Anywhere you go, I'll follow you down

I would just call it off.
The math on a value raise here isn’t great, you only need to win like 23% of the time to justify a call, but you need to win >50% to justify a raise.

🎶 Follow you down, but not that far . . . 🎶

Oh? This isn't the karaoke thread?

Why you no raise the turn? Afraid of KT/T8?

He's facing $200 with a stack of $295. The math doesn't change that much.

I would 100% jam turn here, plenty to get value from - worse 2 pairs and suspect this V will be clicking buttons and betting w/ the large amount of pair + straight draw region. Put in the $ when you are ahead of his range, by just calling there is less than 0.5 SPR left. You are calling jams on all blank rivers anyways, I wouldn’t worry about his top end portion that beats you on turn - just calling gives him a free shot with straight draw portion.

Grunch:

PRE - either flat call or raise bigger. At least make it $40, if not $45 or even $50.

What is a "FUF" call?

FLOP - V's donk is weird. Nothing to do but call, I think.

TURN - I think we need to consider what his range may be here, when he donks flop for over half pot and barrels for a large size, leaving less than half pot behind if we call.

Ignoring all individual reads, the population is going to have a strong hand. I'd expect this to be KQ or better for value, and I'd think he'd go for a x/r at some frequency if he flopped a set or 2P. But maybe he does this with Q9, or even J9 at some low frequency. He might also do this with JT.

If we're going to have less than a half pot bet behind getting to the river, I think we might want to play jam or fold here. And I kinda want to jam, given our read.

RIVER - I don't think this is ever a bluff from the population. But if we have a read that he's capable of being OOL, I guess we might have to call this off.

Even with the read, I think I'd lean towards folding. But I'd be angry at myself for how I played this. I don't know how we're beat, but it seems pretty likely we don't have the best hand.

Result: We call river, V has QJo.

I’m raising the flop to 150
In position, I want the lead
Not into calling along
I’m trying to find out if I’m really behind right now. Raising for value to discourage draws, fold out air and see if villain caps himself.

If raised, I give up
If called, let’s see if he checks to the raiser this time on the turn.

I don’t know that it would change the ultimate decision, but I think that would be my plan. If I was reading it differently, maybe like nitty, I could fold the flop. Top pair, bad kicker is nothing to be proud of.

As played, with your wonderful villain descriptions, I think villain got there on the river, thought you would fold to a jam, so thought better of it and maybe you call another 200. Looks like you’re beat.

It’s hard to advise you, because many of your posts rely on reading the situation. Though detailed & interesting, they are still your reads and not mine.

Calling the turn and folding the river seems bad. I think that if you’re not going to fold 2pair, you should raise/jam the turn.

Just saw result
Good call I guess, for a split pot.

Donk bet makes sense with TPWK
I understand villain’s plan now while I rarely understand yours.

Turn, you pretty much have to shove. Not happy about large bet, but don't think you can fold. The board looks dangerous. However, you are really only losing to 55, unless he limp/called 99 or QQ or donked 2/3 pot multiway with KT for a gutshot.

Not good to leave less than 1/2 pot behind with made hand on somewhat wet board. You want to make sure all the money goes in, and don't want to let him draw cheaply.

Result is not surprising. He seemed to also like the turn.

2 poker principles

1. Cause problems
2. Aggro beats passive more often than not.

Cause problems or better delimmas. A delimma is a problem with only bad choices.

It's better to give your opponent a problem to solve than you trying to solve the problems he creates. That gives him more opportunity to make a mistake. That applies to more than poker, try it during negotiations on a used car.

You can change the dynamics of the power of IP by being a problem creator. OOP you have first opportunity to create problems. That's what V did to you.

People think a flop donk is a great hand. That's true from an OMC, but not from a player who can mix it up like your V. Why wouldn't he c/r if he had something like AQ, a set, or 2P? Whether he understands the principle at play or not, he's giving you the delimma of f/c/r with non premiums.

He flop donks, you call, which may worry him, but calls don't force him to make a decision. The call was probably the best of bad choices on the flop based on the info you had at the time.

But you erred on turn because you didn't take the opportunity to pass a problem back to V. Others have adequately explained why you needed to shove turn.

That would have made the river a non issue. As frequently happens in hands evaluated here, it's the earlier mistake that causes the river problem.

Note how V gave you the river delimma. Calling to chop is a losers game. By choosing aggro over passive and to be a problem creator, he used the power of OOP to bluff first.

He might be a better player than you've given him credit for. Or maybe he's a spaz with TPGK? Can't say from one hand, but you should consider how much better he played this hand than you, and against a lot of other players with your hand, he would have scopoped.

I know you take heat for posting some of these hands. Don't let it get to you. I'm enjoying thinking them thru because it makes me a better player.

He might be a better player than I give him credit for limp calling 35 pre with QJo?

He over-limped in late position with an off-suit Broadway combo. You raised small. When action gets back to him, the pots $94, and he has to call another $29. He's getting over 3 to 1 with the best relative position on the PFR. Getting over 3:1, he isn't supposed to fold anything.

Next time, raise bigger pre. Your small bets / raises on early streets keep getting you into difficult spots on later streets.

And jam turn. Ditto the above. Stop trying to trap with thin value and balancing with insane low-equity bluffs.

Yes, he might be better than you credit him.

You and I think he made an error on his limp and flat pre. But given that as an AP, who do you think played the flop, turn, and river better?

Don't be results oriented and say that since you didn't lose that that means you played the hand well.

Was this hand just a fun event for you because of the chop, or did you learn something about your game? Or another way to look at it, is do you think you exercised a strategy that is a long term winner?

I think you played this hand fine. Maybe you could go bigger pre, or just limp behind. In these multiway live spots I'm looking at QJs as more of an implied odds hand, where you're playing to make a strong hand like a straight or flush to win a big pot. That is unless you can iso and have a fair chance of getting heads up with position. Raising and playing a bloated multiway pot isn't ideal, but whatever. When you've got the button it should still be a profitable spot as long as you navigate postflop reasonably well.

On the flop a call is the only play that makes sense. Your hand is strong enough you have to call at least one bet unimproved, especially with the BDFD and BDSD giving you additional equity on many turns. Raising just folds out everything you beat and isolates yourself against a range that crushes you plus some draws.

On the turn a jam has merit, but given the read that villain randomly spazzes out, I like the flat to give him an opportunity to bluff off the rest of his stack on the river.

The river obviously sucks. When a fish starts moving like they're going to jam when a card puts four to a straight on the board, then suddenly bets smaller, it's often because they have a strongish absolute hand and just realized there is a possible straight and that they could be beat. It tends to indicate something like two pair or a set. I wouldn't totally rule out straights, but I think they're more likely to jam here with the low SPR.

Given pot odds and the read that he randomly spazzes, I think it's reasonable to make the crying call. A chop was a good result given that you don't really beat much on the river. Jamming seems like it just donates the rest of your stack the times when you're beat. I doubt he would even fold out any better two pair given the ridiculous pot odds, so there's really no point I can see in jamming river.

Edit: Thinking a little more about it, river might be a fold in the long run. I guess we beat Q9 if he plays that this way, and we chop with QJ, but pretty much everything else beats us. It's hard to come up with any bluffs on this board, even from a spazzy player. Maybe something like a weak Q keeps betting as a sort of bluff? That seems optimistic though.

Anyone shoving river as a bluff? AQo/s?

I raised 6X IP lol

Over 3 limps.

You can lol if you want. Your sizing sucks.

Tired of trying to tell you about it in every thread you post. It's like you have a pathological need to prove you can beat the game despite making horrendous mistakes repeatedly.

You don't have enough to make a credible bluff.

For another $95?

Go home, Banana. You're drunk.

Pre is bad

You raised _to_ 125% pot. Even if you could, I wouldn't recommend opening to $5 in a non-straddled $1-3 with no limps yet.

The rest was answered immediately:

Folding flop is possible. Folding river would be awful with pot odds. He doesn't bet that way with the straight, and there isn't that much else that limp/calls preflop that beats you.

We "only" need 23%, but the "better" ranges I can come up with we have half of that. And it's not difficult for us to have more like 4-6%.

• If he only bets medium strength Qx on flop, he has KQ,QJ,QT on river ... and we have 11%.
  
• JT is the only big draw on the flop, and that makes our equity worse on the river.
  
• If we start including weak draw hands so that AJ/J8 can get to the river, then KT/T9/T8 are there too. And I think a lot of people give up AJ/J8 on the river.
  
• If he's betting Q9 on the flop, and follows through, I don't see why he doesn't have at least 55.
  

You almost need a read that he mostly bets flop with Qx, and then never bets turn with KQ/QT (so just Q9/QJ).

Or a read that he's just going insane with two random cards enough, which we have no evidence for.

FWIW I like shoving turn much more than calling river, and I can see the reasons to do it ... but I doubt it's much of a problem for him to shrug call turn.

6X is plenty big...this isn't some dumb texas game lol..next time I'll just make 100 pre and shove flop

Out of curiosity I went back through some of your past thread's to see how many times I suggested raising bigger pre. It was a lot. Like, probably 8/10 threads before I stopped looking.

Keep doing what you're doing if it's working for you, I guess.