[sthief09]

you know I respect you a lot, and you easily fall into the top 10 people whose hand posts I'm most likely to read because I know they'll be good. so you know I'm not taking a jab at you or anything. but I think you can learn most from hands like this by just analyzing it yourself. it's one of those hands that everyone talks about where you "do your thinking away from the table" since there's no way you can do that much math at the table. you want your instincts to be sharp.

so while I think it's a good hand to post because it's a tough spot, there's not much opinion involved. it's mostly hand reading. I think you and everyone else would learn most by starting people in a certain direction, like "what range of hands do you put them on" or something.

this isn't just for you. I think it's something that'll help everyone. you'd be amazed how much time I spend sitting in front of excel figuring out hands like this to sharpen my instincts.

if you want my opinion, I think it's a fold. if UTG has a set, you're in bad shape, and if the button or UTG has a straight you're also in bad shape. I'd imagine one of the two scenarios is going to be the case almost every time so you probably have 2 or 4 outs. when you're ahead, you probably only have 2/3 of the deck anyway. and the pot wasn't too big to start with.

please tell me if I'm out of line with my above comments. I'm just really big on the away from the table calcs because they give you a great feel for how close some situations are, and it's a lot more insightful then reading through peoples' opinions of why it's a call or why it's a fold.