5NL: I didn't see the straight coming. How can I fix blind spots?

Hey and welcome to 2+2!

Advice for Hand Reading:

• Board Texture Awareness:
  Pay close attention to how the community cards change the possible holdings of your opponent. Recognize potential draws and completed draws on later streets.
  
  
• Opponent Tendencies:
  Factor in your opponent's playing style. A loose-aggressive player may have a wider range of hands, making it crucial to adapt your strategy based on their tendencies.
  
  
• Think from Villain's Perspective:
  Consider what hands your opponent might perceive you as having and how they would react to different board runouts.
  

General Advice:

• Slow down and take your time to assess the situation, especially on critical streets like the river.
  
  
• If you're unsure about the strength of your hand or the best play, consider making a smaller bet or even checking to induce a bluff.
  

Remember, learning from each hand is a valuable part of your poker journey.
As you continue to focus on hand reading, you'll develop a better understanding of your opponent's likely holdings and improve your decision-making over time.

Good luck at the tables!

Appreciate the advice. Thank you. Almost all of the advice out there is "bet strong hands aggressively" and when I flopped a set, I bet aggressively.

Can you elaborate on the terrible aspects please? That is one part I would rather not "set" aside.

Take this with a grain of salt as I am only a NL10 player trying to break into NL25, I'm sure others will have better/clearer advice but still some things I think can be improved:

In theory you shouldn't be leading this flop as BTN will have a much stronger range, particularly due to the fact your defending range is even wider because of his min raise open.

It's great to get into the habit of conciously thinking through your actions like this as it is a good way to improve quickly - however you mention the busted flush draw but flush completes on the turn - unless the hand history is wrong?
Does the Q help your range overall or his? bet-call turn, donk overbet jam river is very rarely (if ever?) going to be theoretically sound, the line doesn't make much sense to me. When making a big deviation I'd have to have a very good reason to do so - I still don't think I'd ever make a play as wild as this though. Also, assuming you are 100bb effective jamming on the river for 2x also doesn't seem like a good idea - villain can still have many of the nutted hands here.

PF is fine. Otf you should check oop against a loose aggressive PF opener. What you did is called a donk bet. It is called that because (while there are exceptions) it mostly is a play that donkeys make. It is much better here to allow your opponent to bet and go for a check raise. You do risk having villain check back, but you have to think about your whole range and not just this hand. If you call an open oop and you always bet when you hit and check when you miss the flop, opponents can exploit that by folding to your donk bets and cbetting their whole range when you check. Having a check/raise range prevents this. Your check doesnÂ’t always indicate weakness and you wonÂ’t always fold when they cbet after you check.

IÂ’m not sure why you thought the flush draw missed here. Yes, he wound up missing it, but you didnÂ’t know that at the time. The turn completed the flush draw and your opponent raised your turn bet. This should have at least raised the possibility in your mind that he might have you beat. IÂ’d still call the turn since you had a lot of outs if villain has the flush.

On the river, you should not be feeling like your set is good given prior action. The turn raise indicated that villain had either the flush or some kind of combo draw (flush + straight possibilities). The way he played this, AA and 55 are also possibilities. Of course he could have some bluffs as well. It is certainly not a shove. IMO just check the river and evaluate based on what villain does. It wouldnÂ’t be an easy river decision, but you basically have a bluff catcher otr. You might have lost less had you check/called, assuming villain doesnÂ’t shove. With your turn call and the flush draw out there, I am not sure villain wouldn’t be checking back, and even if he value bets it might be less than all in.

It’s not even hand reading, it’s literally looking at what the board is. I’m not sure what this blind spot thing is you’re meaning.

On the turn, a flush is now possible.

On the river, a straight is also possible.

On the turn we don’t necessarily have to worry that we are always now up against a flush, but we need to at least consider it to be a possibility.

You need to start to try and consider your opponents range as well as your own. Not just bomb boards cause we have a set.

Gl

PF is fine. Otf you should check oop against a loose aggressive PF opener. What you did is called a donk bet. It is called that because (while there are exceptions) it mostly is a play that donkeys make. It is much better here to allow your opponent to bet and go for a check raise. You do risk having villain check back, but you have to think about your whole range and not just this hand. If you call an open oop and you always bet when you hit and check when you miss the flop, opponents can exploit that by folding to your donk bets and cbetting their whole range when you check. Having a check/raise range prevents this. Your check doesnÂ’t always indicate weakness and you wonÂ’t always fold when they cbet after you check.

IÂ’m not sure why you thought the flush draw missed here. Yes, he wound up missing it, but you didnÂ’t know that at the time. The turn completed the flush draw and your opponent raised your turn bet. This should have at least raised the possibility in your mind that he might have you beat. IÂ’d still call the turn since you had a lot of outs if villain has the flush.

On the river, you should not be feeling like your set is good given prior action. The turn raise indicated that villain had either the flush or some kind of combo draw (flush + straight possibilities). The way he played this, AA and 55 are also possibilities. Of course he could have some bluffs as well. It is certainly not a shove. IMO just check the river and evaluate based on what villain does. It wouldnÂ’t be an easy river decision, but you basically have a bluff catcher otr. You might have lost less had you check/called, assuming villain doesnÂ’t shove.

Preflop
Standard I think

Flop
Donk is at least OK with an ace. He might go to war if he is aggressive. But he might interpret a check-raise as a personal insult as well.

Turn
He raises you. This situation is pretty rare but should cause you to go into call-mode since you don't know where you are but you have lots of outs.

River
Two draws just made it. You shouldn't bet because while he might not have the draws he will see them and and assume you might have them so he will only call with flush/str8.
Donking all-in is bad. Reminds me of my early days playing poker. "I have a set. I deserve his whole stack!"

Relax, it's easy to miss str8-draws. Just throw away a couple stacks more and you will get it.

I'm just a beginner so definitely me thinks not too much weight should be given to my comments ...., but regardless: I'm trying to have my thought process thinking of these two or so questions:

What is my hand category here ( eg one pair , monster )

How many streets of value can I expect here?

Is the board wet/dry and does this board texture favour villians' range or my range more?

I understand that you want a concrete answer right now, and I can give you one, but believe or not, the best you can do right now is focus on improving your process, study and habits around poker in order to improve over time since the skill gap won't close by knowing how to play 1 hand.

Essentially you thought you had a strong hand, but you didn't relative to your opponents possible hands. So you played aggressively with a marginal hand