Mid/High Stakes Limit Hold'em Poker Forums

im dealt Q8 in the bb in a good online 15-30 6 max game. utg limps. he is extremely loose, randomly aggressive. sb is more unknown to me, also loose, but possibly more reasonable than utg (which is not saying much). utg and i have been involved in a lot of jousting lately. i check my option and 3 of us see this flop:

T84

sb bets, i raise, utg calls two cold, sb 3 bets, i call, utg calls.

the turn is the 3

sb donk checks. i decide he is on a draw and that utg will surely bet, and that im ahead of most of his range. so i check, utg bets, sb calls, i c/r, they both call.

the river is K

sb checks, i bet.

comments?

i like your thought process and your play very much

nh imo

I prob bet the turn personally, a free card would suck but I agree that you are ahead here often enough to c/r.

Meh, i think UTG has a pair here, maybe 10x.

I dont think the K changes much so If you are ahead on the turn you are ahead now but i guess there maybe more value from inducing. I think SB is usually always beat and has a missed draw but I do think.

I think there is prob thin value in betting here, UTG's range is prob wide enough. I really dont know..

I lead the turn as well - if UTG has J9 or 97 you miss a lot of value in a multiway pot when he checks behind. Presumably the earlier history led you to believe that UTG would fire the turn with this entire range (bet when checked to type?). Otherwise this is just horrible FPS.

I think you played it super great.

Flop raise is bad.

I'd rather c and see river to be honest

Why is flop raise bad? Theres a ton of draws that villain can have, flushdraws, 67, 79, j9, and he`ll never fold any of those until the river, which he might even bluff with if we let him. Also theres alot of worse 8s he can have that he`ll also never fold, plus a few pocket pairs. People who limp utg dont usually fold too many made hands.

a) tiny pot. Protection isnt very important. Of course if we have the best hand its nice to get an extra bet from those hands you mention

b) When we dont have the best hand we want to draw as cheaply as possible and we dont want to knock out third guy. We also dont want to get 3-bet and get put in an awful spot with 2nd pair

c) Out of UTG's entire range the ones you mention is a clear minority. Ie the a priori probability he has those hands is way less than 50%


So yes! If we could see the cards and we knew we had the best hand and UTG had one of those hands you mention we would wanna raise. But if UTG didnt have one of those hands. If he had som Qx, two overcards, Ax, 4x we could argue for a call to hope for a bad over call - even if we had the best hand . Finally if we could see SB having a draw or cheese and UTG having nothing like K2s or whatever it would be a VERY easy call - even if we had the best hand .

So its too much of a parlay for the exact hands to be such we wanna raise. Unless we have the best hand AND UTG has one of those hands we want to raise against we dont wanna raise. The a priori prob that is the case is quite small.

Raising here is a basic mistake I see pretty much everybody do. People need to adjust to the smaller pot and the wider ranges. Its not a big mistake EV wise but its a big mistake form a GT pow or Poker theory pow. Its bad poker. Make the pot raised PF and make SBs bet a cbet and its a no brainer raise. Limped pot and a bet OOP that means a lot more than a cbet = dont do dumb things by trying to protect a hand that doenst need protection very often in a tiny pot where we'd love for UTG to make bad overcalls.

Oink's explanation for not raising the flop seems pretty reasonable to me. Can anyone put up a good argument why they think raising the flop is the correct play.