Just A Hand; OK, Two

I played this hand in the Bay 101 40/80 game on Monday, and thought it was interesting. The villain usually plays 80/160, and since I usually play 20/40, we've seen each other around a ton but don't really have much history.

The results, which aren't yet up in the 2 plus 2 thread, are that he checked behind on the river and courtesy showed 77. If you're gonna 3-bet with 77, you really can't just give up like that, at least in my opinion.

Decided to add a second hand....besides, it's not every day you can make a $1500 mistake in limit hold 'em.

So I'm playing live 40/80 and somehow get mixed up in a pot with Q9 of diamonds. I suspect I was the big blind (in fact now that I think of it, that was almost surely the case) and the raise came from early position. We saw the flop at least 5 handed, maybe 6 ways, which was:

QT8 with two diamonds

In other words, gin. The preflop raiser is very loose preflop, but tends to be passive after the flop. He's bad. The first two cold callers aren't awful, but the third is quite so. I check to the preflop raiser who dutifully bets (he's passive, but this is 40/80). 3 players calls and I raise the entire field. Everyone else calls. The pot is now, if I remember correctly, 11 big bets.

My memory is now failing me, as I completely forget the turn card. It wasn't a total brick, but it didn't much help me either. Let's call it a black 6.

QT8-6 with two diamonds

I lead, as I put in the last action on the last round and, since I didn't get 3-bet, I think my pair of ladies is probably still the best hand. Even if it's not, I have 9 diamonds to make the virtual nuts, 3 more jacks to make the idiot end of a straight, and 5 queens and 9s of non-zero value. The preflop raiser calls, one player folds, another player calls, and the aforementioned terrible cold-caller raises. I cry inside, don't think long enough, and call. Right after I do it, I look back at the terrible player's chip stack. He only has 6 chips left! This changes everything. First of all, the fact that he's almost out of chips makes it far more likely that he has some sort of hand that is much further from "the lock down nuts" than usual. This line....call....call on the flop. Then raise the entire field on the turn, usually screams monster. But when going all in, players, especially bad ones, do particularly idiotic things. Second of all, the fact that he doesn't have enough chips to 4-bet (which I'd have to call) means that 3-betting is much cheaper than usual. I had a chance here to put 2 big bet pressure on the preflop raiser and the first cold caller for a great price. I might get one of them to fold the best hand. They assuredly each have some outs (what with me having one pair of queens at the moment), and getting them to fold a hand with even 3 outs is worth an entire big bet in a pot of this size (it's around 15 bets, which means their equity is about 1 big bet with 3 outs). But I was asleep at the switch and just called, then watched in horror as both other players called. The river bricked off and it checked through. The preflop raiser won the 19 big bet (~$1500) pot with AQ, that he played in absuredly passive fashion, and I felt like an ass for the next 30 minutes. He claimed he would have mucked had I 3-bet, and I believe him.