After some thought about how this hand was played out, I have some mixed feelings about my non-standard line and wanted to post on 2p2 for some advice and suggestions on the line/hand.

Images

Hero: Has been at the table for about 10 hours. straight forward, ABC for the most part, but image was reset/eroded recently as the table saw me CRAI bluff someone who had a donkey bottom straight within the last hour. (I got snapped called and tabled the losing hand)

Villain 1 - Sat down about 3 hours ago, hoodie with sunglasses, never played before prior to session but seems like about an average villain for the casino. Some leaks, but none really too exploitable. Has limped small pairs, and has not had too much aggression without having a hand. Have not been in any major confrontations with him before.

Villian 2 - stuck and bleeding out. lost a huge pot trying to bluff me on a disgusting run out but failed to do so. He's been a station ever since, not a threat.

Table dynamics - some of the 5T players have dropped down to pray on some fish (all of us, supposedly it's relative), abusing obvious methods in some of the poker books. Most PF raises with multiway action have been for 15, and no one has contested with a 3! mostly. Opens of 30 or more have usually been uncontested by stations

Most of the players at this hour are armenians and asians who know each other by first name -- i assume they are all regs. Hero has been snug when OOP and not willing to stick out his neck at a stationey table. He has opened last several pots and taken down blinds and a few limps.

The hand

PREFLOP

V1 ($1250) (UTG)- opens for $35. V's opens have been larger in nature relative to the rest of the table and seems based on hand strength, though his opening range is relatively tight.

V2 ($600) (BTN) - calls.

Hero ($covers) (BB) - I look down and see AA. I raise to $115.

V1 calls, V2 folds. When V1 calls here, we put his range heavily on 99-KK.

FLOP ($263)

BOARD - 7 3 4

Pretty good board for my hand, though wet. Plan is to c/r and barrel on most turn/river cards.

Hero pauses then checks for deception.
V1 bets $100.
Hero c/r to $300.
V1 tank calls.

TURN ($863)

BOARD - 7 3 4 6

One of the worse cards in the deck at a glance, but not the worst.

Hero bets $400.
V1 tanks some more, cuts out a call, but also then position chips to suggest a possible shove, but ends up calling.

Everyone at table is dead silent after someone made a comment "damn this pot is getting huge"

RIVER ($1663)

BOARD - 7 3 4 6 k

This card is one of the ones that brought genuine concern, but does not impact the plan as it was to ship any non-heart river.

Hero bets $435 and is all in.
Villain tank calls.

How often are we supposed to be good here and how can we improve our line?

Your sizing is not great. You should be making it somewhat larger preflop and c/r to 300 is tiny. I don't understand why you left only 1/4 pot for the river, you should just have raised a bit larger on the flop and shoved the turn for 2/3-3/4 pot. Considering villain tanked the river you should be good very frequently. If you asked me how often you get called by worse on the river I would say probably not very often, but shoving is still better than checking. You do not need to be >50% equity when called for shoving to be best there, you just need to put in the 435 with more equity than you would have by check/calling. Shoving also makes it the most possible for him to make a mistake against you. Checking and having him check back QQ/JJ would be gross, you must give those hands a change to call getting 5:1.

Also, I think c/r flop is needlessly FPS. Just bet and plan on betting turn and shoving river if the board runs out favorably. If you put his range on mostly 99-KK, checking flop is terrible because his entire range will call a bet but only some of it will bet, and only some of his betting range will call a raise. Having him check back JJ for pot control would be a disaster.

If he tank called you're probably good TT+ is always calling given price. Not having more money could be good if he has a small flush 89 , TJhh. Because he is also never folding for that price. Only thing you could have done is change the sizing on the turn and 4 th street

x/r flop is way too fancy it accomplishes nothing but turning your hand face up. Also doing it w/o the A is extra bad.

The only reason to take such a line is if you are deep vs. a spewtard villain who goes nuts when checked to (they exist) and you are at a stack depth where x/r sets up stacking villain nicely and spewtard villain dgaf what you have.

When you x/r you only have value hands here ever and maybe AK/AQ which I mean still have tremendous equity anyways. OMCs take this line often and I have very trivial folds (or flop check backs) with JJ/QQ.

This is why you should barrel bc your range (theoretically) still contains all air (AK, total preflop bluffs, etc), some draws, and value.

$150 pre / $250 flop / tank stuff turn

Or

$150 pre / $130 flop / $260 turn / stuff river

Id prefer the 3 street approach on dryer flops or where we at least had the A

Look up how to calculate pot raise sizing for your 3b sizing preflop. Only adjust it up or down based on effective stack depths, not range. (i.e., I wouldn't mind a smaller 3bet if each villain had $500, but not because we lol have AA)

160 pre
bet
bet
shove

Bigger preflop and get it in on turn hoping he calls with KK/QQ with a heart. As played check/call river.

As played thin-value jam on river is really close. If he gets to river and calls with QQ/KK/AJhh/AQhh/AKhh then its a breakeven bet. If he gets there with JJ then it's profitable. I think there's a good chance he folds all JJ and QQ with no heart on the turn.

In game I jam river but after doing the math I think check call is better.

--

I do think check/raise flop has merit as part of a balanced range if your villain is a thinking/bluffcatching player and there is some dynamic between you two. Against a relative unknown I think bet/bet/bet is the line here.

I like the sizing preflop, with stack sizes what they are vs V2 I don't see any need to go bigger. I could see going to 125 but 150/160 just seems unnecessary(you're effectively 3betting a normal size vs v1 and 4betting vs v2). Also the way V2 reacts to 3bets should affect your range to some extent here(i.e. whether your 3bet bluffs will actually have some board coverage here ever).

I think you're making a mistake putting V1 calling range preflop quite so narrow. He should at least be able to have AK/AQ and perhaps even KQs/KJs(and even lighter with stack sizes?).

Agree I don't like the flop ch/r, hand is much better played as a two street hand as avaratia said, and you don't get stuck in these stupid PSR situations like you are on the river.

Given the (ridiculous) open size pre, your hand plays like 5/10 hand. $ 115 is way too small given the amount of money in the pot. $ 130 would be my choice and post-flop bet (>1/2)/bet (>1/2)/shove.

Only read the HH. Would suggest focusing on fundamentals. I would 3bet bigger OOP multiway, bet flop, check decide post turn given actual run out, with view to calling a very high percentage given stack sizes.

3-bet bigger pre, (around 145 imo)

Other than that I really like your line. With your reads (especially the one about his preflop raise size) I expect him to have JJ-KK and stack off this way a huge percentage of the time. I think you stack 1010-JJ a bit more often with this line than if you bet/bet/shove.

I also like the turn sizing. I use that play a lot when i want to get stacks in and find it very effective against most non-pros/people you don't have history with. Although it shouldn't matter much, they just can't get themselves to fold to the small turn sizing and then they're just getting too good of pot odds on the river. Nh

He's stacking off TT-KK if you bet the flop, but may not stack off TT or JJ when you c/r the flop, because that looks super strong with the line OP took in the hand. I'm betting the whole way here and feeling pretty good about it, especially against described villain who won't be able to fold an overpair, especially if he has a heart in his hand.

Renton posts some key fundamentals which I need to reflect further on. I think the argument that losing value in the hand by potentially letting flop check through is a very valuable point. FPS is clearly acknowledged.

To the rest who have posted, thanks for the feedback as well.

Given the dynamics of the table, any larger than $115 PF would likely illicit two folds from these V's. (Pot = $140). V2 has nothing here he calls otb with that can endure a 3! pf, so him coming along for the ride was not a factor. For those suggesting a PF raise > POT, don't we lose immense value a lot of the time by folding out too much of V's range? We expect V's hand to be elastic here, and not inelastic most of the time. We also factored that V has been raising big PF at times, even with sitting relatively deepstacked OOP to the rest of the table as a sign that V potentially lacks experience playing deep, or even having the ability to factor that in.

As mentioned by others, I did briefly consider taking bet/bet/shove line:

- flop bet: $200
- turn: $475
- river: $shove

But given I have no hearts, my thinking was that there were many situations on this flop texture where i might be placed in some difficult situation on the turn/river where I would not be able to execute this line. For example, when the 6 hits the turn, do you check for pot control, or do you b/f $350 to a shove when V may turn his hand into a bluff without realizing it. (for instance, 99-KK with a heart)

Reflecting on the flop C/R, I agree that a c/r here was pretty suspect considering I did not directly factor in my history with the villian at time of the decision to c/r. If I had factored in that the V saw me lose my mind by CRAI bluff 2-3 orbits ago, then the C/R would have not been as bad as I would have at least given it some thought before the FPS.

I'll post results in my next response.

any line u take is going to suck when the 6 of hearts comes on the turn

Since when do people open UTG for 7 big blinds with a hand that has a 5-ranked card in it? Seems to me like the 6h is one of the best hearts you could have hoped for. With any less than 2psb behind I think you're probably happy to stack off with AA on the 6h.

Exactly. The 6h is effectively a blank dude. He 7x'd from utg and you 3bet from the bb. It's actually sometimes a good card (well a mixed blessing I suppose) bc now his KKx/QQx/JJx etc are probably never folding and sometimes spazzing.

I used to have your mindset on too big elicits more folds. 1) it doesn't. It really doesn't. 2). If it does (which it doesn't) you can exploit this by widening your 3bet value range or adding in more bluffs too.

There are times when we want to invite villains into a hand. For example a spew box sitting on 60bbs in cutoff and a known squeezer in the bb. We have btn. If spew box opens cutoff, I flat AA/KK/AKs here a ton...

...but vilain just 7x, from UTG. This is a dream scenario for AA and you need to start valuetowning right away.

Imo 6h is a terrible card because it is an action killer

Results:

Probably can 3bet bigger pre if he really is so tight UTG most people aren't opening to fold premiums. As played line seems fine, you can adjust sizing a long the way but nothing too criminal. If he takes a stab with something like AK when you check to him then c/r is fine but if not just pot pot shove as most players are just going to cry call with an overpair. what if he has 99 and decided to x/b and a Q,K or A peels off on the turn killing your action. the fact that you did just c/r bluff helps but some people do follow the, people don't bluff twice in a row, rule.

Not really. nobody has a 5 here and there are only like 3 or 4 combos of suited hands each person can have.

probably just put you on AK with A or K of hearts.

River was a King

are there any learnings from this about extracting value or taking unorthodox lines? or is this just a "wow you played that badly" thread?

not trying to insinuate anything, just an honest question that i'd enjoy hearing on from respected posters in this sub-forum

The first learning is that villain is a pretty decent whale and should be bum hunted accordingly.

The second learning is just how wide your value range can be in live poker. imo what separates the good from the great players are thin value bets/jams. Pretty sick to think that you could stuff 99 OTR here for value. Not saying that in this exact spot we should, but I would probably be stuffing QQ most of the time.

Truth be told when he calls the river I'm expecting to not be good here like a stomach wrenching big portion of the time. (exception is JJ-QQ, but i expect a turn ship)

What hand does a competent V have that gets to the river and call river that does not have me beat?

Actually, in fact, as soon as he calls I turn over my hand while saying "guess you got it", not to slow roll him or anything, but just because i didnt see how i could get called with worse under a standard situation.