I'm unknown to villain

Talked to a few players about what's best here and there's some disagreement.

What do you want to do?


Full Tilt Poker The Sunday Mulligan No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t20/t40 Blinds - 9 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

CO: t3030 75.75 BBs
BTN: t2525 63.12 BBs
SB: t2700 67.50 BBs
BB: t2645 66.12 BBs
UTG: t2890 72.25 BBs
UTG+1: t3005 75.12 BBs
UTG+2: t3865 96.62 BBs
Hero (MP1): t3400 85 BBs
MP2: t2940 73.50 BBs

Pre Flop: (t60) Hero is MP1 with 5 5
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to t120, 1 fold, Hero calls t120, 5 folds

Flop: (t300) 8 5 2 (2 players)
UTG+1 bets t160

call....dont really think its that close, unless you've been spewing a ton.

why just call and not raise? I don't really think we should give him another card here because if a spade comes we're basically giving up. I raise pretty big..600ish

And then call, yeah?
I usually take this line but lately I've been attempting to fade a card on the turn and then shift gears. Additionally, if the spade does come and villian bets 1/2 pot or so, we usually have good implied odds when we fill up.

Villain is a very very good player and it's not clear that he's 3b shoving worse.

You guys realize that folding KxQs is a really big win, right?

minraise

NSB
You realize getting in tons of gold vs a flush or higher sets isnt.

Who makes hands that good though?

There's only one higher set out there, what are we going to do, call the flop and raise the turn? You should mention reads like 'villain is a very very good player' in your OP, and anyway, if he was that good, he wouldn't have only better hands in his flop 3b range. In any case, he can still call your flop raise oop. I doubt he's folding hands like JJ+ w/spade, if we flat the flop, we let him catch up where he might have folded, if he has air on an op w/o spade, all we achieve by flatting is allowing him a free 2-outer or the opportunity to bluff us if the spade does fall. If his range for getting more money in on this flop was [hands that beat ours right now] there are still solid arguments for raising.

Hm yes I guess. I thought this is standard against good, aggressive opponents ... We are 50% against
88,22,AsTs+,KsJs+,QsJs,JsTs and AQo+ with the A plus we fold out some spade draws ... if you can discount 22 it looks a bit different though. Idk ... your arguments almost convince me ... on the other side: how do you balance your raising range in this spot if you do not raise sets and weak flushes ?

No, the intention would be to call down on safe boards, and possibly call 4th spades if we think we have decent implied odds on boating up.

yeah my bad sry

i'm really not sure I agree with this, esp vs some unknown in the mulligan. He has no idea who I am, so I doubt he just 3-bets the bare As or something like QQs with a club and hopes I station off. I think a lot of players would do this as a default, but i'm not sure he would.

I agree he's going to bet/call pairs w/ a spade and perhaps the bare As with a hand like AsK or AsQ - but I actually doubt he 3-bets them. Thus, when 3-bet, we're up vs a flush a huge %. At that point I guess we're priced in to call the rest off.

I'd argue you don't need to. He doesn't know who I am, and this spot is going to come up so rarely that it doesn't really matter if I have a balanced range to raise flop or not.

420/callll