zerochill

Being aware of KK's in their range is a good thing, but you do sound a little bit fearful which is likely overweighting their range in your mind with top sets on all K hi boards! Makes sense because KK is a great hand to flat at all stakes, but in the long run if this misperception goes unchecked you'll get yourself in a lot of trouble on these and other boards since it'll probably carry over to other textures.

I think reminding yourself of all the heaps of other kinds of hands in his range would be a good exercise to get this top set funk outta your system. I would take a piece of paper and write down a bunch of one pair hands villain can have on each line in order to start re-calibrating the way you look at ranges on K hi boards. So for KT4cc you got AKQ4s, KJJ9, KQQ3, QQJ5, TJ78, AJT3, etc. Do it by hand because stuff seems to stick better that way.

As played, no reason to raise flop and good fold on the turn.

Those are really good questions actually. For starters I think you're right and at these stakes + large player pool there's not a lot of value in finding some well balanced sneaky squeeze range here. You'll find yourself guessing post flop with hands that require solid reads to play this way and you also won't be able to build upon those reads and adjust like you would in a smaller player pool. So just squeezing standard, dominating hands (AKJT, KQJT, JT98, good AA/KK etc) and flatting the rest would be the way I attack this spot given the creative limitations of 25PL.

Not too familiar with calc programs sorry, I wish. Wouldn't mind learning though so I hope someone who knows finds the thread could show us.

If BB calls our open jam with the same range he'd shove if checked to anyway, then we just miss the opportunity to get the extra information - if BTN is getting involved. I think another point to be made is that having it check around to see a turn might be the best possible outcome for our exact hand here, since we improve very nutty and if they were so thin they couldn't shove that flop but catch barely enough to shove turn while you improve, that puts you in a great spot to dominate as opposed to chopping up pot odds with everyone getting it in on flop.

midori I think at these stakes vs. a random you could size up to 3.50 or even 4 on the flop (but even increasing by $0.28 to full pot tends to scare rec's off the float) since they'll tend to have a pretty inelastic flop calling range of all Kx/7x/spades. Other than that Torstein, I agree with Jerry we shouldn't be 3betting these junky kings at a full stack depth you're just gonna find yourself in too many marginal situations postflop. KK97 is probably the lowest I'd 3bet or KK96 if I'm feelin' lucky :)

jonna I think the majority of players at 25plo play too passive to bet w/ out hitting 2pair on the turn which gets it in anyway. I could be wrong, and it's not like chk/chk turn is all that bad anyway since I think river chks by us on unchanging boards do encourage bluffs from BTN. As played I think turn sizing is fine and I'd call river because we have the Qs.

3betting would be fine, but this is a squeeze which totally changes the dynamic in the hand. You might want to squeeze this hand once in a while for randomization or something funky like that. I'm not sure what else you can do except fold or get it in on the flop since how can you play well on turns that don't give you straights? Seems like you'll make bad folds on board pairs, flush completes, and even total bricks if you were planning on folding unimproved. Bet/go with it on the flop or bet/fold after the squeeze pre but yeah flatting pre would've avoided the marginal spot for sure.

vs. someone with his described tendencies it sounds like he's forcing you to either check your whole range on the flop or have a bet/3b range on the flop. If you go with constructing a b/3b range I'd probably include this hand in it since you can't ever get it in that poorly but is super high variance this deep. Now that I think about it, lowering variance is more sensible so I'd work on a balanced x/call range with some tricky x/raises in there too.

I agree with the pot/go with it vs. these stack sizes and just think this spot dictates a high variance play since you do alright vs. everything but sets and those don't happen all that often. If one more opponent had 100bb things might get weird.

x/folding to BB action but pot/isoing over BTN shoves is the only continuing line I would take on this board. The important part is making sure BB doesn't show any speed because 3 ways with this hand is a variance fest (although you're probably not doing that poorly) and I would avoid it mostly for that reason.

Check out some of Durian's videos on defending from the blinds. I wouldn't jump right into following exactly how he plays since it'll take a lot of practice and messing around (maybe move down while testing things out) but his whole aim is to mitigate exactly what your concern is regarding losing out of the blinds.

No reason to 3bet preflop and negate your btn advantage. As played I think your best option is checkback turn/decide river. Even though it sucks sometimes because you let him realize equity, if your read is that he doesn't have flushes then you can make a decent amount picking off river bluffs vs the missed straight draws and other nonsense.

Played as a 3bet pre, potting flop is the only play vs two 50bb stacks (it would definitely change if they were deeper). Turn would be a x/c though. The main thing I would change about the play is flatting preflop vs. the minraise but probably still 3betting vs a 3x or pot. These aces don't flop particularly well and even though they have a suit, you're gonna want more highly connected and dominating hands when playing these limits that people don't fold their equity basically ever.

vs CO's weakest hands here you shouldn't be doing well and a flip against his range at best (but maybe hovering in the 40-45%). He'd have to show me TJxx for me to continue, but it all comes down to what kind of variance you want to take on right there. If you're winning and he's tilted maybe go for it.

Despite the ridiculously good odds you're getting on river, I definitely agree with jonna about turn call river fold. Given he's one of the better regs at 50zoom this seems like a super exploitive line he's designed for the recreational players (and 50zoom is littered with them) who won't ever fold their straights but will completely stop betting at the turn and stubbornly call river all day.

There is also rake to consider where from a pure EV perspective "bumhunting" at these high rake limits goes way up in value, not to mention your overall game selection is much more abundant at the micros (50-100). Maybe for 200-400plo there's less of an excuse.

I think in theory your head is in the right place but in practice, being read-less at this low of a limit, you have to be really careful because a lot of the time you're better off taking a line that doesn't involve trusting them to make a good poker decision. So in this exact spot you're probably better off simplifying and taking a check/call/letthemrepyourhand line. All of your thought processes could be introduced to the problem again once you are positive villain cares about making the right decision.

It sucks that PLO is such a high variance game so when you just start out dabbling you naturally want to keep stakes as low as possible, but often times you'll run into the issue that no one is "playing poker" so you have to revert to a simplistic nut-peddle mindset which doesn't encourage much self improvement (which is obviously the goal as opposed to grinding out $2 limits professionally).

I would also be careful in using the phrase "showdown value" on the flop since your equity is more important at this stage of the hand, with showdown value being more important starting at the turn and most of all on the river.