[yamel]

Interesting spot as usual….I think a call is fine, we are calling 1BB to win a 7.5BB pot and lots of turns improve us. I think V’s have mostly 1 pair hands, draws, or overs themselves given the raise size.

I actually think a raise may be a little better since we can clean up some unpaired hands (e.g. Ax) that can easily fold now and we take the lead to bet/bluff favorable turn cards when called and really put pressure on 1 pair hands.

Curious to see the math on what we can call without the bdfd, but I would not call this without the BDFD against two players.

Doing some quick math to check my thought process against a range like:

AJs-A7s,A2s,KJs-K7s,K2s,Q8s+,J8s+,T8s+,94s+,AJo-A8o,A2o,KJo-K8o,Q8o+,J8o+,T8o+,98o

With the bdfd we get about 19.4% equity against two opponents, and without the bdfd we drop to 15.3% (equity is much worse than I thought facing two opponents).

Our pot equity is 19% (2bb/ (4.5+2+2+2)) at 2BB and 13% at 1BB…so with my range example we can call bets smaller than 2BB with the bdfd, but can only call the 1BB without it.

[fivebyfive]

Interesting spot. When I’m facing a small bet with multiple callers, one of the questions I like to ask myself is: what are my gin cards (both for my hand and for my range)? I guess the answer here for our hand is 7s or Js. But even those cards are tricky to know how to proceed with. For our range, I’d argue the best cards are any non-spades between the 2 and 8.

But no turn is ideal for us. This is especially tricky because this was limped preflop, which means ranges are wide across the board. So while this board isn’t that great for anyone, it likely favors us. Our opponents can have 8 or 9 or flush draws (and maybe a set of 22), but we can have all the 8/9/flush draws. Because I’m going to face a lot of uncertainty on a lot of turns, and because I have two back door draws with overs, this is a hand I want to either jump ship with or take it down/get heads up now.

I like a raise here to 5bb. It’s a cheap and doesn’t kill my stack if I have to fold to a shove. This is that classic leverage moment where I can use a smaller bet to threaten entire stacks. My opponents have shown a lot of weakness, especially button, and I should be able to take this down a lot. Obviously if anyone shoves, I’m out. If HJ calls my raise and I don’t gain any equity on the turn, I’m done with the hand. If a spade or 7 or J comes on the turn, I’m putting their likely 8 or 9 to the test. If a K or 10 comes, I’m trying to navigate to showdown if I can.