I'm mostly lost and guessing when it comes to post-session hand analysis, Flopzilla, range construction, and if I'm honest poker in general, so I'd appreciate any feedback on my thought process here. I've cropped the stakes and my final action because I'm less interested in commentary on what I actually chose to do or on average player tendencies at Site X than the reasoning - which is probably muddled, given I'm thinking as I type.


CO: 47.25 BB (VPIP: 33.77, PFR: 30.46, 3Bet Preflop: 8.89, Hands: 153)
Hero (BTN): 120 BB
SB: 100 BB (VPIP: 12.50, PFR: 9.38, 3Bet Preflop: 5.88, Hands: 32)
BB: 113.5 BB (VPIP: 26.29, PFR: 15.43, 3Bet Preflop: 5.80, Hands: 180)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 6 3

fold, Hero raises to 2 BB, fold, BB calls 1 BB

Small samples but SB fts=88% and looks tight, BB fts=66% and isn't an obviously crazy 3bettor, so I think the steal is fine and boring.


Flop: (4.5 BB, 2 players) 8 T 9
BB checks, Hero bets 3 BB, BB calls 3 BB

From here I'm just making things up, but in order to have something to work with I'm going to say an overall 66%fts means that Villain 3bets JJ+,AK and some junk from BB vs a button minraise and flats with another 40% of hands (which might have made the steal a bad idea, now that I think about it). The board is scary, 40% means a lot of garbage and I have a flush draw and a gutshot so I cbet confidently - though after betting I wonder if I should have sized it bigger.

Putting various 40% flatting ranges into Flopzilla I'm very surprised how often Villain has something here. A lot of it is middle/bottom pair or a draw, but given how wide my range for a button minraise is and how little of that range actually strong, I think he'd be right to call a lot of those hands and I'm feeling a lot less good about both the steal and the cbet than I was at the table.


Turn: (10.5 BB, 2 players) 7
BB checks, Hero checks

Hooray, I has straight! Only I'm pretty certain I can't get any value here and that checking back and bluffcatching (with or without a diamond on the river) is the only option.


River: (10.5 BB, 2 players) 9
BB bets 9 BB

That's a bigger bet than I hoped for, and I need ~31.5% equity against his betting range to call here.

The board paired so I no longer beat [77-TT,T9s,98s,97s], although Villain is perhaps slightly less likely to bet any random J he called otf (unless he thinks I'd keep betting a set into a 4straight turn (I wouldn't - should I?)). He certainly bets his FHs/quads here. The only losing value bet I can imagine here is a 9, given I pretty clearly don't hold a J after checking the turn. I'm going to put his value range at [TT-77,AJ-QJ,A9-T9,JT,J8s,J7s,98s,97s] which comes to 117 combos against which I am ~20.5% - well short.

His range has a ton of potential bluffs in it, and adding some to Flopzilla tells me 19 combos would be enough to make a call correct. So the river decision comes down to: "Is Villain bluffing >14% of the time?"



So.... Is the above anywhere close to how I should be approaching this?

I usually just figure if I have one of the best or worst hands I have in this spot, in that case the decision is easy. If a 6 is the best hand you're ever going to have here then call.

There are some better hands you can have. You sometimes have a jack and certainly any full house like T9/87/89/TT/99/88. I assume you sometimes have some missed flush draws or some Qx that missed. If you cbet KQ/AQ that's already 32 combinations. My guess is a 6 is actually somewhere right in the middle which sucks because you can safely fold about 50% of your hands. Given that people don't generally call these flops with hands they can actually bluff the river with I just fold and because it is so close it's not a big mistake either way.

If you cbet like a spewtard then obviously a 6 is going to be the best hand you'll ever have and need to call. In which case you are probably also losing money with your range no matter what decision you make and you need to fix your cbetting range.

Your thought process and analysis is very good in comparison to most posts by BQ newbies.

I fold pre. The bottom of my range for BTN opens is 64s/54s. I think 63s is slightly unprofitable.

On that flop, I think I'd either check it back (you shouldn't bet 100% of your FDs), or commit to triple barreling a lot of runouts where you don't improve. As played seems fine, but betting the turn (panning to check back all rivers) is also an option, because villain has a bunch of sets and two pairs and a few draws (inc pr+draw) that can call.
River seems like a pretty standard call in theory when you check back the turn. Villain can have a lot of better hands, but he has some air too. When you check the turn, it's with the intention of calling almost any river. If villain won't bluff with his various ace highs and king highs (missed diamond draws mostly), and won't turn hands like AT/KT/QT into bluffs, you can fold. If this was 5NL or something, villain will be so heavily weighted towards value that folding is probably the wisest choice.

Pretty solid analysis you provide. With that said, a weaker hand like 63s should be raised 3bb if that is your standard raise size. I feel like he could be semi bluff with a pair ace kicker. You block the bottom end straight but not the top like AJ, KJ, QJ, etc. He could have an overpair as well. I think the river call is the right play.

Thanks for the replies.


Good to hear!


So, do you think I should spend more review time thinking about my own ranges than my opponents'? I mean, that's probably a good idea anyway given I have no idea if I cbet like a spewtard or not (which means I probably do, tbh).


Yes, running through this hand on Flopzilla has made me rethink just how wide I can reasonably steal, and I think 63s is probably pushing it vs 2.


2bb actually is my standard button size. I'll go higher if the two players to my immediate left don't like folding and for some reason I don't therefore want to find a different table, but I haven't noticed a huge difference in success between 2/2.5/3bb steals. In fact, the biggest difference is that sometimes someone sees the minraise as an excuse to make obviously stupid 3bets, which is hardly a tragedy for me...


Huh. If I bet every flush draw here, I never have much on a diamond turn after checking back. That's embarrassingly obvious now. Gives me some ideas about how to play vs the ~80%cbet players I sometimes see.

Well I don't know if you cbet like a spewtard, only you know.

I just know that if you raise every suited hand preflop and cbet this flop you're going to have quite a lot of missed diamonds in this case. To be honest I think 63s is pushing it even on the button.

Basically there are two ways to approach situations like this. Either you analyze your opponents range and decide what to do or you pick hands from your own range to call/raise/fold with. Since the range of your opponent is highly variable and unknown it is the easiest to play a strategy that allows you to play unexploitable.

If he bets 100% pot he is getting 1:1 on his bluffs and you need to call 50% to make him indifferent. In this case you can fold 50% without worrying about being exploited so it's pretty easy to analyze your own range since you have a lot more information on it.

In this case I think you have hand that should be right in the middle of it and that makes it difficult. This is where your flop strategy plays a role because that determines with what hands you are going to see this river with. You should have a strategy that maximizes your EV on flop, turn and river in general. Just because you get some folds on the flop doesn't make it the most profitable. In this case a straight draw and flush draw can make a decent check because it has great equity against a checking range and you can protect your checks with some draws meaning you don't automatically have to fold when the turn is a 7 or a diamond.

In any case you should check back some flush draws to be able to call a turn bet and bluff the river when it is checked to you. I am not good enough (any more) to tell you the exact frequency but I think cbetting this hand is never a mistake. As played checking turn and calling river I think is pretty much mandatory in a vacuum and the only consideration is whether your opponent is capable of bluffing.

I definitely recommend doing this. It's hard for me to give a good analysis of your post-flop lines when I don't know your pre-flop and flop strats, but you're definitely opening wider than me, and you're probably c-betting more often too. (This doesn't necessarily mean you're playing badly, just differently). That said, if you can look at this flop and think something like "I'll check back some marginal one pair hands, check back some flush draws like AKs/AQs, and 6xs/5xs, check back some complete air [without even a BDFD or BDSD], but I'll bet almost every hand that has an OESD, gutshot, or BDFD, as well as the obvious value hands" your turn and river play should be fairly easy.
To some extent, you can plan the hand based on whether you want to play a big pot (with nutted hands, and draws to the effective nuts), a medium pot (with one pairs and/or showdown value that like to check back and maybe delay c-bet, or get used as bluffcatchers when villain leads turn), or no pot at all (air that gives up immediately and is ready to snap-fold on the turn).

P.S. One c-betting tip that might help is that when you have a flush draw, try to almost ignore it and ask "Would I bet this hand if I didn't have a flush draw?". If you had 63o, you have a weak gutshot that might work well as a bluff, but if you've got many better candidates for flop semi-bluffs (e.g. all the combos containing a jack or 7), then you can bet with those in preference, and just take the free card with 63s. Sometimes with low ranked FD combos, you're not even sure if you want to bink the flush, because you could get stacked, so keeping the pot smaller by checking is sometimes a better plan.