a common situation i may be misplaying

[W. Deranged]

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I would think more about raising if the flop were something like AJ9, since it is a lot more likely the third player has a pair or gutshot. Given the low flop, I think it is considerably less likely the third player has a piece of the board. That, plus the fact that we are way behind the pfr quite a bit (and way ahead of a hand we don't want him to fold the rest), means that we can forgo the limited protection option in order to save/make more vs. the pfr.

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I think this is an interesting idea. I generally will never take a wa/wb hand in a multiway pot (particularly if raised) because I want to shore up my equity, but I wonder if this might not be a fine situation for it.

[MrEngenic]

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I've thought about the flop raise. Why would we want to raise the flop here? UTG+2 probably doesn't have low cards since he limped in EP. Unless he has a pair or a flush draw he needs a runner runner to win and he's not folding a flush draw. We don't need to raise to protect our hand since he would make a mistake by calling by almost all hands we put him on. If he has specifically AJ or AQ, will fold a raise AND SB doesn't have AK we gain with a raise.

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I think my post above summarizes why we don't want to raise the flop...

[MrEngenic]

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Just calling the flop gives UTG+2 the proper odds to draw to his 5 outer here. This, combined with the fact that there is good chance that you are already ahead, added to the chance that SB may have a drawing hand, means not raising this flop will cost you too many pots.

Much of the time SB will think you raised with your flush draw to get a free card, and will keep betting into you with what is usually a losing hand.

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There is no reason to believe UTG+2 has more than 2-3 outs. What are the likely hands with 5 outs for him to have?

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Just calling the flop gives UTG+2 the proper odds to draw to his 5 outer here. This, combined with the fact that there is good chance that you are already ahead, added to the chance that SB may have a drawing hand, means not raising this flop will cost you too many pots.

Much of the time SB will think you raised with your flush draw to get a free card, and will keep betting into you with what is usually a losing hand.

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There is no reason to believe UTG+2 has more than 2-3 outs. What are the likely hands with 5 outs for him to have?

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2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, an A + a bdfd, etc. There are a lot of dangerous hands.

[Shillx]

Is there any real point to raising the flop? I say no.

UTG+2 is almost always drawing super thin here unless he is really bad*. The only hands that you would like for him to fold are 2x, 3x, 4x and 5x. A typical limper will almost never have one of these hands (barring 55-22), and if he doesn't, he is drawing super thin. Yay your flop raise got him to fold T9 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]...who cares. He was drawing dead anyway. And if he has a [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] draw, he isn't going anywhere so raising only weeds out the hands that are drawing thin/dead.

Raising does a couple of things here...

1) It opens you up for a 3-bet by AK-AJ.
2) It risks folding out KK-TT

Both of these things are not good here. The pot is small enough that you would like to see him showdown his KK. Let him bet 2 outs all the way (or check/call if he gets scared). And if he does have you beat, you will probably lose more by raising and that sucks. Get to a showdown here. If you are good, you will be good at showdown. If you aren't good right now, you are probably going to lose. This is a good hand to "slowplay" IMO.

*Now if you had a read that he is a horrible player, then raising is fine. He could have limped with a hand like K4 and you want him to pay to draw at that gutshot. He might also call two cold with a hand that is drawing thin like 77 (and you might lose too much value by just calling).

Brad

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2) It risks folding out KK-TT

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Brad: I knew someone would bring this up, but no. Especially KK, QQ, and JJ are rarely folded in this situation, except by the most weak tight of players, given how draw heavy the board is.

[damaniac]

I think you overestimate the draws present on this board. Yes there is a flush draw possible. Villain won't have that very often, and when he does, you're not really charging him much of anything on this flop. He could have a pair or a gutshot, but due to the low cards, this is less likely. Third, he can't have overcards. Fourth the pot is small.

Basically we have a parlay. We have to have a better hand than the PFR AND have the player behind willing to call with a weak hand for two cold or have a hand like a pair or a gutshot (that he can either fold or call with, since he is incorrect to call 2 on this board we'd rather he call). Given that we are behind the PFR a substantial portion of the time (no clear idea, somewhere between 25-50%?), and that the low cards on the board makes the pair or gutshot less likely (5%?), and that the pot is like 7sb's, raising is counterproductive.

Finally, KK/QQ/JJ/TT will fold here sometimes. It isn't necessarily weak-tight, and who says the PFR isn't weak tight anyway? That is just an added cost to raising, that most hands you beat are going to freeze up.

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I think you overestimate the draws present on this board. Yes there is a flush draw possible. Villain won't have that very often, and when he does, you're not really charging him much of anything on this flop. He could have a pair or a gutshot, but due to the low cards, this is less likely. Third, he can't have overcards. Fourth the pot is small.

Basically we have a parlay. We have to have a better hand than the PFR AND have the player behind willing to call with a weak hand for two cold or have a hand like a pair or a gutshot (that he can either fold or call with, since he is incorrect to call 2 on this board we'd rather he call). Given that we are behind the PFR a substantial portion of the time (no clear idea, somewhere between 25-50%?), and that the low cards on the board makes the pair or gutshot less likely (5%?), and that the pot is like 7sb's, raising is counterproductive.

Finally, KK/QQ/JJ/TT will fold here sometimes. It isn't necessarily weak-tight, and who says the PFR isn't weak tight anyway? That is just an added cost to raising, that most hands you beat are going to freeze up.

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I wasn't putting the PFR on a draw, nor the caller behind us. I'm saying the PFR never folds here is because it is equally likely that we are raising a draw as it is that we are raising top pair, especially after we limped.

From my experience, villains will almost never fold KK-JJ and sometimes even TT here.

[damaniac]

How do you figure that us raising an A and raising a draw is equally likely?

[SeaEagle]

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Assuming he's not a LAG but a reasonable player:
There is almost no chance he has a 4 or 66. Likewise, it's not likely he's on a flush draw. Only KQs and maybe QJs in diamonds. The chance he's on a draw is infinitesimal.

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How did we make the assumption that he's a reasonable player? Hero has no read on a Party 3/6 table. It's unlikely villian is on a draw but it's far from infinitesimal. If you are going to put villian on a "reasonable" range of hands then you may as well fold to the turn bet because a "reasonable" player isn't betting into you on the turn with anything you have more than 3 outs against.

If you're beat you're calling down so raising and calling are roughly equal in that case. So the question is "What does he have if you're not beat and how can hero maximize his profit in those cases?"

Raising helps you if he's on a draw. Raising hurts you if he'll bluff a hand that you fold out. There are only a few, rather unimportant other situations (like when he has KK an spikes a K). I'm not proposing that he's on a draw very often. I just think he's on a draw more often then he'll fold a worse hand that he was still willing to put chips in with.

If you disagree and say he's never on a draw and he's often betting into hero with KK-TT and he folds those all the time when he would have paid off another bet on the river, well, we differ in opinion. IMO, the EV of a raise and call are very close, and the value of mixing up your game is probably worth more than the EV difference between the two.