1/3 Hand Analysis (2 hands)

Hey OP, welcome to the forum. Ignore people who say mean things. You submitted two careful hand histories. You’ll get more feedback if you post them separately.

Hand 1

Preflop just fold. AP, raise flop to 90. Hand then gets gross. Just call and puke. It’s a home game, right?

Hand 2

3betting AQo SB against a button straddle might be GTO but a live game offers less fold equity. AQo is the very bottom of my SB 3bet range. Fold pre.

After that I just check it down.

H1, being first caller of UTG raise in SB with Axs is bad. I would x/r flop with the plan of shoving blank turns. River, all aces beat you, and he could have a good one UTG, but only one ace left. You are only beating a bluff, but maybe call, read-dependent.

H2, preflop is probably best. Could raise or maybe limp/call. Folding pre would be insane. River is a clear value bet.

All of this.

Hand one is a fold pre against an uncalled UTG open. It the open were later, I'd 3-bet or fold, depending on V. AP to flop, semi-bluff raise. AP to turn, I guess we have to call down? Raise seems like overplay, and we're getting a good price with TPNK+NFD. AP to river, gross. Either way, give yourself a kick for calling pre with this cheese and decide whether you could possibly be good 30% of the time. I kind of doubt it.

Hand 2 was fine, now give up. Nothing worse is calling, and a chop is rarely folding after calling turn.

Welcome to the forum, it’s a wild ride

1
The reason we’re folding is that suited aces are very playable in position, but OOP not so much. What I mean is when you miss, you want to bluff and it’s hard to bluff OOP.

As played, you have to confront villain, you can’t just let him merrily barrel along. You flopped a great draw, I would likely check-raise this spot, but you gave no villain info, so I might not.
See how villain responds to a check-raise on the flop and adjust your strategy. Poking the bear & seeing him react can make you more confident about what to do next.
Against the population, I’m folding the river. However, knowing more about villain could change that. The small turn bet, may have been ready to fold if you raised.
You appear capped to villain.

One scenario:
V opens TT - his cbet is not raised so assumes nobody has a Q - Ace on the turn is scary, but when you don’t donk or raise, figures you don’t have one of those either - on the river figures his tens good.
But there again, AQ may be the most likely hand with this action.

2
Fold pre-flop - don’t mind limping your range from the SB, but your range needs to be tighter. Going first is a disadvantage more than you think. Your shiny knife looks pretty but the people with baseball bats see you coming. You are playing Doyle’s ultimate trouble hand OOP.

By goodness, you confronted villain this time & the limp/3Bet definitely looks like a monster, but v called. Do you realize that you miss the flop 68% of the time? Do you realize that it takes a better hand to call, than to bet - and v called.

When I read ‘she’ no more of my money is going into the pot. In general, the ladies play a tight passive game. They won’t bet their strong hands much, but they will call with them.

River changes everything - you left the caboose & landed in the driver’s seat. Never felt like she had a ten, even the most passive probably finds a raise with a ten. So now bet for value. Villain’s range is pocket pairs & AK

Takeaways:
You are looking for the golden opportunity of poker, playing strong hands in position, and then applying the pressure. You simply don’t have to play mediocre hands out of position and put yourself in these questionable situations. I just wish I could explain this critical concept better, it’s the favorable situations you’re looking for, not just playing hands.

Thanks for your post
Take advice here with a grain of salt. Everyone means well, but it’s up to you to get something out of it.

Grunch:

Any reads on UTG? They may help.

PRE - with the $5 straddle on, you're only 60 straddles effective. A4s seems like a pretty cuspy call when we're starting out so short, even if we know the BB isn't likely to squeeze. I don't hate flatting, but I'd like it a lot better if we were deeper.

FLOP - With such a massive draw, I'd seriously consider x/r'ing. But I don't hate the x/c.

TURN - This is why I don't love the flat call pre. We made a weak top pair and still have a combo draw. We can't really fold, but I don't think we're ever ahead, and I don't think a jam gets through anywhere near often enough to justify getting it all in here.

RIVER - If we know V is capable of taking this line as a bluff, I'd call. If we don't think he's capable...yeesh, I don't know how we can fold, but I wouldn't expect to be good here very often.

Going back to the flop - unless V has QQ or KK, I think a x/r may fold out enough of his better AX to make it a profitable play, and avoids this river spot. Of course, we could also avoid it by just folding pre.

When you say you limp your entire range from the SB when the BTN straddle is on, do you literally mean your ENTIRE range, like, including hands you plan to fold to a raise? Or are you just limping your entire continue range, with some limp-calls and some limp-raises?

I wouldn't limp with everything. I think I'd mostly be playing limp-raise or fold. There are some hands I'll fold if there's a raise and a 3B, but mostly I'd just be over-folding most marginal hands and looking to limp-raise with a strong linear range.

PRE - When you and BB limp in, I'd think the BTN wouldn't be raising too wide, if she's semi-aware. 3B'ing with AQ seems automatic, but I'm not sure about the 5x sizing in this set-up.

Without the BTN straddle being on, I'd like it, but here, I think her range may be stronger, and we're really shrinking the post-flop SPR quickly. I might go smaller than usual, like just 3.5x.

FLOP - Think I might c-bet small here, like 20%-25% pot. But I don't hate the check. I'd mostly be hoping to deny equity and hoping to fold out some PP's below the T's.

TURN - Delayed c-bet seems fine. Sizing seems fine.

RIVER - Hard to think what worse hands would call a $375 jam. I don't really want to bet small as an attempt to induce. I might just check to feign weakness and hope she bluffs at it.

Re limp SB with BU straddle, I mean I limp my opening range that can call or 3bet, but mainly limp-raise (might limp-call small pairs or suited Ax). Although hearing others' feedback about playing suited Ax OOP maybe I'll take that out of my limp-call range in SB vs BU straddle.

Thanks for your feedback!

I considered x/r flop but BB is so loose passive that I wanted him to continue

then on an A turn I can't imagine UTG folds any Ax to x/r so I'd be folding out bluffs and only called by worse

what turns would you x/r here?

Seeing a few replies saying fold A4s pre, even in 6-handed 1/3 you're folding it?

I appreciate your feedback and analogies haha

Re hand 2, seems like all the responses are saying to play tighter OOP pre.

If we x river and she jams, what is our action?

VPIP'ing low suited aces generally works better when we're deeper. It also helps to be IP rather than OOP. I'll VPIP low suited aces more when short handed, but I'll usually play them as a raise when I'm OOP, not as a flat call.

I think flatting flop with our specific hand, in order to keep the BB in, in a multi-way pot, is problematic.

Our hand has a ton of equity, but no showdown value. We'd love to take the pot down on the flop. We wouldn't mind getting it heads up vs a worse draw or a single pair.

It'll be harder to extract value if we make our hand on later street if we just flat call now. If we suddenly wake up on a heart or straight card, it's pretty face up.

When the flop is two-tone, I don't think I'd have many x/r's on the turn, because they wouldn't make much sense. If we had a thick value hand, we probably would have x/r'd the flop, or we'd donk turn, not go for a x/r.

Like, imagine we had 33/22. We'd x/r flop at some frequency. If we just x/c'd flop, we'd donk out on the turn at some frequency. We might go for a turn x/r at some frequency, but we'd probably have very few bluffs. Would we even x/r with 33/22 on a turn A, when V could have AA/QQ?

Say the turn was an off-suit 6. Would we x/r with 33/22? Maybe, but why? We have showdown value, so there's no need to turn our hand into a bluff. If we're concerned about V checking back on a two-tone board, we'd donk, not check.

When we flat pre from the SB, we could have 33/22. With A4hh, I'd want to x/r the flop to rep one of those sets, when we have a ton of equity in our hand, and we probably have a good amount of fold equity. Our hand benefits a ton from folding out our opponents' better AX combos and any pairs.

We don't need to x/r huge when we're only starting with $300. We could make it $90 on the flop, and just jam almost all turns.

Next time it's better to post individual hands to different threads.

HH#1:

Doubt calling here with this marginal hand OOP to an UTG raise with it not going very multiway is profitable. If we're trying to keep our VPIP up to get invited back to the home game, ok, whatever I guess, but it's a losing play, imo.

With our massive equity I try to add FE by check/raising to $90 which will setup a ~PSB jam on any turn.

Now with showdown value and getting a good price to realize our equity I think I'm cool with just calling the turn.

Readless, I would make a hero fold here. Just not enough players are taking this barrelx4 line with worse multiway on the river plus we block most flush draws that could be taking this line. Even KJhh/KThh/JThh probably mostly give up 3ways by the river.

HH#2:

I limp my whole playable range from ~HJ- some I'm cool with our preflop limp.

Whether I LRR/call/fold would depend on my read on Villain. If 3betting I'm not sure we have to go this large.

I might just cbet small here and see if that gets AK to fold. But otherwise when she calls this massive 3bet preflop I might just give up UI on this board (where I doubt she is folding overpears).

I get our reasoning for our turn bet, and I'm guessing we're planning with following that up with a large river bet. Ok.

Ha, with this river we've now moved from bluffing to value betting. If we want Ax or medium pairs to call, we probably need to bet very small. So I wouldn't go more than $100 and maybe even less cuz it is just so hard for those hands to call on this runout.

GcluelessNLnoobG

H1 I will go against the majority in that I think calling A4s from SB is defensible. That's because (1) it's only a 3x sizing, (2) it's a hand which does OK multiway and (3) we've specified that BB is likely to overcall extremely wide, so we're unlikely to get squeezed and also the odds to see a flop may be even better than they already are.

Not check-raising is a major blunder and the subsequent action illustrates why: one key category of hands you want to drive out is stronger Ax which will disappear to a check-raise. Now is the time for maximum leverage with NFD + gutshot + overcard and you'd quite happily see folds but don't hate the money going in. The passivity means you waste all the advantages of your hand but get bogged down with its weaknesses. Fold river.

H2 I don't play all that often with button straddles but my understanding is that limping your entire range from EP with button straddle is OK. Limp-reraise with this exact hand I'm not sure about, it can't be terrible.

River is there a meaningful bet size that you can bet-fold? It's a bit awkward .

Thanks for feedback. What does UI mean?

Re: H2, yes my turn bet was to size for pot sized jam on river, which I did.

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Thanks for feedback. One additional reason I didn't x-r flop (other than wanting BB to continue) was that I've been playing a lot more x-r semi-bluffs lately and they just never seem to get through. In other words I was being results oriented/playing scared. Even with loose player in the BB behind I should be x-r flop almost 100% of the time. What do you think?

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RESULTS

H1: I sigh called and V showed 4[emoji3530]5[emoji3530] for the nut straight

H2: I jammed river and V snap called with KK

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You need to x/r the flop and shove the turn in hand 1. Your FE might be reduced because there are no reasonable 2 pairs on this flop, so you are only representing a set. However, you have good equity if called.

It is hard to read, but I gather he had 5s4s for an OESD and made a straight on the turn. However, you were 80% against that hand on the flop.

UI = UnImproved

What was your thought process on your river sizing? Cuz when we accidentally back into value on the river we need to change our sizing plan. There probably wasn't even going to be reason to jam as a bluff versus Ax/99 as these hands will have trouble even calling like a ~1/2 PSB of $200. But now that we want these hands to call, we need to go much much smaller. I probably would have only gone like $75 on the river.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Grunching here:
-H1, I would fold pre but can see a case for calling. Once you're in there tho, your money is going in on the flop and turn. If I got to the river as you did, and there's only one ace left in the deck, it's going to depend on "is this Player bluffing enough here to call?"

-H2, not a fan of the limp 3b. Reads on the V would help but the 3b size makes this basically a bluff, hoping JJ or worse will fold. I could see an argument for calling the raise or just saying F it, fold.

H2 preflop, 3! sizing is too big. You fold out many hands you dominate. Limp/call or raise initially are also fine. I don't see how you can fold to a single raise.

If your x/r's haven't been getting through, I think it's worth examining how you structure your x/r range, your x/r sizing, and the spots you're x/r'ing. It may be that your x/r semi-bluffs aren't getting through because you're sizing wrong or choosing the wrong spots.

Our x/r should generate a lot decent amount of fold equity here, in a multi-way pot, when we defended one of the blinds and can credibly rep some very strong hands on this board.

We shouldn't necessarily expect opponents to always fold right away. We may need to barrel turn. This is why we need to x/r with combos that can comfortably barrel across a lot of turn cards.

This hand is a good example. Whether we make our hand on the turn or not, we can jam, and know that V should fold a lot, but even when he doesn't we have lots of outs to improve.

Everyone likes your careful hand histories with results. Keep them coming, OP.