hi guys,

this is a hand where i ended up finding myself in a few tricky situations.
so, i just want to go through step-by-step to pick your brains to see where i can improve on my thought process.

stats:
MP 76/18 agg. factor 62%
BB 26/16 af 33%

edit: Hero was running at 17/14 55% for this session



PF is pretty standard.
so on the flop, what should i do, and more importantly, what should i be thinking about?

start by calling.

his range is sets, flopped straights, FDs with overcards, and NO air since its a 3 way pot. people dont **** around that much multiway.

I think the first step is to try to work out what range of hands your opponents might have. Secondly you need to look at any notes you may have made about your opponents, such as what the MP's donk means - is it TP, is it TP and a flush draw, is it TP with a straight draw. I see a lot of loose players donking flop like this with a pair plus straight draws so something like 87, 76, 75, that sort of thing.

As played I would raise on the flop (and make a note on how MP reacts to you raising his donk bet) and then probably get it in on safe turns (anything that isn't a 4 or a spade, basically). A 9 makes life harder, but you probably still have to stack off.

I would raise to $1.60 giving you a nice less than pot jam on the turn.

@Cosmic Baby: if i call, what's the plan if shorty BB check/shoves?

i'll post the next steps in about an hour. just want to get a couple of replies (2nd opinions so to speak) before i continue.

i didn't have enough meaningful reads on these guys.

which worse hands do you expect will call my raise, and which better ones may fold? what will shorty do with his respective holdings that he could check into 2?

call, no reason to do anything else, hand is not strong enough to value raise
if bb shoves, we fold
he also donks big

pre

I would raise slightly more pre-flop to iso the MP limper maybe 5 - 7x

post

The board is really Wet. I would have a look at his donk bet stat if you have enough hands on the villian.

For me, your hand is probably best most of the time against that player. Obv 79 is the nuts at the moment. I would be looking to raise to around $1.75 for value, to charge his draws, which I think makes up most of his range.

thanks for all the replies so far.

i have decided to call. my reasoning was to get BB to come along with anything drawable or maybe going for a c/r with any hand that made solid contact (plus FDs, although i wasn't certain if he'd be aggro enough for that) juicing the pot to give him incentive to do so.

raising, as i judged it at that moment, would make most worse hands fold, and all better hands call. also it would have been a borderline strong move given my relative hand strength basically telling both villains that my weakest possible holding is an overpair.

my plan was to probably call a shove from the shorty given pot odds + i've got a GSD to bail me out. the only exception being if MP went over the top which would make it a fold i wouldn't like but have to make, i think.
if MP calls, i'd have to think again and harder. (i couldn't make up my mind on the spot with the time ticking)






well, there we've got it. villains didn't make it easy for me.
lots of buttons available, which one should i take and why?

i've got awesome pot odds offered but now i'm not sure if i'm ahead and if so how far. if i'm behind, it'd be by a bigger margin than the other way around.

call I guess with 2 fish in the pot for such good odds

yes, call and spike a 7...

alright, so let me call and spike a 7 then...





... not.

check or bet?
does my hand need much protection here?

no takers? alright.

this was a difficult spot for me to decide whether i should bet to protect or try to check it down. i'd love to hear a few opinions.

i decided to try to check it down since, if villain was willing to lead out on flop with a flush draw, i'd expect him to bet the turn again. so i wasn't too worried about protecting my hand from draws which in turn meant villain can't have too many outs vs my hand if i'm ahead (and i get a free card if i am behind).

so the river then comes



viallain's bet on the river had me completely thrown off. it just didn't make any sense whatsoever.

that's, i beleive, a very obvious fold at these stakes.
but my brain (ego?) screamed i had to call given the bet size vs pot size instead of giving up on the equity.
i didn't even think longer than 3 seconds or so which is what i could take away from this hand without posting it here, to take more time, especially if the bet looks very weird.
retrospectively, it could only make sense with a flush or villain hitting TP (and even then i'm wondering if it does make sense).

now, what really interests me is how i could have played differently in order to avoid the difficult decisions.

i can't recall if it was Pokey or Grunch who said that if you're facing a difficult decision, you have made mistakes on the prior streets. so maybe you guys can help me out with some insight.

thanks for all the replies so far.

oh bb is all-in, think you can get away with a bet ott there's still value board is wet

I realize I'm late to the party. Plenty of worse hands call: 77, 44, 98, 87, 67, 75, 64 and 54 all call with a pair + a straight-draw (GS or OESD). A8 and A7 probably call as well with TPTK or an OESD. All of those hands are in MP's limp-calling range. Better hands in MP's range are sets, 2-pair and straights (no overpairs because MP is raising 18% preflop) and they do not fold. However, there are a ton of the former in MP's range. Your equity vs.
{ 88-44, A8s-A7s, 98s, 87s, 76s, 65s, 54s, A8o-A7o, 98o, 87o, 76o, 65o, 54o } is 65% and MP is not folding anything in that range.

Also, there is no way that MP is thinking about what your bets mean, so you can scream "I have an overpair" and he is not going to hear you. BB might be thinking about your range (his 26/16 isn't as absurd as 78/18), but that seems unlikely. You are giving your opponents way too much credit for thinking.

If you are going to call a shove from the shorty, I think it makes sense to raise to $1.50 or so. You need to charge the draws and, as noted above these villains (MP especially) are calling any bet with his draws.

Ugh. I think you need to bet again. MP just flatted BB's shove, so I really doubt he has a straight, 2-pair or set. So often you see a fish shove over a shove and make your decision really easy (to lock up the hand). I think he either has a draw and/or a top pair hand (i.e, 98 or A8).

In fact, I think a case can be made for raising to get it in on the flop. I think you are going to be ahead a ton after the fish flats the bb's shove.

SCF, thanks a ton for the effort you've put into the replies.

the way you've laid it out, raising the flop makes a lot more sense to me now. i guess it made me wary seeing how often other players stack off in similar spots with marginal overpairs when the action indicates they're not in as a pristine shape as they seem to believe.

His check on the turn suggests to me that he has a bunch of draws in his range. He bet the flop with his draw and now he checks the turn hoping to get a free card (or maybe he picked up a flush draw on the turn).

I really don't think even a fish flats the flop shove and checks the turn with a set or a straight. If you take those out of his range, all he has are draws and weak top pair hands. The pot is big and I think the fish calls with any draw, so I bet for value here. Really - I don't think the fish is going to call BB's shove and then lay down his 77 on the turn. He's not thinking about odds.

Bad card on the river. The spade draw got there and his A8 and A7 hands just hit. The wrinkle is that his bet is tiny and I think that he would make a decent sized bet if his flush got there (fish don't like chasing a flush and then betting small when it hits). He could have 2-pair and be scared of the flush now. Alternately, it's a blocking bet from his straight draw-pair combos like 98 or 78 that wants to get to show-down cheaply.

The thing is, even if we take a range that is always beating you - for example, {88,66,55,A8s,76s,65s,A8o,76o,65o} and add only 6 combos of 77, you are getting the odds to call:

Board: 5s 8h 6s 6h As
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 83.333% 83.33% 00.00% 30 0.00 { 88-55, A8s, 76s, 65s, A8o, 76o, 65o }
Hand 1: 16.667% 16.67% 00.00% 6 0.00 { 9d9h }

Since he can definitely make a blocking bet with 87 and is very unlikely to have a monster like 65, your call is mandatory getting 9:1 odds.

Yea, I quite like shoving over the top of MP when he flat calls the BB's all in on the flop.

Turn... I think we have to bet to protect our hand, and I would probably just shove it in in this case.

I think these hands are difficult to play but IMO you had the two most ideal villains to get it in the mix with and I figure 99 is good here a large percentage of the time.

Interesting hand.

I've checked the spoiler now and MP showed up with a hand I didn't even include in the bottom of his range. Just goes to show.

Edit: I was actually surprised at how well you were doing against MP's range on the flop. It seems that it turns out that a huge chunk of his range is a combo pair+draw, which your over-pair does well against. Of course, the critical assumption is that MP is calling with all of his draws without getting the necessary odds, but I think that is a good assumption with this villain.

vs MP alone, i guess i can justify calling the bet given the stove. especially since i couldn't figure out which hand he'd bet so small with that has me clearly beat.

but the problem i had afterwards (results orientation probably is a factor) is that the pot was also protected by the shorty. and guesstimating 3way equities make my head asplode.

and given that the pot is protected, that bet gets even weirder - even without taking the results into consideration. bluffing only makes sense if he was fairly optimistic he's got the shorty beat, right? so that'd make it lean more towards a fold.
as i said, that gave me a proper mind ****

Good point. I was ignoring the shorty, which is bad, since the shorty is significantly more likely to have a strong hand. The board smacks his preflop calling range in the face and his shove into a donk and call is very strong, since he must expect to get called. (LOL with what he shoved up with, but given the info you had at the time, I think you have to treat his shove as rather strong). This probably bolsters the case for building the side pot on the flop and turn with MP, since he is so fishy.

I defo bet turn.

River block bet is so weak from the villian.

Putting aside whether we should bet or not, we need to be clear why we are betting and "betting to protect our hand" isn't a valid reason - in fact it kind of suggests that we want villain to fold a worse hand.

Betting the turn is fine obv but we need to be clear that we are either value betting (ie we want a worse hand to call) or bluffing (we want a better hand to fold)

smells like a missed flush draw on the turn... either way imho reraising on the flop to me would be better.