Preface, took an extended hiatus from playing poker (haven't played regularly since 2014) and I mostly play PLO so I consider my NL competence to be mediocre. I just hope to make it more difficult for others to take my money. Anyway

Villain is a very loose aggro young-ish asian male. Bluffed off his stack last orbit. Lost a pot a few hands earlier to him when I had nut flush draw and missed.

Myself, been sitting for about an hour or so, doubled up a fish with AK on K T 6 rainbow when turn comes a 7, then I bet-call against TT in a $800 pot.

Effective stacks 825
Villain opens up MP to 30, I 3b HJ with Jc Jh to 80, villain calls

Pot: 167
Flop: K Q 3 rainbow
V check, I check

I check thinking villain most likely called very wide PF with a lot of broadway combos, maybe small pairs. I expect him to continue with any broadway draws, any king, and a decent Q like AQ. I opt to check feeling I'm either slightly ahead or very far behind.

Turn: 6 rainbow completes
V check, I check

Same rationale as flop but I thought about betting briefly. I don't think a barrel on the turn folds out like AQ.

River: J
V bets 130, what to do here?

Is there merit to raising river? 350 total and fold to a jam? I lose to AT, T9. I think we can rule out KK, QQ from PF action, we beat everything else?

Remember, I know I suck at NL but thoughts are appreciated none the less.

Raise and fold to a jam. You got it, get value from two pair hands like KQ,KJ,QJ and sometimes some villians will look you up light, most will just call with 109

just calling is ok sometimes

Yeah, 350 and fold to jam is good. Like you said, it's unlikely that he has KK/QQ even if he did flat it to the 3bet pre based on the postflop action.

I do feel like your hand looks a lot like what is it but he may talk himself into a call with QJ/66/KJ here so still like the raise.

Definitely eliminate KK and QQ from his range after he checks flop and turn to you given pre flop action

Is T9 in villains raise / call 3 bet from MP range? AT probably is. But I think he never has a bigger set. Probably no AA combos either.

Likely V has AJ, maybe QJ and JTs. KJ possible but unlikely he checks it twice. Let's guess he has 16 combos AT, 4 combos AJ, 3 combos QJ, 3 combos KJ, 1 combo JTs.

So there's 297 in the pot. If we figure villain jams AT and flats the other hands, while he folds say 25%, a raise to 350 has

EV = .25*297 + .75(11/27 * 517 - 16/27 * 350)
= .25*297 + .75*3.2222
= 76.67

Most of this comes from our assumption he has 25% bluffs in his range though.

By comparison, if we flat call,

EV = .25*297 + .75*(11/27*297 - 16/27*130)
= 107.22

I think you're better off flatting unless villain has a lot of bluffs in his range. I didn't even consider T9. There's just so many combos of AT compared to Jx and there's not much else he'll call a raise with. Your hand also looks really transparent if you raise so you have to worry about whether this guy is smart or ballsy enough to jam as a bluff. He probably isn't but if so it makes raising even worse.


Sent from my LG-D850 using Tapatalk

bet flop. as played bet turn. as played raise river. My only real concern with a river raise is that his river bet looks SO bluffy that your river raise looks bluffy too, which could induce a bluff from villan (if i had air here in your spot id strongly consider raising it, and if i had bluffed river and gotten raised, i wouldve put you on a bluff, and although id probably jsut fold to the bluff sounds like V is the type to level himself into a river bluff ship)

So I mean, I still think raising is EV+, but if he 3!s you I think itll be a crying fold and will certainly include you getting bluffed off your hand.

I like a raise/fold on the river, too. Would be a pretty sick bluff raise from him.

I probably would have c-bet, but as played, check on turn is good.

(BTW, I much prefer PLO to NLHE and play PLO whenever offered, so completely understand where you are coming from!)

I normally c-bet an exploitably high frequency. Villain hasn't been at the table long enough to see that but it seems like c-betting flop with a villain call, i'm just hoping to get to showdown. I would hate to cbet flop, ck/ck turn, then fold when villain leads rivers which seems to be the the most common occurence. If we c-bet flop and get good run outs, like 2-8, we're still trying to get to showdown right without much action?

As for a delayed c-bet, on betting turn, if called, I take my showdown value if checked to on the river, but if he leads a blank river, any 2-8, do I call? That's a good number of rivers for me but it feels like a guessing game since villain could check/call turn with all his gutters and his Kx and Qx. I think the lower sets would lead turn thus my excluding them.

For the open/3b range, I think T9 AND AT are in his range. Villain was super loose opening A5os, K4s, etc from UTG+1 and MP.

Call river

Obviously never folding river, but I might just flat here. What hand gives us value that checks both flop and turn? Looks like the J helped V, but there are only 6 combos of KJ and QJ available. 16 combos of AT and T9, obviously fewer if he only has T9s or ATs. Maybe 66 makes sense that whiffed on a turn x-raise.

In game I probably raise/fold, but looking at it now I think flatting is better.

The more I think about it, the more I flat. Can't really see what he calls a raise w/ that we beat except maybe KJ or QJ.

He's just not going to call you with much that doesn't beat you, so I think calling is fine. I might raise just to try to make myself look suspicious for future hands. It can be worth taking a chance with a possible rejam to get the villain to call off his stack later on. Usually the villain is not going to have the balls the rejam bluff here without the goods, but he will fold and mark you as a suspect. I'd fold to a rejam unless I caught some sort of tell.

It can be very profitable to make "useless" plays to hide all the times that you aren't making "plays," but it might not be necessary if the action is okay anyway.

I think 350 is a poor sizing though. It looks too bluffy, so it might induce if he's really agro or something. A min-raise would still draw suspicion on his folds, let you out of the hand more easily and cheaply on rejams, and get more calls.

I like a cbet on the flop as well because this board seemingly smashes our range. We have a lot of AK, AQ, KQ, KJs combos and also AA, KK, and QQ. That said, I think checking on the flop is fine too.
As played I like a call here instead of a raise. If V is bluffing he quickly folds and what hands does V call us with here that we beat. QJ is the only hand I can think of.
IMO V would have let turn with all sets and hands with a K. I would call here and expect to lose maybe 20% of the time to AT or T9s.

if V is calling with gutshots, youre probaboy ahead of his calling range even if he is calling with a Q here, which i dont entirely believe. V is going to bet into you with a K, and you sort of have to call, os betting the flop folds out his air, charges the draws, pays off the K which already would happen, and the onky downside is Q might call (but also might fold honestly).

The reason you (and many other winners) cbet at exploitably high frequencies is almost no one exploits it.

If you bet turn and he leads river its basiclaly the same decision as if you check turn and he bets river.

Betting flop isn't mandatory, this hand especially likes to check. If you're playing a strategy that bets 1/3rd pot in 3bet pots then yes you should be betting, betting more than 1/2 pot otf would be a mistake though. Turn seems like a good spot to check again seeing as youre hand needs very little protection and you've announced you don't have kk/qq otf.

I think we're ahead of him after you both checked two streets, but the question is will he bluff his stack and are you willing to call it off?

If you are, raise/call. If not, just call. You have a good bluff catcher at the very least. For a very loose aggro asian I might not mind calling him off. Your beat by AT and other sets are prob betting the turn.

Players need to make thin value bets and many of those are simply going to require folding to a raise when it happens. Calling a raise here could be very "stationy" and set a player up for future failure. I think the bet sizing is an error. He is looking for too much value off of calling hands and putting himself in a tougher position to fold.

He needs to be able to look at the relative rather than the absolute value of his hand strength, and that is probably why his bet sizing is a bit too large, imho.

After he bluffs off his previous stack. He is so much less likely to do it again. In such short period of time.

I think our raise will look suspicious enough. That we can get calls, from wider than suspected (usually is the case in live play)

Raising to $280, soul reading him if he jams. Likely folding

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Could you further elaborate on this? 1/3 and 1/4 sizings from good players are very interesting to me.

Betting 1/3rd in 3bet pots on boards where you have a range advantage is a strong strategy because it forces villian to put money into the pot with the weaker parts of there range against a range which is crushing them. It allows you to bluff for a very nice price, especially on boards which villian does not have a raising range. In this hand on kq3 a 1/3rd strategy forces oop to continue with hands as weak as 44/at (of course this is depending on ip's 3betting range) as not to be exploited. Oop also cannot raise as he should almost never have the nuts here, this was highlighted in another thread recently posted about raising qq on a kqx flop. On turns you can then polarise and put immense pressure on oops range. On boards where hero is at a range disadvantage i would suggest more checking and a polarised larger bet strategy.

Ok that is along the lines of what i was thinking ty. 2 things

1) this induces ALOT in live poker. I realize this isnt necessarily a bad thing but just a note and curious about your thoughts here.

2) really interested in how we approach turns

Benabadbeat (online crusher) recently posted a hand something like:

2/5

CO opens $12
Bena $48 from sb w/88
CO calls

Flop A72

Bena bets $30
CO calls

Turn: 8

So the hand becomes standard after that. My question is what was he doing on most other turns? Potting? Check/folding? I feel like these 1/3 flop bets get called always which is great most of the time but for these A high flops specifically i dont understand the approach with 88-KK

I tend to see a lot of the laggier live NL players leveling themselves into calling a lot after the action is so passive on previous streets rather than re-bluffing. My other thought for the river was that I'd rather raise and get a fold, having to fold myself occasionally if jammed on, as to avoid showing down my hand. With much of what is being said, clearly no one wants to raise/fold river. The last thought is definitely incorrect on my end.

I have wondered this as well Avarita but I think I might know the answer.
When we 3bet OOP and get called, we are generally ahead of Vs range, right? Then on most flops that hit our perceived range, we want to be cbetting at a very high percentage. So we cbet 1/3 ish here so that we can keep Vs range wide. In the example above, we would check/fold on bad turns (Ks, Qs, Js and spades) and check/call on good turns (Ace, 8s, 7s and below).

I have heard Doug Polk say this in a lot of his videos but still don't 100% understand the theory correctly.

In regards to the OP hand, I can go either way on the flop here. Maybe slightly closer to checking since we are IP and would lean more to betting if we were OOP in the blinds. Again, I think this is a standard call on the river.

Yes smaller sizing will induce spew sometimes but for the most part I often give people credit when I do have the weaker part of my range, knowing that if they are spewing they're putting in money terribly often enough to make it really bad. I also find that players will raise strongish hands otf like ak (Along with other mergy hands which don't make a tonne of sense) on k83 which isn't necessarily a bad play (100bb deep atleast), but makes them much easier to play against. Very rarely do I see a hand which does make sense like a gutter w/ bdfd being raised so mucking after being raised is usually easy. We can also exploitative size up w/ bluffs and size down w/ value if we think they're really going after our small size.

I haven't done any work in Pio but in that hand i would assume a lot of check/calling ott, obviously depending on sizing and turn card and then evaluating river. I doubt oop does any potting w/ exactly 88 in this spot except on this exact turn.

The Raptor bet! Works way better in position than out. After a 3bet with 100ish bb stacks you can still get all the money in with normal turn and river bets. People tend to dramatically over/under call, and play either super spewy or turn their hands face up, at least they used to online.