210 BB effective stacks
Villain was unknown at the time (First night in the room)

HI (hero) A3cc

SB posts $10.
BB posts $20.
UTG folds.
UTG+1 folds.
UTG+2 calls $20.
HI (hero) calls $20.
CO folds.
BTN raises to $135.
SB folds.
BB calls $115.
UTG+2 calls $115.
HI (hero) calls $115.

Question 1:
Going 4 way to the flop and being 200bb deep, I feel like i have the right price with the implied odds, makes sense? How high would the raise have to be before you fold this here?

Flop (pot: $550) - Ad Tc 4c
BB checks.
UTG+2 checks.
HI (hero) checks.
BTN bets $300.
BB folds.
UTG+2 folds.
HI (hero) calls $300.

Turn (pot: $1,150) - Ks
HI (hero) checks.
BTN bets $720.
HI (hero) calls $720.

River (pot: $2,590) - Ah
HI (hero) checks.
BTN bets $1,675.
HI (hero) ?

Final Board: Ad Tc 4c Ks Ah

Question 2:
I have a tendency to play my weaker draws more aggressively and nutted draws more passively. Good approach?

Villains range with a preflop 3bet into 2 opens from early/mid position, 2/3 pot size bet with 4 on the flop and 2/3 pot on turn: on the river is heavily waited AT+, TT, 44, A4s, A4h (KK, QJ with a club sometimes but rarely) and the various clubs. (56cc, 67cc, 78cc, 89cc, 9Jcc, JQcc, JKcc, KQcc). Since he was so aggressive from pre to river i would discount some of those clubs except the broadway clubs.

Question 3:
Does this range make sense?

I have A3cc, if I didnt block clubs this much I would probably call, against a loosey/aggressive opponent I would tend to call also but I was having trouble to figure any other hands than missed clubs that get there that I beat? I chop with the 2 combos of A4s left but I dont feel like he would always raise that preflop as a bluff squeeze.

Question 4:
Am i putting too much importance on blocking clubs here to consider a fold?

Question 5:
Any flaws in my thinking, anything I didnt think of that would help me take a decision here?

#1 I like the call pre although I tend to play this Asuited hands on 3bet pots only in position.

#2 I kind agree on that but in this specific hand I would 3 bet flop for several reasons. We can make some suited Aces hand to fold, we can even make JJ+ plus fold. If Villain call our 3 bet we can narrow his range on something like AQ+. Does villain 4bet flop with 10's, A10 protecting flushdraws to get there??

#3 Given how the hand was played and villain is never balancing pre, my guess is that he is beating you on the river. Better A, 10's or KK's. Is he capable of 3 barreling vs Hero? Missed flush is kind of hard...

#4 Besides club blocking I think the main question is villain capacity to bluff there. This type of spot you are way ahead or way behind..

#5 3betting flop will help to fire the alarm or win the hand right away.

Do you agree on my thoughts?

There are a couple disadvantages to only aggressively playing weaker draws.

You run into stronger ranges not only because you don't block pair/nut hands but you also can run into the nut draws.

You might get bluffed off the best hand by weaker draws.

Your continuing range when you raise is slightly weaker on average. This one is probably not a huge deal because it's so unlikely a villain would ever know your ranges that well.

You probably have some suited aces higher in your distribution that would make better calls because they aren't quite as strong because you block more of the lower club combos that you are hoping are bluffing.

A4 is a full house and has you beat.

Your hand looks like Ax trips or a missed draw. Villain's bet polarizes him between a missed draw & AQ+.

The only missed draw that didn't pair up is something zany like J9c or 25c or 34o

Most villains are going to check a pair on this river, and take their showdown value.

Against an unknown, I'd have to fold. I'd only call if I knew the villain was capable of firing 3 bullets into board where hero is likely to have trip-aces on the river.

I fold this pre OOP vs. unknown 3bet. If I do call and hit this flop, I'm not playing it slowly.

As played, river is probably a fold, but who knows? We have no reads and are under-repped.

was i reading this wrong? cuz i saw limps and a raise(as opposed to a 3bet) the clubs shouldnt be too relevent here, the Ac makes at least trips anyways, and other than A3cc(which is trips) flush draw with 3c shouldnt be in villain's range that often if any.
i guess this is just one of those spots where u r pretty indiferrent against an unknown.

You are right, it was just limped, raised and called.

Considering that its not 3bet pre, i cant fold pre here even OOP right?

Thanks for the responses, I folded and villain showed 5c6c. I saw through the rest of the night that he was a spewy player... wished i knew player specifics..

Grant2: thanks for pointing out my mistake with the A4

Cassule: #2, you helped me to realize where i made the biggest mistake in the hand, thanks

Oops. Maybe it was the large raise size that made me think it was 3bet.

I probably still fold this OOP vs. an unknown. The fact that we did call and then hit a fantastic flop that we didn't capitalize on is what bothers me most.

I hope you made up for it later against this guy

Hero calls $20

Start by correcting that play

Don't mind the flat call - Hate the 3 bet call though.

Before reading results: I would have folded, but reads make all the difference here. With some players they are rarely bluffing here because this is not a good spot to do it (clubs missed + board paired + board paired the ACE). With LAGier players, they absolutely can have busted clubs. But you have to know that first, else this is probably a fold. The thing is that we block both bluffs and value combos, making it one of NLHE's classic "compare two very low probability events" scenarios that leaves us with a challenging decision.

Deciding to play a draw aggressively or not. This is actually a really nuanced subject and I will have to post more later on this. I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, but I will just say that it should not depend solely on the number of outs or ability to make the nuts. It depends on the board as well and the situation (OOP, number of opponents). As for this hand here, I am leaning towards playing it aggressively (c/r flop, bet turn, probably bet river as it ran out).

In villains spots, I think he should only be bluffing with KJcc QJcc and one or two more (it is not likely that we have clubs here because of our line, so him blocking clubs is irrelevant for his bluff considerations ... What is important is that he blocks AQ and AJ from us). Expecting people to fold trip aces is hopeful at best - most people find a reason to call. We do need some bluffs though and against people that tend to level themselves (thought patterns like "he knows I have an A here, why would he bluff") we should bluff more. This is obvious I know but the point is that this is one of the "reads" we should be watching for as hands play out at the table.

My mistake - we do not really block bluffs here. However, it is a spot where most people narrow their bluffing range.

Also, for villains bluffing range here, QJcc is a straight so lol nevermind that. Switch that to J9cc / Q9cc. We dont usually have AQ here so the Q blocking potential is low, but still better than say 89cc which doesnt block anything in his favor.

PF is meh, I don't think either calling or folding is bad

As played I think River is a clear fold.

I probably play it the same way you do, But I am wondering if there is any reason to raise the flop. With out any information on villian it's hard to say, that's why I would resort to just calling and folding river.

We are over 200 blinds deep, I like raising pre with this hand. We can gain more information about his range too, if he doesn't 3bet we can remove a lot of the hands from his range that we are worried about beating us as played.

I like raising villains bet on the flop. Narrow his range more, possibly win the hand right there, and if we are currently beat we have tons of equity.

As played, I would fold river.

You are only beating a busted flush draw, and you have the Ac. Seems like an easy fold.
I like your passive line, but not for the reason you suggested. Essentially when you raise, you waste your pair of aces, because when your called your ace is pretty much never going to be good anymore. In general, you want to play your combo draws passively (weak pair+ flush or straight draw) because your hand has showdown value.

I really don't think raising flop makes any sense. Raising turn is better because your pair of aces is not likely to be good anymore, but only take this line if you think villain is capable of making folds or is a weak player

You played the hand great imo. Def don't raise flop your hand has showdown value against his range

Results?

Why do we want JJ- KK to fold? Are small aces value betting here? I think many just check and even then we can just call and if they slow down which they will if they just have a small ace we can consider betting or raising on later streets. Based on exactly what you just said it seems like we're only getting called by better and getting worse to fold. We could also get reraised

People raise pair + draws way too much, i never understand why. You have two hands, a flush draw and an ace with a weak kicker. When you raise flop you essentially throw the pair aces into the garbage and your hand just becomes a flush draw. Raising turn is potentially reasonable but raising flop seems clearly bad to me

Fold river, rest of hand is standard

After reading your comments and thinking about it again, I think check/call flop, check/raise turn is maybe a bit better than check/raise flop (which is what I was leaning towards). But I dont think its as simple as your earlier statement that we 'have two hands, so dont waste the made hand (aces) portion of it' (paraphrasing what you said before). Just because we have a made hand does not mean it really has showdown value. Here I think it actually has very little given the action. This needs to be evaluated on the flop, relative to the current situation, and then decide what kind of line we want to take. Are we comfortable check calling three streets on a random runout here? Two? Or just one? The less streets we can call consecutively on average, the less showdown value our made hand truly has. This is also pretty clearly a spot where we will face three barrels a lot (more on that in the next paragraph), so I think we had better be ready for that to happen. Being out of position further decreases showdown value of weak top pairs. Instead of taking a weak made hand to showdown, I prefer to utilize it for blocking potential and the extra draw value (the 3 is a clean out for two pair).

The pot limped to the BTN preflop who put in a raise, and then got called in three places. On the flop, he cbets into 3 people. At this point I dont think he has a lot of air unless he is playing mindlessly... his range is mainly clubs, good AXo, and AXs. If our intention is to check/call down unimproved, I think its probably losing. He will play well against our perceived check/call range which is pretty clearly a marginal AX and 44 (and 44 will go down in probability after we check/call turn). I personally dont like turning a marginal hand face up out of position. We are just guessing at that point and against decent players we wont do well. In position, I am looking to flat more streets... but thats a different situation, different story than being out of position.

I think we have to put in a raise before river. All this said I think this spot is just a crappy one due to being out of position and having limped preflop. A long story for why we shouldnt limp pre....