Turned OESD
1/2 NL. Table is 6-handed I am effective stack with about 300 versus main villain. Villain is clearly amateur, but plays OK.
Limps to me in BB with JcTc, I raise to 15, UTG, UTG+1, and BTN call. Flop is Ah9s3d, I bet 20, only UTG+1 calls. Turn is 8h for Ah9s3d8h. What should I do?
7 Replies
Check back pre or go bigger, like over $20.
On the flop, there is so much AX in your opponents' ranges. I think cbetting with air here is not a good play. If you were going to cbet JTs, having a BDFD would be better.
Including the pot size on each street would be helpful. There is roughly $60 on the flop and $100 on the turn. I think checking and betting big (like $75+) are both probably OK here. If I bet the turn big, I would give up on the river and then puke when Villain wins with T9hh.
I would think betting big gets Villain to fold 9X, 3X, sticky PPs, 45s, and maybe the worst AX on occasion. On the river, I'm not really trying to get him to fold TP+, especially not when he can have any number of traps as well as AJ+ that decided to limpcall pre.
Agree with Dan.
Raising suited hands preflop that are dominated by the limp calling range and we are OOP is not going to be as good as just checking BB and seeing a flop.
Check flop as well. If he checks back now you can start bluffing OTT.
What's your normal raise size preflop with no limpers? Make sure you are going larger than that and accounting for how many limpers there are. In a very juicy 1/2 where people are calling any raise size with junky hands like KJo in MP facing an UTG raise to 15 and there aren't a lot of agro 3bettors, then I am going 15 with no limpers. And with 1 limper I am going 20. After that it is a judgement thing based on how loose the table is limp calling and how many limpers there are. If the table is limp calling large sizes a lot, especially if they have hands like AJo, KJo, in their limp call range, I would consider maybe not even raising JTs facing a lot of limpers.
Normally at 2/5 and higher my iso size is 5x with one limper, add 1x for each additional limper, and 1x if you are out of position as well. But at 1/2 where I play, I find the mentality is very different. Some people are limping 2 to call 15, 20, 25 iso raises. They just don't want to raise to 10-15 and face a raise of 30-50. So in 1/2, your iso size has to be kind of egregiously large to pick up the dead money pre or thin the field, and you aren't getting a good price to pick up a bunch of $2 limps. As such, you want to isloate very linearly with a tendency towards hands that can flop strong top pairs.
On the flop, I think the play here is either to bet small (25% pot) or check, but I would lean towards check/fold. We are super multiway with nothing going on but 3 to a straight. We have 8 turns where we turn 8 outs and 8 turns where we turn 4 outs. A high flops are going to be one of the most overdended board textures against multiple barrels. Top pair on the flop will be top pair on the river at a minimum. These are very bad conditions to try to bluff in a 4 way pot out of position.
If we had JTs with a backdoor flush draw, we might consider betting flop small. There we pick up an 8 out draw or better on 16 cards - any club, 8, Q. 7c or Kc gives us a 12 out draw on the turn and 8c or Qc gives us a 15 out draw on the turn. But honestly this multiway, we might just not want to ever bluff the flop.
Getting to the turn the way we do, about 100 in the pot with 265 behind, we can bet 75 on turn and allow ourselves to jam river for 190 into 250. I would strongly consider going 75, looking for live reads, and consider jamming any river including a J or T tbh. Villain is likely to raise 2p+ on the turn, folding anything worse than Ax or a pair + fd, wheel draw + fd. Villain may start folding their weakest Ax on turn and fold a lot of Ax on river also. Our line isn't going to be super high EV, but I would guess it is slightly above 0.
Ideally on the turn we have more like 750 behind so we could bet 150 on the turn leaving 600 to jam on the river. In multiway pots at 1/2 where the preflop sizings are really large so the SPR isn't very large despite starting the hand 150bb effective, the situation doesn't lend itself to super good bluff spots.
What happened is I bet 40 on the turn and got raised to 140, and folded. Didn't think I had odds to call. Seemed totally pwned. Maybe I should have check/called the turn.
I think I would rather have bet turn bigger like 75. Too often they are still going to raise off their very strong hands just letting you off the hook, and I don't think 40 gives you the fold equity you want. When you are betting less than half pot on the turn, you are also kind of giving him the green light to raise off Ax. There is a chance he might raise Ax on the turn to check back river with some Ax that he might have folded on the river if you bet 75 on the turn and jammed river for 190.
Check call or check raise/check jam vs smaller sizes are potential options on the turn, but honestly everything sucks out of position with an open ender when there is a flush draw out there and we have 2 undercards. We potentially get all the money if we check call turn and check jam river if we hit our straight though. Donking river is also an option. The smaller he bets turn, the more I would want to check call/donk.
Other possibility is he checks back turn (probably not the way the hand played out), and you get your free card/ have a shot to bluff river with an overbet.
1/2 NL. Table is 6-handed I am effective stack with about 300 versus main villain. Villain is clearly amateur, but plays OK.
Limps to me in BB with JcTc, I raise to 15, UTG, UTG+1, and BTN call. Flop is Ah9s3d, I bet 20, only UTG+1 calls. Turn is 8h for Ah9s3d8h. What should I do?
PRE - I might just limp along, but don't hate the raise. Might want to raise bigger, maybe.
FLOP - I'd just check when multi-way and OOP, especially on an ace-high but otherwise disconnected board. I don't want to try to bluff every street with Jack-high on an ace-high board.
TURN - interesting spot, now that we've gotten here the way we have. I could see check-calling a big bet, or check-raising a small bet. Doesn't seem to be much point in betting, when we're not folding out very many better hands.
Preflop, I thought my hand was enough stronger than the limping ranges to raise OOP. Raising also misrepresented my hand, as I would usually have a mid to high pp or premium high cards.
On the flop, I thought it was a dry ace-high flop and that the 1/3 pot cbet would work more than 1/3 of the time.
On the turn, I thought I could represent AK/AQ/AA/99 getting value from a limp/called weak ace. I didn't expect to get raised much, because he could be stacking off with little equity if I had what I was representing. I was thinking afterwards that check/call or check/reevaluate might have been better.
Villain showed an ace when I folded.
