$1/$2

SB: $443.75 (221.9 bb)
Hero (BB): $236.89 (118.4 bb)
UTG: $200 (100 bb)
MP: $306.17 (153.1 bb)
CO: $40.52 (20.3 bb)
BTN: $265.41 (132.7 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with J K
3 folds, BTN raises to $5.33, SB folds, Hero calls $3.33

Flop: ($11.66) 4 J 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $7.77, Hero calls $7.77

Turn: ($27.20) K (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $20.40, Hero calls $20.40

River: ($68) 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $231.91, Hero folds


So Villain plays 27/21 over 2.3k hands and although we havent played alot pots together he seems very solid.
What u guys think ?

Does he open T8o OTB?

If he does, this probably has to be a call. I've been seeing a lot of overbets lately at 200NL, and shoving 3x pot he's only repping the Axss. His value range is pretty narrow.

Maybe best to 3b pre
Maybe best to raise flop
Maybe best to raise turn

You played it quite passively, although not wrong.

River you have a bunch of flushes as well as tons of pairs with A and Q and T kickers, I don't think you need to hero call this.

You could still call if you feel he's bluffing enough, sure, AT and AQ with a spade are enough potential bluffs to consider the hero call.

Imo I like flatting pre to keep in all his dominated garbage Kx/Jx he opens OTB. He will correctly fold them, and we're dominated by AJ/KQ.

Flop is completely std to call. Raising is out of the question.

So is turn. He has a massive range advantage, he has 16 QTo + sets, overpairs, AQ.

If he opens like 55%+ OTB, I'd be inclined to hero here quite often. He could have Qs9x, 10s8x, and some missed AsTx, etc. He's just really not repping much, and I expect him to xb AJss/A9ss quite often OTT

Against 55% opening range 3b pre is strictly better than calling. Against a more tight-solid open, 3betting gets worse, and your EV of call and 3b starts being similar.

If you think about dominated hands like that you are bit behind current theory. If BU has J4s, and we call with KJs, our EV is lower, than if we 3bet, and he folds J4s. Folding out his equity is better than seeing flop against him.



Flop raise with a good top pair with bdfd is played at least 20% here. Depending on preflop assumptions could go over 50% (and is then standard).


J94r is actually in the default flop subsets I have here.. this is some Snowie based preflop ranges for 3bb BU open. You see KJb raising over half the time (vs 1/3)

Thank you so much for your replies guys ! Helped a ton.

Question internet,

Lets assume Villain opens a 55% range here with 3bb. Is that the range you are flatting pre against Villains open then ? I Have quite alot more offsuit combos in my flattingrange there and not something like 84s. Isnt K9o or A3o a pretty +EV call here pre ?

Without rake K9o and A3o are +EV flats vs 3bb (50-55% opening range still), even K8o, maybe even K7o/A2o. With rake, they all drop EV of course. How the range looks exactly depends on the rake (and rakeback). This range model is from Snowie, I'm not 100% sure but I think it's based on NL200 Stars with 2016 supernova rakeback, and it's against 42% or so open.

Way more important for those hands on the edge is who of villain/hero is better postflop. If you suck postflop, a lot of these hands will be -EV for you. If you crush postflop, you can call a lot more.

If your opponent is opening that wide, it's more than fine to 3b KJdd here. Most opponents I play hardly open that wide OTB, so my standard is just to flat KJdd here.

I used to open 55-65% OTB, but the higher you go up the less profitable it is to do so. The blinds are going to play back at you a lot, and when the SB plays 3-bet or fold with 15%+ 3b SB vs BTN, you don't really want to be opening that wide.

Your opponents have to really suck for you and be loose-passive imo for you to be opening around 60% OTB & not get punished.

On a side note, overbets used to be very rare in 2016 & 2015. I see it almost every session now though in the past month at 200NL. I think Doug needs to stop posting material online LOL. Like, does he want online poker to die even faster?

I agree that 3b > calling is much better if he's opening 55%. OP didn't give us what his opening range is OTB though. With 27/21 stats, I don't think it's likely he is. I'm 25/21 12% 3-bet & only open something like 40% OTB.

I much prefer a more polarized raise on the flop. Also, we have very few value hands on this flop, so we need to choose our other hands that raise pretty wisely. We really only have J9o (if we even defend that pre) & 44 for value (if we don't 3-bet that pre). If we start adding hands like these along with our bluffs, our raising range is going to be super weak.

Also, if you get called here, there are a lot of turns that you're not going to be comfortable on. You also fold out his low equity bluffs that are probably going to continue bluffing on a lot of different runouts.

Generally, when you have a range disadvantage, you shouldn't have much of a raising range. Esp on this turn. You should basically never raise this turn with any hand. If you raise two pair+ here, that means you can get barreled off any river runout after x'cing the turn.

Yeah with tighter BU open call pre is fine too.

Your flop raises theory seems a bit outdated, everything you say would sound normal in a 2009 thread but since we have solvers most online pros know it doesn't work like that.

Huh? I'm pretty sure hardly anyone ever talked about theory in 2009.

Did it ever cross your mind that solver isnt exactly always the most optimal play...? Probably not.

Raising the flop is already borderline bad, but advocating for a turn raise is just terrible. I don't care what the solver says. It's just flat-out bad.

Pre I'd usually 3bet against a 45-50% BTN range, just call if tighter and definitely 3bet against wider.

Flop can be a raise depending on how he constructs his cbetting range. Definitely a raise if he cbets wide and merged (which would include 9x and weak Jx). Just call if he tends to cbet more polar.

I think river is a fold because you can easily have Jxss, 9xss, ATss, QT sometimes so no need to worry about getting exploited against a 3x overbet. There are also better bluffcatchers such as KQ w/ Q.

Solver takes and input and creates and output. Humans can use this to understand good poker play better. If you give it weird input or don't understand how the output is to be interpreted you won't improve from it.

Pretty much all highstakes crushers are working with solvers and some very good human heads up players recently lost to what you might call an advanced solver version. So they give some pretty good output.

If you want to criticize my points please be more specific. It's difficult to argue with a type of general belief like the ones you posted

Why is it bad? It's a value raise with top 2 pair that also puts fullhouses into our raising range to spread it. Seems very standard and intuitive to me to raise some 2pairs on the turn, and KJ is the best one.

Without running any sims, I'd be surprised if solvers raised the flop more than 5, maybe 10% of the time tops, given we're facing a 70% bet. I would probably never do it in a vacuum against human players, against whom we I believe we generally get less calls on average than against solvers.

Turn should be mixed, I expect a raise to be best against many humans who won't have wide enough river betting ranges.

A unrelated question to the topic, how do you customized the color of betting, checking, folding?

I think the hand is played fine, Fold river. I don't like raising in any part of the hand.

3b is fine also

What he likely means is the solver will not play better vs that particular reg in that spot than a human would(even if both would be +EV).

Calling it "bad" is a stretch, it's more like: "it's worse than calling."

Villain "seems solid" would mean he is unlikely to play as a solver would on the flop or turn therefore having a "solver" like response would not be the most EV.

Correct me if I am wrong here but someone playing close to what the solver suggest is likely to have a positive redline in a normal 100/200nl environment - a "solid" reg in the way the normal poster understands the word would have a red line that is going down significantly.

FWIW if villian bet 1/3rd Flop raise would be more standard, but vs a 3/4ths or 2/3rds I usually flat

I'd raise sometimes, but vs small sizing obv. increasing the raising freq. (1/3 or less)

Thanks for posting Internet.

Hands like AsQx/AsTx can play like this often enough to warrant a call imo. Kind of a spot where folding isn't a big deal at all though as having a spade blocker is >>>> than having two pair and we have plenty of other strong hands to call river with. I'd call with a spade blocker, but might not call with As since I think that actually blocks all the bluffs (I don't expect people doing this with QsXx basically). I'd expect people's bluffing ranges here to be disproportionate towards the As, so having Qs, Ts, or something like that in our hand is pry best vs. random player imho.

Generally in bluff catching situations it's going to be player dependent more than other spots so any additional info can sway us one way or the other.

using a 1/3'rd cbet sizing then yes pio would say you need to x/r a decent amt, villain used 2/3rds however so I'm guessing pio would suggest less than a 5% x/r given that