5/T

Hero: young white male, had 3 bet a few times and also got caught bluffing a river. Never played here before. Up a few hundred, 2K stack.

Villain: MAWG, bought in for over 3K and hadn’t played any big pots, seemed tightish but not a strong read.

Hero opens button to 35 with A 6

Villain flats sb. Heads up.

Pot - 80
9 8 5
Hero bets 50
Villain c/r to 150
Hero calls


Pot - 380
9 8 5 T
Villain bets 225
Hero calls


Pot - 830
9 8 5 T Q
Villain bets 325
Hero raises to 850

did not think he could have a J while I can have XJ, JJ, J9. Obviously spew if he’s never betting a set but I thought for small sizing he could and a sb flat could certainly be pairs.

Flop can mix between bet and x after he x/r I’d be tempted to bet/3b this hand
After river it’s an easy fold you have literally one of worst bluffing combos in the deck

Thank you for input - what would be logical bluffing combos? I didn’t really think blocking him from having the Ad mattered cuz he would 3 bet those pre. So it was more, I have one of the few airballs and him having a J didn’t make sense.

Seems to me he could have a jack pretty readily. JJ would be the obvious possibility that could play this way. JTdd is also a hand that might be played like this. Agree that river is a fold not a raise.

Yea this except for the bold part.

We should have a relatively high x/b freq if we're using a >1/2 pot cbet sizing. Exploitatively simplifying to betting 100% freq for 1/3 pot isn't awful either and is definitely easier to play imo (the exploit being that villain is unlikely to defend enough vs the 1/3 sizing and also villain is unlikely to defend aggressively enough with not enough x/r).

We should have very little (if any) flop 3bets given how dynamic the board is; we want to force BB to play tricky spots oop with a high remaining spr on a super dynamic board (one of the reasons we have a relatively high x/b frequency) and not give villain the chance to 4bet the flop.

That being said, 3betting or calling flop are obviously both +EV with this exact holding.

Turn can't fold.

River easy fold.

Thank you. Villain had J9 spades which was quite a surprise.

I would expect JJ to 3-bet preflop a very high percent of the time, but for sure some times V shows up with JJ.
But there are still a lot of Jx comboes V could have (e.g. AJ, KJ, JT, J9, J8, QJ, J7 etc.)

I have a hard time finding sufficient Jx holdings to get to the river ..... which have not raised earlier.
I mean, it would be fair to assume that most JT, J9, JJ hands raise on turn as still is a draw heavy board and you can deny V some EV by pushing V out of the pot.
So the majority of you hands are between few Jx holdings and many flush draws and some pair +draw holdings (e.g. 97, 98, 96, 86).

If you are to balance that you will have way more bluffs on river that Jx holdings

I did not bother to list all the j hands villain could have, just thinking of hands a fairly tight V might not 3 bet pre but check raise on that board. Obv with this V it extends to J9s. IME tight live Vs are just as likely to call the first raise than 3 bet pre with JJ especially OOP.

But the point is V could have several jack hands and the bluff is not good.

Thank you for the comments. I think one takeaway is how I was ranging the lack of 3 bet. I thought JJ and the suited Js would be 3 bets vs button.

+1 to this and also turn is a good spot to raise and set up a possible river jam. We lose a bit of equity, but we put a lot of pressure on a hand like 98 or any 9d hand. As played I cant see a river raise working that often unless villian is either bluffing often or value betting too thin.

Aggressively eliminating hands from your opponent's range based on preflop action can lead to big errors on later streets.

There’s literally no reason to think this I’m so confused by this post