This hand has been bothering me for a while.
Villain is a russian reg who is super aggro. Saw him double/triple barreling with large sizing a few times with strong draws.
Don't think stats are relevant that much but he was running 26/21 with 11% 3bet and 12% 4bet and calling 3bet was 50%
He had a 45% steal in the SB..

Pre I 3bet for obvious reasons and the flop is standard, with his range, not sure what he is repping beside draws. since I have all the nutted hands in my range. Also if he has a set, wouldn't he most likely to c/r as I was the 3bettor and would very likely to c-bet this flop.

I think turn is also standard, Not much point raising as we have the second nuts and heart draw, calling also keep his bluff in if he has any.

River is a bit meh. was there a difference between KK and 78,(with 78 sometimes is a chop I guess?)
Not really use to this large sizing but I do know a lot of regs just love to bet >85% for their value range.

I think his sizing just makes it hard for me to jam with anything else other than QJ. Or am I just being to nitty here. But again do we really expect him to call with a set when we jam?

I don't see any obvious reasons at all why pre is a 3bet tbh.

And yes, river is a 100% jam against this dude.

Pre is probably one of those play that people make every 30min, I guess at the time I felt it's a good to 3bet him and even if we get called, its better than hands say like A3s.

Why is river a jam though, what would he be calling us with? He has to worried about QJ/78/KK. Well take out 78 as they shouldn't be in my 3betting range.
so we should only be jamming KK/QJ.

Definitely shove river I highly doubt he's laying down a set.

Well first of all, sets are so infrequent that he'll have QJo far more often.

I think he's probably calling a set, but it's still an easy call. You need to get looked up by two pair here before shoving becomes good. Or you need to somehow eliminate a few combos of QJ from his range.

Do you think this player will fold K10 or 910 here?

i wouldnt assume he defends QJo by flatting it oop that often, i also wouldnt assume that he decides to donk it with this small sizing on the flop, when we have position with a stronger range that is very rarely folding to a half pot bet (imo, but this is debateable).

3bet pre is likely good with your image, and for most its not a bad spot deep as long as we have an idea of the likely hands that are calling and 4betting us.

what are the chances he calls a bet on the flop with a gut shot and no overs to the board? I mean 46 was small enough that he maaaybe does this.. but more likely he does not have QJ. I would shove there.

feels to me that if you really feel like river is too thin then you should be raising turn. I highly doubt he lays down a set on the river if you raise turn ship river, and i very much doubt he folds two pair on the turn and may well hero call river with it. Add that to the chance that he'll spew and the chance of him hero-ing a turn raise with one pair and I think we're making more money raising turn and shoving river. The only counter-argument for me is how often we force a bluff to fold on the turn. We also do have a few turned nut flush draws we might want to play this way so it's not like we're only nutted.

I agree we can discount QJo maybe a bit but do think there are gonna be a fair number of QJ combos. I really doubt a set folds the river though.

@rightlight, villain lead flop he didn't call.

I think you have to discount QJ a lot by the way he played it, both PF and especially the flop. 66 you probably barely discount at all, and 99/TT not that much given he may not want to get it in PF for 200bb. He could also have KT/K9 etc, even though he'd prob not call a shove with those very often (though you could say that are good blocking hands to call with so who knows - crazy Russians and all).

Honestly, how often are you going to have QJ here that this is the only value shoving hand. Calling is pretty bad imo. (Also, you may want to consider that crazy aggro Russians are probably used to getting a 200bb in there more than most.)

I doubt that K9 or T9 will fold this river, blind vs blind. I agree with you that it's a weird line to donk a set. KX, QJ, T9 seem more likely for him to donk out with, but the size on the river and the fact that he took the initiative back on 3 streets points to a strong value range. Anything about how stubborn he is? I think the river decision hinges on how likely you feel that he will call with a set or 2 pair. I'd shove expecting to be called by all sets and some 2 pairs because it's BvB.

I think villains willingness to fold a strong hand is reduced a ton only judging by the unorthodoz line he took.

pre is a call imo, 3b is fine but you should 3b bigger because of stack sizes. River is a snap shove, he def has QJ in his range, well at least he should, but if happens to have it, god bless him.

Unless the 3betting/4betting stats are skewed by sample size and positions, then I agree with Nirwanda I see no reason why 8 high is an obvious 3bet.

I think the turn is a raise for reasons mentioned and the fact that Q, J, heart river kills our action from a lot of worse hands.

Sent from my SCH-R760X using 2+2 Forums

I think the 3b pre is fine once in a while, but if you're saying "for obvious reasons" that makes me think it's your default. So that probably isn't ideal.

As played, I really think calling a 3b OOP and then donking this flop discounts QJ extremely heavily. His most likely hands by far are AK/666/999 imo (for value), and complete random AJ/AQ type stuff as bluffs.

Definitely shoving river.

Against an aggro Russian dude, I not only would shove river but probably would be shouting CALL CALL CALL CALL! at the screen. Seriously though, it's a BvB hand, people's ranges widen and he's probably not folding sets or two pair, and rarely will have a higher straight. He might even hero some one pair hands if he just doesn't believe you due to BvB dynamic.

QJo seems like a borderline but still relatively standard hand to raise/call bvb. why would you not discount 66/99 but discount QJ so heavily? why wouldn't QJ donk the flop? why would 66/99 always donk flop? why would TT/KT ever donk flop?

i agree with renton but it's probably pretty close cuz not everyone raise/calls QJo bvb. but undiscounted QJ is 16 combos, 2p+ is 8, which is really really significant. even if he calls his entire value range (which seems pretty bad) it still might not even be a good valueshove.

value (playability), deep stacks, in position, nutty potential, can flat 4bets, fold equity (folds out better), board coverage.. on top of my head

You think that it's standard to rasie/call QJ out of position pre flop? I highly doubt that for most players. It's a bad hand to call with, but a good hand to 4-bet/fold, both of which mean you have to scale it back a lot aginst 66/99 for instance that are bad hands to 4-bet and where calling is standard. Post flop, I guess if you have a donking range then QJ may be in it but against most players you are discounting a bit more post flop also.

Honestly, if you can't get the chips in on the river with this hand against a player like that then something is wrong IMO.

I also think that KT/K9 are significant. They feel like more likely donking hands post flop, even if they don't always call the 3-bet pre flop. From villains's point of view they are not bad calling hands if he think heros raises sets. Not saying that villian will call with them that often, but may do sometimes.

There are a lot of things going against shoving in this hand:

1) The weakest hands in your range are calls before they are bluff shoves. This is a spot where I'd expect villain to be quite nutted if he's not bluffing. So there's actually no indifference threshold in your range between calling/folding and bluff shoving. JJ/QQ are the obvious candidates for this sort of thing but I think even those are just calls or folds on this river. The only time you'd want to bluff shove here is to fold out air that is even better than you, like if you had AhQh for example. If your bluffing range is non-existent then it becomes pretty hard to have a value range here.

2) 87 is a rather large part of villain's range to take this line. That doesn't really affect the equity of shoving 87 directly in this hand but it affects his response to your shoving. That he can have 87 so easily protects his range such that he will not feel compelled to make calls with the bottom of his value range. Honestly the only reason he'll have to call your shove with hands other than straights is because he feels that you think he's just bluffing so damn much here that he should defend any legitimate hand he bets vs your re-bluff.

3) I don't think people would bother with having a donking range on K96 rainbow unless they were doing so with QJ/QT/JT. Also, I think if you deal a random aggro reg a random distribution of QJ/99/66/K9/KT hands, the likelihood of him donking the flop would be the highest with QJ followed distantly by 99/66, followed by K9, and KT almost never would donk. So even if you only give him QJ suited preflop, I think that those 4 combos will be weighted higher than his set combos and definitely higher than his two pair combos.

Why do you think that villain is nutted if he is not bluffing? Why wouldn't he for sure bet anything that beats AK/AA for instance? This is BvB against a crazy Russion remember. The more he is betting hands like that the more he needs to call with hands that lose to 87.

I'm too lazy to crunch anything, but I think those who want to call should think about defending donk bets. If we only raise the nuts on the river for value then we are hardly ever raising (I mean, assuming we don't want villain to print money by donking then what percentage of hero's range is QJ by the river?). Villain would fold almost all his value hands in that case. (If we assume that QJ is a big part of his value range then that's making a read that we don't have.) That does't seem that it can possibly be optimal, and 87 is better than anything else to raise with.

Any hand that beats AK/AA equals [K9s, 99, 66, 87s, QJs, possibly QJo] equals quite nutted, 14 to 26 combos, the majority of which are straights.

He can defend only the straights and he's already defending anywhere from the majority to the vast majority of his legit range vs a raise..

i think youre making far too many assumptions about villains range and river play.

As most people have said Id say this is a pretty trivial shove for the reasons already mentioned.

I agree with the previous poster that you are making too many assumptions about villains's play, but ultimately it may be a pointless debate as it does depend so much on what is assumed about villain.

However, just for the same of throwing some numbers out there, I get the following. This has been done quickly and it may be incorrect, but I get that:

We can give villain a value range of sets, 2 pair hands, 1 pair hands, straights that beat us and straights that split. Say that these are {66,99,tt}, {K9,KT,T9}, {AK,KQ}, {QJ},{78}. Obviously he will have a wider range, if we want to consider hands we have to scale back a tonne (KK,T6s,44), but for the sake of simple calcs those buckets can represent villain's range.

If we set the relative PF weighting by considering that all those hands get scaled back by 50% relative to the sets (as most people are more likely to call OOP with pairs than we these hands), but reducing {78} slightly more as he may not open with those unless they are suited in the first place, and say that the relative post flop scaling is the same for all except that {AK,KQ} gets scaled back by 60%, then I get a relative combo number as 41. Of that, 20% is {QJ} and 8% is {78}.

On the river, if we bluff then we risk 802 to win 820, so if villain thinks he's bluff catching then he needs to call about 51% of his bluff catching range. {QJ} gives him 20% and {78} gives 8%, so that leaves 23% of other hands, meaning that we win more than enough when he calls. And this is considering that villain thinks he is bluff catching, and with some of those hands he won't so will call more often. Add in the crazy Russian factor and it's a more clear shove imo.