Recently DalTX posted this hand. He took an aggressive line on the flop and I suppose it created an uncomfortable decision when he was faced with more action and an overcard on the turn.

I was in a similar situation: Top pair top kicker, 4bet pot, and up against two strong hand ranges.

Difference is his pot was a few bets larger, the preflop 3 bettor lead and there was a raise, and I actually have reads:

• Earlier EP overplayed top pair with AX twice.

$0.10/$0.20 Limit Hold'em Cash, 5 Players

Preflop: Hero is CO with J A
MP raises, Hero 3-bets, 2 folds, BB caps, MP calls, Hero calls

Standard raise preflop. Even though I suspect my opponent to be open raising less often than a standard EP raiser, I also know fishies limp strong and raise incorrectly meaning my range will perform better than the stat implies. In either case, I don't have enough information to make any huge preflop adjustments. Easy 3bet/call.

Flop: (12.5 SB) 4 J 7 (3 players)
BB checks, MP bets, Hero calls, BB calls

Things get interesting here. Like the other thread I have top pair top kicker against 2 strong hand ranges. Here my equity 3 ways is pretty decent. Maybe 35-40% or so as a guestimate. BUT if I raise, the better hands usually get max value and the worse hands minimize costs. Raising this flop makes it easy for my opponents to make decisions with their range. The capper probably makes a mistake with AQ/AK and coldcalls a raise, but if I flat he probably peels the turn when another bet goes in, and his equity will still be bad.

Also, my read about EP overplaying top pair leads me to think he will reliably 3bet all better hands than mine, extracting max value when he's ahead. A player who would miss value more often would be more difficult to justify my line against.

My plan here is to call down a lot.

Turn: (7.8 BB) 7 (3 players)
BB checks, MP bets, Hero calls, BB calls

River: (10.8 BB) 4 (3 players)
BB checks, MP bets, Hero calls.....

As on the turn, going for overcalls against the preflop capper (who probably has AK or AQ or TT-99) is WAY more profitable than trying to extract value from the guy who's barreling. I'm ahead against the capper over 90% of the time, and behind against the range of hands which or/cc and barrel. Value call ftw.

What kind of preflop opening range do you put MP on? Is it a default range or do you have reads/stats to support it?

I ask because when I play on Carbon with a HUD there are often of 55/7 types. I'm very nitty with 3-bets when it's one of those villains that opened.

What part of BB preflop capping range is he checking on this flop?

Firstly, let's nip "protection" in the bud immediately. Capper's line looks a lot like AK/TT. We don't mind giving those hands cheap turns and rivers. Plus we can get action if we turn an A v AK.

So given that we likely don't have anything to "protect" against (assuming BB isn't a spaz that could have a gutshot or something on this board), we should concern ourselves mostly with MP.

I'm still not sold that a guy with the read of "overplayed TP on a flop" is a guy who has to have us beat here over 50%. Fishes don't play a flopped set this way, and even if they do, there's just 3 combos total of those flopped sets by the river, plus 15 overpairs. Plus all the other dumb things people donk here like 66.

So if you can never fold (which I wouldn't plan on doing here minus like turn Qh River K, maybe), then we need to be ahead of his donks a bunch to not only cancel out the "1 if right, 2 if wrong" issue, but have it be better than having BB overcall in terrible shape. I'd still be tempted to raise flop, since players are bad and BB will take two to the face with a hand like AK/AQ (which may not even be a mistake given how people play at these stakes), plus MP is going to bet here with all kinds of stuff that AJ is crushing.

@ Dal, fish often have what I like to call "soft-flat" raising ranges. What this means is they're relatively position unaware AND logically inconsistent.

So one player for which I have 400 hands is 56/8, but I know they open raised 55 and KJs from early position. A logically consistent LHE PFR range which contains those two hands would lead us to a ~15% open raise from early position. This difference is caused by a player limping in with hands that are stronger than 55 and KJs. This makes a PFR range weaker than it might appear.

It's the same story from MP. The same player open raises QTs and 33 which implies at least a 22% PFR from that position. It's no where near this. And I just grabbed the first player I could find that roughly matched your stats.

A different laggy guy who opens 27% in early position raises 98o and 87o (implying a ~55% range).

If this fish were really raising the top 7% of hands across the board {77+, ATs+, KQs, AQo+} then I would rather fold a full 30% of my 3bet range. However, they are not raising a consistent set of hands. They miss-value hands preflop and call instead of raise, raise instead of call, or "mix things up" and limp strong / raise weak.

@nyrugby, speculating? Sometimes he's slowplaying and most of the other times its:

My understanding of protection in LHE is very different than most players often discuss. I've wrote about it before:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/35...-dead-1415809/

Nor would I be. The only way to think that I give his range an equity edge on the basis of those reads would be to misunderstand what I said.

My read about him overplaying top pair leads me to expect him to re-raise all hands better than mine rather than missing value. When my opponent is in a position to play his range really well against a particular decision, it helps to justify alternatives.

More a statement towards future posters than you. The passivity of your line is actually justified by the fact that BB is in the pot with a range that's dominated by your hand (as in: if our goal is to get 2 BB in on the flop or turn, having BB passively calling along is a low risk alternative to raising ourselves).

Yeah, I think this is the most important question on the flop. Have you seen BB be an lolslowplay monkey before (like is this the line he'd take with JJ+ here)?
I'm otherwise not yet super-concerned about MP. Yes, he might have JJ+ or 77 or 44. But that's at most 22 combos (likely fewer, as BB often holds some of those broadway cards). J9+, QJ, KJ, AJ, or a FD quite often here (maybe even some 88-TT) are also possible in his range; which (conservatively: assuming only J9s in pf range, only a reasonable assortment of FD's, and not all of 88-TT combos) is still >40 combos. Things like A4 or A7 seem fairly unlikely to me, that he'd play that aggressively with 2nd or 3rd pair into the pf 3bettor and cold-capper.


As played on flop, I think you should at least give serious consideration to raising the turn without a tight read that BB will slowplay overpair+ until the turn even if he had pf initiative. He was in perfect position to trap you both for another bet on the flop and opted not to. I'd mostly be putting him on AQ+, 99-TT (or potentially the one possible combo of JJ which he's super-comfortable slowplaying).
As far as MP is concerned, no one is showing strength, so I think his range is essentially unchanged from flop (except now there are two fewer combos of 77, fewer of the less likely A7; A4 seems even less likely that he'd continue to be this aggressive).


River: BB still hasn't shown strength post-flop, so I'm feeling pretty confident we're ahead of him. MP's range is likely similar to prior two streets (except now two fewer combos of 44 and fewer of the already unlikely A4; also discount some of the FD's, as doubtful he's bluffing a whiffed draw 100% of the time against TWO opponents; +/- perhaps further discount 88-TT slightly).
I think we can again strongly consider a raise here. With the combo counts I've alluded to above, we're pretty close to the desired 2:1 ratio (to justify raise even if it's a "win one more when ahead, lose two more when behind" situation). Pot's so big, BB might call two with any 99-TT in his range; especially because your raise can perhaps look like a desperation play on a busted FD.


idk, I read your reasoning, but I feel like a raise should have gone in on either the turn or river.

this is a pretty clear raise on the flop. i think you're using faulty logic to make a sub-optimal play.

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

1,991,115 trials (Exhaustive)

board: J47

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
AsJd	48.48%	911,756	107,104
AK, AQs, 99-JJ, AA	21.06%	418,585	1,331
77-AA, AJ, KJ, QJ, JT, J9s-J8s, Ah*h, 8h9h, 9hTh	30.46%	552,339	108,435

I'm perfectly happy to accept that as true, but an exhaustive equity calculation is only part of the story.

When you 3bet preflop what did you want to occur ... an A and your capped that would be somewhat bad, when you flow top pair you would really like to see what BB is playing.

So raise the flop, the post is giant so call is nothing and raise most like means something). If raised by either your calling down. You have odds for 2 pair or something. Plus it's super micro, so all reading is suspect.