Overpair on paired board, Villain comes out swinging

Grunch:

Question - is it normal for someone to be allowed to sit down with 500BB's? That's a pretty high cap on a 1/2 game.

Reads - if he's sitting down with 1k in 25/100 chips, my first assumption would be that he's either not a rec, or possibly ran well at table games like Blackjack, and is playing the rush. But I'd approach it as if he's a competent reg until I see a reason to label him otherwise.

PRE - when there's lots of money on the table, especially if the game is playing splashy, I'd probably raise to more than $10 over an EP limp when we're in MP.

FLOP - My default line in multi-way pots is to check when the board is likely to get stabbed and there are more opponents behind us than in front of us. Here, there's only one opponent behind us, and I'm not sure how often CO is going to stab at this board texture. If I was going to c-bet, it would be less than 1/3 pot, because it is so multi-way, and this 773 flop doesn't really smash our range as the PFR.

That said, it's probably not a huge mistake to bet 1/2 pot at low stakes, when the pot is small and the SPR is pretty high. We don't want to give opponents too good a price to out-draw us, and our hand is vulnerable. We just need to be aware that a capable opponent can put us in the blender with a check-raise, whenever the board wouldn't seem to favor our range.

When V raises to 4x, he's only repping a narrow value range (77, 33, 7x), and he could have some draws for bluffs - clubs, 65s, 54s, maybe some others if he's capable of doing this just because he thinks you have no 7x or 33 in your range. I'm not loving it, but I'd probably peel one and see what he wants to do on the turn.

If the turn is just a brick, and he checks, I wouldn't bet. Our hand has enough showdown value to check back and bluff-catch some rivers. I probably wouldn't bet if the turn completes a flush or ISSD (no betting on 6, 5, or 4 turns).

If the turn is a high disconnected card, basically any Broadway card other than an ace, and he checks, I might bet small. It wouldn't necessarily be a value bet, more like a combination of value, protection, equity denial, and possibly buying us a cheap showdown.

If we call, and V barrels turn, especially for a large size, I'd be inclined to fold, unless and until I see that V is capable of check-raising flop and barreling turn with air, weak value, or just a draw.

Aside from the obvious nutted hands, it's not unheard of for low stakes players to play middling over-pairs to the board this way. So he could conceivably show up with a hand like 99, TT, or JJ that didn't want to 3B pre, but then decides this is a "safe" board to blast off on.

If we want to assign V the read that he's a good, thinking player, then we should somewhat discount that he'd be check-raising here with thick value, rather than donking out in this configuration.

If he donked the flop from the SB, he can get called by the UTG player. If he goes for the check-raise, he's probably only getting value if and when you c-bet, which isn't certain. If the flop checks through, he's kind of in no-man's land when over-cards come on the turn, which is going to happen a lot on 773.

So, a lot of this comes down to our read. If he's good, he should have more bluffs here, and we'll have to call down more. If he isn't good, we'll need to fold more.

ETA - if I've played with V enough to know he's capable of making this move with a very wide range, I might 3B the flop, and fold if he jams, simply because I know that the V who's capable of taking this line with air is capable of barreling turn and river, and we'll probably have to fold a lot when we don't improve. I'd rather have a club draw or some sort of combo draw than an over-pair to the board if V is capable.

Yeah, I haven't paid enough attention to know the pattern where someone comes in with a stack of high-value chips, but blackjack is a decent guess?

Agreed on all this, and would have preferred to bet smaller... honestly if he x/r 4x the smaller bet I might be more inclined to stick around one street but that might be bad logic.

I am likely over-indexing on a small sample size, but it feels like I nearly always face a leading barrel after calling a x/r. People aggressive enough to x/r in the first place seem to continue with the aggression, and call/fold feels like a really bad result. This definitely contributed to my decision at the table to just fold, pending a better read.

Yeah, I think a lot of this comes down to "what's the default action here assuming we don't have a good read on V but he seems like not-a-fish?". Much easier to handle this if I have any idea how much he bluffs, how likely he is to continue etc. I'm erring on the side of being tight here versus unknowns and just giving them the credit I would a fish that a x/r is always mega-value, but it feels icky to fold JJ when I see a flop with no overcards.

It's one of the states where bets are limited by law. It's not technically NLH, but I usually post hands as if it were, since it only becomes relevant if you're actually in the business of stacking off reasonably deep. There is no house limit on buy-ins, but someone sitting down with more than about $600 is reasonably uncommon.

As to the open size, it was pretty standard for the night as the table had been mostly passive nitfish, not splashy. One LAGfish on my right who had folded this hand already, and villain and BN were both pretty new to the table with more aggro images, so possibly about time to size up.

Raise bigger preflop. Peel at least this bet. Yes, he's probably going to barrel fourth street with his entire range, but maybe your call will tell him you have an overpair and not whiffed overs and he might slow down, especially if the turn hits your range. At worst, you do also have two outs to bink the effective nuts.

The "better" a player he is, the wider he should be doing this with and therefore the wider you should call. Is there a 2/5 game that he might have stepped down from?

Larger preflop. Check the flop.

FWIW, in theory opponents should have some flop check raises with bluffs that give up and check turn. Flop check raises at low stakes tend to be bluffs more often than turn check raises.

Even when they're not bluffing, the turn might be a scare card that slows them down. So, I tend to call flop check raises whenever I'm holding a hand that is strong or has decent equity to improve on future streets.

If V is a thinking player he may just recognize that this is a board he can use to rep strength as the pre flop caller, and fold out a lot of our un-paired over cards. But once we call, he may give up with a lot of his bluffs. If he's capable of barreling off with a bluff, I might adjust by calling with hands that are either at the top of my range or have more equity to improve when we're behind, and folding more when our hands are more in-between.

So here, if we think he's capable, I'd rather call with the highest over-pairs, NFD's, and combo draws, and fold out my worst over-pairs to the board.

Not sure which part of our range JJ fits into, so I think it's one where we should call or fold based on the read and stack depth. The shorter we are to start, the more I might fold, simply because I think most V's are more likely to fast play, even if it's somewhat face up. If we're deeper and I think V is capable, I'd be more likely to call and evaluate turn.

I go bigger pre -- at least $12, probably $15 depending on how table is raising.

With this many callers, just check the flop. As played, it's most likely a fold w/o more info on V. I can see peeling one, too, but turn and river are going to be tough to play if this guy is any good.

I'm fine with how it was played and would call the raise on the flop.

One key piece of information is whether a bigger game is running and if so, is there a waiting list. If the villain couldn't jump into a bigger game, I'm more inclined to call. Lots of higher stakes players will just try to push around the low stakes players since to them it is almost play money.

Yeah, I would call and probably call down as played. I guess he is allowed to sit with $1K at 1/2. That he sat down with $1K in black and green indicates he is waiting for a bigger game. He knows you don't have a 7 and probably have at best an overpair.

Thinking it over, I'm a little more amenable to calling down as I am realizing that a smart Villain can also see how little the board hits my range - it's a good point I should have considered more at the table. Not entirely sure I can get over the strongly reinforced bias that randoms who come out with big aggression always have it, but I am distinctly vulnerable-looking here. It's also tempting to cut losses and wait to see how often V is going to bring aggression like this.

The chip stack wasn't directly for/from a bigger game, although in general the 1/2 sees plenty of tough players. There is sometimes a 2/5 Omaha game which I've heard is very splashy (but not that night) and otherwise the high-stakes poker is all limit, so you get a weird dynamic where the 1/2 game gets a pretty wide mix of types. The true fish are all playing 3-6 though. Was not a Fri/Sat night so I think the biggest thing running might actually have been 8-16, if that even counts as bigger. (Might be obvious where this is at this point..)

I have to imagine that he was playing a table game or something with the stack, especially with all the greens. Some people also seem to like to keep their extra bullets in the form of black chips in their pocket, which is just weird.