Hi All,

My first post concerns a hand I played last night.

$1/2 NL HoldEm 6 players. I had $250, Villain had $230. Villain seemed quite a solid player, maybe a little loose.

I was in the BB and dealt JJ (suits unimportant). There were 5 limpers to me. I decided to try and take down the pot there and then and raised to $12. I got 1 caller (Villain) who was UTG.

Flop came 6 6 4 rainbow

I think and bet out $25
Villian calls....
Turn brings a 10....
Whats your plan for the turn/ river?

Thanks
aquifex

This is a tough situation. What you have to ask yourself when facing this type of situation is: What hands could this guy call me with preflop, and then call again on the flop. What I'm most inclined to think is that this guy has a pocket pair 8's, 9's, or T's. i.e., hands that he thinks are good enough to call preflop with, and then make a call on the flop simply because he has that "overpair." On the other hand, without any read on this guy it is hard to say, there are many players who will limp UTG with a hand like A's, K's, or Q's (ask Iceman) and wait for a raise behind them. Now the proper play for them to make would be to limp-reraise but lots of them won't, will take a flop, and then given the fact that you're willing to bet into them on every street with a weaker hand, call you down with a winner. They are risking the chance of getting beat by letting you hit a better hand, but of course they could care less. So on to your specific situation:

5 limpers to you = $10, you make it $12 - Total pot = $22, UTG calls $10 more, total pot $32.

Flop comes down 6 6 4, obviously you are liking your hand at this point and make a bet of $25, roughly 75% of the pot. What can your opponent be thinking at this time? Best case scenario he holds an underpair to your hand like I said above. After that he's got AK, thinks your bet is suspiciously large and reads you for an unimproved AQ/AJ type of hand or at worst an AK to split with him. Worst case scenario he's got an overpair and figures, hey, this guy just made a huge bet into me, why not just call him down and let him give me his money instead of taking it from him. So you've put yourself in a tricky situation here by betting $25 on the flop because you haven't really narrowed down all that much what he could be holding, and you still have to act on the turn and potentially river.

At this point the pot should now be somewhere around $80, from what we've narrowed down to his likely range of holdings, what card are we happy seeing on the turn? Not many besides a Jack. However, I don't think you can slow down so far as to check it to him on the turn because at this point all he's got to do is force you to a huge decision. I think the 10 on the turn is potentially dangerous as a pocket pair that he could have been holding, my plan would be to bet about $40-$50 on the turn. At this point, if he comes over the top all-in, with the absence of any knowledge of the player, I'm ready to lay this down. If he folds, great. Your real problem is if he flat calls you yet again. I generally tend to believe (Outside of a regular NL25 party fishbowl, of course) that if someone flat calls a large bet 3 times, they probly got you beat. So say you had made a $50 bet and he flat called, now you're staring at a $180 pot, more than the stack that you've got left. At that point, without hitting a Jack on the river, I think if he makes any significant bet you've got to be really really thinking hard about not giving away your entire stack.

This is one of those situations that you really want to try to avoid when playing NLH, any hand that is going to end up forcing you to make a decision for your stack is a bad hand. This is why position is so, so important and why JJ doesn't play well out of position. This hand specifically I think facing one opponent to avoid getting yourself in trouble you should have bet less on the flop, this way if you get called you can slow down on the turn without making yourself look weak, or, if you decided to push him out on the turn with a large bet, you can be much more certain that he's got a real holding rather than some crap like AK.