NL5 - Low Straight

Can you explain why?

Can someone tune in on this as opposed to just saying fold pre.

He might be making an argument that the rake is so high at 5NL that it disincentivises calling out of the Small Blind (which at a certain rake level is a valid argument).

At chip EV (no rake), you will mix call/3bet from the small blind vs cutoff with these suited connectors. At 5NL I think it’s criminal to fold, as people play very bad and you often get paid more than you should when you make a good hand.

If you want to play properly, I would consider donking this flop. These middling/low boards are great for the SB cold calling range, as you’re so dense in these cards. But, most don’t, which is an EV leak, but it’s not a spot worth focusing your time on too hard - pots often end up small and are infrequent.

Coolers happen - you can’t convince yourself you’ve played it badly just because you got coolered, else you’ll spend your life thinking you suck.

On stars it's better to just never call from the SB because they don't rake preflop. This hand could low frequency 3-bet but that's a read you have to make. No offense but if you don't know that there's not meant to be a cold call range it's unlikely you'll be able to make 3-betting profitable either.

OTF we can donk bet I theory. I quite like it in practise but on stars when you're not meant to have SB flats I'd be worried you just get tagged as a fish and people won't fold cause theyll expect you to make mistakes on later streets. Although I think at 5NL people aren't good enough to make that adjustment.

OTT we just want to bet ourselves. We unblock 2pair/ sets and the board is just smashing our perceived range. I think Overbet is correct size. When villain 3-bets us I think it's always T9. Tbh I'd be looking to just fold already although that sounds crazy. I'd probably call turn fold river but it's likely just giving up EV compared to folding turn. Just ugly to muck the second nuts OTT.

It's not like we're folding range either cause we can call sets and some combo draws with the idea of donk jamming good rivers.

OP if you can't broadly follow preflop charts you need to at least know and explain why you aren't.

Disagree. Several reasons:

- playing zero EV hands at a stake you haven't beaten yet is only increasing workload unnecessarily for likely negative/breakeven EV at best

- low SC are going to struggle to realise OOP even vs whales if you don't know what you're doing (i.e. playing perfect exploits/gto)

- even gtow, at 50nl GGpoker preflop rake, and assuming perfect gto v gto, nearly always folds here:

Fold pre.

I think it is a bad beat and maybe the next time it happens other way around. Sometimes these things jus happen.

I like to call, 3bet and fold this hand from SB depending on the opponents stats.

If they fold against the 3bet from the button, I 3bet some of the times or fold

If they dont fold against 3 bet, then I call or fold.

I guess folding could be better. I need to check my database how I have played 54s from the blinds when cold calling against the Button. Probably losing if I have to guess

Oh wow, I checked from 160k database. I have only 8 hands where I cold call from SB or BB versus BTN open.

When I put 3bet OOP preflop with 65s versus BTN opener. I get like 6 hands too. So not enough samples I guess

because you have 5 high in bad position.