Played 40/80 holdem yesterday and had some interesting ones.

Hand 1: game is 3 handed, not a great game, I open JTo on button (no spade), sb folds, bb good player calls. Flop T 4 3 he check calls. Turn 5 he check raises, I call. River J

I think the options are call, raise and call a 3bet, raise and fold to a 3 bet.

Hand 2: game filled up, I open AKs EP, someone cold calls, BB calls. He is a strange player, sort of bad taggy with fits of LAG i suppose, I almost want to just call him an unknown as any read may bias too much and he is unpredictable, I guess he tends towards passive postflop but with fits of lunacy (strange like I said). Flop is Q54r he checks I bet, coldcaller folds, he calls. Turn A puts some flush draw he checkraises, I call. River Q, I think I have the same 3 options from before.

Does lunacy include spazzy 3 bets? Seems like it takes a special kind of spazz to 3 bet the river as a bluff in the second hand. And if he is cabable of it then I'd probably definitely raise the river with the intent to call

Hand #1 Do you have any reads on the BB? Is he one to XR a flush board without a flush? Is he the type of player to fold small flushes HU?

If not, I would fold the turn. As played, I think you call the river as a bluff catcher.

Hand #2 I lean towards raising. Does he have a set or 2 pair that got counterfeited? Or is he enough of a spaz to XR a naked ace in that spot?

Given how you describe him, I would probably raise the river.



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On the first hand what do you normally do with sets or flushed? And does he that?

HAND 1: Raise / fold seems good on river. He's going to be check-raising two pair on that turn, just like he would with his flushes, straights and sets. He's also not going to be raising you on the river unless he's got you beat and pretty much only with a good/nut flush.

HAND 2: With him being unknown, I'm just calling down and taking note.

Since you don't have great reads, I'd think of it from a GTO framework.

Hand 1: I think JT is high enough in your range to raise the river (I assume it's towards the middle of your raising range, after TT and sets that were waiting for the river). Maybe you'll have some combos of QQ/KK/AA or AJ in your raising range too, not sure. He would be getting 10.25:2 on a river 3bet, so you shouldn't fold more than around 16% of your raising range to his 3bet. Obviously you are gonna fold your bluffs, but that should only be something like 9% of your range (if you bluff raised the river your opponent would be getting around 10.25:1 so you'd want to have around 9% bluffs in your raising range). So you'd need to fold a bit more than your bluffing range. So I think you can probably fold at least some combos of stuff like AJ/QQ/KK if those are in your raising range (maybe use the presence of a spade to decide which combos to fold). I think JT is too high up there so I'd call all combos.

Hand 2: Again, AK is high enough in your range that I think you have to raise, even though his river bet is scary (a lot of busted draws would give up and A3/A4 will often check). So in your value raising range, other than AK, you have like QTs (2 combos), QJs (2 combos), KQ (8 combos) which is 12 combos total. He is getting 11.25:2 on his bluff 3bet so you should fold only about 15%. If your raising range was AK/QTs/QJs/KQ, that would be 24 combos, of which AK is 50%. So you should probably be folding your bluff raises (probably a few combo draws that didn't 3bet turn or maybe some KK combos) and only some of your AK combos. Folding all AK would be too much. Unlike Hand 1, AK is toward the bottom of your river raising range here so we can fold some of it.

Hand 1)

Looks like a call. Issue with raising river is that not only do we not block any flushes (giving him all available), but we also block the very hands we want to have him pay us off with (namely another ten). He shouldn't have many Jx in his range (I'd expect most of his bluffs to have a 7 or 6 in it), and even if he xr the turn with a hand like 77, he's probably not planning to call a raise with it.

I have us pretty indifferent to his continued action on the river (~48% eq, sim below, not used to PPT yet so I may have missed stuff). If he has random spaz that occasionally hit top pair, then our eq goes up.

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

1,353 trials (Exhaustive)

board: T435J

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
JT	48.78%	642	36
TxRx, ss, 55, 76, A2, 5x3x, 54, 4x3x, AT, KT, QT, JT, T9, T8, T7	51.22%	675	36

Hand 2)

Raise seemed best when I first analyzed the spot, but it might be better to do something mixed between call, r/f and r/c. As Frankie Fuzz noted, if we always r/f this hand, we're exploitable. However, r/c this hand 100% is spew (we're nowhere near 2/3rds equity against his continuing range) and also exploitable, but never raising may miss value. Given that this guy is weird, I'd probably just call so I can collect information for later.

Hand 1: Raise/fold looks the best, depending on just how aggressively villain will put in the 3rd bet. If he is putting in more with AJ, QQ, KK, AA and the rare pure bluffs with spade blocker I prefer a raise/call.

Hand 2: Of the 3 options presented I prefer a raise/call. But given the action, I think I like a bet/call line more, check-back range very relevant. Can't see any raise/folding lines being good when villain may go for value with an ace we beat or even the same hand.

I think you may be right about hand 1. In the HU analog, Cepheus shockingly doesn't have a raising range on the river. He raises 76 100% of the time and Jc4c 1% of the time, but he almost never has either of those hands here after this action. Obviously this is a different spot because of the slightly larger pot and altered ranges (mostly for BTN). But I think it's instructive nonetheless...

Meaning it jams everything on the turn?

I know I play like a girl here but I just call the river with JT if this was a normal game.

Everything that it wants to jam, yea. The only JT that 3bets turn is JsTs...

Seems like Cepheus plays like a girl here too ; )

I mean look at the board and count combos, there's a ton of flushes and straights that this guy can have (all 45 flushes if he never 3 bets pre, and probably like 36 straights), and we're only targeting Tx and 2 pair for value. This guy would need to be a major league valuetard who will xr As5x, 66-99 on the turn and pay off a raise for me to want to raise the river.

Eh. I just meant if I had DD's exact hand in this spot. I often have a river raising range but that's because I'd wait until the river to pop some portion of my range.

The games I play regularly have a player pool that tends towards the snugger side. So while there are obviously going to be many times raising the river with JT is correct against most of the people I play against is going to just going to get you punished

And of course three handed against a compent player makes a huge difference

He could also think DD is bad

hand 1: too many draw (that beat 2 pairs) hit the turn to make it ok to 3bet the river imo

hand 2: you raise in EP and got c/r on the turn with tptk, read is unclear, i would satisfy myself for the 3BB value with tptk and get a better read with what he c/r with on turn.
ps: i only play live couple days once in vegas but i guess the person who bets on the river need to show first right ?

Hand 1. I call

Hand 2. I raise, but I don't have a plan for what to do when I get 3bet and would likely decide what to do in the moment.

Hand 1: do you cbet 100% in this spot? If not, looks like a fine candidate for a value hand to check back.

Hand 2: Love the raise. His range looks pretty capped, since most of his Qx will want to raise flop, or else will not raise turn. Good spot for you to value raise wide.

As a default, I'd Call both and I have no reasoning to back it up.

Hand 1: I think this is def just a call on the river. Big flushes and straights should far outnumber any worse 2 pairs. It is actually a little bit hard for him to have 2 pair if he plays like an online pro. Regardless, I am hating life after the turn c/r and the river doesn't excite me.

Hand 2: I like a river raise/fold. And of course, never tell anyone you raise/folded a made hand. His most likely hand is a turned 2 pair imo and it is perfectly logical for him to bet the river despite the counterfeit. Bluff 3bets are super rare and he obv isn't going to value 3bet anything worse. He shouldn't have 32s very often at all since it is such an obvious flop c/r. For us to be in bad shape, he needs to have some slowplay tendencies that it doesn't sound like he has. I think responses are going to be a bit biased on this one since people who play non-anonymously are not going to want to admit that they can raise/fold in spots where they could get murdered if their opponents knew it.

Hand 1 - Call. Just not enough out there that calls a raise with worse -unless he specifically knows you raise light on scary boards.

Hand 2 - the bb line seems like A5, A4. Unless you know he is tricky and will wait until later str8 to chk raise top top on flop. He could even chk raise aj on turn. The spazzy part comes in on river when he is counterfeited and bets out.

I raise hand 2, and likely call. As spazzes will spazz... if he had a Q, oh well.

I agree with you that we should have a small percentage of value hands that we check back in this flop, but I disagree that this is a "fine candidate" with which to do so.

that's weird to me. i'd think checking back any value hand on this flop is pretty bad (i could be wrong).
how often do you fold this flop if you're villain?
how often do you c/r if you're villain?
or are you planning to fsdr at all when c/ing back?

I like r/c in this spot. Villain is check/raising 2 pair on the turn, 10 with a good kicker, 10 with a straight/flush draw kicker. He is likely leading the river thinking it's a value bet.

He may even 3B with a worse 2-par thinking you are raising a J on the river.

1) can you do a calculation showing DD's equity versus his entire range of hands?

2) no good villain should 3 bet the river for without a flush or a bluff.

As villain I'd fold this flop sometimes.

As villain I x/r this flop a reasonable amount.

I'm not planning to FSDR when I check back.

I wouldn't be checking back the flop because this is a board that I'm afraid villain is going to x/r more than other boards. I'm checking back occasionally because villain is described as "good" and I prefer to play in a more balanced way vs. good players.