Button is Sun -- a quiet Korean regular pro who always wears a Texas Longhorns cap. I've played a lot with him over the years and he's fairly solid, a winner, but I've never ever seen him take 3 to the face preflop. In this hand I have to think he did it as part of an adjustment to the MP guy (a LAGfish who's been playing virtually every pot and raising most of them) -- either trying to disguise AA/KK to get more action from him or with a slightly weaker hand to get paid off by him when he hits.

I open AJ, LAGfish MP 3-bets, button calls, folded to me and I call.

Flop QJ2. I check, MP checks, button checks.
Turn 6. I bet, MP calls, button raises, I fold.

?? It's hard to think of a hand Sun wouldn't bet the flop with (except 66) but it's also hard to think of a hand I'm beating given the lack of draws. Also, as far as I've seen Sun never raises the turn on an OESD semibluff (and I doubt he'd cold-call 3 with an easily dominated hand like KTs preflop anyway) so I took that mostly out of his range. To me it smelled like 66, QQ, (one combo of) JJ, or a weirdly played AA/KK, or some random spazzy bluff. I didn't think it was a bluff often enough so I laid it down. Anyone else pay him off? I think MP is fairly negligible here because he has us beat 0% of the time when he checks the flop and just calls the turn.

Based on what I remember in the 25 game he can play very tight if he is in the right mood. But he can tilt with the best of them too. If he wasn't tilting then yeah, i think you're beat.

J-dub probably has a good read on him.

AA/KK/QQ/JJ all bet this flop. If he's as good as you say he is (winning pro), he's not giving a free card to two players with any hands that strong. Nonetheless, I think it's pretty close because it's tough to think of many hands you're beating here. A-J is probably right on the borderline for hands I'd pay off here (I'd say muck K-J!).

Why can't he have AK here? Or TT? What does your hand look like to him? Look, if you've got a good read, fine, but I can see him wanting to put the screws to you in the hopes that he gets you to fold AJ, AK, AT, 77-TT, KJ, JT, etc etc. I'm not folding.

IMO he's never raising two people in a 3way 3b pot with a worse hand here ever. He's probably not as solid as you think and has JJ or 66. I guess maybe QJ is a possibility.

When a good player calls 3 cold preflop, it always preplexes me. Last two times I remember it happening, both players had A-A. Hard to figure what he has here that he would check the flop with, but if he has A-A, it kind of make sense that he would continue with the deception on the flop, and he might be thinking greedily with Q-Q or J-J. (FWIW, I can remember cold-calling 3 only twice, both times with J-J, and both decisions were in states of confusion.)

So is that 50 game any better now?

I think it's prob a good fold.

This is the catch 22 of making big laydowns to predictable opponents. No matter how predictable they are you will always have that lurking suspicion that maybe they pulled a fast one on you. Anyway, though I dont think it is a bad fold I might call and see what he does on the river.

Brick is accurate is his description. When Sun is stuck he plays horribly bad pre-flop. He also loves to free showdown raise, which could include a four bet if you choose to three bet. He also would play a pair with a flush draw like this on the turn, especially given the action and he would bluff the river if he missed. If bad player calls your getting 10:1 so that would be 5.5:1 effective to see showdown. I wouldn't fold and would donk if I improved on the river.

What was your plan on the flop if bad player bet and button called?

Well played

this.

ROOTING INTEREST IMO

You're read seems exactly right. I fold this and feel great about it.

If someone wants to give me 2:1 on $5 I'll take JJ and 66 exactly and you can have every other hand villain has.

Stars only

based on the description in the OP, he should have 666 100% of the time here... so the question is how much weight you put into your read...

seems like an ez fold to me

I'm interested in the flop.

You don't really know what the other two have and you kinda hit your hand. Seems to me that this is a good situation to donk.

Hi PJ,

How often do you think Sun would free showdown raise here? You could potentially call the raise and see if he fire again on the river. If you don't think that's very likely, this is pocket 66 a vast majority of the time, or at worst a hand you may have two or three outs against.

PJ is getting much better odds on a call down. Or a Call/Fold... That might actually be reasonable, I don't know.

uh, we hate our hand on the flop. We're not seeing a turn unless they let us do it for free. We are out of position vs. 2 aggressive players (one good, one bad) with a hand we felt like folding for one more SB pf. We called that PF raise because we were hoping to flop top pair, and hoping that it would be good. It didn't work out well for us.

you're c/f the flop?

FWIW I was never folding the flop, but I was only check-calling. I wasn't nearly as disturbed by the LAG's 3-bet as I was by the button's cold-call. But seeing as how I flopped second pair and the button could easily have 99 or 88 or something, I was going to see how he reacted to the LAG's c-bet and continue cautiously.

i witnessed the hand and i couldn't believe your hand was this strong... if MP was a LAGfish like you described, wouldn't sun cap AK, AQs+, 88+ to hopefully get it heads up preflop?? and being the LAGfish that MP is, i'd probably donk out AJ on the flop...

i have only played w/ sun occasionally and my read on him is that he's pretty laggy... u have more experience w/ him though so i wouldn't argue against your read... i'd put him on 66 also...

He might cap some of those hands, especially AK and maybe 88-TT, since getting HU would be great. But with KK/AA, he may want to keep me in since my range is so incredibly dominated by those hands. And if he has 55-77 then he may just float it. Or so I thought; I mean I dunno.


Well the times I've played with him he wasn't ever really that LAGgy, at least not against me. But then again my read could have been off (as other Hustler regs have told me it was, and I now believe them) and since this was very early in my session I couldn't be sure if he was in a solid state of mind or on tilt from losing a lot, or what. Also maybe he plays differently in the 50, as all my experience with him has been in the 25.

BTW, were you in this game or just sweating it? Who are you? (PM me if you don't want to post it).

hand? I have money on this.

The fish called the raise, the river blanked, it went check-check, and button turned over 76s for the FSDR hand (and super loose PF cold-call) and the fish won with 88. I suck at poker. My read on Sun has obviously changed a lot now, thanks to 350,000 2+2 readers and lurkers who will not let me hear the end of this and give me sh*t daily now.