T9cc

Without reads, I'm just calling the flop, since I don't want to value own myself multiway with just a gutterball and a non-nut flush draw.

I would check raise this flop. We have the worst position of all players. It's easier to play HU or max 3-way on the turn & river.

preflop’s a nah for me dawg

mostly raising flop

Preflop, against all passive players, I call . Without reads, I make a disciplined fold. JTs is way better to call with here because at least you make the nut straight. If you hit your flush with T9cc, you're going broke against AXcc-JXcc and sometimes naked Ac and Kc.

I check-raise the flop because the HJ donked only one-quarter pot. HJ might fold with a better hand. For those favoring the check raise, to how much are you raising?

I'm not x/r the flop 5 ways with T9cc here. 5 ways a good % of the time when we stack off it's against a better draw.

It seems to me none of the other players can represent a set.
Any of them can be having an Ax FD.
They may also have a combo draw, such as 56cc.

I would raise to 100-125, trying to get all the pure gutshot, 8x, 99, TT, JJ out of the way.
By raising this much, I think those who can call are having a good Q, Axcc, Kxcc (heavily discounted), sets (discounted), worse combo draws.

After the CR, if one person jams and all folds, we call.
If only one of them calls, we heads-up to the turn with just over 1spr, jam on any none-A, none-K, none club card.

If ♣ arrives on the turn, we need to evaluate whether our villain is the type who doesn't continue to call any post-flop aggression without nut FD.

pf prob plays better as a 3bet than a call, and given the size of the open you're prob better off playing a 3bet or fold strat in this spot as a whole. Flop I'm prob going $160ish and shoving most turns.

I'm mostly playing my entire range in the SB as raise or fold. What I do with T9s is going to vary with my reads and table dynamics, but with no reads I probably raise more than fold, given this action so far, assuming HJ's $20 open isn't large for the game, and possibly a big hand sizing tell.

Flop donk for 1/4 pot from MP and flat calls behind are weird, and don't look all that strong. In theory I get the reasoning for a check raise, but what size can we take that isn't all in and doesn't pot commit us? Like, the BTN only started with $200. He's probably got something going on, and may just want to go with his hand if we raise and get a cal from BB, MP, or HJ.

I dunno, I think we're getting too good a price not to just flat call and pray for some jack that isn't the Jc. Seems like a reasonable chance the turn might check thru on a brick and we get two shots to make our hand.

fold pre

the more i play this game the more im convinced playing like 10% vpip is the way to go, esp OOP. its just so hard for hands to be profitable unless you are a world beater postflop. and suited connectors suck in this game unless they are broadways or Axs. the only hands that really have positive expectation are set mining hands or hands where you make the nuts.

sb should be 3b or fold except in cases where you have small-med pp's are suited broadways like JTs or KQs, which might be a call sometimes and 3b others. the problem with 3b hands like T9s or KQs is often you end up punting OOP with no equity after having made some big like 5x raise pre and then end up flopping zilch. if you have a real handle on your opponents then sure 3b them but i doubt anyone has convincing evidence that this is profitable in Live NL.

i think nl is a game for pessimists in general tbh.

Not sure how we made the leap from “the pot will be $200” to “we should shove $500”, but I give you credit for at least calculating the size of the pot before suggesting a 20x shove, that’s more thought than most posters here put into their raise sizes.

The point is that a shove is about twice the pot. And that there is no in-between size that leaves any fold equity for the turn, especially if the short-stacked button comes along.

Yeah not too sure either way, like obviously calling is never a mistake but I feel like shove just folds out so much and when we do get called we're never dead. I know this sub-forum loves to give people ranges of the nuts and air only but that's not how poker is played.

My only issue with shoving, is that the size of the bet is so small how do we not just call.

Result: I made it 200 and everyone folded. Btn mini tanked and showed KcQx.

I think taking the great price is better if it was pfr that bet as opposed to an mp donk and a pfr flat.

Yeah I don't mind just taking the card either, you can kinda do whatever you want in this spot as long as you don't fold.

Anyone who didn't say fold pre is a fish and you should ignore all their advice and all their future advice

Snap fold pre. Its almost a 7x open over a lj limp. It's 2024. Go look at what gtowizard does vs a mere 3x hj open. It already is breakeven

1/2 PSR leaves almost a full PSB left when HU against a player where we had $500 initial effective stacks, and 1/2 PSB left even when it’s 3-way with $400 initial effective stacks left.

there's nothing wrong with playing JTs and T9s in a 5 ways 33bb pot for 7bb.

The bet from MP seems like a typical feeler bet that inexperienced players will make with their speculative holdings, like underpairs to the board TT/99, second pairs, weak draws, etc. They are basically saying they have a made hand but they don't want to see a turn or pay more then $25 to see a turn.

OOP I think this hand should raise in this scenario, HU if we had a hand like this or value like a set I think it's a mix of flatting and calling, but the ideal situation would be that we get HU with a weaker player and potentially fold out some top pair holdings on the flop in a multiway situation. Everyone's range should be pretty capped here when they flat call the 25 and there's only one person behind we really have to worry about besides them. When we flat the SB pre we can easily rep sets by check raising large and deny equity to other flush draws/etc. VS. jam or 3bet from anyone other than the shortstack on flop we have an easy fold if it goes multiway facing this action. That's the worst that can happen

AQo is hating life vs. a checkraise. I would just check raise large around the $125 - $135 range.

Having T9 is good I think because we unblock a lot of Qx and better draws that will fold if we blast turn, like if the turn is an offsuit 6 I think we can just blast away here and steal the pot. At least versus MP who we have a pretty clear idea of the kind of player they are. If we know the person who raised $20 isn't capable we should just fold pre most of the time

If you look at it like you’re cold-calling a 3! out of the SB with T9s, there’s a lot wrong with it.

Obviously it’s not quite that bad (MP will come over the top less often, ranges are wider but not nearly wide enough for T9s to want to enter the action cold, immediate odds are better than a lot of cash game spots, but worse than facing 2.25bb raise -> 7bb 3! in an ante with a tourney), but still pretty bad.

Few people’s leak is playing too few hands when facing this much action, getting this bad of odds in this bad of position. And from a minimax standpoint there’s a lot more EV to be lost by playing these spots poorly than there is to be gained by playing them well with speculative hands.

we're going to have between 15-22% equity against 4 or 5 players here most of the time. BB/MP probably do not have a 4bet bluff range at all. we won't often have direct odd to call but when we make a 5 card hand it's often going to be against a hand that made 2 pair or pair plus a draw vs our made hand given our opponents' likely ranges giving us good implied odds. our hand is also going to be simple to play postflop and actually tough to make a mistake with, in this spot for example either calling or x/r is not a bad option. we only play the hand poorly by making flagrantly bad decisions like calling down with 1 pair five ways or donk-shoving the flop with a gutshot.

We're in agreement that for any number of players going to the flop, we'll have to (very) slightly over-realize our equity. Like as little as having 23% hot-and-cold equity when we contribute 24% of the pot going to the flop.

It's just very hard to over-realize equity at all in worst position without initiative. Just from preflop we are already under-realizing our equity because we are never winning the pot without seeing a flop whereas we do sometimes fold preflop (though we, again, agree that's not going to happen a super high percentage of the time).

I've found in my study that the EV you get from suited connectors is actually a very smooth distribution: these hands largely realize their equity well because they actually win the pot often, either by making it to showdown as the best hand a lot (eg: by being able to call a street with a pair+ backdoors, or being able to hit their pair on the turn because they flopped a GSSD, or being able to call-down multiple streets because they had a pair+draw) or win without the best hand a sizable amount of the time without the best hand, especially being able to float or semi-bluff raise with some equity. This is a stark different from baby pocket pairs where they're d*g-sh*t at winning the pot in most situations but so greatly over-realize their equity in the situations that they flop a set that it makes up for all the x/fs.

Obviously this will change in multiway pots because the less often you have to win the pot, the higher percentage of your earnings are going to come from the tail of the distribution. But

1) some of the factors that make this true remain here, for example how reliant these hands are on making it to the river: When suited connectors make a 5 card hand on exactly a 3-card straight or flush board, they only flop that hand 1/6th of the time, whereas 60% of sets come on the flop.

2) The math isn't even all that different from the spots I've better studied because you're getting similar immediate odds as defending a min-raise in the BB, for example.

By the way, I suspect this is why it's so easy to exploit a bad table by setmining while YMMV a lot more with playing more suited (semi-)connectors and then "outplaying" your opponents postflop.

I really couldn't disagree more here, but maybe it's my fault for using wording as vague as "playing well" versus "playing poorly." The fact that there are multiple +EV lines to take when we hit a combo draw doesn't mean realizing equity is going to require us to make a ton of tough decisions with a high degree of risk. It's going to involve a lot of brutal call/raise/fold decisions like 2nd pair+backdoors facing a bet from an in position player with additional in-position players left to act, as well as bluffing just the right spots and frequencies in spots with extremely low indifference threshold.

with the extra money in the pot from going 5 ways we can just overfold the tough spots and over-realize when we flop strong.
a lot of LLSNL villains are totally blind to how going 5 ways changes the game dynamic compared to playing heads up or 3 ways. most of the money in LLSNL is getting someone to stack off with TPTK or two pair vs a 5 card hand/trips. T9s/JTs/JQs are fantastic hands to take 4 or 5 ways in these games for the reason I said, when you make your 5 card hand it's very often against villains playing a range that made 2 pair and will pay off.

Nice result. I usually don't like trying to make huge moves like this multiway because it has to get through everyone. It is a fairly unique spot though because the small size donk is typically a bad fish who is somewhat capped, and the guys just calling are typically fairly capped, but once in a blue moon trapping. And then sometimes guys will put their foot down with KQ and stack off here. But you just have so much equity, you don't need folds to happen that often to be profiting here. When you account for the times that people don't fold, I think calling likely has an EV in a similar ballpark to raising here. I don't love that we're OOP though.

Preflop I would fold this. We aren't getting a good price facing the $20 raise and we're in the worst position. Suited connectors perform poorly multiway + out of position.