3/6 LHE HU vs seemingly competent opponent on ACR:

I raise button with T9, opp 3 bets, I call.
Flop A67, I call a cbet
Turn 8, he checks, I bet, he raises, I 3bet, he 4bets, me?

Other questions: 3bet turn standard? call flop standard with no backdoor flush draw?

Yes, yes, call down.

This is actually close and I'd much rather call down a set than this hand, for obvious reasons.

I usually don't fold hands this good online w/out a read, though, so I'd probably call down and hate it. I expect to see a K hi flush here a lot.

Edit: where is opponent from? The closer he is to Moscow, the more that calling down is mandatory.

He's a 'murican

Would not it be better call turn instead of 3bet and raise safe river ?

Has played called down

I figured a lot of hands with a pair and a heart could check/raise turn, plus some two pairs and sets. I doubt any of those hands fold.

What confused me was, if he had a flush, why would be 4bet turn since he may only get called by other flushes whereas if he called and check/raised rivers and perhaps leading on some 4th heart rivers, he gets extra bets from my bluffs and worse hands. Then again, what in the world is he 4betting turn with? A set thinking I just have a pair and heart or two pair? Just a heart and pair going super aggressive?

Result was that I made what I thought was an exploitative fold with the potential future benefit of inducing additional bluffs, although the session ended up not going too long, so that never came to fruition.

I just call the out of flow x/raise on the turn, which is SUPER-strong, and call down.

Yeah kinda of agree because the line he took is very unusual, so I prefer to play but more passif, get a read on SD and go from there.

All you did now OP is to make a exploitative fold , good or bad who knows, and what would you do when u face a similar situation again ?

It is a very unbalance play by the villain and you have to get that read imo .
So folding is in my mind a mistake .

Ps: when I say I delay raise river and get 3bet I am never folding either ( of course I don't raise a paired card or a 4th heart).

That's why I'm asking you! I hope I made a god fold though

In all seriousness, I hate to get bluffed but I slept fine last night. I'd play the hand the same if I had to do it again tonight (not against the same opponent assuming he remembers the hand).

Maybe your opponent isn't thinking that much in this hand.

I'd suggest not playing the hand the same way.

I should clarify that when I made that post I had not yet been convinced to play the hand differently but I posted in this forum to hear opinions on the hand so convince away. But I'd like to hear someone say what they think this guy has that I should call down.

What do you gain by 3-bet/folding the turn that you don't gain by calling the raise and calling the river?

AK with either A or K but not both. Two pair hands with A. Sets. This is a HU hand. People tend to be more aggressive with strong hands because they need to extract value with them and can't afford to wait around as you can with 6-max or full ring games.

My thinking was/is that I'd get my 3bet called by a lot of worse hands that I mentioned previously, basically all the hands you mention that might 4bet only I thought they wouldn't 4bet. 3betting and betting river wins me an extra bet versus calling and calling river. It also lets me check back a 4th heart river, whereas if I call and he bets a 4th heart river, I get put in the cage anyways.

You should think about this before you 3-bet. Especially in heads up limit, there are only so many things that can happen. If you can't call down a 4-bet, you shouldn't be 3-betting here.

In both situations (3-bet/check behind vs. call-call), you end up with the same number of bets in the pot, so it really doesn't matter how they went in. You gain nothing and lose nothing here.

Theoretically we should have a 3 bet / fold range. It should just be very, very narrow. And I don't think the nut straight should be in it without a read that this is a flush, like, nearly 100%.

No. This is a false understanding of GTO-style thinking. There is no necessity to have a range for every way that the hand can play out. It's part of the consideration when constructing the strategy, but it's possible for there to be empty hand ranges for various decision-making pathways.

Then what necessitates defending against a 4 bet if the 4 bettor has no incentive to raise a worse hand than a flush?

The pot size and the rest of the decision tree defends against this.

This is the same reason why there isn't a hand range for a preflop 3-bet/fold to a 4-bet range, even in some sort of GTO theoretical sense. There's too much money in the pot and you theoretically have a good distribution of hands in the rest of your range so that you're not in this spot.

That doesn't answer the question of why we should call with a hand that has 0% equity. If anything, we should be overfolding given your explanation, because the 4 bettor should have the nut straight beat 100%.

If we want to argue that T9o should not be a three bet for this reason, I'm okay with it. But what's opponent's range to donk xr the turn and call a 3 bet? I know a straight is doing quite well against mine when I'm against aggressive opponents.

You make an interesting argument about not having a 3bet/fold range, but I did indeed have a plan: I 3bet with the intention to fold to a 4bet.

Yes, if I check back river, the same number of bets go in. But I don't intend to check back rivers. Unless a 4th heart rolls off, I'll bet river. When the sets and two pairs call me, I will have gotten an extra bet versus calling down.

This is the lost in the desert scenario. If you're lost in the desert with no water, what do you do? It probably doesn't matter what you do because you're most likely screwed and you should be more concerned about how you got there in the first place.

I agree that you should be beat here. But it's low limit HU. The question of what *should* is different from what *actually* happens.

I'd encourage you to think through your whole range. The idea of 3-bet/folding a straight here seems unbalanced to me. You have a very wide range to start the turn. That you would go from that to folding with a hand as high up in the ranking as a straight seems unreasonable.

Poorly worded before...

To fold this hand at any point would be super-exploitative-- i.e., you are folding an extremely strong made hand for one bet in a pretty big pot. And super-exploitative folds require detailed reads.

In other words, if you were up against a player who you had seen in this exact situation several times and the player ALWAYS was incapable of 4-betting the turn without the nuts, you could talk about folding.

But the problem with that is that it also conflicts with your 3-bet on the turn. Players like that generally are nitty about their turn raising range in the first place, which means there aren't going to be enough hands in their range that you beat to justify a 3-bet on the turn.

At any rate, I'm all for super-exploitative folds in situations where you really are super-sure. But this strikes me as closer to you were pissed off that the villain 4-bet you and decided to put the villain on a specific hand when you didn't have enough evidence rather than paying the villain off.