This hand took place in a 1-2 game at a locals casino in Vegas. The game has been going for several hours. When it started there were a lot of older rockier players, but as the evening progressed several looser players showed up who ran the spectrum between passive through one player who seemed smartly aggressive and a couple of spots who were overly aggressive. Here are the players in the hand:

Hero is in Seat 3

V1 is in Seat 4. V1 clearly has limited experience playing casino poker (for example, someone had to explain straddling to him). He states he has played in a lot of home games but seems generally weak. I have seen hands where V1 has attempted to take the lead in pots post flop with weaker holdings such as second pair. V1 has typical LP leaks, plays to many hands, goes to far with them etc etc.

V2 is in seat 7. V2 seems to be playing overly aggressively and has won some pots lately by overshoving. He has been caught bluffing before.

V3 is in seat 8. V3 has been playing very aggressively (though not as aggressively as V2). V3 also seems to mostly confine his aggression to preflop and seems to be playing more ABC post flop especially when he is not in position.

V4 is in seat 9. V4 seems to be playing very tight aggressive. He has built up the biggest stack at the table and he's done it while hardly having to showdown any hands. Based on his play recently, I believe V4 is working to isolate V2 and V3 and outplay them postflop.

V5 is in seat 10. V5 plays very loose passive preflop. He tightens up more postflop although he will still call overly loosely on the flop. A second barrel is typically enough to get V4 off of draws and weaker made hands. V5 will almost always play his big hands very fast post flop.

On the hand in question, Hero is in the big blind. Hero's stack to start the hand is about $185. All V's except V1 have hero covered. V1's stack is about $100. V1 limps, V2 limps, V3 raises to 7. V3's opening range, even after limpers is wide. V4 and V5 call the 7, the SB calls 7. Hero has and calls 5. V1 and V2 call. Pot is $44 after the drop.

Flop is . SB checks, Hero checks, V1 leads for $10. V2, V3, V4, V5 all flat call $10. SB folds. Action is on hero who has top pair, bad kicker, no dra and the pot is $94. Hero has $178 behind.

What should Hero do and why?

Should Hero have led the flop? If you think so, why?

What about preflop? J9os, really?

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I'm not gonna get into playing that pre-flop but there is no way you should have checked in that situation. In that spot. I would bet between $15 and $25 every time, expecting that anyone that has me beat would raise to dump out the flush draws. Now, if you just call, what happens if a club, 8, 9, or 10 shows up on the turn and someone bets? You know you are beat. Certainly there is at least one flush draw and one straight draw still in there. I know of course the initial gut thought is that it is only $10 into a $94 pot, there are way too many people in the pot. If you shove here, the only one that calls you is someone that already has you beat or the silly fool that can't give up the flush draw. I'd fold and smack myself for not leading out to begin with. You have only $7 invested. Kiss it goodbye and move on.

Fold pre, out of position, bad hand, too easy to get in trouble, etc etc etc

If you called, lead flop for a few reasons. You possibly have the best hand but it's not string enough to check call three streets. Take the lead, fold out some hands that have some equity against you, and start narrowing ranges. Fold if your flop bet gets raised.

As played- fold. While there is a chance you have the best hand there are way too many cards that you'll have to check fold the turn on. Also, even if you hit a 9 you still don't even have close to the nuts. It's weak and sucks, but all in all I think it's the best. Sure, you can check raise and try to fold out draws and hands that slightly beat you like JT, but I think this is verging on the point of spewy since when we are called we are normally way behind. Also, I just cringe at stacking off for nearly 100 big blinds with a hand that I shouldn't have even played preflop.
FYI- I have defended with J9o from the big blind before, but this is normally against a single raiser who is midly aggressive or extra meek from late position. Against the aggressive ones I often will check raise bluff post flop against their high c-bet % and against the meek players I'll often check call with air and then bet decent on the river if the turn checks through.

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You didn't state your table image?
If your image is LAG, I'd simply fold to the $10 on the flop.

Anytime you get a two suited flop and the top card is the offsuit, I'm very wary. This is because you have the danger of running into top pair with a flush draw and it's impossible (rightly so) to push players off that hand.


I'll assume your image is TAG and your bets will garner some respect. Here's my opinion:

I like to check raise the flop to "walk-up" the value of my Jack. It's even better because a weak bet was made followed by many callers all of which sweeten the Pot for our check raise. You were in the BB making impropable two pair hands more likely (only the thinking players at the table will probably recognize that though)
I raise to $65 to $75 total on the flop.

This should fold out everything but flush draws and hands that have you beat!
If a non-club falls on the Turn, you'll have to re-evaluate you read on the Villain(s) to determine if firing another round or check folding is the best move.

PRe-flop: I'm not super excited about calling a raise with J9 Out Of Position but it's not the worst either.

Just my $0.02

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I see where you were going and I can follow, but the above statement is confusing. What's the point of raising if all worse hands are folding and all better hands are calling? I mean why risk the check raise? If we have a TAG image just bet out- it will accomplish the same thing at a far cheaper price when we're beat.

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Good point. I probably should have elaborated further in my reply.

First, checking allows you to get a bit more information based on the bets/action behind you. In this situation, it pretty clear that the weak flop bet and multiple calls indicate hands that aren't very strong. (although I'm still worried about Jc,xc from V1)
Hypothetically, if there was a bet and raise we'd be able to easily throw our hand away without investing another dime.

Second, the check raise gives the implication that we have a powerful hand. You could fold out hands as good as QJ or KJ. doubt they exist based on the action so far though.)

The idea behind the check raise is to win the Pot now. Based upon action so far, I'm doubting that we're beat.

If our check raise gets called, we'll have to evaluate the range think it's flush draws and hands that have us beat) on the Turn. Can we fold out better hands by betting again? Is our opponent on a draw and we need to charge him for the final card?


I can't fault betting out on this Board. IMO in loose games like this, a bet of $25 to $35 isn't going to fold everyone out.
We'll need to fire another round on the Turn. In my experience, I don't know that betting out is going to any "cheaper" and I'd rather have information from others before committing additional chips.
This is why I think check raising this flop is better line in this situation based on his discription of the players. Again, I'm assuming that Hero has a TAG image.

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"Sure, I've been called a xenophobe, but the truth is, I'm not. I honestly just feel that America is the best country and the other countries aren't as good. That used to be called patriotism" ~ Kenny Powers

I don't mind the preflop call to close the action, getting good odds.

Postflop with this kind of hand is purely fit or fold, out of position. Look to flop two pair, trips, OESD, or pair plus draw hands. You didn't. Check-fold, move along.

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I think if I was posting in someone else's thread I'd just say:

This

I mean clearly this is the "book" answer on this hand. I think you'd get a lot of difference of opinion preflop and that it's kind of a close call. I think the post flop question of lead or check has merits both both ways, but I don't think you can really debate that folding to any action after either checking or leading is a solid play ...

So of course that's not what I did. Let me start by saying that I had a thought process behind my play. That being said I couldn't really argue with any criticism that my play is spewy. I suspect that if you crunched numbers it would be a borderline EV play, either a thinly profitable play or a thinly losing play. Either way, it's for sure high variance.

I shoved. My thinking when I called pre was just in line with Grange's. Flop big or get out. When I caught a small piece, I decided that there may be some reason to take a different tack. I definitely did not want to lead at the pot as I was sure that would produce a number of calls and wouldn't really leave me with any better sense of where I was at. I was pretty much thinking at this point that if it got back to me with only one or two players that I could possibly C/R and rep a big hand (to the extent anyone is paying attention, I should be perceived as a somewhat nitty TAG).

Strangely, I think the critical moment in the hand was when V1 decided to donk into everyone from my immediate left. That gave me last relative position on the flop and really set everything in motion. Absolutely key to my decision was the fact that I had rock solid reads on V5, V4 and V3, in particular V5 who I have played against several times. I really feel that I know his game and he just never has a big hand in this spot. Similarly I was pretty strongly convinced that neither V4 nor V3 held solid hands. V4 was good enough that he wouldn't mess around in a multiway pot with a strong hand. V3 could have been getting cute with slow playing but again I think he's solid enough to know that's not a good idea. V3 would also have to worry about V4 and his massive stack behind him so I think it's really hard for him to call without a big hand, and he most likely does not have that kind of hand.

V1 and V2 were more problematic. They would be the most likely candidates to have slow played a big hand. V2 in particular seemed to have a case of FPS (of course maybe you say that abou me). The counter to that though was that they would probably be the only ones who would pay me off if I was ahead in the hand.

Finally, I thought my stack size was ideal for a shove. The SPR ratio when it got to me was around 2-1 so people would be getting about 3-2 to make the initial call. I just think that these guys were all going to have a hard time making that call without a big hand and I think they've all pretty much announced to me that they don't have big hands.

So I shoved. It wasn't what I planned, but I thought under the circumstances it was a justifiable risk. For what it's worth, the only call I got was from V2, the board ran out, I showed and he mucked. I stand by my play in the sense that I thought through what I was going to do and went with reads that I felt were solid. It was definitely not a "by the book" play though.

OK, let me have it.

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@missingflops on Twitter

Have a plan. Make decisions that have merit and reasons behind them. Screw the results. It's not what I would have done but you completed "the process" and didn't just blindly shove not knowing why, so A+. Solid thought process and follow through is the key here. Well done.

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Glad to hear that you won the hand. I also like that you are trusting your reads. However I don't like your strategy hear. A few months ago I made a point to stop betting top pair hands > Kx aggressively out of position. Now I usually check call or check fold in this spot. My profitability increased significantly.

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