Villain is a regular on this American network. 22/16 tagish stats, standard 70% f3b but maybe calls a bit more given positions. I 3bet about 9% in these spots with a polarized range vs him.

2/4nl 6 handed $400 effective stacks

2 folds, Villain (CO) raises to $12, BTN folds, Hero (JJ) raises to $40, BB folds, Villain calls

45J ($84) 2 players
Hero bets $40, CO calls $40

3 ($164)
Hero bets $80, CO calls $80

2 ($324)
Hero

Hows this tricky? B/F 100

I can see c-c vs more loose/agressive villains (they have more missed draws and are more likely to turn 2nd pair into a bluff), but not against this guy

b/f, small.

It's definitely a tricky spot: not much worse calls if we bet and if we check, we have to rely on villain turning a hand into a bluff. There is probably not too much non-straight air in his range and in our range after villain calls the turn since we block all the Jx, so checking the river is the first step. Our non-straight hands might be QQ-KK and villain's might be 99-TT.

Betting almost over-represents our hand; although, there are a few times where one might be able to bet the turn for value here and then the river as a bluff with a hand like J8s that could lose to some hands villain may turn into a bluff if we decided to check to induce a bluff. It's also probably tough for you to have KQ on that type of turn, unless you're a spew from villain's point of view. Even if you did have KQ, you're probably the one doing the betting on the river and so when you check, most villain's will understand your range is probably comprised of Ax and JJ-KK quite often.

It all depends on how competent and aggressive the cutoff is. Seems like either a check-call or a check-fold.

Very good post by shootaa again.

I think value-betting this river is too thin vs most people. You could have AA and a lot of Ax with a FD that bets the turn, along with 6x type hands. Not to mention he is going to have Ax some % of the time too, and he really needs to make a hero-call to call with worse here, especially since his worse hands are going to be 99-TT and some Jx hands, possibly KK-QQ if he decided not to 4b those.

So what hands does he get to the river with ?

Let's assume he calls a 3b IP here with 99-TT, half of AA-QQ combos, AKs, ATs+, AQo+, JTs+, QTs+, KTs. Of course this isn't his exact range but I think it's fairly close to what we can expect.

He calls the flop with all Jx, All FD's, 99-TT, and maybe Ax with a BDFD (let's say he calls half of those). He probably calls the turn with virtually the same range. For the sake of simplicity, we will assume he raises QQ+ on this flop.

So OTR he has,
1 AJ combo
1 KJ combo
1 QJ combo
1 TJ combo
6 99 combos
6 TT combos
2 AKs combos
2 AQs combos
2 ATs combos
1 KTs combo
1 QTs combo

We beat 17 combos, and are beaten by 7 combos. He's folding KTs and QTs 100% of the time, so we can get value from 15 combos. In order for a bet to be profitable here, he has to call half of those combos. IMO, him calling half of them is a bit optimistic since they are all pure bluffcatchers and the board got pretty ugly.

There is 240$ left in stacks if my math is correct, so if we check and he ships, we need to be right about 30% of the time. The combos that beat us are always betting (7), so he needs to be bluffing 2-3 combos for a C/C to be profitable. Considering 2 of his combos have no SD value, and this seems like a good spot to bluff, I think it's fair to expect him to bluff more than 2-3 combos here.

So yeah probably a C/C.

Of course the number of combos calculated etc... isn't going to be the same he has and he might play some differently, but I think it's not too far off and shows that he doesn't need to be turning a hand into a bluff that often in order for us to profitably C/C

edit : I forgot to add he might call flop with AQ and the spade BDFD, that actually doesnt change anything for the river since we can expect him to fold it OTT.

possibly should include a few 66 67s type hands into that range

Nice post, dude! Thanks for writing out all the combos.

One tricky thing to consider is that a lot of players will be shoving flush draws on the this turn in attempt to fold out hero's ace high hands. You might discount any of the pure air hands however you like, but I'm thinking pretty dang close to 90% of the combos are shoving the turn.

If we had been three betting 3% or something EXTREMELY small over a decent sample and know that villain knows this, then I'm 100% on board with your analysis.

Bet/fold small, as said above

also disliking your bet sizing, it should be higher

This play is a worthwhile consideration; although we aren't sure this stymies villain's ability to turn hands into a bluff.

Perhaps there's a case where betting small gets called by better and bet/calling yields a profit when facing a mixture of hands turned into a bluff and straights, similar to our idea of checking the river.

The problem is that it's very tough to tell what's going on if we bet small, but by checking we should see more logical and straightforward play so we can hopefully construct a plan. There is definitely a time where betting small could be best, but defining that time is the big issue with the play.

Damn good post klakteuh

Interesting. You mean non nut-flush draws or all FD's ? I don't recall seeing many people Shove these kind of turns with a NFD, although I have seen people do it with like KTs yeah, but not very often. Or are you talking about this specific spot where Ax gives us a GS ? Do you think it's a good play ? I just feel like when we have the NFD, we can still win with Ace high when villain doesn't bet, and some villains will often bluff an Ax river.

Also, if we shove NFD's OTT, we are basically folding out all his bluff hands that we were probably beating anyway, and getting called by all his value hands. Not to mention that it makes our river calling range highly unbalanced since we will then be calling virtually all brick rivers ?. I guess it makes sense to do it with a 6x/7x FD though.

Yes, sir. I'm meaning the times like this turn situation where shoving will often fold out a decent amount of slightly better semi-bluffing combinations. KT and 87 for this hand are great examples of that type of spot with some pretty solid justification, especially if we're predicting to see a lot of three-barreling on the river with those slightly better hands, i.e. the flush draw doesn't have enough show-down value. On this run out, our opponent probably assumes we have some pair plus draws and some stubborn ace highs (maybe even some naked flush draws) that he can fold out by shoving the river, so it seems like being three barreled is the quite likely adjustment on this river by most solid players.

The expected value of shoving turn and potentially being called plus potentially folding ace high (very likely) plus potentially folding a hand better than ace high (rarely) plus getting there some of the time if we are called is greater than the expected value of calling the turn and folding river unimproved, in this instance and mostly because it looks like we're usually against a wide enough turn betting range. Some spots with similar equity but against fewer air combinations (or a very tight opponent), a turn shove might just get you in quite a bit of trouble. A great player would be all over this exact hand and very rarely have missed flush draws to bluff when you check the river is all I meant.

Balancing the turn shove is whole other can of worms; but, shoving the flush draw on this turn probably works out pretty well against most aggressive regular's turn betting ranges, especially since those same people fold ace high or similar types of draws in this instance a big chunk of the time.

i think this is somewhat villain dependent, but versus alot of good players i think checking with our entire range here is going to be best

Thanks for the post, yeah that makes a lot of sense actually, will have to keep it mind when I play

I guess if we expect villain to be shipping FD's OTT, the River becomes even more of a C/C since he now has less Straights.