Hero doubled up earlier with AA vs KK. Otherwise has been card dead. Stack ~600

Villain 1, loose passive. Limps nearly every pot. Folds to any aggression without a made hand. If he hits the flop he goes for check raise a lot. Stack ~150

Villain 2, Tight passive, has shown down AK, AA, and KK in multiple pots recently where he was preflop aggressor. Has shown down small pocket pairs where he was not the aggressor. Stack ~600

9 handed, $2-3, $3-300 spread limit
V1 limps UTG
Folds to Hero in cutoff who raises to $12 with 5♥️6♥️
Folds to V2 who calls on the button
Folds to V1 who calls

Flop (~$35): 4♥️8♥️8♦️

V1 leads for $20. He never has an 8 here.
Hero raises to $75.
V2 calls. I put him on 44-TT, AQ, AJ, AhTh, suited hearts up to 1 gapers (T9, 97, JT, J9, QT, QJ, KJ, KQ, AQ), A8s, T8s, 98s
V1 folds

Turn (~$200): 3♣️

Hero bets $125
V2 Calls, I narrow his range to 44, T8s, 98s, 99, TT, the suited hearts above, A8s

River (~$450): J♠️

Hero bets $225 to fold out 99, TT, and busted hearts. In the moment, I thought his most likely holding was 99 or TT. Typing this out has shown me that was not necessarily true.

Am I thinking of the combos correctly?:
I'll always lose to:
3 combos of 44
2 combos of A8s
2 combos of T8s
2 combos of 98s

But I'll win when these fold:
9 combos of suited hearts
6 combos of 99
6 combos of TT

since hearts missed hes not folding all the combos of 99 or TT. V2 could also have more 8s than A8 T8 and 98. you said hes tight passive and he cold called your raise on the flop this should indicate he probably has a big hand. he has 44 or 88 probably. bad time to fire even the second barrel. turn is a check fold imo.

also i think you should just fold this hand pre.

If V has only seen us play aces & several orbits of fold'em, his range might be much more snug OTF than we think, and even tighter calling the double barrel. I like what we planned pre, but we ended up multi-way, not HU. I'd discount 99 & TT heavily & think he might try to suck out to a river flush far less. He might have some JJ combos and perhaps might be completely uncapped. I've noticed QQ+ getting flatted pre a lot in my 2/3 games, and considering our image... All this to say, those hands might have a harder time folding river if they called turn.

Having said all that, none of us were at the table with you. If you're sure of your range, then just crunch some numbers. I need to start using it, but SplitSuit uses this FE calculator in his videos.

The chances of V2 taking a call, call, fold line with 99/TT on this runout are pretty low, especially given our image. His cold call on the flop is pretty strong; I would remove a lot of the pairs & hearts from his range, and would not fire the 2nd barrel on the turn.

+1

Wimps ITT. Pre is standard, flop is standard. Turn barrel is completely standard when you pick up add'l equity OTT. Go for it OTR with the other 65s combos, this is probably the worst one to do it with.

watching too many doug polk videos. the cold call of the raise on the flop on a paired board indicates strength. bluffing OTR is just spew firing the second barrel on the turn is the same imo. learn when to give it up buddy.

This is the key to the hand. On the flop, V2 is not calling a single bet; he's calling a raise. And there's a live player behind him. That's a lot of strength. He's weighted towards 8s and 44 with this action.

But let's assume that you've ranged him correctly. I still think it's ambitious to try to get folds from 99 or TT. I would target his missed flush draws, and make a smaller bet (maybe $100). That should still fold out his bigger flush draws, but it will cost you less when he's holding hands that won't fold.

Pretty big spew past the flop raise.

So are we only betting this river with trips,straights, flushes and boats? Never bluffing?

Poor logic, just because our opponents cold call indicates strength doesn't mean we shoudln't continue our story OTT. What matters is we picked up equity, we have other hands that want to continue going for value, and this is one of our best bluffing candidates. check-folding this much equity is disastrous. I'd much rather check (and call) a high card flushdraw OTT than this one.

edit: do you really honestly believe a second barrel is -EV?

I would tweak his range some. If he can have 98, he can have 87. If he can have T8, he can have 86. I would also discount a lot of the heart combos on the turn unless you have some reason to believe a tight player will be calling 2/3 pot sized bets with non-nut flush draws on a paired board. OTOH, there is a non-zero chance he will be raising 44 or A8 on the turn.

I probably c/f the turn, although it is closer than most people here are saying. If I do bet it, I would go smaller. I don't think there is much he folds for 125 that he calls for 100, and he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who will bluff-raise over a perceived weaker bet.

I give up on the river. His range is a lot of pairs and better, and I don't think he folds nearly enough of them to make the bluff worthwhile.

Would you have played QQ-AA this same way? Because that is what you are trying to rep.

Against a tight passive Villain, as is described, I'm not making a river bet here with AA, but rather check/evaluating. If we check and Villain makes a large river bet I'm probably folding.

**grunch**

Villain has way more 8s than this in his range: 87s, 86s, J8s, K8s, A8s, 88. He also has JJ/QQ if he's passive and I don't think he's ever folding them (maybe 1 combo of QQ, 2 at most that you could discount as a fold on the river).

the key information is that a tight/passive cold calls a bet and raise on a pretty dry paired board after calling the button pre (widest possible range). given that you have the combo draw, I think it's extremely unlikely that he's calling this action with a draw worse than a K-hi flush draw.

betting turn can't be good. how often are we even betting for value? I'm guessing it's pretty rare, since even JJ+ want to pot control this board (which could be a bet/bet/check line too). that means we don't need to find many/any bluffs. against this opponent who is so heavily weighted to trips+ in this spot, an optimal adjustment is to bluff less than a GTO frequency in order to exploit his tight play.

furthermore, his range has an order of magnitude more 8s than yours, and your raise/bet/bet line reps what? JJ? A8s? even AA here is thin value.

that said, you are at the absolute bottom of your range, so betting river can never be completely horrible. however in a vacuum I don't expect it to succeed nearly enough to be profitable bc: 1. we block a few extra combos of FDs; 2. I weight his range a lot less toward draws; 3. I am a lot more pessimistic than you about how many combos he is really folding on a very blank runout.

Yeah you're right. I was trying to rep QQ+, but I likely check the river if I really had that.

I don't mind our iso attempt of V1 who sounds like he is fit/foldy postflop. Unlucky that this went 3way.

Not sure why a passive player can't have an 8 here in a multiway pot on a drawy board. At the very least he has something and my guess is it is very unlikely he's going to fold that something to a raise (although I guess he did). I would just flat although I'm not in love with doing that on a paired board (basically hoping our position will help us figure out later if we are behind if we hit). Warning bells should be going off when the tight guy behind us takes a raise (with betting open) to the face; I think our ranging on him is *way* too loose, it's much more like 88/44/AA/KK and maybe some smaller overpairs (with the bigger overpairs discounted due to no 3bet preflop), imo.

Any money put into the pot UI (and perhaps improved) after this guy flats the flop raise is setting money on fire, imo.

GcluelessrangingnoobG

yeah and i think bet folding less than a boat too. if you get raised guy is going to have a boat/higherflush minimum.

buddy why do you think we should continue OTT?? This is LLSNL not heads up online vs the toughest opponents. We don't need to protect our value range with bluffs, our opponents will assume we are bluffing more than we actually are and pay off our value hands when the time comes. What equity did we pick up vs 44 or 88? Still got 1 out.

Second barrel is definitely -EV might as well light those chips on fire.

How did the river play out? Bet/raise/fold? We never see his hand and he mucks his flopped boat or quads and scoops a nice pot is my guess.

Thanks all. Results below.

Given the result OP posted I'd have to say not having bluffs in our range on the river is a mistake.

why? he called with T8o (meaning vill has many more 8s than OP suggested). you mean to imply that since he tanked hard he would find a fold with 98 or 87? I don't buy it.

I think results are further evidence that after vill cold calls the flop raise, barreling unimproved is spew.

He also has 99, TT and flush draws in his range as well.

Difficult to say given read (especially since it's unclear exactly how he got to showdown with small pairs, i.e. did he station someone down), but overall when I see "tight" in the read I think that means he manages a hero fold with smallish overpairs when the preflop raiser raises a donk bet (as raiser is repping a bigger pair), and I think tight players toss a flush draw here pretty easy (especially with the betting still open and donker can ship and then be re-shipped on my raiser).

Course, this tight guy just showed up with T8 preflop to a raise, so what do I know about reads.

GcluelessreadnoobG

That's the issue I have with reads is that "tight" means different things to different people and who knows how big of a sample it's over. I'd rather focus on our range and I think this is a decent hand to fire the 3rd barrel with. Obviously having hearts sucks because it makes it less likely V has hearts but we put a ton of pressure on this way.

In the end, I hope this isn't given as a good reason to possibly spew once and a while for meta game purposes. You know what the chances are of making back-to-back nut hands within an orbit of spewing? Pretty low. I also reason this to myself after spewing in a hand and showing, and then saying "great, I'll get paid off now by these guys", and then I go 4 hours without making so much as TP and by that time everyone who had seen my spew has left the table.

Gdon'tmakeitahabit,imo,itwillnotpayforitselfG

I think your confusing my sentiment with that of someone who's obsessed with balance, gto, etc. I don't want him to bluff this combo for balance or gto or any of that stuff. I want him to bluff this combo, because I bet the EV of the decision is significantly higher than x/f. Putting some 2/3 donks turn range on solely boats, or even trips+ given all the prior action is silly (we might be able to assume that OTR), also assuming we only have one out vs his entire range is silly. The real question is whether or not to bluff OTR, and I think thats a fairly close decision. I think that potentially we should be jamming river tho, and not using this sizing. Were basically repping strong 8x, JJ, or 44.

This isn't ever true on early streets, and probably not on the river against all but the craziest of opponents. I don't even view it as protection. I'm just highly confident that the EV of betting this hand on the turn is substantially > 0 (folding). This could be proven as well, I'll could run a PIO sim where I nodelock assumptions about our opponent's strategy (we dictate how he plays) and see how we should react. Its possible we have to check-call this hand at some point, but I'm 99,99999999% confident we will never fold OTT. Given he's playing as wide as T8o vs a ISO, I think that should be intuitively apparent, but even if we give him a standard defending range here (much tighter) the way we play this combo will not change to the point we fold OTT.