Thought this hand was interesting but not necessarily played well by either player (or maybee it was). 9 handed higher stakes HO game, which in my experience means players will play slightly tighter in holdem rounds than they would in purely a holdem game.
Good player opens cutoff, very good player 3 bets sb and I call bb 88 ( I expect he knows my range is uncapped here). I raise 7-6-5 rainbow flop (cutoff folds).... Sb check calls 2 turn.... Sb c/r 7 river (final board 7-6-5-2-7)

(1) what do we think his range is here
(2) We.....

What do you think his range is here?

</BigBadBabar>

A 7x would be expected to normally put in more action on the flop. Overpairs as well. Monsters would almost always put in more action on the flop or the turn. Other hands are unlikely to be raising the river. No hand is likely to be played that way.

Given this, we should call. I think out of all hands his most likely one is Q7s.

Can someone explain this strategy of flatting all 3bs in the BB? This is an easy 4b to me. We destroy CO's range, and are well ahead of SB's range and have position on him. CO might fold pre. SB might not cbet. Gain immediate equity. We can have a pretty wide 4b range here in BB, so we aren't giving our strength away. May buy free cards. Bloating the pot lets us get to more showdowns with our SDV hand.

Fwiw I think his mostly likely hands are JJ-AA, weighted more towards AA

As one of the few forum posters who advocate the idea of a sb cc range, this is kind of a surprising question.

What do we want to do in this spot w/ a hand like T7s? A5s? JTo? Fold? Seems like we're giving up a lot of Big blinds in an aggressive game dynamic. I'd much rather JL's strategy of flatting 100% than folding any non top 10% to 15% than constantly taking a small bet hit every time we're the BB.

Edit: Forgot it was a button open 9 handed, so it's likely not as maniacal as a three handed game's button open, so hands like T7s are probably a fold.

I've never heard of that strategy but it sounds like something nits do because the only hands they'd cap would be JJ+/AK and they don't want to turn their hand face up. I cap pretty wide in this spot so I don't think I'm going to be adopting that strategy, because my monsters are already plenty disguised.

If I'm missing something, please correct my thinking.

In all likelihood I have a misunderstanding of what we can call from the bb preflop. But we just don't connect very well with this board. My default button and SB ranges would leave me defending 88/ATs/AQ for sure and probably also adding marginal hands 66/A8s/ATo/KTs/KQo. If these are really too tight some general heads up would be appreciated.

So without knowing whether you've brought along some bluffs, it seems this is near the bottom of a relatively narrow range. So bet folding seems appropriate.

It's easy to say "I agree with Jon" regarding his weighting toward big overpairs, but I do think this texture rewards playing those hands as SB did. And again, because you don't connect very well with the texture, he can count on your betting both big streets very often.

Forgot to add that this was a 2 chip/3 chip blind structure so small blind may 3 bet a little lighter than he would in a 1/2 and I'm going to be calling little bit lighter pre.
The fact we are 9 handed doesn't matter much. Cutoff is likely opening same range regardless and sb is 3 betting same range he would in a normal 4 handed game.

I also think he expects me to take a free card on the turn way less than most live players here so the threat of having turn check back (from his pov) is minimal here and makes overpairs more likely. Vs most people id expect him to b/3b flop.

Although hands like KK/AA must be dsicounted somewhat when he doesn't c/r turn (until he c/r river obv)

I never said I 4b or fold (or 3b or fold). I have a calling range AND a raising range in the BB! Imagine that! Using all the options available to me. --This is assuming CO opens fairly wide, allowing us to 3b or 4b fairly wide. Protecting our flatting range is also less important against a wide open. Against an UTG open, I'm all for cc'ing everything.

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OTR you have a bluff-catcher. Since villain a 'very good player' let's assume has he has properly balanced river x/r bluff range. You should be folding the bottom x% of your value range. Figure out your range, where 88 fits, etc.

I 3 bet

I would call river because I think if villain figured out I was folding 88 here he'd be able to exploit that by raising a larger frequency of bluffs,

I'd be interested to know what the villain actually had. I still believe 7x is more likely than an overpair. Even if the villain was not afraid of a turn check through, he still should have check raised that turn with something like KK. 7x does not make too much sense either but more so than an overpair imo.

Phunkphish, show us your playable hands vs. (co open, sb 3b). I don't care which you 4b and which you don't.

Roughly 25%

I think I need to raise flop with T8s and 9Ts with bdfd and this gives me enough hands I can 3 bet bluff river with without having to turn a made hand into a bluff.

Having said that I'd rather 3! 88 on river than A6 because we have blockers to his bluff combos, meaning A6 has more showdown value vs. his range.

Before accounting for blockers, by MoM / poker theory, you should turn the top of your vbet folding range into a 3b bluffs. You should not choose the bottom of your bluffing range.

Accounting for blockers can be tricky. What do you think his bluff combos are? What are you trying to block? Does he bluff his 8x and 9x hands that did not connect, or does he bluff the top of his folding range, like Kx or Ax.

That's fine if you want to 3 bet bluff ak/aq or whatever the bottom of your value range is because you can't call but if you want to add hands I think adding 8T makes more sense than 88 which I think is too strong to fold.

I think many Ax combos will call down river so I don't expect sb to turn these into a bluff. Kx might be bluff checkraise candidate if it gets to river but I think it often doesn't. Even if it does get to river it might still serve better as bluff catcher rather than bluff candidate. Essentially, since the river card doesn't put anything ahead of Ax or Kx that wasn't already ahead, I don't think it makes sense for sb to call turn with them and then check fold river.

We bet and offer villain 9.83:1. If I'm to guesstimate my range on the river here, it'd be something like 81 values and 9 bluffs: 88-aa (42), 55-77 (7), a5s-a7s (8), 9ts (4), 89s-8ts (8), 78s-79s (4), 67s (1-2), ak (16).

Villain now reraises us and to avoid being exploited, I'd draw an optimal folding range at 20.3% of my range. I'd fold 89s, 8ts, and most of my AK.

To exploit, maybe villain is bluffing close to 0 and/or is value-raising thin. If that were the case, I'd fold more hands like all my AK 56, a5-a7, while I value 3b hands like aa and kk thinner, and throw in a few bluffs with hands that are too weak to call.

88 just seems like too big of a hand to turn into a bluff. I'm not sure if I understand blockers well, but this don't seem to play a big role in this hand since 89 makes up very small portion of ranges. Once sb k/r the river, it's not like we can just say, "oh we have 88, villain has waaay less value combos".

Too much overthinking going on here. Jon is clearly making an exploitative play, so forget about which hands we should turn into bluff. The bottom line is Jon thinks most of villains range is this:

And Jon clearly thinks there's a chance villain might fold better, so instead of investing one bet and making a crying call hoping to catch whatever bluffs are in villain's range, Jon decided to invest another "just in case" bet to attack villain those times he has a better overpair.

Whether Jon's play is correct or not is impossible to prove. Unfortunately it's one of those "you had to be there" hands, the exact type of hand that makes for horrible threads.

I will say this much, the "just in case, add one more bet" raise when we already have a profitable crying call, is a concept that is pretty much never talked about in limit holdem. I've read close to every book on limit holdem and I don't recall anyone ever writing about it either, but make no mistake, the toughest players in the game know about this play, and they know when to utilize it.

After all, mathematically speaking, it's a potentially very attractive play because you're getting much better odds on turning a call into a raise (only one more bet to invest to induce better to fold) than a straight up bluff raise (now you have to invest 2 bets). Problem is, it's easy to veer off into fps land and overuse this play (because it's ****ing fun to throw more chips in the middle!). So much depends on your image (you prefer tight straight forward) and your target (you want a guy trying to play well who value bets thin and has a fold button).

BTW I've talked about this play before in this thread for anyone interested.

I understand what you are saying and I do agree that there are times to sacrifice what you perceive to be a +EV call because you think turning it into a bluff is even more +EV.

There is a particular player in the games I play who thinks he is really really good and makes super exploitative folds in big pots against everybody because he considers himself such an expert hand reader. He is super aggressive with the betting lead but as soon as you play back against him, he makes ridiculous and bad lay-downs.

The other day, I was in position in a capped pot with AQ unimproved on a pretty dry board against him and I raised the turn despite the fact I thought I could make a profitable call-down, because I was fairly sure he would insta-muck AK and fold many pair combinations also.

Having said all that, Jon described the villain as very very good which does not give me an indication that he thinks he can make an exploitative play. I have been taught the correct way to approach playing good players is to attempt GTO play and only alter it once you discern particular tendencies. If he has a read that he thinks this player does not show down enough when raised on the river, I think he should have mentioned that.

I could construct a player where I think moving my bluffing range up from my weakest value hands, through my pure bluffs, and into the range of hands that has showdown value is correct but as you said, this would be an exploitative adjustment. None of the information given seems to indicate this would be the case in this situation, other than the fact Jon is a good player and is not going to make such a play unless he considers it a profitable exploitative adjustment (or if he thinks this should be part of a GTO raising range).

I'm not saying he would have way less value combos, I agree that 8s make up a small part of his overall value range. I'm saying he would have fewer bluff combos. When I call river with 88, bluffs are mostly what I'm trying to beat. I don't think he is bluffing a lot of Ax or Kx hands for reasons I mentioned earlier, so that leaves hands like 8Ts, 8Js, 9Ts, 9Js as likely bluff candidates. Our having 88 blocks a substantial number of those combos.

Therefore, I think A6 has more showdown value if we call. Therefore, I would rather 3 bet 88 because the 3 bet bluff has very similar value for both and we give up less showdown value than we would have with A6.

made some edits to typos and clumsiness..

@ilovepoker when playing someone "really good", I'm not sure if I can try and exploit them by bluffing more. We have AK, followed by A5, followed by A6 to turn into bluffs. That's 10 more hands we'd bluff before 88.

I mean perhaps I'm strategizing the AK portion of my range poorly, which I think is the case, but how else am I suppose to play them? I guess I can check it back on the river after barreling 2 streets, or "freecard" the turn after raising the flop, or call it on the flop, or fold it on the flop, or cap it pre. Maybe this flop just sucks for me, but it sucks more for the sb. Perhaps I can exploit villain if I he doesn't donk check flops or if villain's k/r river range is narrow. Now that I've typed this through, a "really good player" probably is expected to donk check in a balanced fashion, and not expect us to play AK like this, and if that were the case, then my original plan with ak is horrible.

On the river, based on my new range of 74 hands (no more ak), I should fold around 15 hands on the river: 4 t9, 4 t8, 2 a6, 2 a5, which leaves me with 3 more combos of 88 to fold... My 3b range prolly consists of stuff like trips+, aces, and maybe kings. To balance my 3b range, I think I'd bluff 88 1/3rd of the time, call 88 1/2 of the time, and fold 88 1/6th of the time. It probably don't even matter what I do up against a really good player in such a marginal spot.

@crazylord im not sure i understnad... when villain's range is weighed less towards value and more towards bluffs, shouldn't we just bluffcatch a bluffcatcher instead of turning it into a bluff?

Yes, which is why I'm saying call A6 and raise 88 if you have to raise one or the other

I wouldn't rule out A7 out of Villain's hand, and put him on like KK+ A7 on the river (JJ seems ambitious). I agree with whoever said JL should not be freecarding anything on he turn so he can easily delay action.

I would call the river.