$25 NLHE 6-max: rush, hand planning.

Full Tilt, $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em Cash, Rush, 6 Players

Hero (BB): $52.38 (209.5 bb)
UTG: $41.12 (164.5 bb)
MP: $26.42 (105.7 bb)
CO: $25.35 (101.4 bb)
BTN: $8.68 (34.7 bb)
SB: $46.69 (186.8 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with J 3
4 folds, SB completes, Hero raises to $0.80, SB calls $0.55

Flop: ($1.60) 3 8 J (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $1.10, SB raises to $4.90, Hero??

Our opponent is limping machine. Nothing else to say. Super small sample.

Would you isolate this pre?

What would be your thoughts once we got raised huge? With def stacks i guess i would call him down. We do beat Jx and some overpairs. For me it seemed only value heavy, not much draws that he could play like this, especially with this raise size.

Opinions?

Thanks.

Pity about the sample/lack of info on villain. With top two pair I'd be willing to see turn and river. That flop 2bet... doesn't look like he wants a call. Almost like he is betting 99, 1010 or worse PP. I can't imagine he would be so passive preflop with JJ+, and anyway, even if he is slow playing these, you don't want to see two more streets in case your pairs get counterfeited. He's probably betting this again on the turn heavy as well.

I'd say preempt the turn bet now with a reraise of ~$10 on the flop, with the intention winning it right there and of putting no more money in the pot. You'll end up calling that on the turn anyway and still know little more. If an 8 or J comes on the turn, you are no better off unless he's playing AJ very strong here. You remove AJ by reraising the flop IMHO.

It's tough, but you don't want to play with top and bottom two-pair or bottom two pair in large pots that see rivers.

check pre, call the raise and call down turn likely we do need to fold 3 streets here most of the time unless you think he is capable of multistreet bluffing you here

Ill call here, He might be holding AJ, KJ, QJ, etc. or overpair.
Our hand is so strong that folding is not an option.
He might be bluffing even.

Easy fold. You are either crushed or he has run a great bluff. What made you raise pre? What do you hope to gain? Yes,I know. Punish the limpers, however, that is not a hard and fast rule. Especially in a case like this. Was he likely to fold to your raise? I doubt it. So you have a bigger pot with a really crappy hand. You MIGHT end up with the 4th nut flush draw, and that's almost the best case scenario. You actually end up with the best case, but even that, as he has played it is not great. The most likely hands that he has here are J8, 88, 33, J10, air, JQ, and JK. He may have some poorly played QQ type of hand, but I seriously doubt it, and he is not doing this with pocket 10's or 9's.

You asked about isolating. That makes no sense. It's just you and him. You are already heads up. Just play a crappy hand heads up for a small pot.

Also, you have to consider how many cards help his range that do absolutely nothing for you. If we add in his range 9 10 then we have 7, 8, 9, 10, Q, K and A that have to be considered great cards for his range. Or, over half the deck helps him and we haven't improved.

If he's a limp machine, can he be doing this with QQ+ also as a trap?

I'd re-raise small and look to get it in. You're at least a 2:1 favorite against his range here, and possibly more if you add any air to his range.

John A said:

If he's a limp machine, can he be doing this with QQ+ also as a trap?

I'd re-raise small and look to get it in. You're at least a 2:1 favorite against his range here, and possibly more if you add any air to his range.

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Yeah, I was taking to Ubercroz, and after a severe tongue lashing realized that raising is the best option. I still say no to the raise pre and still think folding is superior to calling. He said he tried to reply but got logged out so I'll let him make his case without stealing his thunder

I myself would call and see a turn card. Your opponent probably knows about c-betting and could be bluff check raising (some opponents would have waited for you to fire another barrel). He could have a jack like QJ, KJ, or AJ. If they wanted to steal the pot, then your opponent would checkraise the flop and lead the turn hoping for you to fold (I do this a lot in heads up matches as a bluff).

Alternatively, raising this is fine as some others have said if you think you will be called with worse and you want to protect your hand against getting counterfeited or outdrawn.

Scrover said:

I myself would call and see a turn card. Your opponent probably knows about c-betting and could be bluff check raising (some opponents would have waited for you to fire another barrel). He could have a jack like QJ, KJ, or AJ. If they wanted to steal the pot, then your opponent would checkraise the flop and lead the turn hoping for you to fold (I do this a lot in heads up matches as a bluff).

Alternatively, raising this is fine as some others have said if you think you will be called with worse and you want to protect your hand against getting counterfeited or outdrawn.

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Calling to seer another card is great if you have a good chance of improving. In this case just calling helps him at least 5 times more often than it helps you. If you continue with the hand you have to charge him for the next card.

So lets address all this stuff one little piece at a time.

Pre-flop: Everyone has folded to us and the SB, a "limping machine" (thought I am suspect of this since you already said you don't really know anything about him). So we are in position on the only other player in the pot. What we want to do is to get as much of his money as we can, with some secondary concerns that maybe we can address later.
If that is the case, then why did you bet pre-flop? If you want to say it was to bluff him, I guess thats okay - but you are in position and he isn't likely to fold. If you were trying to get him to put more money into the pot for value then you have a bad hand, its worse than the average hand. So you can't be doing this for value and you can't be doing it to bluff, because you know he is likely to call (limp machine is probably going to call a single bet).
What you have done is to create a pot that is bigger than the hand you are likely to get. This means that you are creating a bad situation for yourself later, your hand is going to be strong enough to really commit and if he applies pressure you will have a hard decision to make.
The best move, form a hand planning perspective, is to check and see the flop. You can try and take his money when you have more information and he acts before you. No problem. Once you have more information on this guy, then you can start to do clever stuff like betting with a J3. As it is you bet, so now we have to figure out how to manage that. for future reference don't do what you did here again.
What do we think the Villain has? It could be almost anything. like 60% of cards. It could be a pocket pair he is slow playing, it could be suited connectors, it could be a Q7 or a J8, who knows. Our play here has given us no information.


Flop: So now the flop has hit and you have two pair. Hey, this is THE BEST situation you can get for your hand. A flush is not really any better and a set is pretty good, but if they are betting into you then you may be second best. So with this hand you correctly bet, your bizarre gamble paid off. Once you bet he check raises. Now what is he doing this with? Well we don't know. Becuase we don't know anything about this player. It could be a bluff, it could be for value, but it doesn't make much sense. He has limp called/check raised this hand. Given that line I think he thinks he has a "good hand." I don't know what he thinks a good hand is. Is it AK, because this is a pretty thin board, is it QQ and he thinks he has us? Is it 7T and he is trying to "semi-bluff?" We don't know, because we have no useful information. So we have to play this game on level 1 of poker - what is my hand, how good is it relatively, and can it get much better? We have the 5th best hand at this point. And our hand is not likely to improve. There are few instances where something is beating us now and we will draw to improve. Given that is the case, we have to decide what to do.
1: Calling - calling is not a great choice, we don't get any new information and we set ourselves up for another tough choice on the turn. We are not pot committed and may be in a worse situation (rarely a better one) when the next card hits. I would never ever ever ever call here.
2: Folding - this has some merit. We don't really know what this guy is thinking and we have a middle strength hand that is not likely to improve and we don't have so much money in the pot now that we can't fold. You minimize your losses if you lose, but you are throwing away a hand that has value. It is a decent hand and given his range you are likely throwing away the best hand if you fold. I would likely not fold.
3- Raise - your hand is decent and not likely to get better, he may be willing to commit with a worse hand and that is good for us. It also sets us up for an easy decision on the turn. If we bet big and he calls we can pretty much keep going regardless. We make our job simpler by setting things up to make sense. I would make a fairly large sized raise here. Bump it to $12-$15. He may call, and we may lose, but we have a chance of gaining some value. He also may call with some strange draw or just a much worse hand, and then we got him to commit and basically donate us money. Raising I think is the best answer to this problem.

You are probably thinking to yourself, but I don't want to raise big here, this hand isn't that strong! You are kind of right, this hand isn't that strong. THAT is the reason we don't do those silly bets pre-flop, we put ourselves into situations where the only answers are crappy ones. Raising is the best answer in this situation.

The BEST BEST thing to do is not be in this situation. don't bet pre-flop when we have position and no information. Then, we can make more educated and better decisions on the flop.

I think your pre-flop raise is fine. In fact, it's the most ideal play imho. If I ever have someone bad enough to limp into the SB in my games, I'm always raising 4x the BB. I don't care what hand I have. I probably draw the line at 72o, but probably play 82o. If they are fishy and coming into the pot like that, then it's pretty certain you'll out play them post flop with position. And you always want to build a pot in position against a weaker player. Poker 101.

I'm not sure if a raise pre flop is fine. You hit huge flop, two pair. I don't see any escape here, but with these two pair I prefer control the pot. So the flop - if he checks, I bet. If he raises, I call. The turn - also I call. The river - also only call. I don't see overpairs here, but you know better his style and you have some reads on him. Limp with QQ+? - it would be very tricky, but also risky for him, because of situation like that, you can see the flop for free if you want.

John A said:

I think your pre-flop raise is fine. In fact, it's the most ideal play imho. If I ever have someone bad enough to limp into the SB in my games, I'm always raising 4x the BB. I don't care what hand I have. I probably draw the line at 72o, but probably play 82o. If they are fishy and coming into the pot like that, then it's pretty certain you'll out play them post flop with position. And you always want to build a pot in position against a weaker player. Poker 101.

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I think you are 80% wrong.

Poker 101 is not building a pot in position against a weaker player. While it is nice to have when you can, its not the most basic thing.

You want to make sure that you are building a pot commensurate with the hand strength you are likely to have against an unknown player.

We are not using position here to our advantage. Position doesn't mean we get to bet whenever we want without considering what the implications are. Position means we get to have information about what our opponent has done and we get to capitalize on that information.

In this case we have a person who limped, and we have a hand that is likely to be worse than his. While I am not completely against stealing from the BB, I don't think it ideal. We can take his money on the flop more easily than we can pre-flop.

I want to stress again the question of WHY we are betting preflop. If it is to simply take his SB, then wait til the flop - we have more information and he is more likely to fold.

If it is for value then we have to weak of a hand.

If it is to abuse position we are not abusing position, because he is likely to call.

If we know that he is likely to fold his limp then betting is great.

If we know he is likely to fold on the flop after he has called a bet, even better.

We don't know any of that. We just know he limps.

We are playing with a substandard hand against an unknown player and we don't know what anything means.

Play it safe and do the move that is more likely to win until you know more about this guy.

And saying that you are likely to outplay this person is a fools errand, what does that even mean? You can't outplay an unknown player, you can guess and hope that you are guessing correctly. Who knows why they are making the decision they are making and what made them pick it this time. Is he hiding a monster that he hopes to slow play on a later street? Is he a calling station willing to throw away money to see the next card? Is he certain that the BB is trying to bluff him because blind v blind is always some strange contest of manhood?

The point is playing bad hands is not a great answer. And it is not poker 101, playing good hands and using position to beat your opponents is poker 101. Encouraging a learning player to do what you are saying is going to lead to them losing money.