blonde poker forum

1/2 game at Aspers, London.
Im sitting with around 300-350ish, fairly new to the table, have chipped up from 200 buy in in the few orbits, showing down TPTK/ made hands with AQ/AJ.

2 limpers to me in the bb, with the 4 straddle on, I look down at  Ahrt Ac. We make it 20. Straddle cold calls, folds to sb, old women fish who comes along.

Flop Qh Js Th.

I make it 43. Both call.

Turn 4d

Old Lady checks, i check (this is where i butcher it??) Guy behind bets 55 with 30 behind. sb calls, I think about it, probably should fold?, but call.

Will post the outcome of the hand in a bit, its fairly irrelevant though. Really want to know what we should be doing on the turn.
History of the 2 players: Old lady to my left, seeing any flop. Same with the guy to my left, dont think hed folded pre flop at all, especially when he had chips already invested. AM happy with pre flop and on the flop, as am ahead of their pre flop peeling range alot. However both calling puts me in a tough spot on how to approach the turn. Keep betting? Check call? Check fold?

You can get away with going a bit bigger pre i'd make it at least £24 and possibly more depending on how peel happy the table/limpers are. Flop really sucks, likely i'm checking there tbh but i'm not sure how good a play this is.

Whats the ladies stack?

Also if you are going to call his £55 and you cant effectively fold for his £30 on any river you may as well continue in this spot (Ladies stack dependant).

Personally I'd check the flop for pot control.

+1+1 if lady has like 150 im probs just shoving this turn and hoping for the best

Asking me now, I had her covered for sure, playing around 200 at the start of the hand i would think.

Ditto...

I think checking the turn might be fine because we will see a lot of action in front of us if we are beat. As played I guess shove but we are behind sometimes.

"2 limpers to me in the bb, with the 4 straddle on.... We make it 20." 1/2/4 + 4 + 4 => 15 already in there...

I'd  almost play Pot Limit on this preflop so agree with the making it ~24 pre (maybe a little higher IF we want to negate the psychological positioning of only having to put an even £20 / 4 red discs in). This is compounded especially if the straddlers playing ~100 and feels like getting it in, meaning he can only ever 3 bet shove to our raise.

As played i'd likely check back the flop too, a lot of people's ranges in this spot are suited (potentially Broadway) connectors so we're likely to be seeing two pairs / flush draws and straights looking to get it in. You say, "as am ahead of their pre flop peeling range alot.", but is this still correct for their 3 bet peeling ranges? Have they been frequently calling 3 bets? particularly a cold call from the straddle seems particularly more focused in the range of broadway / medium pair type hands? so i'd be more bothered about his holding in the hand.

If we check back the flop and the straddle bets we can evaluate our decision based on the "old ladies" decision...

We can profitably check call... but we can't profitably bet / fold...the only time we're ever profitably betting the flop is if we get both players to fold or we're betting for value and we're doing neither on this board texture.

As played we leave ourselves with an awkward turn decision where we could be getting trapped by either villain. The bet sizing of the straddler on the turn seems very valuey particularly if he's leaving 1/3 behind, this is so infrequently a bluff and may be leaned more to induce a call from both villains to gain additional value on close to nutted hands. If we call we're folding nearly every river.

While in game it sometimes seems counter productive to raise pre and check back these flops with a strong holding we can improve our pot control and not have to check fold our second street when we see cards like the  9h or paired boards; while we can also effectively balance our range if we similarly check back our nutted hands. This also gives us better contingency on the flop as we are never likely calling a raise on this board texture with our holding.