PokerStars - $10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

PLR_4781879ZX (BB): $2,219.75 (VPIP: 18.60, PFR: 16.28, 3Bet Preflop: 12.50, Hands: 45)
PLR_4402141EK (UTG): $1,097.75 (VPIP: 36.59, PFR: 34.15, 3Bet Preflop: 50.00, Hands: 45)
Hero (MP): $2,037.50
PLR_9450130TB (CO): $2,486.48 (VPIP: 15.91, PFR: 6.82, 3Bet Preflop: 5.26, Hands: 45)
PLR_6166796SQ (BTN): $980.50 (VPIP: 14.29, PFR: 7.14, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 14)
PLR_8743922XA (SB): $3,988.75 (VPIP: 37.78, PFR: 31.11, 3Bet Preflop: 9.09, Hands: 45)

PLR_8743922XA posts SB $5.00, PLR_4781879ZX posts BB $10.00

Pre Flop: (pot: $15.00) Hero has J J

fold, Hero raises to $30.00, fold, fold, PLR_8743922XA raises to $120.00, fold, Hero calls $90.00

Flop: ($250.00, 2 players) J Q K
PLR_8743922XA bets $160.00, Hero calls $160.00

Turn: ($570.00, 2 players) 5
PLR_8743922XA bets $400.00, Hero calls $400.00

River: ($1,370.00, 2 players) T
PLR_8743922XA checks, Hero (has exactly psb)

I know this is in the wrong forum, but it's the only one that gets traffic. Thought I'd post a little hand history action for old times sake and see what we can stir up.

This is on Ignition, which I'm sure most of you know of at this point. From a theory pov obviously this hand is a bit high in our range to turn into a bluff but on an anonymous site the question of how to play our range as a whole becomes less relevant.

Although we have basically no SDV here I was concerned he might trap flushes to induce shoves from hands <straights (which is a good % of my range) and/or Ax that might try to move him off a chop when checked to but wouldn't call off a river jam.

Depends how often he has AX that checks (because it isn't folding)

I can see an argument for jamming as he shouldn't have much AX (he shouldn't have AK?). If you did bet it would be to fold out KQs/KK/QQ. I personally don't believe anyone is checking XXhh otr as played. We have a dece number of AX and we have dece number of XXhh combos. So, we should be turning hands like two pair into a bluff probably.

I don't think a jam is terrible.

^ We have a set. We don't need to fold KQs.

You said in a different thread that you were confident that 4b pre vs SB is definitely more +EV than flatting? Are we flatting here since we are 200bb deep?

I'm fine with bluffing here. He really shouldn't have too many Ax here, and we can fold QQ/KK

shove JJ but fold QQ and KK ????

Lol yeah, oversight sorry. Don't need to fold out KQs.

How many KK/QQ combos he has: 6
How many flushes he has: AThh,AQhh, A2hh-A4hh, 67hh-9Thh, QThh =10, + he may have A6hh-A9hh, or some 1-gappers

Another factor to take into account is that some players flat some KK/QQ/AA in the SB in order to back-raise when BB squeezes, protecting their SB calling range, which reduces the range you are targeting to fold out OTR by a little, so let's make it 5.5 combos.

If villain never check-calls a straight here, your shove will break-even only if villain is trapping with a little more than half of his flushes OTR. if he traps more, then you're losing.

Maybe I made a really wide 3-bet range for villain pre-flop, some people are nitty when it comes from 3-betting from the SB vs MP/UTG. The nittier the guy is in those spots, more you should be leaning towards jamming there, since his range will have more KK/QQ than SCs and Ax there.

After all that, I think it's pretty optimistic to think that villain will never check-call Ax here or trap less than 50% when the river card is such a great card for you to use as a bluff.

Edit: there are also 3 combos of 9Ts that you fold, so let's calculate how many A high straights he has here: 12 combos of AK, more 2 combos of ATs(already accounted for the AThh in the flush part).

So he has 24 combos that beat you and 8.5 that you fold out OTR. So in order to break-even, villain must be trapping less than 35% of the time there with his straights and flushes.

If the SPR was smaller OTR and you could make a massive overjam of 2x to 3x the pot size, making it possible to fold out some of villains' straights, fine, but few people will fold a straight there for a PSB.

Just check behind.

I don't think many people really check their flushes here

are you expecting to get enough value off KK/QQ/KQ/JJ/KJ/JQ by jamming?
If we have Ax OTR, we will always bet, we will also fold most 2-pair/sets when villain jams, isn't it better for villain to trap?

Now if you expect people to call off top QQ/KK OTR which is the reason villain is jamming his flushes, then villain should be able to hero call them too.

I agree with you..... Villain should check river 100% imo, but I don't think that's what people do in practice,

V's flop and turn range with this sizing plan on this particular texture imo reeks VERY strongly of a flopped straight. I don't think AA or AK takes this sizing plan often at all 200bbs deep, even with a heart. I'm also really skeptical KK or KQ take this line ott with those blocker effects. Not saying people don't do it, but I think it's pretty bad on a turn where the flush completes.

I think his river range is QQ, maybe 75-100% ATcc/dd, ~50% T9cc/dd, 25% AhA, and then some unknown % of flushes that he checks.

Definitely agree he has huge incentive to trap flushes there. This wouldn't be the case if Hero had more Ax in his range but I don't think I get to river with much Ax that isn't Ah. Not sure I defend ATs 100% pre and I think I can (??) just fold turn with AK no heart. The fact that my Ax is the Ah lends itself to him trapping more bc I'm always going to to try move him off a chop when I hold the Ah.

Right, and I think the answer is he doesn't have much. But I think jamming is bad for other reasons. There are not many hands that beat us that we move him off of by jamming (QQ, T9s) and from a hand-reading POV he has incentive to check a flush otr. The question is really how often he traps a flush.

Good post. I think your 3b range pre is a bit wide, suited ungappers are def not std 3bets SBvMP deep, and some of the 76s-98s I believe get dropped at this depth.

You meant 2 combos T9s that you fold, not 3.

Oh, yeah, my bad, forgot one of them was a flush lol
Yeah, made the range really loose, it was a 7%-8% 3-bet range. I don't know how people play this deep OOP, so it's hard to get a range that matches his.

Ah, and I didn't consider 1-gappers or A6-A9 into the calculation. One interesting thing is that Axs gets better when deep stacked because of the cooler potential, so it's possible that villain may add those in his 3-bet range.

His bet size is fine for a 200bb pot if villain wants to threaten stacks by the river, so in theory he should be using that size with his FDs/sets/flushes/AK/AA/KQ/AT/9T/pair+gutshot.

In reality, few people have the balls to valuebet AA/AK with that sizing that deep, also because most people play nitty in deep stacked poker.

The tough thing when it comes into deep stack poker is that setmining becomes really a huge deal because of the bigger implied odds, if villain is valuebetting AA/AK in that way, he will get destroyed in the long run by hero's sets, so we can play a fairly easy fit-and-fold and auto-profiit if he does that. Which reduces the chances of villain having those hands OTT, which reduces his river straights.

But his range OTF/OTT isn't made only by straights, villain is probably valuebetting sets in that way too, probably semi-bluffing OTF and valuebetting his flushes OTT with that sizing also betting his AK/AA of hearts.

Let's make a more realistic calculation then.

So villain will have only 3 combos of AKx by the river, 3 combos of AAx and 2 of ATs(cc and dd), so 8 combos of the nut straight. If we use a tighter 3-bet range for villain, then he will have AThh,AQhh, A2hh-A4hh, and 50% of the SCs from 67hh to 9Thh, which is 7 combos of flushes

Keeping his folding range the same, he will have 5.5 combos of KK/QQ, 2 of 9Ts(cc and dd), so 7.5 combos.

Combos that will fold: 7.5
Combos that are calling: 15

So this move will only show profit if villain is trapping less than half of the time with his straights/flushes.

One interesting thing is that villain is more likely to check-call with a straight than a flush, since he can't get called by worse(unless he plans on folding a chop, specially with the Ah there).

But these things are really hard to calculate, the better villain is, more this play will lose you money. In the end, it comes to brokenstars' reads on the population, which is "LOL, I HAZ A FLUSH", then jam.

But even if villain is jamming all his flushes, in order to make profit from this move, villain should be jamming one combo of a straight also.

we should "bluff" river with Ax mostly I believe

hmm or not

Can someone explain why villains wants to trap his flush on the river instead of betting? Is it because we are perceived to be calling a shove only with flush/Ax which would shove ourselves when checked to?

I dont see V having many As, and players dont check flush here at my stakes, so I would jam river as it looks like he is on KK/QQ

You can def string together enough combos of 2pairs here to be bluffing properly. No need to bluff this hand

.

I think you're wrong about that, it's very relevant unless you know you're exploiting this particular villain, there is no reason to play your range suboptimally. By bluffing JJ, you automatically lose its check value and it has negative blockers to Ax because villain is likely not playing AJ this way.

I would just check behind and hope my hand is good. He 3bet you pre, so I would assume he has a ton of aces in his range and some QQ/KK. In his 3bet range, what exactly do you beat here?

I think this logic is valid for when you have a low/zero SDV hands and a bluff opportunity where you can rep something.

But there are hands where you get to the river with the bottom of your range and if the player pool's folding frequency in that spot isn't high enough to warrant a bluff, it doesn't matter what your SDV with your hand is, it's not a good bluff period. You only get to play the hand once against this particular player and you don't get to go down the counter-strat iteration path against him in the future where you can exploit him calling too much of his range there.

In this particular hand from a theory pov JJ is too strong to bluff because Hero has KJs/KQs/KQo in his range. I'm saying this logic misses the point. The point is simply, is JJ more profitable as a bluff than a xb?

still, no one has answered this question, and i don't see that knowing less about our opponent is going to enlighten us any more as to whether or not that's the case.

correct me if i'm wrong, but i think you're referring to situations where you correctly make an exploitive play against an anonymous population, but no one is likely to do anything about it if most people don't make that play (which is, well, why it's exploitive). however if you're at a non-anon table and you do these kinds of things frequently, people are more likely to pick up on it and attempt to prevent you from exploiting them. i can't think of any other reason why you'd want to play more exploitively at an anon table. these cases certainly exist, but they're much rarer than you're indicating, especially at mid-high stakes, and people frequently overestimate their ability to exploit an anonymous reg anyway. imo it isn't anywhere CLOSE to a common enough occurrence to say that theory matters more at anonymous tables than non-anon tables.

case in point, you're claiming that we don't have to worry about playing theoretically well in this hand but no one in this thread has come up with an even remotely cogent exploitive analysis. just a ****show of guessing.

not that we can't make some exploitive reads - the one exploitive thing to say is that his sizing plan is really, really dreadful. there are almost no hands that he'd want to bluff for this size. your range is incredibly strong and undoubtedly more nutted than his, and all his potential bluffs have very low equity vs your continuing range (it's relatively hard for him to have a bare heart in his hand after preflop and flop), so i would expect his turn range to be VERY weighted towards value. there are also several hands which he might want to bet to keep his range uncapped on a variety of rivers but just aren't good enough to bet large, such as KQ, but given our flush advantage i suspect he's supposed to check turn 100% anyway. in our shoes KQ is almost certainly a fold on the turn (KxQh folds pre, right?), so i don't think you should even have anything worse than JJ on the river. but again i don't think me being able to (hopefully!) make this read is bolstered by the fact that it's an anonymous table.

also i just wanna point out that JJ may be a better bluff than KQ anyway since KQ blocks a ton of his folding range and the only diff in sd value is in beating ThTx, which people play in a variety of different ways on earlier streets, whereas KK/QQ are likely to play in a pretty similar way across the population of players who use this sizing plan.

if we just make a few base assumptions such as: 1) he only calls Ax on the river, 2) he probably has 2-3 flush combos in his range, but there aren't many flush combos he can have here to begin with, and sometimes they will bet river out of laziness or ignorance even though it's an obvious check 100% spot to anyone good, then it's still not really clear if it's a profitable bluff since it's not clear how often he 3bets 9Ts/ATs relative to KK/QQ, if he ever bluffs turn (i feel it's unlikely, but certainly not impossible), how often he checks KK/QQ on the turn. i do agree with you that QQ is more likely than KK, but how much more seems impossible to say, and QQ even checks turn sometime! however, even allowing for a wide possibility of answers to these questions, it seems that JJ is very plausibly breakeven or +EV to bluff, and i think it's theoretically sound anyway, so go for it bronamath

How can we know with a good margin of error how people play in a different site, different stake, in a super specific spot, in a 200bb deep 3-bet pot?
Calculating their ranges and deduce what they would do with each part of their range is what we can do.

So what is villain doing OTF with his flush draws? check-calling? bet is a 2/3 pot OTF, if he made it like 80%, then we could have a solid read on that, but with this SPR OTF, anything between 50%-66% is normal.