Not Quite Threadworthy--Low Stress Strat Questions

Fold pre, flop raise is bad because we want folds and it's multiway with a massive fish that hates folding.

The whole hand is awful.

Flop raise is the worst part but then I think I also told to the flop 3bet. You can’t feel good about any of your outs

Thanks - yeah maybe a bit of a combo punt here where the bluff bamboozles me into committing the rest the stack without really discounting that the draw might not be clean. Was all prepared to fold to the 3b and the surprise cold call threw me off too much. V2 could have higher diamonds, or either could have a set that boats up.

What's a more sane overlimping range in this spot? Small pp and suited Aces seem standard, but I'm unsure if even sc are a fold because they do like to end up in spots like this. Not too concerned about balancing or capping range here, no one is paying that much attention.

So long as we don't suck as much as our opponents, I have zero issues overlimping anything remotely speculative in LP. 64s in the CO with passive players behind us preflop would be about at the bottom of my range / kinda dicey, but unlike others I actually don't have too much of a problem with it (especially if any real marks have limped in).

GcluelessoverlimpingnoobG

And you want to try to passively realize on a flop like this? Just hard to imagine flopping a whole lot better a realistic percentage of the time.

i used to feel this way, and i can't tell you how many times i've made that fold only to see villain was spazzing out with pocket 3s and would rather just go home than bother taking $28 in chips to the cage

i'm even calling ace high here for $28 and would actually consider K high

yeah this is one of the few times i would limp in (something i usually never do) where it's multiway and i'm in position with something highly speculative

however, i know this is a "nuts or fold" type situation where OP clearly doesn't one of those rules for thee but not for me situations - if i were to teach my brother poker i'd tell him to fold here until he were more experienced

you're so close to getting it... so close

now think about it deeper

The problem with playing that kind of speculative garbage is you talk yourself into punts like this even when you don't flop huge.

We could easily have not nearly as many outs as we think we do given this action (a bet into the world and a call where everyone can have the nuts / better draws), so yeah, in this case I'm going to play extremely passively and just use my position to evaluate what happens.

My original comment was with regards to preflop, where I'm surprised some have labelled this as spew / awful / etc. If preflop is a mistake, it is a very small one at worse, imo.

GcluelessawfulspewynoobG

Weird spot in a three-way, 4bet, low SPR pot:

$2/$5 game at Mohegan Sun on a Sunday afternoon

I just sat down at the table, but I did witness one hand involving the two villains.

HH - Loose Older Guy opens and nit reg flats. Spewy Shortstack jams for about $150 total. Folds back to Loose Older Guy who calls. Nit reg backjams for around $450 total and Loose Older Guy sigh-calls. Nit reg shows AA and Spewy Shortstack says he needs a 9. Loose Older Guy says, "I'm not going to show, but I will let you know when I hit" but it doesn’t matter because flop comes A77. Spewy buys back in the minimum of $300. LOG covers Hero, who brought over $589 from $1/$2.

This is the next hand off the deck, and my first VPIP at the table.

KsKc

I open UTG1 to $15. Loose Older Guy 3bets to $45 from LJ. Spewy Shortstack cold-calls off $300. It folds back to me and I 4b to $165, leaving $424 back. Both villains call quickly.

Flop of Ah Qh 6s ($495 in the pot after rake)

How do you play this spot with one short stack ($135) and an SPR of less than 1 with the other villain? Check, bet small, jam? Do you just jam pre-flop?

Nice.

Oh, no.

See my AKo thread ... I can understand the desire to not shove AA/KK but there's probably no other hands I'd ever want to do this with.

If we are going to get cute then being OOP to both I'd go bigger, and with the short stack there anything a bit bigger means his shove doesn't reopen the action ... so I'd hopefully shove.
Maybe $300 is the nut cute non shove size.

I'd assume short stack doesn't have an A, but a random pair ... hard to tell with the loose guy. QQ very possible, as is Ax. He might well have enough hh hands you have to at least think about calling too.

I guess I'd start by crying, and then when the table dried I'd randomly decide between bet small or shove. Maybe check is good too, but I'd much rather check with Kh.

Thanks for the feedback. My thought process on sizing a pre-flop raise is generally pretty cookie-cutter, which is probably a bad thing. In this case, I took a standard OOP 4b size (slightly less than 3x) and added the dead caller. If the size was going to be >1/3 of my effective stack, I would have shoved, and I did consider just shoving anyway, but settled on this...

I think you and I have different conceptions of how to play versus the 3bet cold-caller and mine might be wrong, haha. I have always imagined it to be a weak range -- mostly medium-ish pocket pairs, some suited broadways and AXs, maybe some "premium" suited connectors -- and have 4bet wider in response. Like here, I think I would 4b some AQo, some suited AX, some big pocket pairs, etc., and for the same size every time. That might be terrible, though. The last time you and I played together, I 4b jammed A5s versus an aggro player's 3b and a passive fish's cc and the passive fish snapped me off with KK and held, for instance.

all of this sucks - but multiway i'm just shoving pre happy to take it down there rather than navigate difficult spots post flop

literally have no clue what to do on the flop - hence preflop shove

Reveal:

NOTE: Saying all this, when you probably won the max and owned everyone...

So after going from mostly winging it on my own to paying for help, I did this kind of online sized 3bet/4bet thing a bunch ... and IMO it mostly goes horrifically bad at 1-2, and is only better at 2-5 if everyone is competent. It's _much_ more difficult to 3bet/4bet too big than too small live.
In general the smaller your raise size the wider your range should be, but you are almost certainly doing better by raising bigger with a tighter range.

This is def. one of those spots where you have to think about what GTO is doing, and why ... and then realize that none of it applies to the guy cold calling 54s.

The problem is that 33-88 is ahead of your hand by a lot, and I've seen a lot of instances where people call those pairs and then just shrug and shove hoping you have AK or fold ... which isn't terrible if you have AK/AQ but sucks a lot more if you have A4s. So I would need some reads to cold 4bet AQo, and would basically never 4bet A4s at 1-2 (I've done it a couple of times ... but there was a lot of data that people were opening wide and 3betting wide, and could find the fold button).

Also GTO H is doing stuff because otherwise the GTO V will start folding ... but esp. at 1-2 it doesn't work that way. And while people at 2-5 are generally better about preflop 3bet/4bet folds I still see spots where I'm 95%+ V1 just never has worse than top two on the flop, and V2 shrug stacks off two pair and calls it a cooler.

excellent post

low stakes live tryhards read "A4s is an ideal card to include in your range for 4! bluffs" and so they begin doing that to disastrous effect

it mostly works in competent environments where people 3! with marginal hands like suited connectors

99% of 1-3 players call with suited connectors instead of 3!

if they 3! you can be assured they usually have a pocket pair or an ace - if you see them 3betting with hands like A7o or K9s they aren't bluffing, they just think those are very good hands

so because there's so few weak 3 bets at this level, we don't really need to worry about balance and getting exploited, we can just 4! our premiums and fold everything else

the entire reason to have a hand like A4s as a bluff candidate is not because it's a good hand, in fact, you're far better off with something like 85s vs the range which calls or raises vs a 4! - in fact, outside of having something like aces or kings - we're mostly indifferent as we're probably way behind anyway AQo is essentially the same as playing 85s vs this range - it's not until we get to AKo which somewhat blocks AA/KK which are the two hands which dominate us that we're beginning to reach parity and it's not until we have pocket jacks that we become a true coin flip and not until queens that we are ahead

so A4s is garbage vs these hands, so why is it a 4! bluff candidate whereas 85s is a fold, simply because holding the ace makes it far less likely you're going up against value and weighs the opponent's 3! range to more bluff heavy - with only 3 aces left, it's more likely he's 3! bluffing with 67s which needs to fold to your raise

but since villains rarely 3! bluff at this level, there's no need for us to 4! bluff and even less need to do it with a hand whose primary value as a bluffer is that it's slightly more likely the villain is bluffing

so like illiterati mentions, unless you have some very specific reads that x player can 3! bluff and then fold to a 4! you absolutely can't put that play in your toolbelt

That's a nice clever play - I was honestly thinking of x/f there, but I'm probably influenced by a similar-but-worse spot I was in where I 3b the ace magnets huge from the SB and got three callers... four ways to an A-high flop. I think the extra player makes a big difference though; at that point I could not imagine no one having an ace nor that someone would fold it. Honestly would still be mildly surprised that LOG folded an ace in your spot but if he gets there with AJ or worse maybe.

opening these hands.
is this too loose for your avg 1/3 game?

I think T9s-KTs might be too loose??

What's your typical effective stack?

How competent/confident do you feel postflop?

GcluelesschartsnoobG

100bb pretty not too confident

Seems a bit tight for the BTN.

Also very human to prefer AJo/KQo over A9s/K9s/etc. but that doesn't mean it's better/worse.

What position?

sorry was meant for UTG through UTG+2

Got into a awkward preflop spot the other day

5/10/20, 2.5k deep 9 handed

HJ is a whale (600) mentions in advance that he's gonna raise to 100 blind
folds to him he makes it 100 blind
I'm co with 7d7c and make it 325 (pretty much force him to fold or jam)

folds to SB (covers) who is a very strong reg and he makes it 650

HJ says alright lets gamble and throws the 600 and is allin

Hero?