Hero is in the BB with
($1150)
Caveman ($900) is UTG+1 and opens to $10 after UTG folds.
There are 4 callers from the field including the Button before it gets to Hero.
Well since we had the thread last week about not being able to continue with a straight flush draw on 98s last week, this is a snap fold to me. 10x is a nutty sizing and we will be out of position making it very difficult to extract values/make moves later in the hand. But I am guessing this is the same session and we weren't analyzing this hand through that lens at that point.
Hero calls the $10.
Six players to the flop Pot is $61
Flop comes:
and action is on Hero first to act.
check or bet?
This is an interesting decision point because the probable bettor is acting right after hero. So going for a check raise, means we as hero are going to likely be raising a calling train as well, which might be tempting from a pot size standpoint, but doesn't really protect our hand from redraws.
If we are playing to limit the field donking hoping to induce a raise from villian having an overpair might be a good strategy. But also pretty revealing about our hand strength, would we be donking A8 here for example? What about the NFD? Is this a spot where we are just better off checking 100%? Do we have other holdings here where we would like to check-call (pair and straight draw, for example), meaning checking 100% serves the goal to protect the spots where we hold that sort of hand?
I think I would settle on this being a 100% check spot and we are planning to raise a huge sizing over any bettor, especially if caveman villian continues.
Let's move this hand along a little.
Hero checks. Caveman bets $40, everyone folds back to Hero.
Action is on Hero, we are heads up at this point already with Caveman. Do we call or raise? If raising, how much?
So there's 61 in the pot and shockingly no one else had enough to call caveman here? Okay then we succeeded in limiting the field and can really put the screws to caveman with a pretty good hand. I think I am going to raise to about 150 here.
Hero raises to $125 total and is called very quickly by Caveman. Possible speed calling tell???
pot is $310 ish.
Turn is the
Board is now:
Action is on Hero. Do we bet or check? If betting, how much?
Really a pretty safe card assuming QQ is the only hand in villian's utg+1 pf raising range that improves with a Q. If he's spewy enough to have Q8 or Q7 then maybe that hurts us too. But if he's that spewy, literally every turn card could be a monster.
But I think villain is checking his whole range behind unless he is ahead of us. I think we have to give ourselves a chance to collect from overpairs and flush draws here. I am going to bet about 175-200. Should be more than half pot, but I don't want to go nuts on the sizing if we get raised here. Then we have to decide if he can bluff or semi-bluff this turn or if a raise here always means a set. (But hint looking at the future I think 8s and 7s is pretty close to the top of our range here, we can have all the flopped sets too in our pf range I assume, but 87 is next in line after that, we may have to defend against bluffs, especially because other than QQ, we block villain sets pretty severely.)
