PAHWM: 54s in HJ, Button Straddle

Okay so we never do play a hand with me here, and I'm posting a live hand in the BC, so I'm doing a few things wrong right off the bat, but I thought this would be a fun hand.

Basically, instead of posting an entire hand history for analysis, I'm gonna post action-by-action so there'll be discussion for each action as we go along, which will make it feel a bit like we're all playing the hand.

The table

$1/2NL: Don't let that intimidate you; it plays worse than 10nl. I have $360.

I've only been here a few orbits, but basically the Button has been auto-straddling (putting in 2bb's before the dealer cuts the deck, so action starts with the player to his direct left, and then he gets to act last preflop, regardless of position; postflop action stays the same). He's clearly there to gamble and doesn't want to miss out on any flop action ever (has been pretty much auto-calling raises as high as $16-$18 as well when people try to iso him), but he's not drunk or way out of hand postflop or anything. He has me covered.

This has made the table dynamics pretty splashy in general with medium-sized pots happening constantly and large pots happening more frequently than usual.

Player to my direct left (CO) is a middle aged asian lady who's pretty nitty. Like she hasn't even limped much as far as I've seen. She has close to $300.

MP is a young flashy dresser (studs in each ear, Beats by Dre headphones, designer polo). He seemed like the type who might be at least a little taggy, until I saw him play for a few orbits. He probably opens more than the usual live player, but he's playing like 40/10 and not folding to isos. Earlier I iso'ed him with 54o in an earlier hand, cbet a KK9r flop, checked back and turn 5 and vbet a river 5. He steamed pretty bad about that, talked to the player next to him at great length about how terrible I am (not meaning for me to hear, necessarily) and all that fun stuff. Generally steamed way more than I'd expect from someone whose jeans are worth more than the pot he lost. He has ~$250.

I have no reads on BB; I'll assume standard middle-aged live player as of now. He has close to 200 in chips.

Preflop

Hero is dealt in the HJ.

Button straddles, SB folds, BB limps, folds to MP who limps, action is on hero with the nitty asian and gambling straddler left to act before we see a flop.

I limp.

We expect the nitty asian lady to fold a lot regardless of whether we limp or raise.

Our pot odds are fantastic and from what you said I gather that the BTN is reasonably passive and isn't going to be raising it up very often.

The reason I dislike a raise is because BB is unknown so we don't know how he reacts to raises and he will be getting decent pot odds to continue because the button won't be folding to a raise and MP also isn't likely to fold even if BTN & BB fold. There is also the chance that MP is tilting so if we raise and BTN & BB fold he could very well 4bet us with a very large part of his range and I don't like playing 45s HU when we don't really have any fold equity and are more likely to be behind his bluffs.

Good reads / descriptions.

I love the Mississippi straddle. I'm sure it's still -EV, though there have to be some significant merits to acting last pre and having position the rest of the way. I don't know how to estimate the EV of that situation, but I would never do a regular straddle, but would contemplate a Mississippi if I wanted to liven it up.

As for the hand.. in your description you say nitty asian lady is HJ but now Hero is HJ?

If the table has been peeling raises pre and giving respect to cbets, I would raise pre. It doesn't sound like that though and it doesn't sound like nitty asian lady is raising much and it doesn't sound like button is really iso'ing after limps? In which case I would feel ok about limping behind sometimes, but if BTN is iso'ing I'll just raise myself rather than limp/call.

Limp behind or raise to $14-15 pending my above scenarios.

45s doesn't play very well multiway and needs position. Risk-reward for making it $22 isn't quite there and not much point to bloat the pot oop since straddler isn't complete retard. I'd say fold, but because we've sat so long waiting for a hand that's both suited AND connected, let's limp. All villains probably suck at poker anyways (skipped reads tl;dr at this point).

Originally Posted by griffey24

I love the Mississippi straddle. I'm sure it's still -EV, though there have to be some significant merits to acting last pre and having position the rest of the way. I don't know how to estimate the EV of that situation, but I would never do a regular straddle, but would contemplate a Mississippi if I wanted to liven it up.

Fixed the HJ thing.

As for Mississippi straddle, getting position on the blinds isn't really THAT valuable live. In raised pots, they never 3b without a very good hand, and in limped pots, they're in auto complete/check option mode.

I don't think finding out whether the blinds have aces or not before we commit money is worth the straddle, especially because we're not finding out before we commit money; we actually have to be first to commit money. Also, what's awesome about having the button in 1/2NL is that you're generally 150bb's+ deep against a few of the players at the table, pots are usually multi-way, everyone sucks, so you're put in a ton of massive eV situations. Straddling basically turns it into a 1-2-4 game, which cuts into stack depth, which given your position and the skill level at the game, can be a huge advantage.

So even if a not-so-bad scenario happens, like you have K7s and it limps to you on the straddle, it woulda been all the better if you coulda had K7s and had it limp to you for $2 'cause now you have the option of risking half as much to get surely more than half the reward, or you can iso with more behind to own whoever limp/calls.

But I'm open to discussion on this one.

button is gonna defend his straddle like every time and the limpers are gonna come with, possibly one or both the blinds too, so I don't see much point in raising here, unless the table dynamic is different from the one i'm imagining.

the table dynamic i'm imagining results in us having 5-hi oop in a multiway bloated pot, fwiw

Hero limps.

Believe it or not, this is kind of a limp or fold situation. Since the BU doesn't fold to raises, there is no option that allows us to steal the button, and we're usually going to end up in MP of a bloated pot multiway with 5-high and a tainted image. I'd rather just keep the SPR low and accept my status as second-to-last to act postflop.

Even if button iso's a lot, I'm not raising here for the reasons already listed. I'm either folding, or MAYBE if I have a clean enough 3b'ing image and BU is iso'ing exploitably wide, I'll l/rr for a large amount, given that my relative position will be great (there'll likely be a fair amount of dead money in the pot by the time it gets back to me) and my hand will play okay postflop against the strong continuing ranges. But I likely just fold.

I'm actually surprised there weren't more proponents of folding because I think this is pretty marginal, but P4s said it best:

Originally Posted by PocketFours

I'd say fold, but because we've sat so long waiting for a hand that's both suited AND connected, let's limp. All villains probably suck at poker anyways (skipped reads tl;dr at this point).

Onto the next action.

The table:

$1/2NL: I have $360.

I've only been here a few orbits, but basically the Button has been auto-straddling (putting in 2bb's before the dealer cuts the deck, so action starts with the player to his direct left, and then he gets to act last preflop, regardless of position; postflop action stays the same). He's clearly there to gamble and doesn't want to miss out on any flop action ever (has been pretty much auto-calling raises as high as $16-$18 as well when people try to iso him), but he's not drunk or way out of hand postflop or anything. He has me covered.

This has made the table dynamics pretty splashy in general with medium-sized pots happening constantly and large pots happening more frequently than usual.

MP is a young flashy dresser (studs in each ear, Beats by Dre headphones, designer polo). He seemed like the type who might be at least a little taggy, until I saw him play for a few orbits. He probably opens more than the usual live player, but he's playing like 40/10 and not folding to isos. Earlier I iso'ed him with 54o in an earlier hand, cbet a KK9r flop, checked back and turn 5 and vbet a river 5. He steamed pretty bad about that, talked to the player next to him at great length about how terrible I am (not meaning for me to hear, necessarily) and all that fun stuff. Generally steamed way more than I'd expect from someone whose jeans are worth more than the pot he lost. He has ~$250.

I have no reads on BB; I'll assume standard middle-aged live player as of now. He has close to 200 in chips.



Preflop

Hero is dealt in the HJ.

Button straddles, SB folds, BB limps, 2 folds, MP limps, Hero limps for $4, CO folds, Button checks


Flop ($16)



Checks to Hero with gambling straddler left to act.

i bet $12

Don't mind if I do.

The table:

$1/2NL: I have $360.

I've only been here a few orbits, but basically the Button has been auto-straddling (putting in 2bb's before the dealer cuts the deck, so action starts with the player to his direct left, and then he gets to act last preflop, regardless of position; postflop action stays the same). He's clearly there to gamble and doesn't want to miss out on any flop action ever (has been pretty much auto-calling raises as high as $16-$18 as well when people try to iso him), but he's not drunk or way out of hand postflop or anything. He has me covered.

This has made the table dynamics pretty splashy in general with medium-sized pots happening constantly and large pots happening more frequently than usual.

MP is a young flashy dresser (studs in each ear, Beats by Dre headphones, designer polo). He seemed like the type who might be at least a little taggy, until I saw him play for a few orbits. He probably opens more than the usual live player, but he's playing like 40/10 and not folding to isos. Earlier I iso'ed him with 54o in an earlier hand, cbet a KK9r flop, checked back and turn 5 and vbet a river 5. He steamed pretty bad about that, talked to the player next to him at great length about how terrible I am (not meaning for me to hear, necessarily) and all that fun stuff. Generally steamed way more than I'd expect from someone whose jeans are worth more than the pot he lost. He has ~$250.

I have no reads on BB; I'll assume standard middle-aged live player as of now. He has close to 200 in chips.



Preflop

Hero is dealt in the HJ.

Button straddles, SB folds, BB limps, 2 folds, MP limps, Hero limps for $4, CO folds, Button checks


Flop ($16)



Hero bets $12, BU Raises to $35 (normal timing, didn't think about it much), BB folds, MP folds, Hero's ($344) turn to act with $23 to call.

Does btn raise FD's? Is he the type to raise Tx here?

Call and lead a lot of turns.

Originally Posted by griffey24

Does btn raise FD's? Is he the type to raise Tx here?

We don't exactly have a 1,000 hand sample against villain or anything, so all I can really say is that he hasn't raised postflop yet. My general experience at 1/2NL is that I need a reason to think that they might raise cbets with draws, like they're young or asian or disappointed there are no seats available at 2/5 or playing for stacks any time they have an excuse to, etc. As far as I can tell at this point, this guy wants to see flops, see cards, see showdowns, etc, but he's not scraping tooth and nail for every pot.

Based on all this, my best guess is that he's someone who would rather play draws passively, especially with 2 players left behind to string along (if he even looks at it like that; hell maybe he's dumb enough to think he's supposed to ISO when he has a draw, lol), but I am VERY open to changing my perspective on it. It takes a really long time to get acclimated to game style at these games, so different perspectives from people who've played these games is very very very helpful.

As for Tx, that's hard to say. Again, I'm yet to see him raise postflop, but it's a small sample size, and if he loves his hand, thinks I'm an idiot and wants to protect against draws (especially with 2 players left to act), I think it's very possible. I tend to see players raise bigger when they're protecting, but that's not a hard-and-fast tendency.

Well В соответствии с пользовательским соглашением редакция не несет ответственности за содержание материалов новости, статьи, фото, видео, комментарии, которые размещают пользователи. Ошибки есть и будут у всех. стандартные матрасы to you too, you twat.

Are you OK surviva? Spouting Russian to yourself...bit odd

i'd call the flop with stacks this deep. we have 6 nut outs, and will pick up a well-disguised FD on ~1/4 of turns. just don't convince yourself he's bluffing is he goes crazy on a spade later in the hand and i imagine we would have adequate implied odds to see one more. 3betting here sucks imo because i doubt he has very many pure bluffs. which leaves semi bluffs (spade draws) and perceived nut hands. that range crushes our five-high and is very unlikely to fold this early in the hand

The table:

$1/2NL: I have $360.

I've only been here a few orbits, but basically the Button has been auto-straddling (putting in 2bb's before the dealer cuts the deck, so action starts with the player to his direct left, and then he gets to act last preflop, regardless of position; postflop action stays the same). He's clearly there to gamble and doesn't want to miss out on any flop action ever (has been pretty much auto-calling raises as high as $16-$18 as well when people try to iso him), but he's not drunk or way out of hand postflop or anything. He has me covered.

This has made the table dynamics pretty splashy in general with medium-sized pots happening constantly and large pots happening more frequently than usual.

MP is a young flashy dresser (studs in each ear, Beats by Dre headphones, designer polo). He seemed like the type who might be at least a little taggy, until I saw him play for a few orbits. He probably opens more than the usual live player, but he's playing like 40/10 and not folding to isos. Earlier I iso'ed him with 54o in an earlier hand, cbet a KK9r flop, checked back and turn 5 and vbet a river 5. He steamed pretty bad about that, talked to the player next to him at great length about how terrible I am (not meaning for me to hear, necessarily) and all that fun stuff. Generally steamed way more than I'd expect from someone whose jeans are worth more than the pot he lost. He has ~$250.

I have no reads on BB; I'll assume standard middle-aged live player as of now. He has close to 200 in chips.



Preflop

Hero is dealt in the HJ.

Button straddles, SB folds, BB limps, 2 folds, MP limps, Hero limps for $4, CO folds, Button checks


Flop ($16)



Hero bets $12, BU Raises to $35 (normal timing, didn't think about it much), BB folds, MP folds, Hero calls for $23 more.


Turn ($81)



Hero checks, BU bets $50, Hero's ($321) turn to act

c/f nh

Call IP fold OOP.

Originally Posted by rpm

c/f nh

+1