I am UTG+2 in 9 handed game with QJ.

Someone posts the half kill ($60) from the HJ. A bad player has just sat down and posts $40 in the cutoff.

I raise and a fairly passive player on my direct left 3 bets. The killer and the poster both call and then the SB caps it at 4 bets. He plays mostly mixed games and I don't think he is very good at LHE generally. He has cold called in some spots and made some other bad decisions that make me think he's not a great LHE hand reader.

I call and everyone else calls.

Flop:

JJ8

SB bets, I raise, the guy on my left calls, the killer folds, the poster calls, and the SB calls.

Turn:

A

I hate this card but bet anyway after the SB checks. The guy on my left calls, the poster folds, and now the SB check raises. I hate life but decide to click the call button. Now the guy on my left folds.

River:

A

Now the SB checks.

I think the turn decisions and river decision are interesting.

I also think the play of the guy on my left is a bit confounding. I am having a really hard time assigning a hand that makes sense given his action. I want to assign a probability of him having an ace to help with my turn decision but then also to reassess that probability once he folds to the turn check-raise to help with my river decision.

If he had a big pocket pair, I find it an unlikely parlay that he decided not to 3 bet the flop, then decided to draw to a very ragged 2 outer for one bet on the turn but then not to draw again once the check-raise occurs. I also don't see him folding a big diamond, nor an ace to the turn check-raise. It's one of these spots where nothing seems to make sense, yet he has to have had 2 cards.

Guy on left: Medium PP with a diamond might make sense. Or a big ace that sniffed out a jack.

Turn: b/c looks fine.

River: competent villain should never have an A here except the occasional AA or AJ (3 combos). Does he have 6 combos that will spite call worse?

Maybe guy on left has TT with a diamond but after SB check raises he thinks that not even tens full might be good if it gets there so he bails...SB certainly looks like a flush or maybe 88 that got counterfeited with the over pairs on board.

Screwplay occasionally works. But I think you have to bet/call the river, because you did move ahead of some boats and flushes.

It seems the passive player to your left had a hand he thought was live when he called the first bet, but decided he may be drawing dead once the SB CR. Maybe he was just passively calling down a big pair. Maybe he decided to call the flop and raise safe turns to better protect his hand in this huge pot. I highly doubt he had an Ace.

Has the SB cc 3 bets before pre? If so, with what type of hands? There shouldn't be too many flush combos in his range especially if he might cc some of these. Maybe he caps KdQd. Would he cap or call 88s?

I wanna bet this river because you described this guy as not good. He may have a few more hands that will payoff than a more competent player would. The pots huge so there is a good chance of inducing a crying call. I would have to be there and have a better understanding of his range to really know what to do. If you choose to bet, you can't fold given the player your against and the massive pot size.

KK with Kd? KQdd or 88.

AK with Kd would be....something.

nh and bet river.

Shrug i would check back and see what he has

How wide is villain capping here?
With the A on board, this makes his flush combos minimal, if at all.

So really, what hands are we targeting? KQ and three combos of 88? I've seen many "experienced" villains who would try to get tricky on this river.

To everyone who says b/c river, what range are we giving villain here?

Obviously an honest villain who isn't insane preflop will have {88}. So we bet.

A slightly more spewy one would have {88, KdQd, KJs}, so we bet.

A "slightly tricky" one may have {88, KdQd, AxKd, AxQd, KJs}, so now checking becomes better.

And we aren't even sure if he's calling 88 or a flush!

I don't think we're missing a ton of value by checking this river (and I'm a skilled self-owner).

I think I'm going to agree with deathdonkey on this one and just check behind on the river and take a note of what the guy shows down. It's certainly an unusual line. What do we think is going to pay us with worse if we bet? Can we ever get a chopping hand to fold? (no) What if we get checkraised on the river, are we willing to bet / fold this river in this giant pot? (no) . . . because we always lose against the described player if we are checkraised on the river.

Strangely enough, I sort of feel like the most likely hand that we are going to be shown here is AA. The read as described is that this is a mixed game player who probably has some decent poker experience but is not an expert in LHE and who might not aggressively push all of the small edges and who might have some slowplay and some FPS in his arsenal. The cap out of the small blind from this player (who has cold calling ranges) in my opinion basically eliminates any possibility of a flush. These are premium cards like AK or a big pair.

When the small blind cbets the flop and the rest of the field puts in 2 bets, why isn't he 3 betting this flop with 4 way action? Because he doesn't have a Jack -- he probably doesn't have any jacks in his range. He also doesn't have a flush draw -- because the nut flush draw will probably want to jam this flop with 4 way action. In my opinion, 88 is also unlikely more from a preflop perspective -- a player with a cold calling range is probably going to just call with 88 from the small blind multiway and out of position to try to setmine. I would think that he would want to 3 bet the flop with 88 so that he might have a chance to b3b a flush card on the turn, but perhaps this player might decide to slowplay / FPS with 88 instead.

Then the ace hits on the turn and he checkraises the turn. Again, this looks like AA that was scared of a jack on the flop but now he just got there. We should also note that this is basically never a bluff. When he checks the river, it sort of seems like some fishy FPS to me. It seems to me that it would be more natural for a hand like AxKd (which we also lose to on the river anyways) to just bet the river.

Obviously his range is more than just AA here, but I guess the point is that unless we are willing to bet / fold in this spot there just might not be enough value in betting the river.

By the way, the turn spot is nasty based on my read of the small blind's range above, but in a pot this size I suppose you can't really fold, just in case.

I felt very similarly to up2ng about this hand. His preflop range should be very tight here. Some players do cap with a wider range of multiway-type hands once they see a pot is going multiway, but this player had not yet given me an indication to think this was the case.

When he check-raised the turn, it felt like he had AA more than anything else. I agree that it is almost never a bluff but I also think it's an overplay if he has AK. Once I raise the flop, the flush card hits, and I still bet, I think my range is far too weighted towards Jx or a flush to make a check-raise with AK profitable. I also did not think this was the type of player to make the mistake of too thinly value check-raising: I thought his mistakes would tend to be playing too passively rather than too aggressively.

With all that said, now there is only 1 combination of AA on the river and I still didn't think AK was likely. Even so, I felt like that 1 combo of AA plus a small chance of AK/AQ was greater than the combined probabilities of 88/diamonds that would pay me off, so I checked back.

Thinking about it now, I think that if I judge his range that highly weighted towards AA even once it is reduced to one combo and he decides to check the river, that I should just fold the turn. At the time it felt crazy to fold trips in a big pot, but I think this may have been the best play.

Who cares what the other guy had, he folded.

River is tough. I feel like sometimes I bet and sometimes I check, neither time knowing what to do.

Folding turn would be sick but maybe correct. PF: can he ever have TJs, JQs, JKs, 88, KQs, smaller SCs? OTT, can he ever be dicking around with dry Kd or an A?

I mean, lots of people have really tight PF4b ranges and play snug postflop. Bad players and decent players. I don't hate folding turn. It goes to show that you need to pay close attention to how others play. And that having a snug PF4b range and straightforward play can make you really exploitable.

"Really exploitable" is an overstatement, for two reasons. First, this sort of "very narrow range" situation doesn't come up very often, precisely because he's capping a very narrow range, and also because the good opponent has to have a hand that he or she can exploitatively fold (like trips). And remember, the capper also gets a 4th bet out of the fish every time he caps his aces, so he's trading off a bit of exploitability by the better player for cold hard cash from the worse one.

Second, the reality is most players, even good ones, won't actually exploit here anyway. It's tough to fold trips in a fairly big pot. And you really need a super-strong read to do it anyway. We've all seen hands where someone makes some really strong move, like capping pre-flop, and we put them on AA or KK only to later find out they had-- 88?!?

So maybe you are letting some LHE expert exploit you a bit in a few limited situations with the narrow capping range. But it's not what I would call "really exploitable".

Very narrow range stuff happens all the time. Maybe my player pool just has more predictable players than yours does, but I feel like these strong PF/Postflop reads are pretty common.

Many bad players flat AKs PF, and only ever 3b or 4b with QQ+. Flop comes rag-rag-rag. Easy flop (or turn) fold with JJ.

A lot of players don't have a turn/river bluff-raise range.

When 3b'ing or 4b'ing pre, it's very common for players to not turn any hands into bluffs, since the range itself is already so strong.

this

What the other guy had is important because it helps you narrow down a range for the SB.

Not betting this river seems like silly and scared poker. It's an auto bet, I think. Very few players will check aces full here. Even fewer who are not good at hand reading, as OP stated.

I think a river VB depends on how the villain views your play...

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Not very good player described as "cold-calling" some doesn't strike me as someone who would screw play a lot.

Generally speaking, most players as described are not raising the turn with a naked ace as default, especially multiway and a high-paired card. Some might raise with an ace and big diamond, but also unlikely given this villain's description.

I think hands that make sense for this villain include 88/two diamonds. Td9d/QdTd/KdQd/KdTd + 3combos of 88 = 7 combos. You chop with Jx. He may also gamble-raise with some smaller diamonds preflop.

If player is competent and has a semi-bluff range, he may have some T9s/QTs hands that are semi-bluff raising the turn.

From a strategic perspective, it also doesn't make sense for this opponent to screwplay for value on this particular turn and river. Your range looks something like Jx/TT-88/QQ-AA/flushes. Once checked to on the river, you don't have very many thin-value hands he can profitably c/raise.

This really eliminates his possible Ax holdings. Remember, he also bet on the flop against multiple opponents, and unless he cbets mindlessly, this should also eliminate more naked Ax.

I'd start by betting river, and soul-read on whether to call a raise or fold. The scenarios:
1. He is checking a flush.
2. He is checking a semi-bluff hand and is giving up or planning to bluff-raise. (QTs/T9s)
3. He is checking a full-house. (Ax/88/Jx). Ax is super unlikely, with 88 and Jx much more likely.