Top two facing serious flop aggression
Alright this is 1/2. Played with this group for about 2 hours, unknown before. I'm more of a tournament player and this is literally my 2nd session of live cash. I play with confidence and aggression. I didn't show down a lot of weak stuff, but I did run a pre-flop to river bet 72s bluff at the table - with confidence. The players were mostly weak passive. Bet the flop and you know where you stand. Some were call stations and others were able to lay down a lot.
But this hand has me stumped and I'm looking for how I played it. I'm not sure how to add the cards. Apologies for the bad formatting. Here's the action:
Hero - QT (spades) UTG
I raise it to $7. I used this sizing because the table limped at lot and i could get many people to usually fold. QTs UTG, I don't want Ace rags in the hand. To my surprise, tons of callers.
UTG + 2, HJ, CO, BTN, and BB all call. At this table it was not typical to have 5 callers in a preflop raised pot. 3, maybe 4, but not 5.
Flop comes QT6 rainbow. In my head I'm fist pumping. Looking to get value from Tx or Qx hands.
I bet $7 into the pot. It's a little low given 5 people in the pot and the pot already at $35. I bet smallish because I wasn't trying to scare away people who caught a piece and planned to punish them on later streets. If there was a draw I would have raised higher. But this could have been a mistake.
Everyone calls and then when it gets to the BB he puts in a raise of $25.
I was happy with this. But I just called, not wanting to get KQ or AQ out the hand. The BB player was pretty tight, and folded to aggression and I wanted to value-town him. IF a K or A came on later streets so be it. But I didn't feel like I needed to reraise.
Ok, here's where it gets interesting....UTG + 2 raises to $100. Everyone including BB folds.
I go in the tank. UTG +2 in 1.5 hours had never bet into a pot. I'm not lying. He check called and limped. Never preflop raised, and never bet in a hand. Not one. And now he's betting into me after I raise and call a reraise. And when he puts in $100 he's doing that into 5 players.
I tanked and folded. I put him on 66x or TTx. Again, never showed preflop aggression once. I had a solid table image. One guy messed with me and one a small pot but I was seen as not out of line (they never saw the 72s or 84s plays...lol)
Ok, would love some thoughts on how I played this hand and what is good in this situation. One thing I thought later was if I raised the $25 to $75 and then got reraised I feel better about folding.
If I was playing higher stakes I could see KJ making the move the guy made, but this was not that. Ah, almost forgot, I was 150 BBs deep and UTG +2 had me covered, probably had about 200 BBs
Thanks in advance!!
6 Replies
Just check-raise the flop to Get It In, wtf is this “betting $7 into $40 with 5 guys to act” thing?
As played: STILL just Get It In, your hand is absurdly under-repped.
To get more responses, make your hand histories more concise. Give stack sizes at the beginning and pot sizes along the way. Present your reads at the beginning of the hand history, then OTTH. Save your most of your thought process for after people respond.
Raise to 10 or even 12 preflop. Bet 30 on the flop. I call the raise. I agree with Davo, your hand is underrepped. You block TT. A big raise from a nit should raise caution but not induce a fold.
1.5 hours just isn't that long, what, maybe 45 hands?
I could see this being AA, KK, QT, Q6, T6, in addition to 66, or TT/QQ (less likely with our hand).
Call and let's see a turn card.
Very helpful replies. Thank you!
but I did run a pre-flop to river bet 72s bluff at the table - with confidence. The players were mostly weak passive.
Confidence has nothing to do with it - that's a losing play.
As for the hand, the small flop bet isn't bad in general but I probably prefer a check-raise; even though you block top pair, with five opponents there's a good chance one of them has a Queen.
The initial check-raise gets me a bit twitchy (can you remember BB stack size?) I'm not sure I like any option here. The same with the back-raise...it's absurdly strong and you are crushed by 66, but there are so many combinations of draws out there. BB remains uncapped however and you'd have to hope that they both have a draw to make calling profitable (are we agreed that both players have TT, 66, KJ or J9?) Both decisions are pretty close but I lean to calling the first time (3betting and folding probably being fairly similar EV wise) and folding the second.
As for"under-repped" essentially it's the same strength as AA except AA doesn't block top pair, and you might well play AA the same way, so I don't think you're under-repped at all.
BB stack size was around 60-70 BBs. He told me later he had KQ and was trying to push out the draws.
As an aside, against a table as weak as this I dont think playing 72s as I would say AQo would be unprofitable against that particular table. It was wild how weak it was in general which is why this definitely took me by surprise.
The UTG +2 villian had never raised in 1.5 hours and thats what through me off. I can see someone doing this with J9 or KJ just not this villain. If he did, more power to him.
