Sunday afternoon 1/2NL: AQs UTG (1 Viewer)

Schmendr1ck

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On the way home from SQM yesterday, @ni9n3r and I stopped by Hard Rock Tampa for a little wind-down from the weekend of degeneracy. It's Sunday afternoon, and the poker room is pretty busy thanks to a tournament series.

I'm sitting at a 1/2NL table with the usual suspects, but only one player is relevant for this hand. Villain is relatively new to the table - he's been here just a few minutes, played a couple of small pots where he opened for a raise both times, won one and lost one, and he's currently sitting about where he started with $100. I cover.

Typical opens at this table have been $6-10, the only larger raise I've seen so far was $12 with AA.

Preflop
Hero UTG ($275) with :ah::qh: opens to $7.
Folds to Villain on BTN ($100) who 3-bets to $15.
Blinds fold, action on Hero.

Thoughts so far?

(Edited for formatting consistency.)
 
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Call. Play cautious, since he is new and you don't have much information. Easy to double him up here, as AQs often plays out the way it plays out...unless you get a good read.
 
That's one tiny raise. Did he realize you had already opened UTG?

2 things make me suspect of villain's skill level, short stack and the tiny raise against an UTG open.

SB and BB action?

I assume they fold. I'd just call here with shallow stacks. Probably planning on stacking off with TPTK+.
 
Seems a pretty standard call spot here. Can't get value by 4-betting. Probably don't have enough book on button to turn this into a bluff. Too good a hand to fold to a tiny 3-bet. Call seems straight forward.
 
Not really enough info to make a play back at Villain here. Maybe he's just stealing your momentum, or maybe he has a premium hand. Either way, a raise isn't a great play. None of Villain's potential actions is favorable for you. Suppose you reraise to $50. Now:
  • Villain folds, and you win the $25 already in the pot (by risking $43 more).
  • Villain calls, and you now have to play the rest of this large pot in worst position, still with little sense of his strength.
  • Villain reraises, and you either gamble for stacks or let your $50 go without a fight.
None of these are really great outcomes. This hand is too strong to fold, though, so flatting is the best play. Take advantage of the fact that Villain reraised too little.

Also, keeping the pot small will allow for more post-flop action, which may give you an opportunity to escape if Villain ends up flopping one of the worst hands for you, like an overpair to queens or a pair of aces with a king kicker.
 
That's one tiny raise. Did he realize you had already opened UTG?

2 things make me suspect of villain's skill level, short stack and the tiny raise against an UTG open.

SB and BB action?

I assume they fold. I'd just call here with shallow stacks. Probably planning on stacking off with TPTK+.
Based on the suspected lack of skill...most skilled moves will be lost on them. And, it's both a good possibility they are overplaying their small pair, OR a good possibility they undervalue a big pair because they are scared.

They likely read a book that said "raise on the button."
 
Okay, I'm not going to dawdle too long here. This seems to be a pretty standard call and I want to get to the meat of the hand.

Preflop
Hero UTG ($275) with :ah::qh: opens to $7.
Folds to Villain on BTN ($100) who 3-bets to $15.
Blinds fold, Hero calls.

Flop ($28): :ac::kc::7c:
Action is on Hero, effective stacks are $85. What do we do, and what's our plan for the hand?
 
$33 in the pot? Pot sized bet. He could have AK here, or even AA or KK, but who knows, right? If you check, he probably bets big and then what do you do? I always like to stay aggressive in these spots.

Either way, I think he is getting all-in, unless he folds to your aggression.
 
Well, you have top pair, top kicker on a monotone board with an SPR of 3.

The only hands you're remotely beating still have a ton of equity on you, for instance :qc::qs:, or you could be getting freerolled against a :as::qc:.

If he shows any aggression on this flop, there's not much hope for you at all. I'd be check-folding pretty darn fast if he bets anything $10+.
 
Well, you have top pair, top kicker on a monotone board with an SPR of 3.

The only hands you're remotely beating still have a ton of equity on you, for instance :qc::qs:, or you could be getting freerolled against a :as::qc:.

If he shows any aggression on this flop, there's not much hope for you at all. I'd be check-folding pretty darn fast if he bets anything $10+.
I think this is a good play against a known, solid player. And maybe it is the safe play against an unknown player too. However, for me, if a new player sits down and makes this min raise on the button pre-flop, I am playing it aggressively. Worst case, I donk off $100 and double him up, left with $175.
 
Okay, I'm not going to dawdle too long here. This seems to be a pretty standard call and I want to get to the meat of the hand.

Preflop
Hero UTG ($275) with :ah::qh: opens to $7.
Folds to Villain on BTN ($100) who 3-bets to $15.
Blinds fold, Hero calls.

Flop ($28): :ac::kc::7c:
Action is on Hero, effective stacks are $85. What do we do, and what's our plan for the hand?

I like a bet of 20-25 here. Villian may hate the montone board as much and with :ac::kc: on board, tough for villian to have a flush. There are sure other hands with single :qc: or :jc:, however.

I bet here hoping to pick it up or get called, but that bet really leaves villian about a pot sized jam.

On the other hand, we really have the top of our range here other than Aq off with one club. Not sure how easily we should fold.
 
Bet $20-something*, planning to fold to a raise or re-evaluate on the turn if called.

A pot-sized bet isn't terrible, but it doesn't seem worthwhile here. Hero really can't stand much action, so I don't want to put in a bigger bet if I don't have to. (Also, $20-something would be a pretty standard bet size for just about any holding: top pair, made flush, set, stone bluff. No sense in switching it up when there's no real benefit.)

Pick up $20 in $5 chips plus an arbitrarily small number of $1 chips, just to make the bet slightly bigger and, importantly, an ugly size that's harder to do math with.
 
15% of the pot vaporized. No wonder it’s hard to beat the rake in these games.

Back when I first started playing, I remember thinking that 10% to $4 flat was a lot to take out of the pot. Now, standard cardroom rake around NH is what I remember seeing at underground games, $7 a hand coming out of the pot, and it's even worse because $2 of it is coming out at $20 in addition to the 10%.

I'm at the poker table, not some lottery counter in a convenience store. Fine, if the BBJ is necessary to draw in lots of players, then do it, but that $1 per pot is already a lot. Ramping it up to $2 per pot just to juice some new stupid promo that adds nothing to the game is terrible for the poker economy. Even the $5 flat rake drains a lot of money out of the game on its own. The jackpot drops are a damn insult.

And I know, the promos are technically EV-neutral, for the most part. They may even become slightly EV+ if there's a progressive jackpot. But this is poker! If I wanted to hemorrhage money to some astronomical longshot progressive jackpot for hours on end, I'd join the slot-machine zombies. And worse, the more money accumulates, the worse it is for the poker economy.

One of the BBJs up here got to over $250,000 a couple years ago, and all I can remember was being disgusted at how much money that represented relative to all the $1/$2 games it got siphoned out of. All of that cash sucked right out of the poker economy, sitting in some escrow account, waiting to be won by a small number of lucky people.

But what happens to it after that? If a guy wins some $500 high-hand promo, you can be pretty sure he'll bring it back to the poker table. But $125,000 goes to the bad-beat loser, something like $70,000 goes to the winning hand, and the rest gets split among the remaining players. Not even getting into the additional taxation this incurs, how many of those guys do you think are going to put those 5- and 6-figure sums back on the felt? Probably none. Maybe a couple thousand dollars will make it back, and the rest will go to fund home purchases, vacations, vehicles, retirements, etc. That's great for the winners, I guess, but it's not good for poker. It's not supposed to be the damn lotto.

So sure, a big BBJ brings in a lot of action, but letting it get absurdly large is bad for everyone, even the cardroom. Promos and jackpots should not become a main focus of a poker game, and they certainly shouldn't be gobbling up $2 out of every pot.

TLDR: Rake sucks, and jackpot drops are almost worse.
 
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Hmm, I very rarely have a donk lead range but a monotone board might be the one to do it on... especially vs an opponent who has already shown some weakness/hesitation with a tiny 3bet.

I don't hate a bet/fold line, I also kind of like a check/raise line depending on his sizing. Probably not putting any money in on the turn.

Monotone boards are really an interesting animal.

Edit: if going for the bet/fold line, I agree with Jim that $20ish is a good amount.
 
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Preflop
Hero UTG ($275) with :ah::qh: opens to $7.
Folds to Villain on BTN ($100) who 3-bets to $15.
Blinds fold, Hero calls.

Flop ($28): :ac::kc::7c:
Action is on Hero, effective stacks are $85. What do we do, and what's our plan for the hand?
I don't think I'm ever folding in this spot, on this flop, against a new player who's fairly active (played and raised several of his last hands), and against a player that only has $100 left in his stack.

I'm checking the flop to the original raiser, though, and if he bets, probably raising all-in on the flop. I'd tread much more lightly if Villain has us covered, but since Villain is a short stack, I'm not folding top pair-top kicker on this board to this Villian, who raised from the Button. There are lots of hands we beat AJ, AJc, ATc, any other Ax, KQc, KJ, QQc, JJc, TTc, that he could continue betting with.
 
Preflop - - - Villain sized his bet too small. Hero is priced in to call but he doesn't have to like it. I don't like a 4-bet bluff vs the button and his short stack. Min-raise preflop often means exactly what we fear, a top 1% preflop hand.

Flop action could quickly render hero's hand into a bluff. Same thing with the turn, a fourth club eviscerates hero's top pair hand.

I see no reason to venture further into this hand quickly. Let's check and see what villain does. I am leaning towards a check/fold.

Hero could consider a number of fancy plays if the stacks were deeper. But they aren't deeper, and villain likely isn't folding any hands better than Hero's holding.

DrStrange
 
First I'm raising bigger PF. 1/2 I'm going at least 10 especially from UTG when my range is going to tend to be a bit stronger.

Flop I'm in the C/C camp. See what peels off on the turn and if it's safe I donk jamming.
 
Hero considers a bet-fold line but decides to let villain keep the lead and elects to check-call.

Preflop
Hero UTG ($275) with :ah::qh: opens to $7.
Folds to Villain on BTN ($100) who 3-bets to $15.
Blinds fold, Hero calls.

Flop ($28): :ac::kc::7c:
Hero checks. Villain thinks for a moment and bets $25. Hero calls.

Turn ($76): :qd:
$60 effective and it's Hero's action.
 
Hero considers a bet-fold line but decides to let villain keep the lead and elects to check-call.

Preflop
Hero UTG ($275) with :ah::qh: opens to $7.
Folds to Villain on BTN ($100) who 3-bets to $15.
Blinds fold, Hero calls.

Flop ($28): :ac::kc::7c:
Hero checks. Villain thinks for a moment and bets $25. Hero calls.

Turn ($76): :qd:
$60 effective and it's Hero's action.
Shove. If he’s got AA, KK or AK shrug and move on, you’re too deep to quit now.

FWIW I’m not calling a pot sized flop bet there on that monotone board, there are almost no run outs you like.
 
Shove. If he’s got AA, KK or AK shrug and move on, you’re too deep to quit now.

FWIW I’m not calling a pot sized flop bet there on that monotone board, there are almost no run outs you like.

Open Jam is a decent option as well, unless it goes check/check you're going to get the max fold equity by open jamming here probably.
 
We are in too deep now to fold with how little is left behind. I don’t want to give him a free card if he has a hand like :ah::jc: or :as::tc: where he now had a gut shut and a flush draw. Jam it in.

The funny thing is the Q does nothing to help our hand really. The only hand we are beating that we weren’t before is A7 and we were never putting that in his min 3 bet range anyways.

But now we are losing to QQ and J10 as well as AA, KK, & AK.

Thankfully he doesn’t have much money left behind or this is a would be a check fold.
 
I do prefer an open shove here I think. Honestly I have no idea where we are at but I expect that villain likely has a made hand and we are most likely beat. I don't think a short stacker min 3 bet player is going to be running a multi street bluff here especially on this type of board. We picked up some full house outs and fold equity with the Q against AA, KK, and AK. Given the stack sizes I think we can also reasonably rep a made flush with an open shove. SPR is too low to fold so we might as well get it in and get the maximum fold equity.
 
If I'm just check-calling the Villian's c-bet on the flop, (and not raising the $60 more on the flop to put him all in), I think I'm just continuing our line, and checking the turn here, too. We've under-repped our hand to this point with the call preflop and on the flop. Give the chance for the button to hang himself, if we have him beat. If we're beat, so be it. Shoving here on the turn might get hands like JJ, TT, or 99, 88 or other pocket pairs to fold, where if they were hands that had 1 club in them, they might have called a raise on the flop.

Very astute observation by @Rhodeman77 that the Q doesn't really improve our hand, (unless up against A7 or K7 on the flop), I wouldn't have thought of that.
 

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