Some NLHE low stake scenarios I'm having problems with

Hi everyone, hope I can get some help with some very specific scenarios. I know that posting hands is the way to go, but bear with me, I'm looking at hands for a couple of hours and I'd like to hear from you regarding general scenarios that I'm basicaly having troubles making decisions. Assume villains to be mindless loose passive players.

Scenario 1

I am not the original raiser and I'm in position. I flop a mid pair. Original raiser c-bets and I call. Original raiser checks the turn... what should I do? Take charge?

Scenario 2

I have something between top pair and straight either in the flop or the turn but the board is flushing. I'm betting the pot to get two or more villains out. With one villain, it's a win situation since odds are on me, but how do I handle multiple villains? Shoving? Overbetting? Maybe the solution is to isolate them pre-flop but it seems some have been vacinated against the common moves, even raising 3BB + 1BB per limper.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I stumbled a problem same as yours. At Scenario 1, when original raiser checks the turn ... what can I do next?

The reason you're not getting much response here is because these questions are too generic for a one size fits all type of answer. In fact in poker there really arent many situations that have an "always do this" type of action. One would be to never open limp but even then there are some very extreme circumstances where it might be right to do so.

As mentioned above, there are a lot of factors that you haven't mentioned that are important for deciding the best course of action here. Your reads on this particular oppenent, stack sizes, even table size (at a shorter table the hands that your opponent might have should be different).

But I'll tackle the first to give you an idea. Assuming low stakes, full stacks, average opponent for these levels of something like 22/12 VPIP/PFR, somewhat but not overly positionally aware, not raising from under the gun (where his range of hands might be stronger), continuation bets sometimes but not always, you're probably WA/WB. You have a hand, there's a decent chance that you have the best hand. How likely is it that you can be outdrawn? If you have a J on a QJ3 board there are far less dangerous cards to come than if you have a 6 on a Q63 board.

You don't want to build the pot with a weakish hand unless you think your opponent is likely to pay you of with worse. Is this opponent likely to call you down with his underpair? Or with his A8? If so, then bet.

How aggressive is this particular opponent? Is he likely to check/raise you on the turn, leaving you wondering whether he has top pair or an overpair or is just bluffing?

How weak is this particular opponent? If you bet how likely is it that he'll fold a better second pair hand, or will do so if you bet both the turn and the river? If you have no fold equity then you really have to guess whether your hand is going to be better than his on showdown.


Don't lump all of these situations into the same category without considering the board and your specific opponent. On a non-dangerous board against a somewhat aggressive opponent I'd be likely to check and hope he bluffs the river, but that can get tricky depending on the river card. Against a passive calling station I might be once or even twice, depending on the board. With a very vulnerable pair or on a drawy board I might bet and fold to a raise or fold to a call and a river bet. It all depends.

Thank you for the answers. Although my questions are indeed generic your answers give some food for thought, for instance (and I've noted this on another thread) if I'm taking the right notes.

I'm really to new at this. When I'm looking at board texture, I'm not looking at the villains, when I'm looking at the villains, I'm not looking at the board. I make a very conscient effort to play the player but my mindset and thought process isn't there yet.

Your answers are more helpful than you might have imagined.

in the first situation, I can't think of a way I would get into this situation. If the player is loose passive, you probably shouldn't be calling their preflop raises, since they are going to be raising tight (even though they are loose). So if you are beating their raising range, you should 3bet, and expect to get called by a lot worse. You should fold most (this is too general to say all) hands that you don't 3bet. Additionally, if the player is actually loose passive, and raises pre and then bets the flop, I'm folding right there with middle pair, not calling the flop bet.

These are really good questions and this thread should get an interesting debate going, I'm really busy atm but will come in and give my opinion later

Lots of good info been said here, Try forming a plan for each of your opponents, based on their stats and how you think theyre playing.

Remember a 43/4 raising has a much stronger range than a 14/12, so now we look at the 43/4 and we see how we can exploit him. I think calling raises off these guys with pocket pair hands is fine btw as if we think they have a strong range when we do hit our sets we may get paid off...but calling a raise with something like KJ is just silly if you know their range is much stronger than yours, but i guess most players at the micros just see two pretty looking cards and call and hope they hit something...

but most of the time theyre not raising so we exploit them by isolating when they limp. And we take into consideration things like how often they fold to cbets, if they dont fold to c-bets and are complete loose passives then you wanna isolate with decent hands that can flop well and then value bet relentlessly (until played back at). If on the other hand the 43/4 fish actually folds to a lot of cbets and it appears he only calls when he has a hand we could isolate him with pretty much any two cards as he is only gonna hit the flop a third of the time so we take it down with a cbet.

Other info you can use is stuff like how often they fold to 3bets and call 3bets, how often they c-bet the flop and the turn, but ill let someone else mention them as im pretty busy but looks like could be a good debate.