$10 NL HE 6-max: Flopped straight but facing big aggression from super passive player on turn and river

[blueskies]

Game

Hold'em

Game Format

No Limit

Stakes

$.05/$.10

Table Format

6-max (6 seats)

Currency

$

First hand at a table. Villain is on another table I am playing at and he is VERY passive. AF is 0.3.

I get 6c8c on BB. Villain is on my left at UTG and limps. BTN min raises. I call. UTG calls.

9sTc7c flop. Bingo!

I check. I regretted after I checked. On a 3way wet board, should have let out. BTN didn't seem particularly strong. Probably not cbetting. They both checked.

Turn's Qh. I bet 45c into 65c pot. UTG raises me to $2.25. WTF?

Here I am thinking goddam does he have KJ??? It would be great if he had 77 or 99. He's so passive that huge raise is just giant red flags. But with a flush draw, including a gutshot str flush draw I call.

River is 5d. No help. I check.

He bets $4.20 into $5.15 pot. (Actually with rake the pot is less, so the bet is a larger % of adjusted pot, but BOL has stopped posting rake-adjusted pots on their hand history) My heart says fold. I keep asking myself is he open limping with KJ? Normally one would say no and it's more likely a PP. But this guy I was leaning very heavily toward KJ. But at the last second I closed my eyes and called.

How would you play each street differently?

Spoiler

KsJc. 3 outter. Yet another one they played it straight up and I guessed the right hand but still paid them off FML. Even if I did bet the flop he probably would have stayed in the hand.

 

[Aballinamion]

First hand at a table. Villain is on another table I am playing at and he is VERY passive. AF is 0.3.

I get 6c8c on BB. Villain is on my left at UTG and limps. BTN min raises. I call. UTG calls.

9sTc7c flop. Bingo!

I check. I regretted after I checked. On a 3way wet board, should have let out. BTN didn't seem particularly strong. Probably not cbetting. They both checked.

Turn's Qh. I bet 45c into 65c pot. UTG raises me to $2.25. WTF?

Here I am thinking goddam does he have KJ??? It would be great if he had 77 or 99. He's so passive that huge raise is just giant red flags. But with a flush draw, including a gutshot str flush draw I call.

River is 5d. No help. I check.

He bets $4.20 into $5.15 pot. (Actually with rake the pot is less, so the bet is a larger % of adjusted pot, but BOL has stopped posting rake-adjusted pots on their hand history) My heart says fold. I keep asking myself is he open limping with KJ? Normally one would say no and it's more likely a PP. But this guy I was leaning very heavily toward KJ. But at the last second I closed my eyes and called.

How would you play each street differently?

Spoiler

KsJc. 3 outter. Yet another one they played it straight up and I guessed the right hand but still paid them off FML. Even if I did bet the flop he probably would have stayed in the hand.

Preflop is standard to call with a bunch of suited connectors, once we are almost certain that poster from UTG will enter the pot. At these lower limits we are avoiding to call a heads-up pot to play OOP with a broad range, but this seems a god pot odds/implied odds scenario. So, preflop action is okay.
The flop comes like a dream to us, this is the reason we call and we could be leading for value, although our hand doesn’t need to much protection, we haven’t flopped the straight nuts and we haven’t the nut flush draw, only a baby flush of clubs draw, which turns our bet for value on the flop always mandatory, to extract value of top pairs, two pairs, sets and even another straight and flush draws.
The turn isn’t so good for our range, for now BTN in the first place and UTG could’ve completed a better straight. The queen on the turn is one of the worse cards for our range, but even so we could think about extracting value of Qx now, and we still have implied odds for a baby flush on the river.
UTG’s raising is quite fair and large and, as you said, although it could be holding KJ, it also has another hands in its range.
But 99, 77, T9s and T7s should’ve bet on the coordinated flop for protection, not checking to see another bigger straight or a flush of clubs to realize in the turn for a free price.
On the turn we aren’t expecting a bunch of TT and QQ, and hands such as QT, Q9 and Q7 (?) would’ve taken this particular polarized line?
Observe that villain is betting 5 times the value of your bet in a configuration where there are two straights and a flush draw.
One thing we know of very passive players: when they do raise we gotta be very smart for their basic instincts is to call most of times.
Another thing we must pay utmost attention is to the sizing of his bet: polarization, at the micros, coming from a passive player, most of the times means he has the nuts or what villain believes to be the nuts.
The river doesn’t complete anything different, and check fold or check call a small bet seems okay.
As played I would have lead the flop and turn, and if passive villain gives me pot odds to continue to seek my flush (in spite of a bunch of reverse implied odds for we own a baby flush draw), I keep calling to the end.
This is not the case, when I bet river and passive villain comes to the top of my range betting 5x versus our 3/4 bet, I would be very inclined to fold. I could call from time to time for protection and with a river plan to check fold, unless the pricing gets too low for a river calling.

 

[gustav197poker]

This honestly looks like a full ring table rather than 6-max, as play at 6-max isn't usually as relaxed as you describe the preflop sequence.
In general I always recommend not calling with speculative hands when there is already a previous action involving 2 players and hero has no position postflop, but this is a different case so calling pre is a correct decision here.
As played, the flop is great and at the same time not so great, because you have the worst straight possible, although that is not so relevant in this texture. You really are dominated in blockers, so it's an excellent reason to value bet. Being OOP you can take the initiative without hesitation. You won't get much action from a villain who tends to have a passive play profile. And there are enough hands that you could get value from and wick lucky inflate the pot and play the entire stack.
The turn has a relative impact for ranges. Here is the second instance so you can bet. You did it and for me that was your best decision ever. But when V raises 3.4x it's pretty weird coming from him, and even weirder on a MWB. I would think I'm dealing with a pretty tight range here, but folding at that size would be a bit nit given that you have a better draw.
When you decide to actually call, the river it doesn't change much and to be honest, it's a total brick the 5d. So here you can call most of the time and on some special occasion like this where you're quite suspicious of villain, you can make a reasonable exploitative fold.
Greetings.

 

[Station_Master]

Tough hand. Pretty easy call preflop. Flop lead is ok, but I prefer a check anyway looking to check raise and build a pot.

Turn you could check again as a Q will likely hit on of the others and you could x-raise, but leading out is also fine. When you take a big sizing and get raised I would be worried already about KJ with potentially 16 combos available to villain and few other hands where this line makes sense. Obviously a clear call though.

By the river, i think a call is the standard play, however based on your read that villain is super passive you could make an exploitative (and exploitable) fold. He could have a bluff but there arent that many logical ones, AJcc?, um something else with a J? You are really hoping it's just an overplayed set or two pair. I would have a hard time folding a straight in game though.

 

[fundiver199]

Preflop
Standard call.

Flop
I agree, that this would be a decent spot to lead AKA donk bet. Its a very connected board, so if BTN is any sort of player, he is not going to C-bet, unless he connected in some way. But its not that bad to go for a check-raise either. We dont want to be so results oriented, that we regret a line, just because it did not work out this time. Also with a redraw to a small flush there are less bad turn cards for you to worry about, so if you are going to use a mixed strategy, then this particular combo of 86 is the best one to check-raise.

Turn
Once again betting and check-raising both have merits. The raise is of course somewhat worrying, but I still think, you have a very easy call. If it was the preflop raiser, who took this line, it would really smell like KJ, but this guy just naturally checked on the flop, like you also did. So he can have some other hands for value than just KJ (or J8) like two pair or a set. There could even be an argument for 3-betting with intentions to get it in, but calling certainly beats folding.

River
Seems like a fairly straight forward call to me. Unless he is very loose, he likely dont limp J8 preflop, or if he does, then only the suited combos. So realistically you only lose to KJ here, and while he can have all 16 combos of that, we cant put even a passive player on just the nuts. Even if we think, he is never bluffing, he could still have a set or two pair and think, he has the best hand. Limpers are never good players, and bad players sometimes have problems reading boards and understanding their relative hand strength.

Results
Just a standard bad beat / cooler. You actually lost the minimum by not getting it in on the turn.

 

[John A]

Ya, flop is one of those boards you want to bet for sure. Other than that, NH.

 

[puzzlefish]

All other points aside, after you checked the flop to try and trap with the lower straight, what hands do you think will give you action by raising after you bet on the turn into a board that completes a higher straight?

I hate checking flopped lower straights, or even making value bets with them. I jam with them on wet boards because this is exactly what happens, pretty much 80-90% of the time, the board completes the upper straight by the turn or river. I want an ace high flush draw and sets to come along and all other possible combos to fold.

There's a lot to be said about putting your opponent on a range instead of one hand, but there are certain instances where that one hand is the only one that makes sense and you should trust your gut and just not give that hand any more action when you know you're dead in the water.

 

[Aballinamion]

Limpers are never good players, and bad players sometimes have problems reading boards and understanding their relative hand strength.

Your analysis is simply perfect, thanks a lot. And yes, you are totally right, limpers are never good players, but this means that their limping range is also bad?
How would you define a limping range? I’m not trying to provoke, it’s a serious questions because I see players limping even with AK, AQ, sometimes even AA and KK (specially in the tournament freerolls I use to play).
So how can we define a limping range? Never being results oriented but this particular player had limped a medium strong hand into the pot (KJ).
How to deal/identify that? (Both in tournaments where this traps are more common as in micro stakes cash tables).
Thanks in advance!

 

[fundiver199]

So how can we define a limping range?

HUD-data can be a big help. If someone have stats like VPIP 63 / PFR 8, then their limping range is obviously very wide. But if they have stats like VPIP 19 / PFR 4, they are basically playing the same hands as someone with stats like VPIP 19 / PFR 15. They are just playing them in a more passive way. Most limpers also have some kind of randomization in their game. Not because they learned this in some amazing course, but because their actions are often emotionally guided. Sometimes they limp AA or AK to "trap", and other times they raise 87s, because they just lost a big pot, and they are tilted.

So in this hand I would definitely not remove or reduce KJ from an UTG limping range, because thats exactly the kind of hand, passive players often limp. But if the stats are more like 19 / 4 rather than 63 / 8, then I will remove J8 completely. And if they are more like 63 / 8, the player is really bad and more likely to overvalue two pair, perhaps not even noticing, that 3 different straights are possible. Part of OPs question was, if a very low AF of 0,3 could allow him to get away. And the answer to that is no, because it was likely over an insignificantly small sample, which he did not share. And as already stated, even if the opponent is never bluffing, they could be overplaying a worse hand thinking, its for value.