I don't really like the line you took in this hand for a couple of reasons. There really is no reason to check raise the turn, but when you do and he calls you are basically shutting down.  Your jam on the river is awful as villain is never calling with worse in this spot.  The only hand that you beat is A10.  I like this line much better… with an open, a flat, and then pokesaces making it 250, when it comes to me I raise to about 775 here.  If pokesaces flats, I'm more than likely getting it in on this flop.  If he re-raises you can fold as you are almost always crushed in this spot.  Although it does depend on villain's image and HUD stats.  You could flat pre but you don't really want to take a flop OOP with 3 other players.  If you decide to flat I think you check/raise flop and then re-evaulate.  Best line is to raise pre and then you more than likely get it in on the flop imo.

I think when you got someone raising so small like that in a MW pot they are usually some fish.  So the 250 raise to me, really just sets up a raise PF from you that looks even stronger and can help you just take it down pre.  It would be a worse situation I think if they flatted too and then it got to you… then it's gonna look like a steal moreseo from you when you raise, but this silly 250 raise actually sets you up a little better to raise (imo).  Then considering the fish will flat/fold a lot of flops, you'll win there, or when they do have a hand like A10 they'll be paying you off on flop anyway.

This is a really interesting hand, because both you and villain take very strange lines lol. 

Preflop I think calling is okay, because villain's min-3bet is weird and if we 4bet to ~800 we could still get more than one caller which we don't want. However, if we're calling preflop multiway it's because we're controlling the size of the pot, which means we have to be treading carefully postflop. 4betting is also perfectly fine if we don't like playing OOP multiway (which we shouldn't) but do also bear in mind that we could be doing exactly that in a BIGGER pot if villains are passive or our 4bet is too small.

On the flop I think it's an easy lead for ~700-800, and stack off to almost any HU action, but when we check it becomes a lot more tricky. I think c/r is better than c/c because we get rid of the randoms and their annoying 200 chip bets, and we shovel more chips in while ahead obviously. On the turn, if we played flop appropriately we'd have an easy jam here, and as played we still have an easy jam here…but we check, and once we do that we really should just be shoving as neither of us will have many chips left on the river anyway.

Thanks guys. I understand JLUDS line here and see where I made the mistake. I also see where FKCoolers is getting at to being OP. It is difficult to play OP without nuts. The line I took warranted a bit of trickiness to the whole situation and played the line badly. I see that 775 raise could put me in a better position OP to see where I really was in the hand and wouldn't had to take that awful jam.

So BB and SB play OP spots in general…It is OP play that invokes having to think of your relative stack to your villian(s), thus really making sure you get where you are on earlier streets making bets to control the pot to see where you are. This also means that you are going to have to pay more to the pot to get that information which means you have to have more fold equity in the play.

I appreciate more insight on this for when I study my game, I bomb the blinds in my play. Any videos or podcasts that discuss the blinds are helpful. I usually play extremely tight in the blinds and try not to get myself in the spot of this hand in the forum. I was waiting to get a hand in here so it can involk a little discussion on blind play or OP play. Thank TPE Nation.

FkCoolers said:

JLUDEOBV said:

I don't really like the line you took in this hand for a couple of reasons. There really is no reason to check raise the turn, but when you do and he calls you are basically shutting down.  Your jam on the river is awful as villain is never calling with worse in this spot.  The only hand that you beat is A10.  I like this line much better… with an open, a flat, and then pokesaces making it 250, when it comes to me I raise to about 775 here.  If pokesaces flats, I'm more than likely getting it in on this flop.  If he re-raises you can fold as you are almost always crushed in this spot.  Although it does depend on villain's image and HUD stats.  You could flat pre but you don't really want to take a flop OOP with 3 other players.  If you decide to flat I think you check/raise flop and then re-evaulate.  Best line is to raise pre and then you more than likely get it in on the flop imo.

Nice. Yeah, totally agree. Any time you have a hand OOP you basically want to be creating the smallest SPR possible because playing 3 streets profitably OOP without the nuts or close to the nuts is not easy to do.

I think I make it even bigger than that preflop. I make it like 995. They're not folding dominated aces, they'll still possibly setmine even though it's an atrocious play on their part, and you want to set up a favorable SPR like Coolers said. AK is the type of hand that's going to flop TPTK. You want a small SPR if possible.

As played, I definitely CRAI on flop. You can get called by lots of weaker aces. If you check/raise small you're committing to the pot anyway so just check/shove.