Villain - Seems like an ok MAWG. He is valuing his hands well, not playing fishy or overly passive. Maybe a little bit conservative, I doubt he would ever run a huge bluff and I suspect he's cbetting a little less frequently than is optimal when he doesn't hit a strong flop. Although he isn't totally straight forward - did get caught bluffing on the river in a smaller pot once when he wasn't the pf aggressor.

Effective stacks ~$2,000

Hero is UTG+2 and raises to $40 w/ KT
Folds to V in SB who calls.

Flop ($90) - QT8

Villain checks.
Hero checks.

Turn ($90) - 6

Villain bets $50.
Hero calls.

River ($190) - J

Villain bets $210.
Hero raises to $950.

Thoughts?

Sorry but your line looks FOS to me. I don't fold any value hands to that river raise.

Sizings way to small in these nuts/air spots you wanna bet max typically. So am not a fan of the size. I like the combo you chose and feel like your card removal effect a work good. but it should be an all in Bet otr

Yeah right... nobody ever checks flop with AK and calls a turn bet... c'mon, this line reps the nuts credibly. We block T9 and K9 and don't block any of his missed flushdraws, stuff like Ax of hearts.

I like the play. All-in seems pretty cool like lolposting said, the problem I see with that is that if you really had AK, would you choose all-in as a sizing in real time? Off the table when theorycrafting, sure, but probably not in real time. So about a pot-sized raise seems fine here. A good hand reader who gives you credit (has never/not in a long time seen you make big moves) will find a fold here.

Interesting. I'm also curious as to what v's range looks like to everyone and whether or not we should be targeting him with this type of play.

He potted it and it seems like he is value betting, so I am putting him on a QJ/QT/88/T9/98

I hate all-in, because you are betting 1900 to win 400 and he will get stubborn with the 9 just enough to make the move unprofitable for you. Folding and bumping it to $950 seem real close.

Also, he was SB, so while we need to discount AK (because he 3-bets it some %%% of the time), that type of player does not automatically 3-bet AK from the blinds vs. an early position raiser. So, it is well within his range as well.

The reason you bet all in with this nuts in this spot bc it maximizes your ev when you are betting for value (tons of resources available for spots like this where the math is pretty solved)
then you need to mix in bluffs so your opponent has to call some % of bluffcatchers
K10 is a good combo here for a variety of reasons
Or just run pio and find out for urself

I like it

Think all in or a smaller sizing are both ok

Kudos if you can do all this in real time at the table, being aware every time how the ranges are capped and what exactly you are repping and varying sizing accordingly. That's some Doug Polk level skills. In practice its more realistic to craft a simplified strategy that has less EV but is easier to apply consistently for good results. Of course we also need to balance that with our desire to improve and adopt more complex game trees.

(In this thread it was mentioned that villain may have some AK too which would make sizing really huge bad because he is not totally capped) that chance of him having AK should affect our sizing too..

Well it’s not like you know for a fact that he doesn’t have ak. But we block it and pf action make it pretty unlikely.
Sure it’s sucks when you jam here and he has ak or looks you up w the 9. But what’s even more silly is when you actually have ak, and he looks you up with a 9. (You’ll show up with the nuts here way more often)
Check out “mathematics of poker” or spend 100$ of run it once elite and let sauce break this down for you (pm me if you need help on which vids to watch)
Or buy pio and run the Evs of diff bet sizings in spots like this.
Point is, try and just get an idea of the concepts in the most common spots and try and play as close to optimal as you can, your opponents will typically be playing so far from optimal and their mistakes will cost them tons of bbs/100.

Think most people will cbet AK here on the flop. Also when people pot/overbet in these spots, they're polarised obv so there's absolutely no sense in going allin (to the poster who suggested it). I think in general people here are going to be fairly unbalanced towards value in these spots. I'd just fold but honestly can happily see arguments for calling and raising. Wp /whateva

Sorry dude this post is basically wrong on all fronts^

I like the concept of your raise but I agree shoving here does make a lot of sense... I mean realistically he could have AK but technically he "shouldn't". Theory wise when one player can have the nutted straights - K9s and AK in this case - and the other player can't (or at least "shouldn't") have those straights it makes sense to use a really large sizing, like all in.

meale - your logic is flawed man. I'd never call this combo fwiw.

lolposting - The thing that confuses me about these spots is because we're raising so large we should have a lot of bluffs (I thought/think at least), and we're gonna run out of good hands to use as bluffs. This is obviously a great hand to use as a bluff but it's hard for me to think of enough bluffs to fill the right ratio of bluff/value when we give him these pot odds.

Do we have to just get creative with our bluffs and not use ones with particularly good blockers? Or use bluffs that would also potentially make good calls? Or is this is a spot where we don't have to worry about the proper bluff/value ratio given our betsize because of our advantage in nut combos?

I think the correct answer involves a little bit of all of these things, tbh. I agree that shoving is optimal for the reasons lolposting pointed out, but the lollivepro in me would like it a whole lot more if this MAWG that values hands well (which means he is an OK hand reader) and is suspected on the conservative side didn't pot/slightly OB river. Against a lot of opponents as described, make it something ~1k. I honestly just don't really expect our fold equity to go up as much as it kinda needs to in order for shoving to be best in most 5/T live settings.

And fwiw, I have seen AK pop up from sb with similar action, so I don't think it's an impossibility in some rly trash lineups.

Yeah theres a lot of recs/non-pros who would flat 100% of AK from the sb in this spot, combining that with the fact that V has polarized his range on the river I wouldn't be opposed to deviate from the normal gto strat which is to shove nuts/air in this spot, it's absolutely an option but we should take the most exploitative line imo and only OP can answer if he thinks V is the type of guy to flat AK pre in this spot at a high frequency.

But yes, theoretically shove is best -- doesn't mean we should always implement it in live play tho

If I was exploiting in this spot, I would likely change my range before my sizing. In any event, I think this sizing is clearly too small.

This is completely and utterly irrelevant. Sure, GTO balancing has its place if you are Dan Coleman or Cary Katz and play the high roller events with the same couple dozen players every month or preparing for your next match with AlphaGo. Same idea applies if you would be playing with this villain on a daily basis.

However, in this particular case all-in as a bluff in this spot is just lighting money on fire vs. a player you might never (or very rarely) see again.

you need to be at least aware of this stuff if you are gonna beat 50nl online these days, playing super hi roller mtts is really whats irrelevant to this conversation
honestly i think if you took some time to dive deeper into the tools available to help you play better poker it would change your viewpoint here.
but until then you can just keep clicking buttons at your local 2/5 game and probably run well enough to beat the game for a little bit of $

i just think in game you can look at your hand and use some basic logic looking at your blockers of hands you want to unblock and block w your suits and stuff and make a fairly good decision whether or not you want to use the hand as a bluff.
ime seeing sims of similar spots...that the ev of your shove wont be SOOOO different whether you are shoving w like ks blocker or ac blocker where we need to be overly concerned

If you really wanted to make some explo adjustments it could make sense to just shove as a bluff and size down when you have it and i dont think the field would adjust that well.
but honestly in live games the more you bet the more the field thinks your bluffing, they ask "why so much" ok i call and then you just print money bc your ranges are constructed well. sometimes they see a bluff and then you hopefully adjust better to the metagame better than they do and your ranges are more solid anyway since they are just in there vpiping at like 45% and calling down bets all the time and you win $

Agree that fold equity hardly changes whether we raise 4x his bet or jam. Jamming just seems like torching way more money than necessary when he has the nuts.

Well not exactly, the reason we're exploitatively sizing down isn't because we want to save money when he has the nuts. We already know he's polarizing otr, so if we actually think he has a decent amount of nuts in his range then responding with a perfectly polar range doesnt make much sense in this spot. The idea behind shoving w/ nuts/air is that our range is uncapped and opponents is capped -- we're operating under the assumption we have a lot more AK then him.

If we actually thought he only had nuts/air, we would likely want to respond with a very small raise sizing instead.

You really think villain is going to be overvetting river merged lol?

I mean.... yes? lol? Pretty sure that's the consensus, hence why we're going for a massive sizing. If you disagree, then you're saying that you think a massive sizing is horrible. Not saying you're wrong, but I just want to make sure the arguments are clear.

Shove camp is suggesting V has plenty of 9x,K9, and maybe some sets/2p some % of the time. That is what I assume you mean by "merged". They're also suggesting V should rarely show up with AK (this I'm not so sure of).

If he ONLY has AK/air. (non-merged range that you're suggesting, aka perfectly polar)... then you should literally be minraising.

fwiw I don't think emphasizing "overbet" is appropriate for this hand. V could very easily not even know it was an overbet, it was pretty close to pot. If it was closer to 1.5x+, then we can def begin to suggest V is now leaning towards a more narrow polarized range as he was intending to truly "overbet". Do I think he would overbet merged? hmmmm, idk, maybe but probably not. Do I think he would pot it with a merged range? Yeah for sure, and I think this bet would be better described as potting it for purposes of predicating V's range construction

Lol literally misread the hand, didn't see it was 4 to a straight. Looks like a pretty clear fold now to me imo. Fk bluffing MAWGs who are never going to fold 9x.