to us, we don't actually have to c/r because now our playability is wacky with a really high spr. or if it checks through, turn is really cool because we are super under-repped on a FH or if it's a bad turn we can just go away quietly.

whatever the case, i understand wanting to call. really, anything is better than folding flop.

Also don't think our hand is face up if we check raise.

I would play A234/A23 with nut clubs this way all day long. If most players fold and we get it in vs top set flipping with overlay, fine. If worse draws elect to continue, perfect.

That said, playing A234/A23 with nut clubs this way might lead people to think we actually have top set which is a nice bonus.

I don't think the hand is faceup at all, but also it doesn't really matter if it was. Nothing really they can do with that information on turns with SPR 0,5 or so. And it's 0,5 with one caller, with more callers every hand is priced in on any turn.

only rationale for not repotting flop is if you're underrolled and need to minimize variance by seeing a turn. even then i'm not sure it's the right play because you let deepstacked CO and BTN see a turn for cheap and now like 80%+ of turn cards make you wanna fold.

Doesn't the same logic apply if I repot? hehe

Seriously though, going through the hand history once more, I did think about whether MP+1 might actually fold if I pot it which would be a huge boost for our hand. Surely this would be a yuck spot for him given all he has is top pair and a non-nut low draw against three opponents?

Then again, he lead into the whole table so I'm guessing he didn't do that with the intention to fold ...

As for me being underrolled, no. Winning or losing $20 wasn't a consideration in this at all. As I said before, I've punted in much bigger spots and I just happened to be a nit in this one for little $$$.

less so because everyone's committed their stacks so you're not sweating whether to commit 170bbs into a reverse freeroll, and shoving flop should fold out most middling wraps which potentially eliminates QJ9 as scare cards

I came to this thread late and there seems to be some disagreement over what is the right course of action on the turn having flat called the flop. How does this stack up in tournament play? Do you just gamble and hope to fade the flush hoping to quarter the lows on a blank/paired river? I encounter this all time in MTT’s and a lot of times I just burn the set when low + straight or low+ flush draw hits the turn.

Depends. Of course the chipEV is the same, but depending on the tournament situation you might be better off not risking all of your chips.

If you're certain you'll get multiway action from playing it aggressively you're sure to make a profit from either two players sharing the same low or somebody drawing to a better high without the best low - or even someone with a worse set thinking everyone's going off with their lows.

With one card to come you're laying 2 to 1 for every dollar you put in and obviously your top set of tens will hold up at least 2/3rds of the time come the river (all cards that complete straights don't necessarily give your opponent's straights) If three other people call you you're printing money.

It's only bad when you get called by only one person.

Another advantage of playing it aggressively, and I'm not saying it will happen in your game, but this is a thing in some games, players might actually fold the nut low or second nut low because they don't have enough of a high hand. They will be scared of getting quartered and losing 50bb or more.

What I would say though is that "play the nut high when freerolled" is extremely broad situationally. For example let's say you have QJ79 (checked pre in the big blind) for a ten high straight on a 46T8 board. That is quite a different situation to having top set because other people can have the same straight as you.

So in these situations draw distinctions between exclusive and non-exclusive nuts.