Played a hand recently that me and Villain thought about at length and figured it'd be interesting to discuss here also.

10/25 game. Hero and Villain both deep.

Villain - excellent online and live player, plays and has beat high stakes Stars

Hero - live player. Sometimes makes money. Seen as tough/aggro to play against.

Villain opens 100 MP and hero 3b BTN 350 with AJ95sshh. A5ss.

Villain flats.

Flop T43ss.

Villain checks. Hero continues 400 villain calls.

Turn 3x.

Villain checks, Hero 1100. Villain calls.

River 4x

Goes check check. Villain wins with AKJ2ssds. K2ss.

Hero thoughts: 3b pre ok/standard, were deep, I have position, hand has nutted potential.

Flop standard.

Turn - gets interesting. As noted Villain is very good, doesn't let himself get exploited. I think he's unlikely to have many or any 3x as it's FR Live and he has fairly tight open range. Shouldn't have boat really. Almost never has TT would just raise flop. Can have overpairs, unlikely to fold them. Think he folds Tx and probably doesn't turn it into a bluff ever.

River - on river I just shut down as it felt like I was being policed down at this point. In retrospect I was thinking we can bet small here given reads. Villain is capable of folding QQ/KK on river as I believe he expects me to value bet AA here nearly always.

Thoughts on hand? Should hero always be betting turn here given reads? How close is Villain spot on the turn? We both agreed that interesting spot is his hand and the turn.

Flame away.




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I think your play is ok given reads.

The only thing I dont like is the preflop 3bet in this spot against this villain, who you should try to avoid get involved .

Pre seems marginal on a FR live table and even more so against described villain.

Flop seems standard.

Turn seems fine.

River seems like a mandatory bet with the story you are trying to tell throughout the hand.

Villains call ott seems really bad oop if he's just going to check the river to you nearly 100% of the time.

Also 'villain and hero both deep' means 500bb+?

yeah we're like £10k deep, think pre is pretty standard tbh. Could obv flat but I mean deep you're 3betting a lot more hands in position and this one ain't a bad one to do so.

Preflop is more than fine, even with smaller stacks.

Villain has a gutter, and also doesn't need to bluff every card in the deck. The 4 is one of the worst cards for his range

his turn call means that he either overestimates his equity vs ur turn betting range (and thats a conclusion that doesnt really need to know ur actual range, since it holds for all remotely reasonable variations) or he overestimates the amount of that equity he'll get to realise (again, given the nature of his hand, not really up for debate, unless ofc someone lets him with w/AK high on rivs...). either way, im pretty sure its losing. xr might look good at first glance since he blocks some of ur second tier value hands and has one of the better hands he doesnt get to call with, but i think you can defend against it reasonably well esp given ur assumption, which admittedly could be wrong, that he xr TT otf (also, given that and the fact he has less 3x than you, he prob gets to xr turn either never or pretty rarely if hes trying to play close to theoretically correctly).

river seems like a slamdunk bet for you if your assessment of his likely actions is anywhere close to accurate (if hes xr sets on flop, xf most Tx ott, and xf most QQ/KK otr, idk what he actually has left to call with, some amount of "slowplayed" AA and the really quite rare 3x+ doesnt add up to remotely enough to deter you from bluffing hands this low in showdown value.) ofc, that should mean he ramps up his call freq etc etc, but this is live so i assume ur all mostly just making it up as you go along

I think pretty much most of your reads/assumption about this villain seem dubious (he shouldn't always xr tt or any set on the flop for example) but we can talk about all the streets

pre - questionable to isolate with this hand deep, if we are we may prefer to be raising smaller by default, this type of hand is good for situational agression but often when stacks are shorter and/or we are squeezing, here any equity edge is negligible but we are likely at a playability disadvantage

Flop - sizing feels awkward to me, we are b/jam or b/c but never b/f, bigger puts pressure on a lot of his overpairs, smaller puts pressure in other ways such as he will still be deep oop if he calls and may make exploitable folds if he chooses to fold flop anyway
If I went small here 275 is good, otherwise I don't like betting less than 2/3 psb

Turn- pretty bad card for us, are we always planning to b/f? Check or bet are both fine but the sizing is awkward again

Also before we bet we need to decide if we are going to bluff on the river

River - I think giving up here is fine, villain should be calling us down with almost everything but an oddly played missed wrap, most ts aren't sticking around past the turn unless they are planning to turn it into a bluff, the way villain played his hand is unusually passive, presumably your betting range here is fairly polarized, maybe a4xx is the worst hand you bet for value

Can bet 1/4 pot or x
Mix it up.
Ignore anyone who says dont 3bet pre... they obv dont play live deep

i bet they dont even lift, either.

pls stop

lol wp

yeah think this is close to fair and roughly what I assumed.

A lot of players i think are good have sent bet like 1000 or something on river.

I think given my image (i've been known to bluff and people like to call me down) made me just gun shy.

When you decide bluff the river you need to worry also with hands that will rebluff the river, even more when you are playing against a very good opponent.

Not really with AJ high