Top Pair, too passive?

[mscags]

No reads on villians as they are both new. Is this too passive? Just right? What do you do different? I thought about 3 betting the flop but decided that the villian that capped it probably had a pocket pair since he capped preflop and figured I wanted him in, plus I didn't want to get capped and then have to make a fold on the river, as the pot was shaping up to be significant.

Party Poker 10/20 Hold'em (6 max, 5 handed) FTR converter on zerodivide.cx (http://www.zerodivide.cx/converter)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A/images/graemlins/diamond.gif, 9/images/graemlins/diamond.gif.
<font color="#666666">2 folds</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Button raises</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero 3-bets</font>, <font color="#CC3333">BB caps</font>, Button calls, Hero calls.

Flop: (12 SB) A/images/graemlins/heart.gif, Q/images/graemlins/club.gif, 5/images/graemlins/diamond.gif <font color="#0000FF">(3 players)</font>
Hero checks, <font color="#CC3333">BB bets</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Button raises</font>, Hero calls, BB calls.

Turn: (9 BB) 8/images/graemlins/club.gif <font color="#0000FF">(3 players)</font>
Hero checks, BB checks, <font color="#CC3333">Button bets</font>, Hero calls, BB folds.

River: (11 BB) 7/images/graemlins/club.gif <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
Hero checks, <font color="#CC3333">Button bets</font>, Hero calls.

Final Pot: 13 BB

[aba20]

looks perfect. standard WA/WB.

I would bet the flop in order to:

- force the BB to define his hand
- put maximum pressure on the button
- fold early if the button three-bets

If you can get this pot HU (ether by letting the BB raise the button out, or by folding the BB on the flop), I'd call down (and/or call the turn and donk the river).

My big fear is getting banged on the flop, or especially on the turn, between two raisers. I want to fold out early in these situations, even though some amount of the time, Im going to fold the best hand to hands like KK that are getting overplayed.

[ QUOTE ]
looks perfect. standard WA/WB.

[/ QUOTE ]

WA/WB thinking works pretty well when the pot is HU. HU, you want to avoid betting the villain's hand for him/charging yourself when WB, and instead you want to make it to showdown and value betting any weakness along the way.

But the more players you face, the less WA/WB works. This is because of several reasons. First, since there are more villains, the chances of you being WB increases. Second, because of the bet-raise interactions between villains, your cost to see each street can be 2, 3, or even 4x as much as in a HU pot. Third, because the number of collective outs facing you increases, even though you may be WA of any hand individually, you are likely not WA of the field as a whole.

Thus, in multiway pots, I think it is best to avoid showdown-oriented thinking like WA/WB, and instead put maximum effort into hand-reading. Trying to calldown and make it to showdown when you are in fact, WB, is hugely expensive.

[aba20]

Good point. My thinking in hands like this though is to get to showdown without throwing away needless bets. I think that you are most likly behind one of the two opponents but our hand needs to be shown down if it can be done without calling two bets cold on the turn or river. That was the point of my orignial post, and I think the OP did this perfectly.