What’s Your Plan? Top Pair, Multiway Pot

8 thoughts on “What’s Your Plan? Top Pair, Multiway Pot”

1. Action really not that strange so far. SB donk bets into 3-way pot opened by a player who raises a very high percentage of his pots … thus most of his range and we dont know if has folded to donk bets previously on missed boards. Not really that scary of a board but that may be why SB chose to add to it rather than hope for a c-bet. Could be OESD, TP no kicker, bottom 2pr .. probably not set (unless Flops have seen a lack of betting) or over-pair from SB.

   Dont really see a need to raise here, quite a few Turns will give us straight draws going to the River as well and our 2 pr would be a gut shot filler. Smooth allows PF raiser to possibly make a move and cause us to fold depending on how SB reacts to a raise. I find it unlikely that MP will raise into 2 opponents without set, maybe AA/KK or unlikely 2 pair.

   I want to call and then hopefully lead the Turn action with another 50% PSB if SB checks.

   If MP calls Flop and SB bets out again I might consider folding with a Turn card that doesnt help me since a donk bet is fairly strong and 2x donk barrel into 2 other players is a strong move as well .. The price would have to be right! This may seem extremely tight with TPMK but both of these players seem to be playing from late position, so both SB and MP are showing some PF strength based on playing from these table positions as well.

   Depending on Turn bet size I think I want to continue and call if the Turn card helps me while being aware that it very well could help MP as well. I dont really think that this Flop bashes their ranges.

   If MP folds on Flop I am calling most any Turn bet with a card that ‘improves’ my hand and may also call another 50% PSB bet to see what happens on River… I have some showdown value.

   If MP calls on Flop I am leading out most Turns regardless if SB checks to me. If SB wants to give up control of hand I dont want to give it back to MP or allow SB to draw for free. We want to see if they ‘respect’ our tight stats as AQ/KQ fit right into a BB call PF 3-way.

   Got pretty much an above average Flop for playing this hand .. and paying a little extra! Being in the middle is no fun. If MP folds our options increase and if still 3-way on Turn we have to be the aggressor if SB checks to us IMO. GL

   • Why do you say the PFR is raising a high percentage of his pots? I’d say an overall PFR of 12 is pretty tame.

     Assuming you call and MP calls, you say you would bet most turns if checked to? What would be the purpose of that bet? It’s hard for me to see you getting called by worse or making better fold, and I certainly don’t think it’s anywhere near a lock that you have the best hand…

     • He is the PFR 75% of the time he is in a pot (12/16). So that means he is raising most of his range. My unknown is how wide a range that is but SB may see this as wide and doesn’t want it to check through or is trying to take him off his hand if he has a history of folding Flops he has missed to aggression.

       I am betting the Turn to both try to get MP PFR to fold to a 2nd aggressor and see if SB was just barreling. Hopefully this gives me position for the River where I can just check down my showdown value hand. I probably call or c/call the River anyway if the bets are the right size. I am essentially block betting SB’s River bet by betting the Turn … if that makes sense. I also want to thin the herd because my hand isn’t very strong to eliminate some Rivers that will hurt me.

2. One thing I might want to think about even before we decide on how to play it is:

   What did we expect to flop, and how would we play it?

   I mean, we have 47 BB, and we push one of them in OOP in a multi way pot, we should already have a plan, neh?

   Myself, I flat the flop expecting MP to fold. If MP raises, SB folds, I am folding as well, as it seems like a bad RIO spot. If MP folds and the Turn is a brick I raise with added equity, GS, 2pr, but flat trips and bricks expecting SB to x River.

   If river bricks I would be very worried if I saw a large 3 barrel….. but if checked to I bet/fold hoping for smaller Queens and perhaps an underpair to call (flush draws hitting excluded)

   By not 3betting the others pre flop it seems you might be capping your range (in their eyes at least) and so might open yourself up some if you push much money in, if they are aggro bluffy types.

   I have a weakish hand, but worth fighting for, but would not want to build large pot, so I am not raising often here. (which makes me wonder if I might just want to fold pre?)

   Andrew plays post flop far better than I do, so I think in some ways knowing my weaknesses saves me from these spots (but costs me EV)

   which

3. Okay – the way I am seeing this, ranges pre flop are going to be on the tighter side from all players given stat reads. Here’s what I came up with:

   Villain 1 (MP) : 22+, ATs+, AJ+, KJ+, QTs+, JT+, T9s, 98s, 87s, 76s
   Villain 2 (SB) : 22-JJ*, Qh 9h, AJ-AQ, ATs, KJs, KQ, Kc Tc, QTs+, QJ, J9s+, JT, T9, 98s, 87s, 76s, 65s
   and for the exercise of it, I tried to come up with Hero’s PF calling range given the situation.
   Hero (BB) : no KK+, maybe no QQ, no AK – – – 22-QQ, A2s-AQs, A9-AQ, KJ+, KTs, Q9s+, QT+, J9+, T8s+, T9+, 97s+, 98+, 86s, 87+, 75s+, 76+, 65, 54s

   *I’m torn between capping his range at JJ or QQ.

   According to my calculator, MP’s range above is about 16% of hands, which seems like a decent approximate range for what he might open in MP with those stats.
   My range for SB to call with is about 14% of hands which seems in line with his stats also. I included one combination of Q9s because that seemed within the realm of possibility to me, but seems like the only likely two pair combo he’d hold here.

   The Flop

   Against those pre-flop ranges, Hero’s QsTd is not doing too poorly at all at 46.6% equity. However, the donk bet from the SB leads me to want to narrow his range considerably. Given that this is the Sunday 500 and it is played by tourney specialists of varying skill levels, my guess is that he is going to be leading strong hands here but not be totally unbalanced. The donk bet range I came up with is: 33, 99, Qd Qh, Qh 9h, AQ, JT. This amounts to 16 combos value hands of sets (7), two pair (1), and TPTK (8) at the top of his range, and 12 combos of JT for balance. I’m not well versed enough in the theory area of balancing ranges to know if this is weighted too heavily to one side or if this is a “standard” type of hand to balance with as an OESD semi-bluff opportunity.

   Given this range for SB donking, and keeping MP’s range from pre-flop, we now have the following equities:
   Hero BB: 22.5%
   V1 MP: 17.6%
   V2 SB: 59.9%

   Not quite enough equity to continue on pure odds alone, and there is MP to think about.

   I think if we call SBs bet, MP will likely fold the majority of his unpaired hands (Ace highs and connectors) as well as his lowest pocket pairs (not 33). If we are to call and MP calls behind us, I feel like it leaves his range still fairly wide with a decent number of hands that we are beating (medium pocket pairs might call) but also hands that beat us (better Qs, sets, overpairs). It seems, based on his stats, that he is unlikely to get way out of line in his spot and won’t raise here without true hand strength.

   So fold/call/raise?

   Fold – our equity isn’t stellar looking with TP here. We avoid difficult decisions. *a good option for me, but maybe not when Hero = Andrew Brokos
   Call – we are behind SB quite often, unless I was too conservative in assigning his ranges, especially his donk bet range.
   Raise – with the original raiser yet to act and the SB leading on the flop, a raise here looks strong, but decidedly not like a monstrous hand that could stand up to multiway action.

   Future streets – it seems like our equity here is dependent on either improving or SB having more bluffs in his range than I assigned above. Since we don’t have a read that SB has those bluffs, I feel like it would be harder to call off if he decides to fire barrels on the turn and river.
   It seems like 8s and Ks are bad for us if he was semi-bluffing with an OESD, and I’m not sure if there are any great bluffing cards for us.

   Given my skill set I’ll pick fold. But I think that I got caught up in using a calculator to try to answer this since I had one at my disposal and if I have time to revisit this, I may see what things look like with a wider donk bet range from SB.

4. Let’s ignore the MP opener for a second and deal with the SB’s donk lead. A pessimistic guess at SB’s donking range is something like AQ-KQ, QJs-QTs, 99, 33, JTs. We’re 20% against that range, so if we think his range is unbalanced toward value hands, we should just fold. Given that we only have preflop reads, I’m not ready to concede that a random in the stars $500 Sunday MTT will be nittily imbalanced. Even if we don’t take out some of the stronger hands which he might c/r, we don’t need to add many semi-bluffs combos (KJs, KTs) to get to 30% equity against the SB alone. We only need to add TT, T9s, and 98s (not to mention other possible hands he doesn’t want to c/c with) to get to 42% equity.

   If we give the MP opener a range of 22+,A2s+,K9s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T8s+,97s+,86s+,76s,65s,ATo+,KJo+, QJo, he’s only going to have top pair or better ~20% of the time, a gutshot ~10% of the time, an OESD 1.5% of the time. So he’s probably only continuing 35% of the time (accounting for random spazzes). That means folding has to be out of the question on the flop.

   I’ve got to run (I’ve been beating myself up for not playing enough live cash recently) so I’ll leave with a question. Do I really want to have a raising range here? My initial thought was “nope” because I can just flat 2p+ to protect the times I want to call in spots like this with top pair; if I’m flatting 33 and Q9 here to a donk bet, I can feel ok about folding top pair here if MP puts in a (big) raise and SB folds. Also, it seems unlikely that the extra 3.5bb we risk when we minraise here is worth it. Sure we get accurate info on MP’s range (maybe even get a fold out of MP’s QJ), but we only started with 47 bb in a MTT, so raising puts a bigger chunk of our stack at risk. On the other hand, if we are flatting big hands here, we give MP a great price to draw to his gutshots, 2-outers (if he decides not to raise flop with AA-KK), etc. It just seems tougher to satisfy both the aims of balance and MTT stack preservation with a raising range here, but it could easily be better than flatting.

5. I’m not really sure what a $500 Stars SB’s range is for donking the flop in a 3 way pot. Given this, I’m a bit wary continuing with the Btn still to act behind (by donking the SB has put hero in the worst relative position), so I fold. Hero could call and hope that Btn folds so that he has position the rest of the hand, but my guess is that’s not likely to happen. I think the button’s more likely to either raise (in which case I’m folding) or call and then I’m stuck in a bad relative position in a 3-way pot that’s starting to threaten stack sizes. I think all 3 players ranges are wide seeing this flop, so you are likely to have the best hand now, but I’m just not sure how likely and thus uncomfortable continuing in the hand.

6. I feel like donk bets like this are almost always weak made hands. What do y’all think about that?

   I don’t see him leading JT too often. He should have more fold equity with a x/r and free cards are fine.

   I also doubt people donk as a pure bluff into two players very often.

   Seems like we should call, hope MP folds, and hope SB has T9 and not KQ?

Comments are closed.