So much for 3 being my lucky number

shakinaces

Before reading, please don't remind me of basic rule of poker no#7: never get it all in during a limped pot. I know, I've metaphorically slapped myself for breaking it.

I mostly would like to hear comments on my thought process through the hand so that I can try and learn. I seem to end up facing huge variance from the blinds in limped pots, positive and negative, which I'm not sure is 'right'.

I've not played a huge amount with the villain in the hand, but they rarely seemed to limp. I figured that this put them more in the suited cards or PP.

Didn't raise myself pre because I didn't really want to be out of position with a small PP when I'm almost always going to be check/folding on a flop with 3 overs and possible draws.

Donked out figuring that it was unlikely there were any aces or queens out there, so it was likely to get checked  around, but might get some calls from people getting sticky with a medium PP.

Took the raise to be one of two things, a suited Ax that was happy to take the pot down there or suited cards that were semi-bluff raising / building a pot for if they hit.

On that basis I was happier to call than 3b because I didn't want to fold out the draws and also hoped the BB may come along for the ride and build me a bigger pot.

It was similar thinking on the turn, most villains I see at the level I play are more likely to check behind with a draw so I wanted to put a reasonable bet in that could see them call to see a river with bad odds.

Then the big raise - the PP option did re-enter my head at this point, namely 66 (raised the flop thinking I couldn't have an A or Q as I only made up, then got lucky on turn) or it was a flush draw and had decided to go with it (maybe 45d)... at a an absolute push maybe something really funky like 63 that didn't want to give me the odds to chase a draw.

I think fold or all-in are my only two options here. Assume that call is never right. Didn't really want to take the all-in option (see opening line), but struggle to see that villain has one of the 3 hands which beat me enough of the time to fold?

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
shakinaces	Small blind		£0.05	£0.05	£13.73
BB	Big blind		£0.10	£0.15	£3.03
	Your hole cards	3 3
UTG	Fold
villain	Call		£0.10	£0.25	£22.46
button	Fold
shakinaces	Call		£0.05	£0.30	£13.68
BB	Check
Flop
		Q A 3
shakinaces	Bet		£0.30	£0.60	£13.38
BB	Call		£0.30	£0.90	£2.73
Villain	Raise		£1.20	£2.10	£21.26
shakinaces	Call		£0.90	£3.00	£12.48
BB	Fold
Turn
		6
shakinaces	Bet		£2.00	£5.00	£10.48
villain	Raise		£9.00	£14.00	£12.26
shakinaces	All-in		£10.48	£24.48	£0.00
villain	Call		£3.48	£27.96	£8.78

Slipwater

Hey shaky!

It certainly seems like a strange line for him to take. I'm not sure why he would raise a flop bet, on that board, with any holding he only flat-called pre with. Of course, a lot of low-limit players will limp in with A3 or Q3, so it is perfectly possible that when they hit two pair they will think it's the world here. He may have a flush draw, but not sure he would be raising in that instance. If it was me I would be happy to just call there.

The off-suit 6 on the turn does nothing to lessen the power of your hand, in my opinion, and (presumably) doesn't make his hand any better either. There are no straights out there, and he will not have pocket queens or aces.

I think you're good here, so yeah - all-in. His calling of the all-in is a bit, well.... overzealous, would perhaps be appropriate here.

PS - I don't think pocket 6s raises a flop of AQ3, when you have bet out. Possible, of course, but unlikely.

gazza127

Played it perfect IMO.

FWIW im not raising preflop either.  You want more people in the pot for when you do flop the set.

Yep. I play it exactly the same.

BorinLoner

I don't think you played it perfectly at all. I hate the donk-bet on the turn and I think you defied the logic of calling the flop raise by betting out. It seems as though you were taking decisions in isolation rather than following through on your reasons for calling the flop raise.

Ignore the idea that we shouldn't play for stacks in limped pots. That doesn't apply when we have the effective nuts, as we do on this flop.


Anyway, from the start: I'd personally be raising pre-flop.

When the villain limps, we're not giving him a strong range, in all likelihood. We may be out of position but we rep a stronger range than him when we raise. I think we can just raise and take the pot down pre-flop or on good flops with a c-bet a lot of the time. Why would we need to check-fold if we had the betting lead versus a weak range? How would you play AK/AQ/AJ type hands in the small blind facing one limper?

Anyway, many people will limp and it's probably not bad. I think there are better arguments for raising but it's not a big problem, I suppose.


On the flop, we're not donking out because it's a limped pot - there is no aggressor to check to. The sizing probably isn't brilliant because full-pot always looks like someone happy with their hand. We do want to build the pot, but I'd just suggest betting a little less and make it look like you've thought about it rather than just clicked a button.

I'd probably 3-bet the flop. We do want to play for stacks with the deepstacked villain and it's unlikely that he's raising an Ace or draw intending to fold. Let him put more money in.

This is where I don't like your logic, though: You call because you want to keep villain's draws in the hand... but then you donk out fairly big on the turn, after the draws have missed and the villain's equity holding any of those has been halved. If we think he's putting more money in on the turn with a draw, he's definitely putting more in on the flop, too. If we didn't think he was going to put more in with a draw on the flop, he's doubly unlikely to put more in having missed the turn.

You see why I think it looks like you were playing each street in isolation?

Anyway, when the villain wants to get it in on the turn we should be running around the room. Snap-get-it-in and vomit on the keyboard if he limped QQ or AA or raised the flop with 66. We have the effective nuts here as we can't expect him to have limped those big hands or continued post-flop with 66.

We'd need to have serious suspicions that this is how villain plays their big pre-flop hands, out of fear of just stealing the blinds if they raise, in order to even consider folding. Even then, we shouldn't fold unless we know that the villain doesn't also overplay his two-pair hands or draws. I don't think we should ever be folding sets to this action, 140BB deep without being able to see into our opponent's soul.

shakinaces

Thanks for the replies Slip/Gazza.

Thanks for the comprehensive response BL.

I do get what you mean about not having a plan for every street and playing each in isolation. This is something I know that I'm always guilty of and, I suppose, a big reason I've not got the skill to play any higher than NL10. Hopefully walking back through hands can help to develop a fix for this.

Looking back at it and taking the time to play with pokerstove it should have probably been a 3-bet on the flop with a view to getting it all in there and the rest of the play becomes irrelavent.  I think I just had a rush of blood to the head on the turn, fearing I may end up losing the value and letting them draw a flush for free... but you are right, if they are bumping it up on the flop they are probably the sort of player to bet again on the turn (most of the time).

I'm not sure about the raise pre though - most limpers seem to be committed to seeing a flop so I think the time I take it down pre are minimal. Then I'm playing OOP in the knowledge I'll see 3 overs most times and not have really narrowed down the villain range any more than having limped. Say I raise to 40p, pot on flop is 90p (assume BB folds), I miss completely, c-bet 60p and get called half the time (any pair on flop / any mid PP / any potential draw) - I've now done 10% of my stack and have to check/fold.

From playing on a site that allowed me to track my own results, this approach always seemed to be a big leak in my play with all these small pairs showing a big loss where I was playing them from the blinds/utg - that made me think this would always be a negative line to take. In truth, I'd wonder whether these sort of hands should just be auto-mucked and limping / raising are both losing plays.

Just my thoughts though - appreciate this may be one of the errors that remain in my play, converting from full ring to six-max.

BorinLoner

Regarding whether to raise pre-flop:

It does depend a lot on how we're going to play different flop textures. However, we know that villain's likely limping range doesn't include strong hands like AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK, etc. We also know that limp-callers tend to play pretty face-up post flop and will miss the flop 2/3 times.

Now, it might be unlikely that we'll get the villain to fold pre-flop but when we raise, we maintain the possibility that AA, KK, QQ, etc. are in our range, especially since we're raising out of position. That means a c-bet is much more likely to get through than if we limp behind pre-flop and then lead out, trying to rep a strong hand.

We don't always need to c-bet, either. If the flop comes something sopping wet like 9TJ or similar, we mustn't c-bet. We know it's very likely that our opponent has hit that in some form or another and we have little chance of improving. Just give up, no problems.

If the flop comes 924 or something similar to that, though, we know that we can definitely c-bet profitably. We're likely to get a very honest answer from our opponent and it's a flop that's unlikely to have improved his hand. We'll get a c-bet through on this flop a huge proportion of the time and, even better, because it's such a dry flop we wouldn't need to c-bet very big. We could bet less than half-pot on this flop without it seeming weak because that's what we'd do if we had AA on this flop.

So we can definitely raise pre-flop profitably.


The only question is whether that's more profitable than just calling and looking to set-mine. My answer to that is that our implied odds for set-mining are actually really poor. We know the villain's range is weak, so even if we hit our set we're unlikely to find him holding anything strong enough to pay us off big. We're also out of position, which makes it doubly difficult to get value. The big blind's checking range will also be very weak, so we're unlikely to win much more if we just make-up from the small blind.

The saving grace of set-mining by making-up from the small blind is, of course, that we're getting a discount on the price of the call. Our pot odds are already 5:1 if the big blind just checks behind, so we don't need to make a huge amount more post-flop to make the set-mine +EV. That's why I think it's not bad to set-mine here, I just think that raising is more +EV.