Full Ring No Limit Poker Forums

So I have $300 in front of me in a $3-5 $200 capped buy-in NL game. An early guy limps and I raise to to $20 with A 5. I get two callers behind me, and the limper. So the pot is roughly $80 and we see 4 3 9 Limper checks, I bet $45 into $80 get one caller behind me, limper raises to $145, $100 to call. I call, other player folds. We take the turn heads up. Pot on the turn is $370, and the early player has roughy $100 left. I have him covered. I'm figuring I'm pot committed and prepared to call his shove, but much to my surprise, he checks on a 8 turn.

I decide free cards are a wonderful thing and I check behind. River is a Q He checks again. Now I'm confused. My A high has some showdown value, and I can't figure him for a fold getting almost 5:1 on a shove, so I check it back. He shows me J 4 for a pair of fours to win.

What position are you in? 9 handed? What are the other players like? What is the villain like? What are the stack sizes? Do you have a good image?
Please don't post the result, it can sway the answers you get?

As it stands and from what I can figure out from what you have given.
Fold pre.
Flop, bet fold or check fold. No one is deep and playing live, you are basically playing show down poker. Consider the raise an all-in when someone is that short, they are never folding if you shove. I dislike the call, you are drawing to the flush and MAYBE an A is clean (if the guy doesn't have a set or 2 pair)
Turn, you made it this far, shove to get any fold equity you have and you are getting great odds to hit your draw. You are right that you have to call if he shoves.
The hand then checks down (which is fortunate for you).

What did you think he had?

I think we have very different styles, because I can't find myself agreeeing with anything you say. Against an open limping range that includes such hands as Jx suited, A5 suited is showing a profit. The isolation raise was fine. On that flop, I have an equity monster: 9 flush outs, 3 wheel outs, and 3 more Ace outs. Against the nuts, I'm only a 2:1 dog. The question isn't whether to fold, but how to maximize value.

On the turn, no one is folding. So there is precisely zero fold equity on the turn. The river I might have some fold equity, but not the turn. I guess my question here is if there was any line I could take against this player (a loose passive old man) to get him to fold his equity share on the river, but I don't see how you guys could know that. So I guess I withdraw the question. Sorry for wasting your time.

I overlooked the wheel outs.
If you have such a monster, why call the flop. Why not shove? There is basically no money left behind.

I am fine with the open if you are in LP, but you haven't said what the people behind you are like. Iso raising when you have people behind that will likely call is not iso raising, it is simply inflating the pot with a hand that can easily be dominated.

Also, did you know that there was a limping range that consisted of Jx suited? That wasn't mentioned in the OP

At this limit of live game, I'm assuming that an open limp is somewhere in the top 50% range. They check fold a lot of flops and show up on the river with some real stinky cheese. I didn't shove the flop because there's a player behind me and I'm inviting him to overcall.

Is this at the commerce?

If these players are fit/fold types then raising preflop is fine. If they are not, then I think that the stacks are not deep enough to raise A5s.
With regards to the way you played the hand postflop, there is not much you can do after he check/raises. You have no fold equity on the flop or turn (given the stack sizes) and I'm not sure you have much fold equity on the river given his range ( although in retrospect he would have most likely folded to an all in bet on the river ( but that is results oriented))

You guys are focused on fold equity but does that really matter here?

OP, we should be told effective stacks at the beginning since that changes pretty much everything. Also, don't put results in. What you need to do here is put villain on a range and get out pokerstove.

Is this at the commerce?

Hollywood Park and I posted the stacks in the original thread.

And I'm all for stoving his range, but I don't know that you get much out of it. The flop is an obvious call. The turn play seems an obvious check back, although I could be wrong. The river is where the real decision is, and I don't know that stove is much help here.

Pre is ok if you were on the BU (or at a large stretch the CO), but otherwise pretty awful. The thing is, you can't really think of it as an ISO raise at this table because everyone is so loose - you're going to get called by a bunch of other players, and A5s plays like sh1t when you have no fold equity otf (you generally won't have much at this table)

The flop bet is okish - you can't really go wrong with this much equity, but at the same time, with this stack-to-pot ratio, I feel like you're better off just trying check down the flop and hit, or if someone bets check/raise all in.

As played, I'd just shove the flop when he c/r. You're not often getting a free river, and it would suck heavily if he folded when you hit your flush and shoved (whereas you always have to call the turn if he shoves, which is +EV for him if he has some kind of made hand).

Against a preflop range of 3 other players with ranges of 40%, 20% and 25%, I'm a dog by a couple of percentage points.
Personally, I feel that's a tad inaccurate, because these players are going to reraise Ak, and JJ+, so those hands are not in their range when we see the flop. That's also assuming zero fold equity.

I feel NL players favor small PP but dislike suited Aces a bit too much. Preflop it's roughly the same, on the flop, you can play fit or fold with both hands. Suited Aces will hit more flops, but not as hard. There will be times when you make a flush or the wheel and they have a set and you're getting value. There will be times when you spike an unimproved pair of Aces and win, and it's a lot easier to determine where you are against unsophisticated players.

I chalk it up to stylistic differences. I like suited Aces and don't much care for small PPs. Also, when your opponents have such random trash as J4 suited, A5 suited not only has more equity (60/40 assuming different suits) than 33, but it's much easier to continue applying pressure if you miss the board.

I like suited aces as well, but they play much better when deep.