NL Holdem $0.05(BB)

BU (Hero) ($5.16) (103 bb)
SB ($4.69) (93 bb)
BB ($1.45) (29 bb)
UTG ($10.40) (208 bb)
EP ($4.64) (93 bb)
MP1 ($7) (140 bb)
MP2 ($7.48) (149 bb)
HJ ($15.75) (325 bb)
CO ($4.54) (90 bb)

Dealt to Hero: 8 7

4 players fold, HJ Calls $0.05, CO Folds, HERO Raises To $0.15, SB Calls $0.13, BB Folds, HJ Calls $0.10

Flop ($0.50): J 7 9
SB Checks, HJ Checks, HERO Bets $0.20, SB Calls $0.20, HJ Calls $0.20

Turn ($1.10): J 7 9 8
SB Checks, HJ Checks, HERO Bets $0.85, SB Calls $0.85, HJ Folds

River ($2.80): J 7 9 8 A
SB Checks, HERO Checks


_________________________

Questions over this line:

- Preflop raise sizing? I'm thinking $0.20-0.25 (4-5bb) may be better if I want to get some folds for a free pot, which is what I probably want with this hand.

- Flop bet sizing? I feel not betting here is just bad. There's a lot of straight draws like AT, KT, QT, A8s, etc. and a flush draw that want to see a free card. But I'm not sure on sizing. Pretty sure we don't have to be too afraid of T8 since we block it and it's not a great hand to call a PF raise with OOP. So should I bet larger to deny good pot odds to the draw? Or is a smaller bet good here?

- Turn bet? This one has me thinking. Our hand looks like it improved, but any Tx beats us, and both villains are likely to continue with Tx. The double check makes it look like neither one has it though, so I figured a large bet might win the pot against the flush draw. If a better hand calls us, we have four perceived outs with the last two 8's and 7's in the deck, and since I'm pretty sure they're betting JJ or 99 on the flop, the perceived outs are almost definitely nutted outs.

-River: primary question of the post, bet or no bet? With the call/call on flop/turn our opponent clearly has something. I'm just not sure why he would check Tx or a flush in this case, so I was almost certain we had the best hand. But he also might be thinking that I was playing aggressive and would bet so he could check-raise behind? Just curious if we can value bet here or if we assume our hand is purely a showdown-value hand and check back.

-Hypothetical, but what would be the line if he shoves on turn after our bet, or on the river? I assume we fold, but just checking.

Initial thoughts, haven't looked at results.

Pre make it bigger like you said $0.20-$0.25

Flop is extremely wet board multiway. Given your hand I'm likely to check behind to see another card. I can get behind betting but I'd want to bet bigger to get some bad draws to fold (no one is folding a fd or QT). Folding out a KT type hand is great, but they might call to a small bet.

So for me my default is to check this flop back for pot control. But I can get onboard with betting $0.35-$0.45 too. I don't like your bet

Turn again default to pot control for me here and check. If we had checked the flop and it now checked to us again I'd bet small for value. In that situation I could get onboard with $0.20 bet. As played I'm checking.

River I really don't know what would call our bet here that we beat? I'm checking all day. I'd also be folding to a lead here from sb unless it was something crazy small like $0.25 or less.

Ok, this was sort of my thinking. I lean more toward the betting side since we are the PF aggressor, but the more I look at my bet the more I realize I was just throwing money at the people who had draws. Your sizing seems much more viable to get folds, which is what I wanted. I suppose throwing in the occasional check in these situations should be part of my strategy as well, I just really prefer keeping aggression if I can argue doing it as a viable strategy

This is fair. I hadn't been at this table long enough to get any good reads on opponents (this was only my 3rd hand played), so I couldn't tell what type of players these were. I do agree looking back though, this board is a bit too wet multi-way against unknown players.

Question: Assume we're heads up here. Do we bet for value against calling stations? And would we semi-bluff against extremely tight NITs to try to get a fold? Or would either of those situations be sub-optimal if they called the flop?

Ok, good to know my line of reasoning here wasn't off. I was pretty sure no Jx is calling by now, and no Ax would have continued this far besides AT. So even though I'm pretty sure by this point villain doesn't have a Tx hand, or two spades, he's folding everything else for sure so it's not even worth betting.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll probably log this as a situation I want to pot control more often than semi-bluff then.

So some extra thoughts on flop bet. If we are betting it's for 2 reasons. 1) we want to win more money the times that we win. 2) we want to get our opponents to fold hands that have equity against us.

These things aren't mutually exclusive.

#1 is simple winning more money is better than winning less money.

#2 ask what kinds of hands are folding to this bet? For your small bet the hands folding are things like 22-66, 45, 46, A5 (and the last few combos exclude flush draws and back door flush draws as they aren't folding.)
These hands have close to 0% equity against you so you don't need much protection from them.

So what hands do you actually want protection from?
Spades (probably not folding to any reasonable bet)
OESD (probably not folding to any reasonable bet)
TX and 8x (might fold to larger bet but not a small bet)
Overs + gutter (might fold to larger bet)

So when you look at the ranges of opponents and what parts of those ranges you actually enjoy getting folds from basically none of those hands you want to fold are folding to a small bet. Some might call a bigger bet even.

So if we bet (I still like checking) we should be betting bigger to fold out KQ, AT type hands. Knowing that we aren't folding out hands like KT, spades, 86 without a massive overbet which has other problems for us.

Id need to know someone can call off 3 streets with 1 pair on a terrible board to make me value bet this turn even heads up. That might be 1% of players?

See the issue is if you bet the turn for value and a 2 rivers do you think someone with AJ is calling a 3rd bet here? If the answer is no that means you can only get 2 streets of value at best, so then you need to figure out what hands you can get value from on the turn v. The hands you can get value from on various river cards. Then compare that value with the times you value own yourself against a better hand.

I honestly don't think you can get value from anything here other than a spade draw on the turn. If the turn checks through and a river blank comes and the river checks to you. Sure maybe you can bet something tiny and get a crying call from Jx. But that's a lot of parlays to make that work.