3-bet flop with bottom set on slightly dry board

What makes this tough is I don’t think he has a big pair or surely he 3bets preflop? Doesn’t he?

So, that leaves us with 2pair or a bigger set

Just not willing to give him credit for a semi-bluff flush or straight draw with this action

Does he even call an open with 92, 52, 95?

He does call with 99 or 55 and that seems like the most reasonable holding.

It’s difficult, because with two already in preflop, this is strictly a 3bet or fold spot for me depending on the villains

Hmmmm...

So, my first thought is he has 55 a lot, and occasionally maybe 99. I think 99 sometimes 3B's pre, and wouldn't always 3B the flop.

Maybe if we knew more about UTG1 and V, we might think he has 95s, or a big combo-draw, like 43cc. The UTG1 open was kind of small, so V could have called somewhat wider. He might have A2cc. A lot of players will fast-play a pair plus the NFD.

Did he give off any tells? Like, when you raised, did he seem genuinely surprised? That's usually going to be a sign of strength. Did he seem uncomfortable? That would make me suspect he may be raising light.

Not sure what to make of his sizing. I don't see this situation play out very often. I'd think 55 would want to just pile it in, and he'd 3B larger.

There's a school of thought that when the PFR checks and a field caller bets, the bet is often FOS, and we can attack that bet by raising. If V thinks that's what we're doing, he might just be playing back at us, but that's unusual in the 1/3 player pool.

I dunno. It's hard to fold a set here, but I might.

I might also peel one, and see what he does on the turn. If we think he's got a lot of 2P and sets, he might slow down on another club, and maybe on a straight-completing card. We can either check back or start a bluff, but mostly I'd just check back and evaluate / bluff-catch the river.

You may have missed that we only started $450 effective. We only have $390 left.

Actually, realizing we are shallow, I don't think we have enough room to manuever on the turn if we call. So, it seems like our choices are jam or fold.

I dunno. No shame in going broke with a set on a wet and dynamic board, but I wouldn't beat anyone up for folding 22 in this spot. It's a super nitty fold, and probably -EV in theory, but I would imagine flop 3B's are super under-bluffed.

Agree that none of the 2 pair combos really make sense given the pre-flop call. So if we look at combos, do we think he has all the 55 and 99 for 6 total? Do we think he has all the 34cc, 67cc, 78cc, 68cc hands or might we have to say V might play some portion of those differently instead of 3b flop with 100% frequency?

We don't know enough to be confident building him a hypothetical pre-flop range. But the flop 3B seems like it would really narrow the range down a lot.

I'd be weighting him heavily towards 55, followed by 99, 95s, 43cc, and A2cc, in that order.

If you put a gun to my head and make me count the combos, I'd say he has all 3 combos of 55, maybe 1.5 of 99, 0.5 of 95s, and maybe 0.5 each of 43cc and A2cc.

If he's 3B'ing less than all in with 87cc, 76cc, or 86cc, God bless his gambooly heart.

I'd guestimate he's got around 3 combos that have us crushed for every 1 combo that we're beating, but has a decent chance of getting there.

Even if he's just got one of those three gut shot combo draws, I think he has 11 outs, and we're marginally better than flipping.

So, the best case scenario range would be 4.5 combos of 99/55, and 4.5 of 95s, 43cc, A2cc, 87cc, 76cc, and 86cc. Against that range, we're drawing to 1 out, or trying to dodge 4-14 outs, minus the chance he makes a straight or flush and the board pairs to give us a boat, or he makes a boat and we make quads

Trying to math in my head, I'd guestimate we're around 40%-45% here. More if we think he's capable of being OOL, less if we think he's not finding the 3B with enough hands we beat.

It's pretty close. I've gotten my money in a lot worse.

This just occurred to me. There's a non zero percent chance he slow played a big PP pre and he's now over-playing it.

Fold pre.

I know a lot of folks love set-mining, but I'm not convinced its profitable counting on a set alone, especially 22, which is never on the good side of a set vs set situation. There is a reason why solvers raise or fold low pps even to much smaller bets preflop. If you're going against another pocket pair, about 10% of the time when you hit your set, they are going to hit their set too. You have an UTG+1 raising range that is pp heavy, you have a MP call that includes a lot of pps, and the BB is wide open and includes all pps.

Set over set situations are rare because it's rare for you to hit your set. Once you hit your set, if you're up against other two ranges that are PP heavy, it isn't all that uncommon. And when one of those players is piling in money like he has a set, then he often does.

V could have a combo draw of some type. Maybe he has QQ/JJ and thinks this is a very safe flop. We went set mining because we believed we could get stacks in when we hit our set often enough to justify the call. Well, we hit our set and now V is telling us he's willing to get stacks in. If we're folding here, why did we play 22 at all?

These small pps can just be folded preflop. If you're OTB and its just the UTG raise, sure lets set mine and see if we can crack his big pair or Ax. Maybe you can bluff in some lines. But going 3-5 ways, you aren't going to hit your set that often and have no options to win the pot, and when you do hit your set, sometimes you're going to be way behind, like you probably are here.

If you are going to play 22, I think flatting the flop has some merit to make your flatting range quite strong and I don't think there are that many hands we beat that can call our raise. If we discount 2p and overpairs, V probably isn't leading into 4 players with every FD, and if he is leading with A9 or K9, I'm not sure it continues. So flatting and giving V a chance to catch up and improve to 2p or better yet trips is better vs the 9x portion of his range. And we're IP so we can navigate if a club does come. I don't think raising is horrible, but flatting is worth considering.

Folding preflop would be horrible. Sets play really well against 2-pair and overpairs multiway.

I would gii here, but I don't mind folding to this action on this flop.

I would think 99 would be likely to call our raise a lot of the time rather than re-raising, blocking top pair combos.

Anyway there's no reason to overthink this spot. You've got the third nuts and you're only 150 bb deep. This is also 1/3 and you can't always put players on logical ranges. I've seen people show up with stuff like 88 or 77 in this type of spot in a low stakes game. If you ask them why they raised they'll just tell you they didn't think you had anything.

Low stakes players also love to call preflop with stuff like TT and JJ, maybe even QQ, to make sure they get a "safe" flop before they put a lot of money in.

Don't level yourself into folding a set in 1/3. If they have a bigger set they're supposed to get your chips.

Agreed - there's a certain frequency of random-noise over-plays at low stakes. If we think we're 40%-45% against a range that we would have as V, we might actually be doing somewhat better than that against the low stakes population, if we start giving V some weird over-plays with hands we wouldn't have in his spot.

That said - V just 3B the flop. If the positions were reversed, and we bet, and he raised, I'd feel a lot better getting stacks in, because he could be raising with a lot of hands that are worse than bottom set on this board. But when he bets, we raise, and he 3B's, even for a small size, all our warning bells should be going off.

Is he really 3B'ing over-pairs or 66-88? In a limped pot? When hero only starts the hand with $450, and only has $390 left? I dunno. Maybe. I see people over-playing big PP's on boards like this when they're the PFR. I don't see it as much when they're the field caller.

There was an ep raise to 10 and 3 callers. Maybe a small raise for 1/3, but technically not a limped pot.

Huh? Sets play "really well" against 2p and overpairs, which implies we assume Vs are going to stick their money in bad vs us with 2p and overpairs when we hit our set. Yet when we hit our set and V is piling in money, we "don't mind folding"?

Yes, you can sometimes win a huge 3-4 way pot with bottom set where people go bonkers. But that's like the slot machine player who thinks they are winning because they hit a jackpot once. The hole you start in from whiffing the flop and having zero playability 89% of the time is a deep hole to dig out of. The fact that the other 11% of the time:

1: You are virtually never getting away from your hand when your crushed.
2: When your opponents have hands that crush yours they are never folding
3: When your opponents have weaker they will frequently fold

You're really targeting AA/KK and 2 pair as the reliable hands that will pay off your set for stacks. But when you hit a set you block 2 pair! You block about 44% of the possible 2p combos. Each V with unpaired hands only has a 2% chance to flop 2p to begin with. It is easier for a V with a paired hand to flop a set (that crushes us) than a V with an unpaired hand to flop 2p.

In other words, if one opponent has KQ and the other has 66, you are 5x more likely to run into x62 than you are to see KQ2. You're going to get felted by a bigger set 5x more frequently than you get to stack the guy with KQ. That's math.

I think what happens is that a lot of people remember the huge hands won with a flopped set, but forget the hundreds of times that you hit a set and don't get paid squat.

I would tend to agree with you that folding pre would have likely been the best play. It's not 2008 anymore, when people would consistently get it in with top pair against your set. These days when you flop a set you often win a small pot, and this spot demonstrates how we're not even loving it when we flop bottom set and our opponent piles money in. To be fair if the flop was AJ2 we'd feel a lot better about it, but still.

I'm only calling 22 pre if the table is exceptionally soft. To call pre I would want to know players are likely to pay us off light when we do flop a set and/or expect that I can steal a lot of pots. Neither one of those conditions is really the norm.

All that being said as played I'm getting it in. Admittedly I'm not really loving it when he 3-bets, but I don't think you can fold a set.

My bad. But my main point remains. This has to be a fairly under-bluffed spot, and V isn't the PFR, so he's less likely to be over-playing a big PP out of a sense of entitlement tilt.

The fact that there was a raise and 3 callers makes it seem even less likely V is bluffing or over-playing something here. He bet into multiple un-capped ranges, got raised by the player next to act, and then he 3B's. He looks pretty nutted.

The only mitigating factor is that everyone else folded. If anyone cold-called our raise, and then he 3B, I'd snap fold. The fact that it's heads up and we might have some worse hands makes me think it's possible he thinks we're OOL and so he's getting OOL.

It's honestly impressive how much you contradict yourself. Fold preflop can not be horrible if your very next sentence ends with ''I don't mind folding to this action on this flop''.

Are you just hoping for A72r flops so that you can convince yourself they have AK? If the answer to that question is ''yes''. Fold pre.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Agreed.

If we're good, I'd expect a hand more like Axcc. V's line kind of makes sense for Axcc. He bets because he has NFD, we raise, and we could easily have JJ/TT here. 3!ing flop is easier than calling and then figuring out what to do on a brick turn. Some people are perfectly happy getting it in with a NFD.

I think we're all on the same page: We're probably behind a lot, but there are enough excuses, hope, dreams, and our hand is just too damn strong to fold so stick it in and pay off the 55.

Yami makes good points about folding 22 pre. It has me thinking V might not be able to put 22 into our range here, and in that case, maybe he would play 95s this way, if we think he shows up with 95s after calling pre.

I dunno - if he thinks we're supposed to fold 22 pre, wouldn't he be more likely to fold 95s pre? If he doesn't show up with 95s, does he show up with 86s, or 43s, or A2s?

22 is good calling a raise multiway. A set beats all one and two pair hands. You are getting could immediate odds multiway, and often will get a lot in when you hit. Set over set, you are often getting stacked, and that is more of a concern deep. There are situation where I would fold 22 preflop, usually HU or 3-way, sometimes with 3! pots. However, calling the small raise multiway is good.

Brother you been here almost a dozen years, and you don't know there's a rule against reverse HH's?

Why wouldn't you just post the hand as played? V 4B all in. We could have debated if he only has 99 or if he ever shows up with 22.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/170/l...

"Further, even if you just do a reverse HH "to understand what V was thinking," and not as a hidden complaint, it will completely confuse/anger people. Posters (OP and other) often get confused about who is Hero and who Villain in these hands, and, of course, the given reads are all highly prejudiced. Reverse HHs are not allowed in this forum."

Yes I've been on and off posting here for a while, but remember reading quite a few reverses so maybe that's a relatively new rule so I apologize. I disagree with you though, and don't think the hand is very interesting from my perspective on the river. Would anyone really consider folding given the pot odds and second nuts in a low limit game?

I think the better question than what to do with bottom set facing a 3-bet is what to do with middle set after you bet and get raised.

Maybe the play is to just call and allow your opponent to keep bluffing (if they are bluffing)?

Making it $160 like you did might fold out every hand we beat with the exception of 22 (and we're still getting stacked by 99).

Given that both players just called pre they shouldn't really have over pairs, but still I think if you had asked people what to do with A9 facing the flop 3-bet most would be in agreement that a fold would be in order. The main difference between A9 and 22 in that spot is that A9 is behind an oddly played overpair, which is really what you're hoping someone has when you're sitting there with bottom set and they 3-bet flop to $160.