Bad raise on the river?

[Buffsta8]

So I am trying to improve my very mediocre play - This hand in a nutshell is probably why you define yourself as mediocre (and why you are probably right)

Pre flop is pretty poor and then to make up for having a poor starting hand in a raised pot of this nature you second guess every decision and basically play a line that gets you to showdown cheaply when there is now reason to play the hand aggressively.

The flop seems like a fairly obvious raise and you have a good chance to be ahead at this point. The player in the middle would surely have raised if he could beat KT at this point so the only concern is utg. he'd follow through with all hands here so his range is no different than his preflop range and you figure to be ahead of that a good amount. Once you don't raise the flop I'm not completely sure what i'd do on the turn. Raising and calling both have merit and i'd have to have a better feel for my opponent and how often he will 3 bet me on the turn to give you more insight both options are fine though. The river I think is an obvious raise/fold as we will never get 3 bet with worse than KT and will get paid off by a lot of hands here. Your hand prior to the river looks like a no pair draw and in my experience you would get paid off here by almost every hand (JJ,99 AA AT AQ QTs 44 etc etc) you get the drift

[Victor]

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preflop is pretty bad. id raise the flop with to trap the fool.

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I am not so sure its that bad. Looney loosie is in there and with some luck one or two blinds will be too. If we hit the hand hard there could be a nice payout.

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you are crushed by utg tho. i would prefer 89s.

[Dane S]

Your river calcs demonstrate why PF is a fold.

[MrBig30]

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Your river calcs demonstrate why PF is a fold.

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Lol. That may be the best point so far this thread. I was aware that the call was at best marginal, but my hope was to get the blinds to come along - get it 4-5 handed with me on the button. And then flop a straight- or flushdraw. Not top pair.

Now that did not happen, it got 3-handed and I got the top pair instead. Now I look for a cheap showdown (as there is no way to protect my weak hand) and hope UTG keeps betting his reverse dominated AK and loosie calling with a weak draw. Raising river may be ok but not great. I did and he payed me off with a worse K .KJ i think, so yes I was dominated preflop.

I will fold next time.

[MrBig30]

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Pre flop is pretty poor and then to make up for having a poor starting hand in a raised pot of this nature you second guess every decision and basically play a line that gets you to showdown cheaply when there is now reason to play the hand aggressively.

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I agree preflop is very questionable. However I do not see the need for too much postflop aggression. If we are ahead on the flop and turn our hand is extremely vulnerable - its not like we gain 2SB by raising flop if they both call as they will draw out a lot of the time. And it is far from sure we are ahead, quite likely we are drawing. And there is no way to protect our hand if we are ahead - if we are behind UTG he might very well 3-bet and all we did is helped him protect his hand.

[MrBig30]

So does anyone care about discussing preflop? Assuming average blinds I guess everybody would call here with KQs, QJs, JTs?
Does anyone call 9ts? 89s? kjs? qts?

[latefordinner]

I don't mind waiting til the turn to raise now that we are heads up and have a marginal pair+overcard+flush draw. Assuming a competent UTG player we can take the free showdown if offered and if we are threebet it makes our river play fairly obvious.

As far as this river goes, I think your intution that this is only a profitable raise if we can fold to the 3bet is a good. Since you can't, I just call. Though I do question your logic a bit there, UTG would have to be pretty aggro and have shown the ability to get out of line not to trust a three-bet to beat KT here.

regarding preflop play, this is an easy muck for me assuming standard blinds. I really really dislike coldcalling in a shorthanded game unless there are like 4 or more players already in the pot. Playing KTs 3-handed for two bets preflop is not my idea of a good time.

I would probably reraise AJs/KQs/88+/and sometimes QJs. If there were 2 more callers I might consider calling with JTs/T9s but i think you couldn't go wrong if you never coldcalled in situations like this.