At lease i had a plan

Thanks to many of your comments, i have learned that i need a plan prior to entering a hand. I'm at work so i don't have hand history but i will try to be concise.
Villian 1 34/20 over 50
Villian 2 20/12 over about 25

Villian 1 UTG + 1 raises to .06 (im putting him on any A, PP, Broadway, and maybe suited connectors).
Villian 2 CO smooth calls (Tighter range TT+, AT+, he has shown a couple of good hands )

I am in the big blind with 97 suited. My plan was to check raise any board without a face card. I had seen villian 1 fold to several flop bets so figure he will fold if he doesn't hit. A little concerned about Villian 2 so i will be careful.

Pot .19
Flop is 996

OK so no need to execute plan 1 on to plan 2... check

Villian 1 bets .20
Villian 2 folds.

Now i put Villian 1 on 2 overs or maybe overpair.

So pot is .39 and i bet .50 I'm thinking he will call with a lot of hand i beat and sure enough he smooth calls.

Pot is 1.19
Turn is a 4 so i decide to lead and bet 1.00. He insta shoves.

What now? Snap call? Stop and put a 9 in his range with bigger kicker?
Just want your thought processess and any help on ranges, bet sizing, etc.

just remember when thinking of ranges you can not add hands as you go, only take them away.
if you are giving villian a range preflop of say {22+, A2s+, ATo+, 89s+} then you need to break it down and figure out with which part of his range he continues, with which part he fold and in this case which part he shoves. however, i think this range is too tight considering he is 34/20. 50 hands is not a good sample, but from what you are saying he deffinitely appears to be fishy. Villain 2 seems std and the above range is probably better for him but probabely more like:
{77+,A9s+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,ATo+,KJo+}
Villain 1's range preflop should be more like:
{66+,A4s+,K8s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T9s,A9o+,KTo+,QTo+,JTo}

so on the flop, with which part does villain bet and then call a raise?

this would be easier with a real HH as well, but mostly you are folding this hand preflop. there's no real point to play this here.

Fold pre.

1. any time you hit a flop calling an early position raiser from the blinds you could be setting yourself up to lose a big pot
2. you avoid getting into shitty spots like this where you are playing weak cards out of position. suited one gappers are best played from late position
3. this is 2nl , theres no need to get fancy and try to level your opponents, they're just busy picking their noses, chatting on IM , watching telly and calling when they hit the board. Set mine in the blinds and get the money in which is what UTG+1 could well be doing.
4. try and think about how often you are going to hit the flop hard enough to continue with a hand and win money against the number of times you'll call the raise and have to check fold the flop even if you hit it weakly ...i.e bottom pair. In the long term you will be spewing money


not sure aboutthe ranges you are assigning either. Are they positionally aware or just playing the same cards from any position. As you move upthe overall stats may be the same but positional stats may be the other way round.......i.e CO will be playing looser than 20/12 by only flat calling and UTG+1 may be playing a lot tighter as he's out of position.

Check raising any flop that you think misses villians range may not be the best plan. It's great to think of villians range and that you had noticed his tendency to fold missed flops. That being said, you are essentially bluffing and villians don't like to fold. What was the plan if the c/r got called?

As for UTG+1 range, he could also have any suited A's, maybe suited K's.

As played, I like the flop c/r, since he won't fold big pairs. You don't say if there are any flush draws or is it a rainbow flop?

On the a turn, you donk bet almost pot. Since he shoves, you have to put him on A9s, K9s, 66, KK+, maybe QQ+. There are 3 possible combos of 66.

You don't say what your table image is. What hand does he put you on?

You also don't say how big the stack sizes are and or how much he shoved. I would still snap call this. If you're behind, it's just a cooler, unless you had better reads.

You should download Pokerstove to determine you equity. It's a free program.

Who knows if the ranges are correct, but here is the PokerStove result:

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Board: 9c 9d 6h 4s
Dead:

equity win
Hand 0: 22.036% { QQ+, 66, A9s, K9s }
Hand 1: 77.964% { 97s }

1) At 2NL any plan that involves bluffing your opponent off his hand is a bad one. It's good to be in the habit of asking yourself if they fold often and observe if they do, but at 2NL bluffing should not be part of the plan.

2) Villain 2 preflop range is wrong imo. He will certainly have even the lowest pocket pairs in his range for set mining (assuming 100bb stacks) and he is very unlikely to call a raise with an ace worse than AQ (unless he is adjusting to villain 1)

3) Flop comes and you decide to execute your plan. Mistake. Your plan was to bluff. You hit trips - with trips you should not plan to bluff. I think c/r is correct but NOT because it's what you planned to do. Having a plan is one thing - but you need to adjust the plan every time the information you learn goes outside the scope of the plan instead of continuing to apply the plan in a situation that is not consistent with the type of situation that the plan was designed to be +EV in.

4) When putting villain 1 on a range when he bets you suffer from wishful thinking. You are thinking only about the types of hands he could have that you beat and not the ones that beat you. Any ace was in your assessment of his preflop range. That includes A9. Let's not forget that now. So don't just put him on an overpair.

5) Bet sizing. You say you bet 0.50 - but what does that mean exactly? Pot was 0.19, he bets 0.20, if you raise the call portion puts the intermediate pot at 0.59 and if you raise to 0.50 you raise 0.30 into an intermediate pot of 0.59 - a 1/2 psb raise. Don't think it's bigger than it is. If you raise 0.50 to 0.70 that's a different story. Then you are making a 5/6 psb raise. If he were to have a flush draw or an 87 type hand he might have been justified in calling - hoping that your c/r indicates you are strong enough that if he hits you'll still stack off.

6) "I'm thinking he will call with a lot of hand i beat and sure enough he smooth calls." Do not automatically jump to conclusions and assume that his calling confirms that he has a hand that you beat. Always ask yourself: "Now, what does that mean? Is this consistent with what I thought? Which hands are now more likely to be in his range and which hands are less likely? Does his line make sense in view of what my previous thinking has been or do I need to completely rethink the situation?" If you based on his call assesses that he has a hand that you beat and it turns out that he beats you, you will at this point have made a mistake - for no good reason. The mistake being that you ignore the parts of the range you already put him on that beats you.

Wishful thinking = only thinking about the hands in your opponents range that you beat
MUB (Monsters Under the Bed) = only thinking about the hands in your opponents range that beat you

Don't do either. Always think logically about ALL the hands in your opponents range, whether they beat you or not.

good info erpel...thanks...
I did say in post that i stopped plan 1 and went to plan 2 which was a check raise.

And you are right about ALL HANDS. I think this is a definite leak in my game right now. Putting an opponent on hands that i can beat rather than ALL hands he might have.

The pot was 39 cents so i bet 50 cents.

Your number six is very good. Just because he "did what i expected" doesn't necessarily mean what i wanted it to mean.

I fully understand that i should have folded pre on this hand but i wanted to see if my observations were correct. Had the flop been anything lower than a 9 my original read would probably have worked. Turns out the guy had J9. Dang if i know why he was raising utg+1 with that hand but i noted it and will learn..