home game that revolves around 2 or 3 whales. one is up big and one is down big. everyone else at the table is either a pro or very solid rec player who plays for profit. it's around 3am and everyone is drinking and having a good time.

effective stacks ~15k

preflop

rec player opens UTG+1 to 60, winning whale minraises to 120 (he never has a value hand here), solid pro makes it 420, i raise to 1100 from BTN with 7 5. utg+1 and whale folds, pro calls

rationale - i know whale has a weak hand and he's winning and isn't going to play a big pot this late in the night with a weak hand. i expect pro to fold a bunch here with his weakish iso range and scoop the dead $$$ a bunch. i've been pretty tight tonight (in line with my rep) and don't expect to be called very lightly either.

flop (pot 2380): A 7 4

he checks, i bet 1400, he calls

turn (pot 6100): 8

he checks, i check. i don't think i'm getting him off of a strong ace ever and think he would 4b KK so double barrelling would really only get him off QQ/TT/99 i guess and i figured if he checks river i could bet river to get him fold there.

river (pot 6100) 7

he checks, i bet 3200, he goes all in (about 9k for me to call)

***
is this a snap call bc my hand is super underrepped? my issue is that any value hands he has here beat me (random 7x, boats, 56), though i don't expect him to check river a ton with value hands and turn goes c/c. so even though my hand is underrepped i'm really only beating a bluff? could he do this "for value" with AK?

we are both up ~3-4k for whatever that's worth... i.e., nobody is tilting/stuck a ton

Isn't this the strongest hand you can have in this spot?

Ergo call.

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yeah it's basically the best hand i can have but i don't think i beat any of his value hands and it's sort of hard for him to get to river with bluff (i think he would lead river mostly?)

Turn and river pot size is 5100ish, not 6100.

why are you so determined to get the whale to fold preflop?

You realize you 5 bet pre already, right? With these stacks, a 6 bet with AA/KK/anything else is by no means automatic. I think he could flat a ton of hands preflop (AA/44/88/56s/78s to name a few) that beat you on the river. I'd likely fold because he's a solid pro who check shipped 600 bb in a game with 2 whales.

Speaking of which, wtf are you doing 5betting in this spot in this game? Sure you had your reasons, but it still appears as though you had no plan beyond "I really hope/think I can take this down preflop" and were rather lost once he called.

flop c bet is way too big. As played this is a call. dunno wtf he is repping but he doesnt have AA or 77. 44? NH sir

He was already folding regardless of what I did imo

I thought I could pick up the dead money a huge % of the time. I disagree that a "plan" is needed if you just take the most EV play each street.

I'm not sure why you think I'm lost on the flop. I assume that means you think cbetting is bad ?

Well it's not 77, and probably not 44, but not so sure it couldn't be AA.

Hands in range <57s that he plays for value this way pre/flop/riv A8dd/A8hh

Hands in range >57s that he plays for value this way pre/flop/riv AA/56s/78s

As for decent bluffs that didn't ck-r flop??? not many, perhaps 86s specifically might be compelled to bluff raise PF, ck call>ck-r flop, ck-shove riv as a bluff to fold out your heavily perceived Ax range (you did ck turn) while blocking 88/some straights.

Maybe I'm stating the obvious here, but if he's good enough, ranging him is pretty futile in the sense that he knows you know he has so few bluffs+so little FE in this spot that you essentially need to have miracle 7x or AA to make the call. Confusing things is that it's awfully easy for you to play Ax this way and awfully hard for you to have 7x... toss a coin.

AK makes for a better bluff catch/value catch via ck-c no? You certainly have bluffs here.

Since like 90%+ of your value range is AJ-AK, he can def have A8s here too

Factoring in
-some combos of A8, maybe AK but that seems thin
-V has a polarity advantage -- less Ax but a narrow "nutted" range (incentivizes a bluff since we should be capped more often than not)
-We're near the top of our range
-We're blocking some of the value hands hes repping (65 and 7x)
-We're not blocking any bluffs
-You said yourself you'd bet/check/bet as a bluff, meaning you'd probably make the same bet on an 8 river, so if V knows this about your game, then he can get you off all your bluffs + a lot of Ax
-(for practical purposes of the min 3bet we'll say that V 3bet and you 4bet) -- question being, do you think he simply doesnt have a 5betting range oop this deep? If not it adds some AA combos, if he does then he has very few/no AA combos

It all adds up to appear to be the prime hand/spot to call with. That being said, all the factors in the world to make calling appealing don't mean **** if they aren't capable of this type of bluff.

It's always AA no matter what.

Fold from my desk chair

Call in game and get shown AA 1000% of the time

Everyone always has it, everyb****ing time



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Are you the other whale the game revolves around?

No I wish

DGAF do you really think this is AA ? You play much higher much more frequently than I do and I'm sort of curious if the whole "when a lot of money goes in, they almost always have it" theory applies (perhaps even more so) at those levels.

I sort of assume everyone playing at these levels is underrolled and even if they aren't, 10k+ is objectively a lot of money for everyone, even people who can "afford" to lose it/not notice it.

Also @ warpig and onedollar, can you guys share any insight as to why you presumably think this hand is played terribly? I don't think I'm a superstar or anything but I think preflop is super +EV and don't really think doing something else on later streets is better than the line I took

Also for everyone -

What are you doing with AK, AQ, KK on river? It's sort of tricky but if we are calling with 7x we should be calling with KK ??

There are few pros who will ship here as a bluff or a potential chop block. If villain was one of those few, you would have likely told us in the OP.<--- is part of what makes big games generally so easy (especially if you can ship without "it" here yourself).

Would need to know a lot more about the game flow, history, what he thinks of your cold-5 bet range , how wide he would defend oop, what his c/c on the flop range looks like, what he thinks of your check-back turn/value bet river line, etc, etc.

what did he have?

I'll post results in a day or two in case anyone else wants to chime in.

I think his view of me is generally scared money and that I'm a competent but non-pro with a super narrow range here. He would probably bet a million dollars that I don't have a 7 and a million is a hell of a lot more than the pot

I think in his eyes my hand is "face-up" as KK, QQ, and maybe AK/AQ. And that's what makes it interesting because even if he is the type who would never stuff without the nuts, if he thinks I have to fold 100% of my range he might be inclined to yolo. Unstoppable force vs unmoveable object etc etc lol

Let me ask you this --- would you make this play vs someone like me if your read was nothing more than "potentially scared money 5/10 reg" ?

Your **** image makes this spot 10x harder.... now its more likely he wont 5bet you pre (or 6bet w/e) because w/ AA he could be very inclined to think you'll fold everything but KK

I wouldn't expect you to vbet < AK (maybe AQ). If I could remove AA because of your turn check and think I could credibly rep hands that beat AK and I knew you could fold AK (I'd have to know you very well)... sure lol.

edit: I don't think your hand is "'face up' as KK, QQ" whatsoever.

Non pros never c/r bluff shove the river. Even most pros can't make that move. You describe villain as a solid pro. How solid is he, solid enough to show up here with air? Your hand looks exactly like AK, or AQ, not KK or QQ. Your actual hand, even though you spiked gin on the river, is basically a bluff catcher, and has practically the same relative value as AK. There is an infinitesimally small chance he is trying to block the chop on the river with AK, but I think that's really wishful thinking. This really is either a bluff or the nuts, and given that he called a 5 bet preflop, I think the chances this is the nuts goes way up.