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Advanced Difficult Cash Game Decision


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This I feel is an extremely difficult hand to play out because of the table dynamics and my overall table image. First the game is 5/5 No-Limit Cash Game, the money is real. Second this is an incredibly loose table, standard 3 and 4 times raises pre-flop are like checking. Third my table image is loose very aggressive. Fourth, no matter what, if they have any kind of draw, especially a flush draw, there is no way to bet anyone off their hand.There are two schools of thought in how to play a table like this. Common Sense is to play tight and hit them hard when you make a hand. Barry Greenstein says this is the wrong move, that you need to play more marginal hands and make them pay on marginal wins. That leads to this decision.Playing 9-handed and I have the button. Six players limp in before me for five dollars and I raise it to $ 40.00 with K(spade) and J(Heart). I get three callers, two very aggressive, very loose players and one tight aggressive player. Flop comes 4(Club), K(Heart), 5(Heart). First very loose player with $450 behind checks. The tight player bets out $75 ($150 behind), the second maniac raises to $200 ($ 800 behind). Also the tight player told me pre-flop when he made the call of the initial raise, that he was going to win the pot with this hand. What do I do?I go into the tank and I process the hand. First I feel there is no AK or KK out there because there was no raise. So what hands beat me right now, a set of 4s or a set 5s is a possibility, also with the excuse of pot odds, somebody may have called with 45, K4 or K5. KQ also may be out there, but again I feel that there would been a raise pre-flop because the callers were in mid-late and late position. I have 250 in front of me so obviously this is an all in or fold. Also there is someone behind me to act. So I go through the decision process and I feel I have the best hand at this point, even if I am up against K4 or K5, I have to be getting the odds. My reads are so far that the tight player is playing some sort of pocket pair between a King and the 5 and threw a feeler bet out there. The loose player is playing a weak King, that let him hit top pair. I have no idea about the other maniac. So based on these reads, I am ahead so I push all in for $ 250. Also even if I am wrong, unless I am up against a set, I have to be getting the odds to call (assuming atleast the additional 50 will be called by the raiser ($505/250 = 2.02) on my money).Now it gets even more interesting. The second maniac that just checked, calls my bet of 250 (I know he has to be on a draw with that), the tight player goes all in for his remaining 150, and the other maniac calls my all-in raise. So there is a potential side-pot between the two maniacs. Turn card is the 4(spade) making the board 4(club), K(Heart), 5(Heart), 4(spade). They both go check and check and I know I have to be ahead right now. River card is the 6(Heart) and instantly the first maniac goes all in for $200. Right there I know I am dead. The second maniac says I can’t call and folds face up. Now the hands.1st Maniac: Q(Heart), 3(Heart)Tight Player: 3(Spade), 6(Spade)2nd Maniac: 6(Club), 7 (Club)Hero: K(Spade), J(Heart).Sick damn hand this was and was over a $ 1500 pot that I lost. To be honest with you, I have no idea if my call was right on the flop. I had the best hand at that point and I ran the hand through an odds calculator and came up with the following:Hero: 25%1st Maniac: 31%Tight Player: 22%2nd Maniac: 23%So in essence I was behind. With three other players in the hand, I guess I had to assume that there had to be a flush draw out there. Amazing that there was also two open ended straight draws to. Gotta love poker.In the end, what is the correct play? Only to a set am I not getting the odds to call. To be honest, when the flop comes, immediately I am thinking all-in if it is checked to me. Is there a right answer? What would you do? This hand has been bothering me for three days. Thanks

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I think you made the right play since your read was right, you just happened to run into three players who combined had the complete world draw.Also, I disagree with Barry G. I think playing tight and ramming LAGS and Loose passive players with monsters is better than trying to out marginalize a marginalizer, ftw.

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Second this is an incredibly loose table, standard 3 and 4 times raises pre-flop are like checking.This is what you want. I never understood when people whine, "They don't respect my raises, they don't respect my raises, I wanna play where raises are better respected." I'm like, "Why? Don't you know how to play poker?" Fourth, no matter what, if they have any kind of draw, especially a flush draw, there is no way to bet anyone off their hand.Dream table. Seriously. There are two schools of thought in how to play a table like this. Common Sense is to play tight and hit them hard when you make a hand. Barry Greenstein says this is the wrong move, that you need to play more marginal hands and make them pay on marginal wins. I've said many times right here in this forum that the real money is making the best decisions in the most marginal situations. You can't just sit and basically wait for the nuts and wait to lay coolers on people. Those hands all even out eventually and the rake eats you over time. Playing 9-handed and I have the button. Six players limp in before me for five dollars and I raise it to $ 40.00 with K(spade) and J(Heart). I get three callers, two very aggressive, very loose players and one tight aggressive player. I object to raising KJ strong with intention to play it. If I'm raising KJ, it's usually opening from the button and I'm wanting to steal or bring in a weak hand from the BB Flop comes 4(Club), K(Heart), 5(Heart). First very loose player with $450 behind checks. The tight player bets out $75 ($150 behind), the second maniac raises to $200 ($ 800 behind). Also the tight player told me pre-flop when he made the call of the initial raise, that he was going to win the pot with this hand. What do I do?I go into the tank and I process the hand. First I feel there is no AK or KK out there because there was no raise. So what hands beat me right now, a set of 4s or a set 5s is a possibility, also with the excuse of pot odds, somebody may have called with 45, K4 or K5. If it was me, I would have mucked, thinking suited K5 K4 w/e. Hero: 25%1st Maniac: 31%Tight Player: 22%2nd Maniac: 23%So in essence I was behind. With three other players in the hand, I guess I had to assume that there had to be a flush draw out there. Amazing that there was also two open ended straight draws to. Gotta love poker. In the end, what is the correct play? Only to a set am I not getting the odds to call. To be honest, when the flop comes, immediately I am thinking all-in if it is checked to me. Explain the purpose of that to me, please? I just want to hear why? Is there a right answer? What would you do? This hand has been bothering me for three days. ThanksI'd probably fold, unless I knew more. I don't like going to war with a pair of kings, jack kicker in a four-way pot. No way. It's a stinker. I think it's just random that you were ahead on this one hand, and as you can see from the odds calculations, you really weren't a favorite anyway. Anyway, if losing a single buy-in in one pot bothers you, you need to play a smaller game. This isn't THAT big of a hand for $5/$5 NL. In general, I don't like stacking off with KJ, but that's just me. I think it's almost the most putrid hand in poker.
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Meh, that's probably not a great spot to be shipping. You need a lot to be going right for you to be ahead. I also think the players are less aggro than you think (at least pf) they should be bringing in almost any hand they're playing with a raise. I'm never trying to get tp 3rd kicker all in with 3 villains. There's so many times you're wayyyyyy behind, and when you are ahead it's very narrowly. But meh, your stack is small compared to pot size, so I don't think it's a huge mistake.

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You should buy in for 100BBs. You probably shouldn't raise that hand preflop, or if you do, raise more becuase this seems like the kind of game where you're gonna get a lot of callers, and KJ doesn't do well in big pots against lots of callers. You should also fold the flop. With so many people interested in the pot, it's likely that you're behind and even if you're not, a good portion of the deck will give someone else a better hand. The thought process is good, but you should fold and get your money into the pot in a spot where you have more equity next time. It turned out that you were ahead here, but I think that's not the case very often and that your equity in the pot probably isn't good enough to make this call.As for Barry Greenstein, getting in there and playing more marginal hands is a good idea IF you have solid reads on everyone and can make good decisions. The safe thing to do is to just wait for strong hands. I think you should wait for a stronger hand than KJo and Top pair, decent kicker before going to war next time.

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I think you made the right play since your read was right, you just happened to run into three players who combined had the complete world draw.Also, I disagree with Barry G. I think playing tight and ramming LAGS and Loose passive players with monsters is better than trying to out marginalize a marginalizer, ftw.
I think Barry's spot on tbh, what people don't realise is that you still get to ram loose passive players with monsters as well even if you're playing more hands overall, probably even more so given that you're being more active at the table, it's not like on choice involves playing only marginal hands and the other involves playing KK and winning, when playing more aggro/loose in the right spots you maximise your EV.
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I think Barry's spot on tbh, what people don't realise is that you still get to ram loose passive players with monsters as well even if you're playing more hands overall, probably even more so given that you're being more active at the table, it's not like on choice involves playing only marginal hands and the other involves playing KK and winning, when playing more aggro/loose in the right spots you maximise your EV.
If you have a significant edge over the table and play well postflop, then yeah. The better you are than the people you are playing against the more often you should be playing hands.
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The reason I felt to go all in after the flop was if no one bet, I should have the best hand most of the time since these players are not that sophisticated. I only would get check-raised by a monster and that would only happen 20% of the time in my estimation, i.e. a set.

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The reason I felt to go all in after the flop was if no one bet, I should have the best hand most of the time since these players are not that sophisticated. I only would get check-raised by a monster and that would only happen 20% of the time in my estimation, i.e. a set.
The fact is that a person you describe as tight donk bet into you and was already raised by a 2nd opponent. In addition, there is still a 3rd player behind you who already checked and may have inteded to checkraise.If they are calling preflop with hands like Q3s and K4o and the like, there are many ways for you to be beaten here and there are also many draws that you have to dodge.
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