You Made Me Play It, Now I Want The Pot

You are in the straddle, so it is less likely you have suited cards, but they might not figure that out.

Why not? Could stab bigger. Might take it on the turn.

What would you bet if you'd held 6c2c? I might bet that "I have SDV, but I don't like the board amount."

People certainly underfold here, each player is supposed to fold some top pairs and straight draws and marginal flush draws vs this bet, as well as probably some pp with a heart, because of the multiway nature

Grunch:

FLOP - It's a small bet to take down a small pot. If it works 21% of the time or more, you break even or auto-profit, and it's fine. It's probably slightly better than that when you have any sort of draw, like your GS here.

I think you mostly at least want to have a decent heart in your hand to bet here into that many people. Heads up or even three ways I think your bet could be fine.

Sometimes it's OK to go with your read though. If you're fairly confident everyone looks uninterested and is going to fold, sometimes that is enough. It's a small bet and you have a sliver of equity so it could be fine if you have a strong read.

If I was going to do this with ATC I'd probably rather have some sort of high cards so that we can spike a pair and pick up SDV against something like 7d7x. Here you basically have a 3-outer (assuming you're not already drawing dead). In fairness you probably fold out all the random gutshots with a bet, 6x, 2x, A-high and so on. IDK, it would be a shame to undo all the good work you've done so far playing solid poker, and probably it's a leak on my part but I prefer to save brain power from these spots, keep things simple with a check and move on. Just feels like you've got an awful lot of people that you're bulk-assigning to the "they don't look interested" read and that if you end up losing 40BB you'll never forgive yourself whereas if you just accept that you saw a free flop and turn with your five-high hand that's not a bad result in itself. Probably the wrong attitude though

Monkey bet.

I think it works better raising the straddle preflop, but whatever.

I do deviate from the button, so I can see it. They don’t want to get in there with the aggressive guy. Also, the numbers work in your favor as they don’t expect you to get out of line in a crowd.

Still, there’s just too much fancy play syndrome going on and I don’t think I would take this line. It’s ok if they see me fold the button sometimes.

flop bet is awful

You think none of the five other players have a heart, or that anyone is folding a heart for b25?

I like this play in general, although that would be in a usual limped pot where a min-bet suffices whereas here nobody is more than 80 straddles deep? But the plan is to trigger extremely unbalanced x/r ranges and make a play for the pot on later streets.. and I'm not sure it is as good an idea on a monotone board as I think you will find modestly more sticky value that doesn't check-raise now. Two-tone connected boards I think inspire a higher ratio of fear of suckouts to fear of someone already holding the nuts.

I can't fold - I was the straddle (the straddle is on the button). If it was a UTG straddle, yeah I'm folding pure without some external very good reason like the nit game or something.

I want them to call with one heart. I feel really good about pushing off a hand like 8h8x or QhJx or Ahx by the river if the flush doesn't come in. What I feel confident about is that I'm not going to get x/r as a bluff ever. If I get x/r it's two pair or better. I think these passive players with a decent Ahx bluffing candidate are going to check call two streets and fold river if it bricks. And I think a lot of single pairs will fold flop because people get MUBSY on monotone flops.

This sounds like a horrible idea, running a big multistreet bluff into this many players with a hand that has three outs, if you're lucky. You could also just be drawing dead.

Thinking a little more about this spot, I've got to be a little more harsh than I was with my previous post. Betting the flop here is almost certainly just a losing play.

What I meant before is that if everyone was clearly not interested in the pot, then I could see making a little stab that doesn't have to work often to be profitable.

Generally though you don't make money in poker bluffing into five loose passives with five high. Wait to semibluff when you have something like the Ah that can get there and win a big pot when you get called. Or if patience isn't your thing literally any hand with a heart in it would be better to bluff with. One in four cards in the deck are hearts so you have numerous better hands to bluff with in this sort of spot.

I get the temptation but I would need a bit more hand to steal this multi way. If we have Th7x it’s probably printing.

It seems to me that having a middling heart is way worse because:

1: I can find myself in a situation where I have a strong made hand that is second best. If the heart comes, I'm just guessing whether I'm second best and have to decide whether to pay V off. My bluff is targeting big hearts for value, so I don't think having a heart improves my equity because if a heart comes I expect to lose since I expect Ah, Kh, Qh, Jh are going to be strongly represented in any range that calls me. Say I get called, then the heart peels off on the turn and V makes a blocker sized bet, what the heck do I do with the Th?

2: I want V to have a hand like QxTh, JxTh. It is middling hearts that an opponent might call a small bet with, but fold on most runouts.

If there's any benefit to the gutter, its against hands like 2 pair, sets or pair + heart that get sticky. So whether its high or low isn't terribly relevant. Higher cards would mostly be nice in that a pair would potentially be good vs the 9x, though I think I can get 9x to fold more often than not. If my cards are too good, then I think its a clear check and evaluate. If I have Th9x, I'm not betting because maybe my hand wins if everything checks down and what I lose to isn't folding, and it kind of sucks to bet/fold when you could easily be ahead. From my perspective 53cc is a weak enough draw that if I'm bet/folding I'm not folding much equity to any hand.

I'm not sure about Th7x specifically, but I think I want to be very polar in this spot despite the small size. I want to bet my strong draws that are ok bet/calling like Ah9x and my made hands that need protection like sets or small flushes. I don't think I want to be betting my 1-pair hands. And with a draw like 87 one heart, I don't think I want to be betting.

So if I'm not bluffing my open-enders, and my middling straight + flush draws, what am I bluffing with? A hand that is near the bottom and is never winning without improving, but has some emergency equity against some moderately strong made hands seems about as best a choice of bluffing candidates you're going to get. I think you can argue that there's no reason to need a bluffing range here given the bingo situation.

Given hero’s image in this particular game dynamic I kinda like a 15 stab from the unraised straddle button, followed by 50 ott, depending obviously. Almost certainly -EV but wtf, it’s good for the game plus hero’s running good, and he’s folding out a lot of QJss & 6h6x hands.

Well I'm not going to keep bluffing if I get multiple callers. If I get multiple callers, I'm checking turn, getting the free river and go from there. And if anyone tries to put more money in the pot I'm just surrendering the $15.

In a reply to Omaha above I discussed why I don't think having a middle to low heart is better, because if I get called, I think Vs have a heart more often than not and those hearts are going to be skewed toward the larger ones. If I have the Th and a heart peels off on the turn, I'm not value betting. And if V bets into me on the turn or river, I think I have to be very price sensitive because I think I lose almost always. I want V to have one random middling heart. Which since everyone limped in, there are a ton of offsuit hands in their ranges, way more than there should be.

There's approximately a 25% probability that one of the Vs has suited hearts. There is a much greater probability that one of the Vs has Ahx or Khx, plus a fair number of hands like Thx or 8hx might call/call/fold on a non-heart runout.

I'd suggest:

1: Vs aren't going to bluff enough. If they start betting, I can fold reasonably confident that I ran into a strong made hand.

2: Vs are going to raise or lead with many of their strong hands. I think a set is x/r here almost always. I think some flushes will raise, and even the nut flush will donk some rivers. After all, when I bet most players are going to assume I have a big heart in my hand because that's the only way most players would play this flop. So sets are going to want to take down the pot before a fourth heart comes, and smaller flushes will want to get the money in for value/protection against a larger heart. When they flat call $15 into a $60 - I think they are fairly capped. Maybe the nut flush looks to let me hang myself, but I don't think there are too many nut flushes out there. AXhh is going to raise preflop with some frequency and is going to stab flop itself with some frequency.

3: Therefore, if I get it down to heads-up, I think I can pursue a bluffing line with reasonable confidence that I'm not running into a brick wall too often on non-heart runouts. And I believe I can get a lot of value from Ahx, Khx, and other random single-heart hands.

So H betd $15, folds around to the CO who calls.

V: Blue-collar factory worker, plays most Friday nights, I haven't played a ton of hours with him because I'm not usually up late on Fridays, I'm usually leaving as he is coming in. He doesn't think about the game in a theoretical way, tends to play relatively face-up. Kind of OMC style.

Effective stack: ~$700

HH:

Hero straddles button. UTG limps, setting off a chain of 5 limps to hero.

53cc Hero checks option.

Flop ($55): 9h6h2h

Hero bets $15, V calls from CO

Turn ($85): 9h6h2h7c

V checks. H bets $70.

Seems like a good card to continue my plan. I think V's range is heavily weighted toward Ahx and Khx hands. I was a bit torn on the size and initially thought about overbetting because I think Ahx and Thx hands get super sticky here and will pay a lot. I felt really good that V didn't flop a flush and that he is the type of player that would be straightforward, and I'd have heard about it almost always. But I think there are a lot of rivers now that I don't want to try bluffing huge, so I decided to go smaller and avoid building the pot too large. With the straight already out there and most cards bringing in more straights, I think single pair and even two-pair hands will fold to a relatively small bet on many rivers and certainly a naked Ah or Kh is folding if it misses.

Having a heart is nice because we don’t need to bluff rivers. We don’t pay off river when a heart comes with the Th because we only beat bluffs and basically everything villain called flop with has showdown value, so they would need to find bluffs that most players aren’t finding.

With 35 we need to blindly blast off in a spot no one has a range advantage and no one is capped.

As long as the plan was to run a multi-street bluff, I'm fine with this. No heart is folding flop, no pair is folding flop - I just don't think MUBS applies when facing b25 only.

There are a ton of theoretical problems like wanting to do this with air way too frequently (especially when our range is ATC right now) but it seems fine exploitatively. I agree that a x/r is always at least an overpair, but the biggest risk here IMO is that small flushes are rather likely to call down. That and TPGK might not fold river, and you of course have to fade a fourth heart.

So I'm not in love with it in this exact spot, but I don't think it's terrible and it's a good plan to have available.

People aren't as predictable as you think in this sort of spot. You'll get called down a lot with stuff like sets, 2 pair, top pair, even occasionally slow played or scared flushes. This is especially true if you have a maniacal image, which you almost certainly do because this is a maniac play. Your range is any two cards and you're bluffing into five players with a hand that is pretty far down the equity distribution of your ATC range. If your opponents are weak tight nits the problem still remains that between five of them someone is likely to have something.

I'm not convinced you should even be betting a polarized range here when it's so likely you will be called, but if you were to develop a polarized range, even the ThX is theoretically still too weak to be using as the bottom of your polarized range that you would be bet folding with. Exploitatively bet folding with something like the 10h could at least be reasonable though.

All this stuff about wanting them to call so you can profitably bluff the river... If you magically teleported yourself to a blank river where you were heads up against one opponent and have barreled twice, maybe that spot would be a "profitable" bluff spot in a vacuum. However you had to make multiple -EV bluffs on the flop and turn to get to that spot and on the river you're just winning back your own money, and even on the river you would prefer to bluff with a heart blocker.

This is just fancy play syndrome. Stick to playing tight and value-oriented when you go six ways to the flop and save this type of bluff for when you're heads up.

So...I actually don't like this as a multi-street bluff, because I don't think the pool is over-folding anything with a sliver of SDV or a smidge of equity to the small bet. I think we're mostly folding out better air when action checks to us, so I'm fine with stabbing once for a small size, and mostly being done with it if we don't improve.

Like, If we can make a hand like JTcc fold, it's a huge win for a small risk. It doesn't have to get through all that often to break even.

I'd prefer to do this with a hand that has some potential to improve to something with a bit more relative strength compared to the range that calls the flop bet, or a hand that blocks the future nuts. Give me 87s, or Ah9c - an OESD to a higher straight, or something that can improve to top trips or top 2P and blocks top set, even if we don't make the nut flush.

The silver lining here is that hero BTN straddled and was closing the action pre. He can literally have ATC here, so he can rep the flopped nuts or a super-combo-draw, and it's hard for even someone with a very strong hand to defend appropriately from OOP, especially super-multi-way.

It's sort of like a bomb pot. Anyone with any reasonable expectation of winning should have done something to build the pot or deny equity. I wouldn't try to make anyone fold anything but better air, and when action checks to us, I think a lot of the ranges here would be just that - better air.

V thinks, double checks his cards, and calls.

Effective stack: ~$700

HH:

Hero straddles button. UTG limps, setting off a chain of 5 limps to hero.

53cc Hero checks option.

Flop ($55): 9h6h2h

Hero bets $15, V calls from CO

Turn ($85): 9h6h2h7c

V checks. H bets $70. V calls.

River ($225) 9h6h2h7c3s ~$600 behind

V checks. H ?

This is where I was perhaps the most torn because I no longer need to bluff Ahx or Khx without a pair which I think makes up the majority of Vs range. It really sucks to check and V has something like 87 with heart. Given the number of straights that came in, I think jamming to fold out sets+ is off the table.

So I was torn between a small bet looking to get thin value from A high but then just feeding his sdv more, betting something like $200 that puts any single pair or even 2p in a tough spot, which is probably what I would do if I didn't get a sliver OTR.