1/2 TPKG vs. Flop Raise

Pre is very marginal. You're not deep enough and you've got 3 people interested, two of whom you describe as loose passive. KQo wants to take it down now a lot or get it HU.

OTF: Only question is are you committed. This is one of the best flops your hand could have got and with an spr of <2 I think its a xrai, if it checks through maybe can go into small ball mode OTT and river for like x/call 1/3rd.

AP I think the small bet was worst.

Preflop is fine, just go a little larger - 55-60 or so.

Flop either bet smallish or check. With a loose passive player who will call all worse Queens and also any Ten I'd be inclined to bet. With the bad player in mind I would just nudge the size up a little, even if only to 50.

The CO is very unlikely to have nothing here, very best case scenario it's something like KJs with a backdoor flush draw. AQ is well represented as well as the sets and two pair. I would just fold the flop pretty comfortably.

Pre is a dreamspot to squeeze, just too small, as others pointed out.
But the spot in itself is textbook imo: whale limps, TAG iso-es, passive fish cold calls and we have great card removal and nice equity.

As played, obviously I dont like it too, but not folding top pair second kicker after putting it 1/3 of my stack. If he only sometimes has KJ or J9, or even QJ (VERY unlikely, I give you that, but spazz factor is always non zero %), we would be burning money by folding.

gii, likely lose, rebuy imo

I would normally love to 3bet pre, but with what should be a wide CO raiser and a caller, we should raise to 60. However, because our stacks are not deep at all, I would prefer to fold rather than call.

So therefore, fold pre and def. folding to the raise otf.

Hands you lose to are 3 combos of pocket 10s, 1 combo of QQ, 6 combos of AA, 5 combos of KK, 8 combos of AQ

Preflop V2 is facing a 3 bet from the SB, with a double limper in between and a limper behind yet to act. IMO, if V2 has QQ, KK, AA this is a terrific spot to 4 bet, and they print with the dead money in the pot. The fact they call and lay odds to the BTN V3, would lean me towards more suited connectors, mid teir pocket pairs, and suited Aces.

With this analysis we can remove the hands you lose to are 3 combos of pocket 10s, and 8 combos of AQ.

I think hands that call your 3b preflop (given the action discussed) that may be turning their hand into a bluff/semi-bluff are 4 combos of J9s, 16 combos of AJ, 12-16 combos of AK (this really depends on your perspective on whether you think player has a 4bet bluff/semi-bluff range), 4 combos of 98s.

11 value hands vs 36-40 bluff hands. 21-23% value.

Pot after before flop ~$150.
Heros bet is about 1/4 pot, so not especially showing a ton of strength. Facing $100 raise, pot is $370. Need 27% to call.

I think your hand is too good here to fold given the action. I see high equity draws like this bluffed frequently in position at this level because you often can see 2 for free. I think the right play is call and then reevaluate based on the turn action.

You don't believe V has QT or 33 in his range?

I think this spot really sparked some interesting discussion.

I ripped it, whale folds, CO calls with AQ (probably a predictable result given that I posted the thread in the first place, but so it goes).

My thoughts:

I don't think CO has KK, AA or 33 as played. I think they can have QT (they showed down with QT in a 3b pot in this session). I think they're capable of doing this with draws, hence the rip. It feels like such a torch if I'm getting to this spot, with this SPR and just folding to this particular villain, but their range does feel very strong if they're doing this against my uncapped range.

At the time, it felt like I was weighing whether or not I thought they were capable of doing this with draws with backdoor, particularly against the whale. Maybe even as light as something like QJ, Q9 (unlikely) or something like ATs with a backdoor. I decided they were, and that's what led to my decision.

I think in retrospect, I still like my 3b, agree with criticisms of the sizing though. If it plays out the same with a larger 3b I'm probably still gonna get it in with an even lower SPR as well.

I think you can flat pre-flop and play a multi-way pot with a little caution. 3betting here feels loose, and if you're not going to 3bet large to like 55-65 OOP, you're probably not getting many folds. You're bloating the pot OOP with a pretty mediocre hand, and because you're so deep, you're giving them a decent price w/ implied odds to stick around.

As played, fold to the raise. If you had AQ I would have a harder time folding though.

For future reference, competent opponents are less likely to raise our bets as a bluff when we're short-stacked, because there's less, if any fold equity. V's raise in this spot will be thick value much more often than a draw, because a good V knows you'll be prepared to stack off with 1P and your good draws.

Yeah, that's where my post-mortem kinda leaned when I was thinking about it after. I'm not sure they truly do have as many combo/semi-bluffs in their range as I think they do, and I don't think I have the equity to ship it as played, especially with basically 0 fold equity.

I think I hate flatting pre in this spot. Either 3b bigger or fold.

To be honest, I'm a little surprised V only had AQ here. That's about the worst hand I'd expect him to have.

I don't think a bigger 3B pre is the solution here. Even if you 3B to $60 - that's 20% of your starting stack. If V decides to 4B, you'll have to fold. If V calls, you'll only have 2x pot remaining behind going to the flop. You really can't c-bet any reasonable amount without pot-committing yourself. Your flop strategy will effectively be check-fold or check-raise jam.

If you just flat called pre, the pot would have been smaller, and you would have had enough stack depth behind to check-call and see a turn, or check-raise.

Really though, when you're short-stacked, you don't want to be calling raises from good opponents when you're in the SB, especially not in a spashy game where you'll end up playing multi-way a lot. Just play tight and focus on playing better starting hands from later positions, until you have the stack depth to maneuver post-flop.

With CO open and button call, you don't have to sit and wait for a massive hand to make the aggressive play; of course you'd prefer a hand better than KQo but that's more than adequate and will sometimes take the pot down preflop with various ways of winning afterwards.

Hoping they're going to be raising flop with QJ or AT is wishful thinking. That's going to be very rare. The most likely hands are QT, TT and KJ, followed by QQ, 33 and AQ...and you lose to all those bar KJ which has equity to beat you (and with the fish in the hand can be discounted as well). If you squint hard you can start to see hands like J9s in there too, but that's shoving round pegs into square holes.

I don't hate your play, shallow enough that a rip makes sense vs a call. AQ 3.5x raise after a cbet and call is pretty sus with TPTK. You have all the overpairs, trip 10s, 1 top set. V1 has all the trip 3, QTs, and occasionally trip 10. Interesting spot. I think you just got coolered tbh.

Preflop is super player dependent on how wide you perceive V1's and V2's range. As the player profiles are stated, I think the squeeze is good and sizing is fine at the stack depths. Too big and you only get hands that you're behind to call.

This spot changes a ton if V1 is not a whale given the action.

I don't hate your play, shallow enough that a rip makes sense vs a call. AQ 3.5x raise after a cbet and call is pretty sus with TPTK. You have all the overpairs, trip 10s, 1 top set. V1 has all the trip 3, QTs, and occasionally trip 10. Interesting spot. I think you just got coolered tbh.

Preflop is super player dependent on how wide you perceive V1's and V2's range. As the player profiles are stated, I think the squeeze is good and sizing is fine at the stack depths. Too big and you only get hands that you're behind to call.

This spot changes a ton if V1 is not a whale given the action.

You're not deep enough to 3 bet KQ. $45 is way to small. I would 3 bet to $40-45 against a single raiser, you have a raiser and a caller. You essentially put in 15% of your stack out of position with not a really strong hand, creating an SPR of less than 2. Call the $12 and see the flop.

Flop bet is OK . But when you get raised to $140 and you shove what are you expecting to fold out that beats you or get called that is worse? Once V raises to $140, he's committed to putting in your whole stack. He's getting 5-1 or so to call. You just need to fold to the flop raise.

Are you advocating jamming as a bluff, representing QQ? In fairness it probably is closer to a bluff jam than a value jam

Armchair QB here: this is overplaying your hand pre and on the flop.
You're representing a pretty strong range with 3b, cbet in a game where most people only 3b premiums. So JJ+, maybe AK. While I think the $40 cbet can be seen as weak, I wouldn't expect the raise to be a bluff, or a hand like QJ (which would prob call).