Small field $50 buy in tournament on Bovada. Down to three players. Payouts are approx $500, $750, $1250.

Have some history with villain, as he has followed me around for a couple hours table to table. Has a unique playing style in that he's extremely tight from all positions other than BTN, SB and BB...but from these positions he plays almost LAG. Like, maybe played 2-3 hands from positions other than those that I can recall. He has been in my SB the whole final table and has raised 2X whenever it's been folded to him. He's been successful in taking many uncontested pots and a couple pots OTF from me, but has lost two big pots of 20ish blinds when I once called pre, called flop, and raised turn, and once when I 3bet him pre, he called, and he check/folded flop.

Since playing 3 handed (20 minutes), he's taken a lot of my blinds and a few flops when he Cbets and I lay down.

Blinds 2500/5000/500

BTN: 90k
SB: 150k
BB (hero): 165k

BTN folds.

SB raises to 10k.

Hero (K9o) calls.

FLOP (40kish): A 10 4 rainbow.

SB bets 13k.

Hero raises to 33k.

SB calls.

TURN (100kish): A

SB bets 22k

Hero raises to 55k

SB raises all in.

Hero folds.


Thoughts? Only tell I had in particular was that the turn lead came after 3-5 seconds of wait.

Opted to raise OTF because he has doubled my BB essentially whenever opportunity presents itself and figured him unlikely to have an A.

Frankly the lead OTT confused me a little, but didn't think he'd bet with AAA, and similarly thought he'd fold most anything to a raise besides AAA...hence the bluff continuation.

3bet pre and icm **** him and his loose range. flop i would call as played fold to turn lead

Flat pre is fine, 3bet given his stack size would be fine as well. I don't really ever bluff raise ace high boards. I can see possibly raising the flop if his opening range is really wide and he perceives you not to get out of line, but just shut down if he calls.

I don't think your line makes much sense - there's very few hands if any you should raise there.. looks like air or gutty.. not even a gutty. imo. correct me

pre is fine
otf dont raise float or fold
as played otf snap fold ott he is never folding when he takes this line

shichi do you think pre is more profitable to call here? i think 3bet has to be better

i dident read any info

btw is close and obv is player dep.
with this stack i prefer flatting and play post
any kind of reg is pretty confident with the preflop play
so Let's get them out of the comfort zone

Think tilt may have influenced my judgment negatively here. Was sick of him doubling my BB at every opportunity, and hadn't punished him effectively for doing so for a good amount of time. Certainly, despite not wanting to admit it, my desire to send a back off message surely played a role in the hand.

Still think that my logic up until the turn was sound. Think his rapid fire weak lead is pretty suspect still, but seems this time it was indicative of him being strong.

Side note: Think I should have probably left out his turn shove which ended the hand to counter results oriented thinking, but it's probably not playing much of a factor in the above resplies...thanks for feedback.

If he's min raising the small blind at a high frequency the best way to punish him is by peeling a ton of hands and forcing him to play the streets. You were probably folding too much before this hand if you felt he was running you over.

3bet pre
call flop, what do you rep?

Was trying to rep an ace.

Yeah, last 5-10 times he had gotten away with it, had garbage. And thx for advice about calling more often...upping 3bet freq from BB in future similar spots, or mostly just loosen call range and use position?

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you wouldn't play Ax this way
you wouldn't play Tx this way
just call otf and decide ott

So what hands, if any, would one raise with OTF and/or OTT?

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I mean generally the smaller the raise size the more incentive to flat here and not 3bet with a lot of hands, but given it's 3 handed at the FT you should be 3betting a decent amount to put pressure on. I probably wouldn't fold a single hand until he adjusts.

I don't think any raise here would make sense, maybe a4.. even then. Nothing wrong with 3betting pre but k9 is a good hand ip imo. If you want to make a play here I think you need to float reav turn. Folding flop best.

I good player is going to have a hard time believing you're nutted here

wouldn't have a raising range in this spot

Lots of quality content to mull over here, thanks for responses. If nothing else I'm certain I'll remember to not fold to blind-doublers from the SB until they show they're capable of folding to me or limping here with some frequency, and to 3bet a bit wider than I have been as well.

Very interesting stuff about what hands, if any, one would raise with on Axx boards such as this. Seems like there's a strong contingency who believe there isn't a legitimate raise range OTF or OTT and TPGK or 2 pair hands merely call to induce more action or control pot or something.

The thing is we want to protect our floats. If we wanna peel our gutshots and Tx we should peel our Ax as well. We also don't really have many Ax that want to stack off OTF since we didn't 3bet pre.

Villain is likely to barrel an ace or king high flop so much, so you wouldn't raise that much if you had it.

So fair to say that, in situations we feel inclined to play back, vs a thinking aggro we should float flops like this, but perhaps against the more mindless variety we should be raising to discourage their potential continued lead on future streets? i.e. raise to get the droolers to fold OTF because they're incapable of IDing my story's inconsistencies, but float thinkers because they'll see through it?

Interesting and accurate point you make IMO. Guess it's kind of a leveling situation OTF where, after being confronted with his lead, we have to utilize 3rd level thinking (what would villain think I rep with a flop raise?) and 4th level thinking (what does villain think that I think he's leading with?). Maybe I'm taking this too far...

Side note: Him calling my raise OTF and then baby betting at me OTT screamed weak/blocking to me. Refused to fold when being presented with that strange bet and couldn't find the fold button. Still as I sit here I think that, as played, folding OTT is bad.

It's kind of weird, because he is probably opening 80+% from the SB and it is unlikely he has an ace, but raisers tend to try to represent on this sort of flop.

I am not sure about not having a raising range on this flop. It is not consistent to say don't bluff raise as you will get played back at as he knows it is unlikely you would raise if you had it, and then to say don't raise with 2-pair.

our value r/c range is obviously really narrow on this flop.. hence we are better off having an empty raising range at this stack depth since its impossible to balance here and we'll get owned by 3b bluffs a ton.. just float if u wanna rep an ace bro

Yeh, I understand, but if you have a hand you want to gii with, why not raise if you are going to get action? Why do you have to be balanced. We don't want to raise with the nuts, but we also can't bluff raise. Does that make sense. I agree in general, but it is all about adjustments, so I don't see never have a raising range on a particular flop.

I don't think it's that unusual from a GTO perspective to say that with a particular flop texture and a particular stack-size, and a particular ITM dynamic, that one should never raise a c-bet on the flop regardless of your holdings.

It could be the case that the way we extract most value from nutted hands is the same way we win the most often with air, which is by calling in both instances.

Below is a pure hypothetical, not perfectly constructed, but designed to show why given a certain set of facts, it may be correct to never raise this flop (at least with a villain who we don't know). It's for illustrative purposes only and obviously hero's range doesn't have to be that polarized.
********************************************
Let's say that our range consists of the nuts 30% of the time, and total garbage 70% of the time. And let's say our opponent's range consists of 25% super-strong hands, 25% medium-strong hands, and 50% total garbage. Let's say that our opponent will be willing to GII on the flop with super-strong hands and medium-strong hands but is only willing to GII on the turn with super-strong hands after villain bets again on the turn, because he feels he's behind at that point with his medium-strong hands.

Let's say that we show a profit of 100K if we GII and win, and lose 100K if we GII and lose on the flop. On the flop, we win 20K if villain folds.

Let's say that on turn we show a profit of 100K if we GII and win, and lose 100K if we GII and lose on the turn. On the turn, we win 40K if villain folds.

FLOP: 50% of the time, we will win 20K when opponent has garbage for 10K. The other 50% of the time, we will win 30% of the time and lose 70% of the time, resulting in a net loss of 20K. So, if we raise our entire range on the flop, we lose 10K.

TURN: 75% of the time, we will win 40K when opponent folds and turn a profit of 30K. The other 25% of the time, we will win 30% of the time and lose 70% of the time, for a net loss of 10K. We turn a profit overall of 20K waiting until the turn to raise with our entire range.