Villain had been sitting for about a half hour and already managed to get everyone to not like him. Young kid. Possibly drunk. Earbuds in. Not following the action. Terrible haircut. Making comments how others play bad. But also had been making some odd plays himself.

Straddle was on so I raise to 15 from the Button with QJo. Villain calls from the BB.

Flop Q53 rainbow. ($33)
Villain leads for $15. I call.

Turn 10(I forget the suits but I believe this was still a rainbow board). ($63)
Villain leads for 15 I call.

River 9($93)
Villain bets 70. I think for a while and call and he shows KJ.

At no point did I feel comfortable in this hand. I started out thinking this was probably a WAWB situation so decided to just call on the flop trying to pot control. It was tough to put him on a range pre or after the flop so I kept the same philosophy for the turn. At this point he could have a bunch of hands I'm crushed by but the small turn bet made it hard to get away since I'm still beating bluffs, A high and small/middle pairs. On the river I probably should have just gave him credit for something and folded. What I'm really wondering about is whether I should have just raised the flop? It surely would have given me a better idea of where I was at.

Flop is totally fine. I'm 100% flatting here. WA/WB, hard to get value from worse and better isn't folding.

Turn is close between a call and a raise. I probably just flat but don't hate raising. Benefit of raising is that small bet looks like he's giving up, and you get him to fold out whatever remains of his equity, though if he has a worse Q or middle pair he only has 3-5 outs. Benefit of flatting is that you allow him to bluff river. Against a button pusher I'm probably flatting.

River is also a flat given how you played the hand, but increased bet sizing is extremely disturbing. I'd expect to see rivered two pair (like Q9) a lot.

As played. River for me would be completely down to the player and what he's shown down in previous hands. I don't think a turn or flop raise accomplishes much.

first off, don't post results in your OP as it will influence the advice you get.

turn is a raise, but I guess it's stylistic. this looks like a probing bet with a draw or weak 1 pair hand. in general, I like raising these small bets especially against villains like you described. this is mostly an equity deny situation though you do have an opportunity to fold out KQ. It's also part of a general strategy of raising weak leads, and so for me at least QJ needs to be a raise in order to keep that strategy from being too polarized. I would say $90 total would be a good raise.

another note about raising turn is that while it's not optimal from a game theory pov (it's a classic wa/wb situation), once you call this very small bet, it's a lot harder to fold the river bc your hand is essentially face up and you know very little about villain's. so when you're ahead and vill does hit the river, it's going to be hard to avoid paying off. thus, when you call turn you're saying you're most likely willing to pay off a river bet so why not commit those chips now before he has a chance to realize any equity he may have or give him a chance to fold a few of the better hands he has?

on the river, it's not a great runout for QJ. the two closest hands we were beating got there, and it's very unlikely Q8 is donking flop and betting 3 streets. also this half pot/quarter pot/3/4 pot sizing looks very very strong. not sure he would even take this line with 53. also, by the river what bluffs does he have? 64? A4? is he turning mid-pockets into a bluff after you call his turn underbet? seems speculative.

this is a credible line for 55, 33, and all better queens (though I would expect them to check flop a fair amount also). I know on the turn I said we should mostly be calling river also, but the small bet/small bet/big bet line is almost always strength at these stakes. you need to be very certain your guy is turning a pair into a bluff and bluffing 64 regularly enough to make this a call. if it's somewhere in that $50-60 range I'm never folding river.

This is great info - thanks a lot. I like your reasoning for a turn raise. If I raise big and he calls(or raises) and then bets the river its a fold. If he checks river I check back since I have showdown value. I commit the same amount of chips but gain more info, as well as getting him to fold a few better hands on the turn and just taking the pot

I will say I think given the very small turn sizing this isn't really a credible line for better made hands. I wish we hadn't seen results, but if we're losing on the river I expect to see Q9 a lot, with weird stuff like T9, 95, 93 or KJ (as he had) sprinkled in. The huge upsizing in bet size on the river suggest pretty strongly that the 9 hit him though in game I'm always calling.

By "credible" I mean that a lot of donk types and annoying players at these stakes will do things like bet 1/4 pot when they don't want you to fold and want to seem like they're not strong and then make a strong river bet. it's a corollary to the c/c, c/c, pot-sized donk always being the nuts.

my point is that by default if villain takes a weak betting lead on flop and turn (or plays it as c/c) and suddenly wants to bet >2/3 pot on the river, my default without a strong read is to fold hands I normally wouldn't.

post stack sizes going forward plz.

v's range is weaker than your holding...raise his flop bet. punch 70% pot bet on turn. you can check rivers if he calls both streets.

...oops, forgot to comment on what you did. fold river, no doubt. his bet sizing on all three streets tell the story perfectly. easy fold.

Yes will include stack sizes going forward. I know that I had 380. Don't remember what he had but he wasn't shortstacked.

To me flatting the flop seems to make sense since I'm only getting called by better hands and worse is always folding. I'm assuming you disagree with this reasoning?

I think calling flop is fine since I don't necessarily assume he's weak donking 1/2 pot on that board. On the turn, I prefer raising since the sizing does begin to skew him towards the weaker part of his range. As played, I guess fold given population-read-wise, his line is strong.

yea man, i disagree. "called by better hands and worse is always folding"...you've picked this up along your journey, don't pay any attention to it.

people call with worse all the time, they do it because they level themselves into it, they do it for the draws, they do it because they just don't understand what's good vs. bad, they do it because they are trying to apply modern poker theory to every hand.

know what you hold. know what your opponent's range is. when you're ahead: Bet, Bet, Bet, Bet, Bet, Bet, Bet.

No.. no.. no..

OP - The Flop - call this bet like every time. 1) We don't want to bloat the pot with top pair good kicker. 2) We want to keep his bluffs in. 3) We have no idea what villains range is and if he 3 bets us we have to fold a hand that had good showdown value.

The Turn - We can raise or call. Even though it feels kind of weak I prefer calling, we keep bluffs in and control the size of the pot.

The River - Once he bombs it you have to fold. The 9 is a bad card for our range and good for his. It's unfortunate that he got there because I assume he would bet if he missed too. Definitely calling a lot of different rivers and sizings.

0

I would never raise this flop. That being said after him showing this garbage down, i'm gonna be much more likely to bluff raise against that guy in the future.

Would you want to bet $70 on this river with top pair mediocre kicker? I wouldn't. Yet villain is betting $70 here which tells me that he probably has a much better hand than QJ.

Also, pay close attention to his betting pattern. He bet small on the flop and on the turn and then bombed it on the river. He didn't increase his turn bet at all but then on the river made a bet that was close to 5 times as large as on the turn. This should set off alarm bells in your head. Either he was slow playing a big hand or something changed from the turn to the river. Q9 would make sense. So would 99. I don't know exactly what he has here but I know it's probably way better than QJ.

I would consider whether villain is bluffing but would need strong evidence that he is likely bluffing in order to call here. Otherwise, this is a super duper easy fold.

Increasing bet size is extremely important. I've correctly check folded QJ (straight) on a T83Q9 rainbow board to a single bet that wasn't that huge relative to the pot but was huge relative to my turn bet (On the river I was last to act after villain bet in a multiway pot and everyone else had folded). My friend asked me if I folded because I didn't want to call to chop, and my response was that I don't think I'm ever chopping in that spot (the only hand that player was betting strong like that in that spot was KJ).