I mean when we check raise this flop there are roughly twice as many combos of hands he'll never fold (Ax and all pairs and KJ+) hat have us in bad shape and 1/3 of his range that he may fold which we are a huge favorite agaisnt.


So the option of getting in 2 bets 67% of the time as a massive dog and taking down 5 1/2 small bet pot 33% of the time in a spot where he have between 60-70% equity agaisnt their range seems bad on the surface

Feel free to reread my posts. KQ/KJ are hands strong enough to passively bluff catch. K9 is not quite strong enough. No, we are not x'r/ing our whole continue range. Nobody in their right mind would barrel K9 and expect to get called by worse -- that's a lame straw man argument. Put more effort into your retorts. It is a spot is worth discussing.

I mentioned in my first post how I continue after x/ring K9. On low cards/spades, we barrel and can get better hands like Kt-KQ to fold. It also prevents his other 6-outers to get free turns. On bad cards we check back -- this can freeze some weak hands from betting against us, giving us more sd equity.

Those are some pros. Cons are that we have a modestly showdownable hand that loses SDV if he plays back at us. I'm ok with that.

I just think gobbo point might be good in tourney for winning chips but is bad in cashgame where only the best ev decision wins on the long run.

Yeah, it was very clear what you meant. That's why I called it crazy talk

yeah, i was trolling. flop c/r is bad, as is flop c/f. river seems really close - i think i'd lean toward river c/c because c/r wouldn't occur to me at game speed. i think both those options are better than river c/f.

hi magic - hope things are good with you.

Hi Babar!

Wow this thread blew up! Thanks for all the responses.

Tbh I didn't even consider xr river. In villain's shoes it would look quite monstrous especially from a player perceived as scared money (I don't think I was but the perception is of most importance obv). Certainly KQ goes in the muck if I xr .... Maybe some 8s too.

However, how thin is he really gonna vbet is he thinks I'll likely over fold this spot? I guess I got caught up in the leveling game and convinced myself he'd have more bluffs than usual (like JTs type stuff) and clicked the call button. I also wanted to use this early opportunity to dispel any "scared money" notions so I didn't have to overthink these spots all night.

I think xr definitely has merit here, but it gets more and more attractive the thinner villain bets. Though, on the flip side, though his betting range is stronger, he may be willing to fold a larger portion of it (esp cuz I could certainly see myself playing some Aces like this).

Magic: I've posted this before and this exact hand may not even be a great example but when good players take shots at bigger games they usually over correct for exactly what you are talking about and start playing extra Aggro and spewy to show they are "not scared". Most good players I believe will anticipate this and play fairly abc against someone taking a shot. In this hand the villain might even have as strong a hand as KK for example.

Anyway the general point is bigger games aren't automatically crazy lag competitions and you don't need to be too worried about being run over. Just play your normal game it will be fine

so anyone want to give reasons why flop x/r is terrible, or share their x/r range?

I don't think its a slam dunk x/r with Ks9, but it's not terrible and worth considering. I think its bad to weight all our x/r bluffs on 5x and FDs.

Ks9 has such marginal SDV -- I'm folding any combos of K9 OTF that don't have a spade. So, why not invest one more SB into 6.5 SBs on the flop and treat our hand as a bluff. Many live players will fold too much on the flop! If we check back turn, I believe many live players wtf check turn also and we get more SDV and more free cards. The K acts as a blocker, weighting more of villain's range to Qhi-; the hi cards also give us equity against PPs and some marginal SDV.

I feel like we can profitably check-call on river, so I want to reserve check-raise for something slightly worse. Whatever the best hand is that we don't think we can profitably check-call with.

Yeah, if I'm going to c/r the flop I'd rather have like JT or QT where you have a few more hands you can bluff out and less sd value

like i said 2/3 times we get in 2 bets as a massive equity dog and 1/3 of the time they fold hands that are 70-30 dogs to us

You guys really think villain will _never_ fold any pair after this flop, regardless of action and turn and river?

I mean it's an A34 flop so barring a 2 or 5 what kind of scary run out are you hoping for?

I would chk call river on that run out.

As ZOMG_RIGGED mentioned, getting info on what hand villain has is valuable. Especially if you're willing to play shorthanded or this game already is 4 - 5 handed.

You suspect villain is a LAG pre so his HJ open raise range should be wide as you suspect. In addition, your read is that villain may think you're scared money so will definitely bet river with worse in my opinion.

I've only played 60/120 couple times live and 50/100 online couple times but one thing I noticed is that good LAG and winning TAGs are generally more aggro. Taking that into account, I would call river.

While c/r flop bet down may be fine in a soft 20/40 game where villains will fold pairs on many run outs, I think only better hands you might make this LAGTAG villain fold is KQ, KJ, KT, or K9.

Villain should have a much wider open range in HJ that you can potentially induce a river bet by Chk/Calling river in my opinion.

c/r riv here works great w/o history against lagtards or w/history against good opps, but might get looked up here even from KQ by a great player. i'd still go for it since getting valuetowned thin here sucks for your image. also he has more incentive to bluff riv if he thinks you're scared money and will c/c instead of c/r flop with 89ss and 56, so we shouldn't really fold riv.

Except every good reg is going to snap call your bs river k/r line. If u really think k/cing flop is the play I say go for it. You'll be dropping back down very soon.

i don't play 80 but know how to read

hey magic, nice meeting you sat. a few things.

first off, nobody at the table knew/cared you were taking a shot, especially not the villain in this hand.

second, villain here is WAYYY looser than you're describing. he goes through phases of being tight and trying to play well but he's really a lagtard at heart when playing live. ive seen him show up with just absolute crap since he has such an overinflated ego about how well he plays. if he feels blinds are tight at all (was it you and the guy in between you and i who was the small blind w/ alan as the button?), he'll open a ton in the hj (and he's not too worried about bu there)

in terms of the hand, first, if you're folding the flop to this guy as you describe him here, that's kinda close since you are oop, the pot is small, and you won't know as easily where you're at on the latter two streets. but i'd still think it's a mistake b/c you're hand is too strong vs. his range to let it go yet.

but if you're folding the flop to this player as he actually is, it's a huuge error. he takes weird lines all the time and is actually capable of deciding to "give up" T9s on the turn and then decide ok well now i have to bet to get high cards to fold. for somebody who has ostensibly been an excellent online player, he plays live very poorly at times. you have to discount a "fudge factor" when ranging him and playing against him. so yea, def can't fold flop.

on the river, you're good here enough, almost on the fudge factor alone. i'd expect to lose most of the time since most likely he rivered an 8 (and you can expect this to be anything from 84s to dear science only knows what lol), but he's also betting hands he decided to "give up on" and then undecided to give up on.

glad that you killed it. running hot while shot taking is always fun . again, nice meeting you and do come back now, ya hear?

What are we repping if we C/R the river?

What are you chk/calling on this flop and what are you c/r ING on this flop?

Range for both seems narrow but I could see how it's better to choose better spots based on play styles of your opponents and yourself.

3x, 88, and 99 - KK???

Depends if you 3 bet BB and how much of your top range you are chk calling flop intending to c/r turn. Depends probably on Playstyle.

I only shared air space with this villain at 40/80, but if his 80/160 style was anything close to resembling how he played 40/80, I'd agree with all of this.

If we defend a range that looks like this:

Then we're going to have a HC hand over 60% of the time on this flop. And we want to fold the 4th nut no pair w/ BDNFD to a spewy LAG on the flop? We have plenty of total junk to check fold, like T8 or J7s or something.

Well assuming this hand was played against ZZ I am check raising any ace, two pair, sets, and straights. Calling down with flopped pairs, pocket pairs, and check folding K9o. Just a hand I would give up, maybe exploitable but I pick my spots with him, especially OOP.

My guess is ZZ showed up with 8xs bc I have played with him a ton and if you call the river here you are maybe good 1 in 9 times. Also don't think he valuebets KQ or KJ bc you could potentially have a 4 and be inducing. As played I would fold river, he plays big bet streets better than anyone in that game.

reasonable river line with Ax or 99+. especially so if uphill's read is correct

nice meeting you as well jdr. you guys are both what i've come to expect from 2p2 folks. i didn't get to see you play, so you'll have to come back again for sure. if you guys come down, we can even get a whole table of former/current foxwoods folks. the stoic former 3/6 player w/ his girl behind him, the actuary, the parking lot's namesake, the elder filipino, you two, and there's probably 2 more that i'm missing to make a 9 handed game along w/ myself.

i also agree we'll have a lot of crap to kf and k high on that board isn't part of that bucket against "mr. i'm-the-lord-ganesha's-gift-to-limited-holdem-texas-style-just-ask-me"

6max-> yes it was and i think he's good way more than 1/9. not sure who you are but i've played a lot w/ him as well and yes we expect to lose this more often than not, but i'd say it's closer to 20-25%, which makes it thin, but right to call. while he has a ton of 8s, he also has a slew of nonsense hands and very often executes seemingly random actions (like checking a turn w/ Thigh to ensure he doesn't get kr'd where he should be barrelling off and then changing his mind on the river).

i guess there is one big factor that hasn't been discussed though, which is he'd play magic differently than he'd play, say, alan, or jdr. so we don't know precisely what he thinks of magic and that can impact the decision here pretty substantially. i've been going off of what he does against me and what i've seen him do. we have a significant history whereas he'd only played a few hands vs. magic at this point.