5 handed 5/10. Effective Stacks ~1200

The lineup is 3 old ABC guys who haven't adjusted well to 5 handed play, a young Asian guy, and hero.

V is the young Asian who's been aggressive pre but it seems like he hasn't gotten out of line post flop much. Has 3b a few times already. Been at the table for ~1 hour.

Hero image is likely similar to V. Been aggressive pre in position and has taken down some pots post flop, but nothing that seemed very out of line.

Hero opens AJ UTG to 30, folds to V in the BB who makes it 120, hero flats.
(245) 9TJ
V Check, hero check
(245) 5
V Check, hero bets 80, V thinks about 10 sec and calls
(405) 6
V leads 200, hero?

How have you reacted to his 3b pre? Has he 3b OOP or in position? Have any of them gotten to showdown?

Bet the flopp.
When you check this flop back with tptk, you have to call river.

His play is pretty bizarre, but I'm not sure what you can beat here. I guess AQ is possible, and with your tiny turn bet maybe even AK finds a call. I dunno though, it seems like KK QQ always bet turn so I guess you have to look him up here.

Fold pre, though.

Villain's line is weird. His flop play is a very common line to take with QQ-AA in this spot, but I would expect those hands to lead turn when checked through not tank call a tiny bet.

Your turn sizing following your flop play could have induced something on the river as well. I'd call river.

I would bet flop just bc it's the easiest way to win the hand vs. his whole range and clearly you are not getting value from AK anyways.

River if we were a little deeper I would stuff (repping nothing is fun).

Even with his silly line (auto-calling silly lines is rarely a mistake), Id probably fold. His sizing is what makes this close.

ya fold pre. as played bet more on turn. w/ ur small 80 turn bet were u trying to induce? i thought u said this guy "hasn't got out of line post flop much" so why did u bet turn so small.

grunch

150 flop, 375 turn, re -evaluate river.

As played easy call

I'm surprised at all the flop bettors. It looks like a fairly standard check from where I'm sitting. This flop smashes our range so it seems like overplaying to bet all the way down to this. I guess I don't mind betting full range for a small size though. Anyway, it could go either way but it's definitely not a clear bet by any means.

And daynnight, 150 flop 375 turn would be enormously overplaying.

Advantage of betting flop : Keeps strong hands in our range. Sets up a potential multi barrel bluff. Sets up opportunity to see a cheaper showdown depending on runout/reads.

With good position comes great responsibility.

Also, this is a board where we will rarely get an early street fold from the preflop 3 bettor. So we are better off choosing to have decent equity hands in our bluffing range. TP with bdfd is a potential candidate for that.

That means I would put small pairs/completely whiffed suited aces in my check back range. I don't see a need to add medium strength hands to that range. If I check in position on this board, I am basically giving up.

In position, on this board, I would bet nutted hands and medium strength hands. Because we are so rarely going to get played back at. So we don't risk much by betting a merged range. We can still get some thin value. And potentially bluff with some of these medium strength hands by river.

I don't get these two.

What do we make of his range pf from these positions; of the part that's not ak what are we winning against

Do many asains who take this line fold better when we ship repping nothing


Calling river idk we have Ah so he wasn't xr some nfd combo otf
Really hard to find a hand that he reps that we actually beat (kjs,98s?)
Agree that sizing is only thing makes me want to call vs his line, but value sizing makes some sense given our line

I like post-flop. Line is too weird for me not to call river. +1 for folding pre. We're really not that deep.

Pre I think I normally fold, but V had 3b a few times already and I folded the one time he 3b me. I didn't want him to get the idea he could run me over and since we were 5 handed I'm opening a lot of stuff so AJ is one of the stronger hands in my range, so I decided to take a flop in position.

Turning it into a bluff is interesting I'd just rather be a bit deeper. If we're betting the flop for value, what are we targeting?

AJ is not that high in a HJ opening range. Even if he is pretty out of line, the call is probably still minus EV.

If you were a tad bit deeper I'd say it's a good spot to 4bet pre but I'd just dump it pre as well

ya. 265 pre imo

Call. Pre is whatever, prob closer to fold, might 4bet fold deeper, flop is fine as played, bet bigger on turn, river is call.

Results:

I call river and he shows AA. I pretty much called because I was confused by his line, but I couldn't think of any possible bluff he could have and pretty much expected him to show up with QQ-AA.

Can you elaborate a bit perhaps?

QQ-AA makes no sense to me but i could see him trying to value bet worse.

I personally think he played the hand terribly.

People take weird lines for value @ LLSNL and low stakes... in general a lot of opp. take weird lines and it makes it hard for you to range them accurately.

Where is AJo located in your perceived utg opening range?

First of all the pecking order of hands is different for opening than for defending a 3-bet. AJ gets demoted substantially when hands like A5s, Q9s, or 22 make way more money facing a reraise, but made less money than AJo as overall preflop opening hands.

A 20% HJ opening range is probably about average so that means you're opening ATo and folding A9o. Once you get 3-bet it's not exploitable to fold AJ when you have every AQ AK, suited ace/broadway/connector and pair preceding AJ in defense. It can be 4-bet bluffed though from time to time (though even then I find that it's better to have a suit, K9s > AJo for 4-bet bluffing here).

I'd say my percieved range was pretty wide, but I agree with Renton that even though AJo is one of my stronger hands in absolute value of I'd prob rather have some different hands to defend a 3b with.

I'm afraid of Renton tearing me a new a**hole because writing this out it sounds silly, but it has just always made sense to me.

I believe it was David Benefield who said "I don't give a **** if I'm betting for value or a bluff, why can't it be both? I'm betting to win the hand"

This flop in particular is one that we really smash and he's fairly face up.

There's just no value in bluffcatching on this texture (one reason for checking), the times we do have the best hand (vs. AK for example), we are just free rolling his equity(as he's never bluffing), and the times he has QQ+ it's gonna be hard for him to call down, and even when he does call down it's thin as hell vs. our range.

I think good players might come in here and explain things I don't understand and put different hands in a bluffing range here but for me, turning tp into a bluff when it has little bluffcatching value itself...that just makes sense to me and is something I have done successfully.

So while I agree betting here is technically "overplaying" AJ specifically in terms of hand values and our range, I still think it's a fine line.

There are some good players that know to take c/c lines here with AA, but that doesn't mean you don't unload the clip when God gives you JT9hh flops.

A similar concept but slight derail is betting value hands in PLO, but preferring folds. This happens a lot in PLO and again it's the "win the hand with your range advantage" mentality.

This seems like a great example of a spot in live 5/10 that is far more dictated by each player's reads than anything else.

I can't believe people are talking about bluffing an aggressive villain off of an overpair in a 3bet pot when Hero has an aggressive image. You just don't ever make money trying to make non-nits fold overpairs in 3 bet pots in ~100BB games. You make money in these hands because you can get max value out of your 2pair+ hands.

Do the people advocating bluffing feel like they don't get to auto double up with J10 here? How nitty is your image . But this is also why I wouldn't call with AJ here, because you are asking to get crushed by A high flops. Its an important fold pre for me unless I have a really amazing read on the villain where my cards don't matter.

Betting on the turn seems mandatory, and when the villain leads the river it is totally villain dependent. Is he just clicking buttons? Then its an easy call. But if hes not just clicking buttons this is always a blocking bet and never a total bluff, and we don't beat a lot of his 3bet range pre that wants to blocking bet on the river, so I'd entertain the idea of folding.