Flopping two pair on a connected board

Poker Strategy Hand Review
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I have T9 in late position, blinds are 20/40, I limp to see my hand hit top two pair on a family pot. Flop is 7T9, rainbow. So, connected, but at least there’s no flush draws and no pair on the board.

First to act leads out a pot-sized bet, and gets called around the table. I figure I should raise, as I likely have the best hand here, barring sets or a flopped straight. I raise, FTA jams. This guy is decent, but loose and overly aggressive from what I’ve seen. I don’t give him credit for having J8 here. He could have it, but if so, I still have outs to the full house.

Another player calls, so I call. 3-way, I’m about 52% to win the hand, which is the best odds out of the 3 still in it.

FTA flips up JT, turn card fills his inside draw, river’s a Q, so he ends up with a super straight, 7-Q, just the usual 10% + gratuitous overkill 6-card straight like always happens when I get it all in with the best hand. It’s just immediate, the very next card is always the nut-giver for these big pot disaster hands. I should patent this play, I’m the who owns it like no other.

The other player had A8, called all-in on an OESD. What is with these players?

So what was my mistake? Playing this hand at all, right?

Or I raised too small on the flop, right? Pot-size bet isn’t enough to dissuade a player like tenball. Should have shoved, maybe got the fold.

Or was the mistake playing two pair like it meant something on a connected board? If I flat, I can dump the hand when the inevitable 8 gives me the OESD and tenball shoves on his made hand. Then I can sit in and fold for another 30 minutes before I get another halflway playable hand, shove on it, get called by pocket 33s and they make a set to knock out my AKs.

You can all tell me my first mistake was not opening the hand preflop all you want, but with T9 and low blinds, you usually want to see a cheap flop and bet it hard if you hit it hard, and let it go if you don’t.

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Yes, usually here you flat the 280, and see the turn 1st.
Or, you can shove hoping to end the hand there, but in this case
3 ppl already paid the 280 with 1 behind, raising here just prolly
will induce a re-raise, and it did… go figure, so no raise …

of the 4 hands that “hit it hard” are the str8, top 2 trips, top 2pr … of those you have the lowest of the four… so no you didn’t “hit it hard”
Well, you said it Puggy … Let it go… ( or flat the 280, and fold to a raise )
Sassy

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You got the chips in the middle with over 50% equity multi-way. This is good. A big part of poker is making your peace with making the correct decision, even when bad beats steal pots away from you.

The question here is whether a flop raise, followed by a call, are the correct actions. It’s tough for me to say given the lack of information regarding the sizing. I’m leaning toward no: family pots breed strong hands, and given your preflop check you’ll have all the straights in your range. A bet means something different than a 3-bet; both Vs’ ranges should be very narrow. What hands did you put them on? What bluff-raises do you have that you would fold? Are there any hands you would raise here for value that you would fold to a jam?

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with that many players limping and seeing a flop, anyone could had held 8,J and if they didn’t anyone with straight draw be calling. even if you opened up preflop, tenball be calling since has suited connectors. flop I would had been cautious with that flop. turn is a 8 and giving anyone holding a 6 or J a straight. also on turn is a heart flush draw. again I would been really cautious here. you missed 1 of the 3 outs would had giving you a boat and any action is a simple fold on.

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Yep.

Building a balanced limp range in this spot is pretty tough. You’re facing three earlier players who have expressed interest in the hand, with four players still to act. There’s a risk that one of those players bumps it up to 5x or more. What do you do facing a large raise? What if there’s a raise by the button, and one of the limpers 3-bets to 20x? You don’t want to always have to fold off facing a raise, so if you’re going to be limping at all here, you’ll need to work some much stronger hands into your limp range… which means you’ll be needlessly allowing a lot of other hands to catch up when you have a fairly premium holding. In spots like this, raise or fold.

As to whether you should be raising, T9o isn’t strong enough to remain in the hand. Again, there are other players who have expressed some level of interest in the hand by limping. You won’t necessarily have position on other players that call your raise postflop. Facing preflop aggression, you’ll probably be pretty far behind the 3-bettor. If you do get calls, most board textures will be tricky to navigate - either you’ll whiff, make a weak pair, or have some sort of gutshot.

Finally, let’s evaluate this from a percentage standpoint. In this spot, I’d be playing a very tight range - probably about 8% of my hands, given the action in front of me and the number of players left to act, in order to give myself a reasonable chance of having either the best hand or one of the two best at the table. 8% is a pretty narrow - just the green cells in the table below. It’s not until I get to about 25% of opening combinations that I include a hand as weak as T9o.

image

Long story short, in this spot preflop, fold > raise > call.

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If i had a dollar for every time i flopped 2 pr., and lost to a straight, I could buy enough chips to get away from the bingo games. Everyone knows the only time 2 pr. flies is when i have pocket As.
Seriously, when you’re in a game where no amount of chips will drive someone off a draw, and you can’t put them on a range, because it’s 52 cards, you gotta learn to smile at the dumb hands and play that much tighter.

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So far, so good. I’m more curious why it was a shove for V holding top pair + inside draw. I raised, figuring that this was the correct action to price out an inside draw.

For those wondering, I figured tenball had top pair, good kicker, and the other player probably had nothing, and I was correct on both counts.

Obviously, I don’t mind losing this hand to a set, if someone has it, and if someone has J8 or 86 here, fine, I’ll take a beating with that. But getting called by the inside draw and then seeing it fill is annoying. I think tenball probably folds if he has only the draw, or only top pair, and having both made him overconfident, but of course he hits.

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I also lose most of the time when I flop a straight. Board always gives someone else a back door flush, or a full house. And do I hit the inside straight draw? Maybe. But it’s comparable to the frequency I hit a straight flush.

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  1. Don’t limp T9o from almost any position. Don’t limp behind with garbage OOP - this will solve a lot of problems.
  2. 2-pair on this board is not a raise multiway in a limped pot, especially with the action around the table. 2-pair does well vs loose ranges here, which is what a call accomplishes. Its not so great vs a tight range(s), which is what a raise forces opponents to be on (if they are decent). Call in position 1 street and then fold on turn if obvious draw fills and you still have the 2 players potting it in front of you.
  3. Don’t get upset that people overplay their marginal hands and draws so badly - throttle back your aggression (at least on the flop) and let them fire off into your strengthened x/c range - these people are simply bad. You don’t need to beat them into submission with aggression. Give them rope to hang themselves on weak hands but also be disciplined enough to make tight folds multiway.

Stronger hands and position wins in the end. The problem with seeing multiway flops with weak hands is that sometimes you will make what seem to be monsters when in fact they are at best marginal. Figure out how your opponents are making mistakes and adjust your game to take advantage of those mistakes. Villain in this pot is so transparently clueless that these adjustments aren’t hard to figure out and implement. He makes the same mistakes over and over again - don’t complain about them, figure out how to capitalize on them.

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No he’s not! 1) he over limped in the sb with JT 2) in a limp pot he chose to lead huge (full pot size bet) into 7 players on that flop 3) after you raised he 3! shoved into 3 players with that hand… this guy is not even close to decent.

You may think semantics here, but you’re not in LP. You’re in the HJ which is MP. You started yourself down the path to being stacked with a very marginal hand by limping in MP with half the table yet to act. Please, @puggywug stop limping these garbage hands. At the very least stop posting them. Someone is going to tell you what you did wrong on the flop, your flop mistake was being there.

This is 80% of your issue! Take responsibility for your own actions and mistakes. Do what Fitz says and repeat to yourself over and over and over again, as many times as it takes to stick… I am responsible I am responsible I am responsible I AM RESPONSIBLE! You have no control over your opponents actions, worry about yourself.

Fold pre

As played do not raise this flop, call and evaluate. So the answer to the question is no.

Flawed logic does not help you win at poker. What purpose would getting him to fold 18% equity serve. Just give him a bad price and hope he calls.

This hand T9o in the HJ facing 3 limpers is not at all close to a halfway playable hand. Also 33 doesn’t need to flop a set, it’s already ahead in the hand and it has more equity than AK to begin with.

No no and no. Just fold.

I have a suggestion for you if you’re willing to try it. Play a 3! or fold strategy pre flop for a week or two and see how it goes. No limping pre, no flatting other opens in position or out of position. If you can’t raise it fold it.

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@1warlock @dayman, @WannabeCoder, @Sassy_Sarah :

I think your advice is solid overall.

I usually do fold T9o preflop. I called with it this time, reasoning that blinds were small enough that I could dump the hand if the flop missed, but if I hit two pair, trips, or a straight or straight draw, it could potentially be a good hand to play. With the limpers ahead, I felt like I was priced in to limp as well. I thought about opening, but I figured all that would accomplish was fold all the hands worse than mine, while calling hands would have my hand dominated. If I could see the flop cheaply and it hit for me, I could then turn the tables on those hands.

My reason for raising was explicitly to price out draws, particularly someone needing the 8, and yet both players who were in the hand went all-in chasing draws. I’m not clear that this hand would have went south on me against good players; surely the better play for both V1 and V2 is to fold when I raised after the flop, right?

It’d be interesting to me to tell me what each of the three players in the showdown for this hand should have done if they were (what you consider) to be a good player, holding the cards they did. Granted, that’s not very easy to do, given that perhaps all three of these hand should have been mucked preflop.

After reading the advice from everyone in this thread, I feel like this hand is an example of 3 players playing their respective hands poorly, resulting in a monster pot that has to end up somewhere after the showdown, and whoever wins it, in the end no one played the hand well. It’s just a wild hand that went out of control. But being that I was ahead when all the chips went in, I feel like I made the best decisions in the hand, relatively speaking, even though the outcome didn’t favor me. I can say I’m responsible for it, but didn’t I read my opponents correctly, and didn’t I get my chips in ahead?

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@puggywug this is a good comment overall. A couple of things though, be careful not to justify mistakes by pointing to good results. The example here would be getting it in good on the flop. What happened here was the absolute best that could have happened. T9 is very strong on that board, however it is a long way from the nuts. You have 6 fishy opponents who each could hold one of J8 (16) 86 (16) TT (1) 99 (1) 77 (3) the 37 combos that beat you with an additional 4 combos, T9, that chop. Good rules of thumb, do not start building pots in multi-way spots where you don’t have the nuts. Cheers and good luck!

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You only bet full pot 950ish with 2500ish behind. If 1st person calls, the other 2 are price’d in to call. Stacks are just enuff where the only re-raise is an all in, J10 opened full pot, so allowing him back in the betting is iffy. Remember Puggy … Tenball is a top 500 player, so I wouldn’t expect him to be making huge mistakes in his play. You reopened action, had you flatt’d then you know the price that turn card will cost you.

Its my contention that you failed in trying to price out draws. ( bet-size’n issues )
I also think both Vs had a legitimate reason for thier play. Had I opened in Tenball’s spot, your raise wasn’t gonna get me out either, no matter what I had, other than a bluff. V2 got price’d in to call with the open-ender.

Everything bad got triggered with your raise Puggy. Otherwise you all pay 280, the turn is the 8, (V2) A8 and you both shut down to Tenball’s bet, and move on. The board is wayyyyy too draw heavy for 2pr to be push’n the issue. Better to trap, hope’n to hit the FH, so you can crush any str8s/flushes. If you bet 2200ish, then I think they can consider folding thier draws.

I don’t think you read the table right due to your raise not getting the expected result. Against “The field” no I don’t think you got in ahead, too many combined outs.
The correct play usually for you on flop was … call 280 … or fold.
Sassy

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First to act leads out a pot-sized bet, and gets called around the table.

There is your mistake. The board is connected. Everyone likes it a lot. You might be best now, but someone could have trips, straight draws, etc. because these are cards that people like to play. If a T falls and you make full house, you are looking good, but I would just fold on the flop unless I have a megastack.

Your play is OK for a cash game, but in tournament play, which is all I do losing one big pot can put you on the verge of elimination, so it is best not to be in these unraised family pots. Having said that, two pairs versus straight draws is a common situation on RP. Someone shoves with the two pair or the draw, and someone calls and someone wins and someone loses.

This is a very mixed table in terms of rankings. The person who called with the open ended straight draw has a chip stack of zero and is ranked at about 1.5 million, so you can expect anything. However there are also some higher ranked players and the player with the JT is a top 500 player.