Flopped TPTK with AKo in the CO vs. an Odd Loose-Passive Rec

I would just call him so we don't chase him out. He probably has an ace and he's seeing where he's at. It's still possible he has 2p (if he limps jacks he limps AQ too). These player types could be all over the place but I wouldn't fault you if you raised him.

It's close between raise and call, but difficult to know what a multiway donk is from a truly awful player. Given that, I'm inclined to just call here and see how it plays out.

Call and raise both viable imo, and I'd prob make my decision based on exploitability. IE if I think he's bet folding AT I'll just call and let him keep value owning himself, if I think he's bet calling AT I'll raise and look to play for stacks on favorable runouts.

Preflop: The open raise is a little large, but if you can expect action when you raise that much you might as well go for it.

Flop: Raise to $50. His most likely hand is a worse Ace, and he seems like the kind of player who will pay you off if you keep betting it. $50 is big enough to extract more value and small enough not to scare him away.

Just my opinion...

I would call. It's not necessarily that I "fear" the top of his range, but that if you raise, the weaker part of the range is more likely to drop out, leaving you against AK, AQ/A4, 44, maybe AJ. (Also QQ possible)

You gave examples of strong hands played passively but not as much where he puts in stacks with a weak hand

Also if we call we have two more streets to extract via bets and raises if it makes sense.

I could go either way, raise or flat call. Probably lean towards flat call. He might think his hand is good whenever we don't raise, and so he just keeps betting into us. Meanwhile we save our stack if he's taking us to value town with 2P+.

Suppose we raise, and he calls. Then what? Are we just barreling off? How often is he calling down the whole way with worse, versus letting us take ourselves to value town?

If we flat call, then he slows down and checks to us on a later street, we'll have to bet most run-outs. But if he check-calls turn, I might check back some on the river, because of his tendency to slow play thick value.

I think I'd be more inclined to raise with worse aces and total air here. If we had AT or A5, or KJ, and he folds AJ, that's a huge win.

for docvail, moneyline, 411heelhook and hitchens97 if we raise the flop and he re-raises, are we folding, calling or jamming?

I'm in the call camp against the initial donk. but if I did raise and got reraised, it's an insta muck. The one characteristic we see on villain is that he is passive, and a passive 3 betting flop would be likely a monster,.

ok I thought you said it was close but good answer.

These things always go through my mind when I'm considering a raise in these spots so I'm always thinking "what am I doing if he raises" before I even act, and vs a guy who limps jacks on his button but then raises that flop, he's got at least top two most likely.

It is close on initial decision, but I leant call because we just we have no idea what a bad passive players likely donk range multiway is.

The challenge is the way he plays he could have a set here and still flat your raise, and all we've done is bloat pot when we're lilkely crushed. Obviouosly have to balance that against getyting value from a random Ace, but I generally lean towards not bloating the pot with TP at this stage against an unknown range.

Results

Hero raised to 70. V folded.

I thought: V just called the river with the only one combo (AA) that beats him. V also played super passively, now he's donking? I thought: if I raise, and he comes over the top, I can fold. I thought about his range: AK-AT, he probably folds 44 oop preflop, maybe has some Axs. I thought bluffing him off AK was a good result. So was a call from AJ-AT. He's such a terrible player, winning lots of money is not why he's there, perhaps he even spazz folds AQ thinking I have 44, AA, QQ, sadly we'll never know.

Next time raise to 50?

I said I preferred a flat call, just to be clear.

It hadn't occurred to me what we'd do if we got re-raised, but in that scenario, unless we have a very reliable read that V is capable of getting WAY out of line, I think we'd have to fold.

I was thinking more about what I see as the more likely scenario - V just flats our raise, and we're in no-man's land on future streets. Then what?

Sounds like V plays too passively, but he might also call too wide. That donk bet could be literally any made hand, even AA. If you call, he most likely goes $20 turn $20 river or some sillyness, so it depends on how much that bet scares me. Im calling flop, just not sure if its to call down or to raise the turn, but i lean raise, im fine to value bet myself some, id say it gets you some thinnish value still.

Random thinks...

With random rec-fish, I think it can be dangerous to make too many assumptions about their range. Like, we can bet thin for value and expect loose calls based on our reads, but I don't know that we can rule out 44, A4, AQ, or even Q4 just based on what we've seen so far. Maybe he folds Q4s at 5pm and raises with it by 10pm, depending on what he's seen and how he's feeling.

Getting him to fold AK would be quite the coup, but also fairly unlikely, just because there aren't that many combos of AK he could possibly have, and he might not feel like folding any of them, ever. I think it's wise to avoid making plays that target too narrow a portion of our opponent's range.

Is this guy a fish, or a total whale? A fish might call the raise with a worse Ax, but probably fold when we bet turn. A whale won't fold A2. A fish might decide to go into check-call mode when we raise flop with AQ. A whale is going to come over the top with AQ, A4, Q4, and sometimes, some worse hands that don't even have an ace in them.

Raising flop and then folding to a re-raise is a bit of a disaster. Maybe we'll spike a K on the turn, or another A, or some other Broadway card that will spook him into slowing down and checking to us. When we have a skill edge, we want to drag our opponents out into deeper water of later streets, where they'll be less comfortable, not as good at hand-reading, and will make more mistakes.

My guess is he was testing the waters with a weak ace, a weak Q, or some sort of ISSD, though that seems less likely than him donking with an A or Q. I'd rather raise him with A2 than AK.

Before raising a donk, I'll force myself to consider if I was even going to c-bet, and if so, for how much. He bet $20 into $43. If you c-bet here, how much would your bet have been? $15? $20? More? If you weren't planning on betting full pot on this flop, I don't think we need to raise when he bets almost half pot.

Just let him take the betting lead, flat call, and see what he does on the turn. If he checks, we can take the betting lead back, and he'll probably call a 2/3 pot turn bet often enough.

Against an old guy who didn't raise the river with 2nd nuts I'm bet/folding here.

I see that calling the flop is in a reasonable option. My thought during the hand was: What do I do on the turn if I just call the flop, and he makes a big bet on a brick? Are people suggesting you just call the turn unimproved against this recreational fish? Consider that V limped 30 percent of his range preflop, incl. JJ, called only two raises preflop, called a third raise in this hand, then donks the flop? Five years ago, when I was a worse player, I might have just folded and faced the ridicule on 2+2. I thought during the hand that a raise on the flop at least gets some fold equity against a passive player and puts me in control of the hand. I can still fold to a re-raise. He is more likely to check back the turn unimproved.. Of course, as Doc pointed out, my thought that the raise on the flop folds out AK and gets calls from AJ and AT doesn't really make sense. It's more likely he folds AJ and AT and calls AK.

This. It's very dependent on the bet sizing.