Buddy of mine played this; LA area yellow chip. Villain opens UTG, hero three bets AJss in MP, HU.

UTG has played at least as high as 1/2 and maybe even white chip, but also regularly plays much smaller (he is not horsing around in this game). He reads my blog and lurks here so I do not want to share too much more info; suffice it to say he has some clubs in his bag and is a fair bit smarter than your average 20/40 bear.

9s 6c 4s

check, bet, call

3r

UTG checks.

What should my buddy do? Is this a GTO problem? How much does our preflop range matter? Or should we just solve this hand in a vacuum? Buddy and Villain have extensive history.


Tangent Suggestion 1: A long time ago in a thread CDC dropped some knowledge that has stuck with me. He said "if you knew what to do on the turn every time you were in position headsup with no pair, you'd be the best limit hold 'em player in the history of the universe"


Tangent Suggestion 2: By default, any hand where you are headsup on the turn in position with no pair is interesting. We tend to hand wave and claim either exploitation or game theory, but this is an extremely common spot where it is possible to make large errors.

I'm sure this wont answer a thing, but in these situations against non-idiotic players, with hand this big hu, I'm almost always betting this turn since you almost have every out when the river comes.

However, against these players, I'm almost always getting c/red on the turn and never get to showdown UI.

This is a form of WA/WB spot where both players ranges heavily comprise big aces and overpairs with some 88/77 in the mix. It would be valuable to know if villain just calls the 3! 100% or if he has a capping range, as well as his propensity to delay action OOP on dry flops that miss both players' ranges.

I don't really mind checking back 100% in this spot. As an alternative...

We can balance checking back our weaker aces here with checking our smaller pairs and random non-ace crap we might 3! and are behind with now. Betting our larger pairs is balanced by betting hands like AK and possibly AQ. If that's insufficient to balance out the stronger hands and villain starts to fold a lot, we'll need to make some changes. This might get more value than always checking back, but requires being carefully attuned to both players' ranges.

We can consider betting 100% here until villain starts to k/r or donk the river a bunch. I think this ends up just value towning us too often though.

in a vacuum he should bet.

from the perspective of balance, (i can't speak to the GTO component because i haven't put in the work/study on that subject), we'd like to have some small portion of our range that is relatively strong, has some showdown value, and can improve on the river to put in our turn check back range. we don't necessarily want to give villain an easy bet on the river by having a weak turn check back range, so we put stuff in there that either has some showdown value or can improve to the best hand on the river. i think this hand falls nicely into both categories considering we should likely bet AQss and AKss for value and may be betting some of our weaker flush draws as a semi-bluff.

it's also possible that we should just put all of our ui no pair hands with a flush draw in our turn check back range here. if villain is good, there aren't going to be many better hands that he'll fold to a turn semi-bluff. of course, he likely should fold a hand like KQ or KJs to a turn bet because he's not getting the right price to spike a pair and doesn't know if it will be good, blah, blah, blah. him folding those hands would be a huge win the times we have QJs or KJs, if those are even in our pre flop 3bet range vs. good player's utg open. the problem with that is we're targeting such a small portion of his range that it's going to be impossible to know what percentage of the time we can successfully bet.

i haven't done the math for this situation and i'm just thinking about it intuitively on the fly, but i like checking back.

What do you estimate villain's opening range is UTG. And what his turn cr range looks like.

If you want a lazy answer, it's probably: if you can't bet the turn, either for value or because villain is straightforward and passive enough to play against postflop, I think we should have folded pf.

(1) What? We 3 bet a good player's open UTG, how do you have weaker aces and smaller pairs in your range to begin with.

In a vacuum, I'm betting the turn.

There's just two many ways for us to win on the river, including the possibility that we have the best hand on the turn and villain doesn't improve. Combine that with the chance that villain folds a better hand (AK or AQ), and it all adds up to bet.

This is generally how I play these situations.

Basically, the tendency to want to bet flush draws is huge. But if the villain check-raises us enough on the turn, betting the turn with a flush draw can become very costly (and put us in a situation where we are going to fold lots of rivers, including probably sometimes to a bluff), whereas if we check back a lot of good things can happen on the river (we can hit our flush and get in a raise, hit one of our cards and raise or call, or call a bluff with showdown value).

Against tricky, bluffy, good villains who like to bluff the later streets, I would like to avoid bet-folding as much as possible with hands that have showdown value against their range, and that includes "delayed" bet-folding (i.e., bet-calling the turn and folding the river UI). I want to be seeing showdown. Against more straightforward players who don't bluff so much, betting the turn is fine.

I would not have three bet preflop; I think his range is very snug. He can delay until the turn with big hands, and he likely has no capping range prelfop. I don't know what his turn c/r range is, but it's probably just top set and AA.

As a followup, if you advocate a turn check, I'd appreciate knowing how you handle blank (board pair non spade) rivers.

Well, I'm not playing GTO, so I decide whether my AJ is good 18 percent of the time against what I think the opponent's river betting range is (which depends on how often he bluffs). That is likely to work out to a fold in this situation with AJ against a fairly tight range, which gets us back to the point that this probably should have been a pre-flop fold to begin with. But if the villain is looser opening UTG, and is bluffy on the river when the turn checks back, it could turn into a call.

EDIT: And I balance, as best I can, by checking back a hand like 77 or 88 or maybe even TT on the turn against a really good player who is likely to bet his entire range on the river after a check-check (never against a fish).

Unclear on my part. I meant weaker/smaller relative to our range, not in absolute terms. A smaller pair here is 88 or TT as compared to AA or KK. The weaker aces are AJ/AT.

P.S. I totally missed that have a flush draw here; I was operating on the presumption of a rainbow board :-\

If this is true, we have a super easy bet / fold, no?

So decent pairs, big aces, and KQs?


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isn't this a toss pre?

I also feel like the turn's a double barrel since we can get a good portion of his hands to fold on the turn like aq, qks, ajs, maybe ak depending on history. If we check back the turn and brick the river, I'm pretty sure we're way more likely to lose with aj high than win.

If we incorporate balance, i don't think I'd have any check back hands on the turn since my range should be very narrow in the first place and thus strong, even against villains that balances their whole range by delaying the raise button until the turn.

WE HAVE THE NUT FLUSH DRAW

There is a zero percent chance villain folds AK on the turn.

Haha, thanks.

If we check back turn I think that a blank river is a check as well. We can balance any hands that we are betting after checking back the turn by bluffing with our hands that have no showdown value and ensuring that we are betting both strong and marginal made hands. Even if we are only checking the river with a very small portion of our range (showdown value with no real chance of getting called by worse if we bet), that isn't a big deal since we act last and villain cannot exploit an unbalanced checking range.

Missed me again. If we check back the turn and he bets the river, what. it. do?

Boo...

I think it's a fold because this villain doesn't seem to have enough bluffs in his range to make a call profitable here (the only bluffing hands might be KQ/ATs).

I don't think folding AJ here makes us exploitable. We're close to the bottom of our range here, so if a bet is over going to justify a fold it is now. We need to be calling or raising enough to make an auto-bet unprofitable, and my intuition is that we are.

If we check back 100% of turns we certainly have a strong enough range to dejustify an auto river bet from Villain. The weaker our check-back range becomes the thinner his betting range can be; just one more reason to make sure that even if we aren't checking back 100%, it ought to be a decent amount.

Fold and facepalm ourselves for 3-betting the wrong person pre w/ AJss.

The simple fact that we cannot showdown UI doesn't mean we shouldn't have three bet preflop guys. I mean I think it's close, and there are definitely times when I would have done it myself.

We get in our time machine, go back to the turn, and bet.

This is just another reason why we should have bet the turn. I know the "free showdown" play isn't popular around here, but in this situation -- where we might be ahead on the turn or might have won it on the turn UI, but it's a close call -- I think a free showdown play makes sense. Otherwise, we're begging villain to bet out on the river, and we have a hard time calling.

Checking on the turn only makes sense if you're also comfortable folding on the river. If you're not confident in the correctness of folding on the river, that means you should have bet on the turn.

I don't know the villain or the rest of the table, but in a vacuum, I'm perfectly happy with the 3-bet preflop. I think if you aren't 3-betting with a hand like AJs, your 3-betting range is too tight in most games, or at least in the games I play in, where it is not uncommon for some fish behind you to take 3ttf with KTo or some such crap.

if we estimate villain's turn continuing/river betting range as something like: AA,99,AKs,KJs+,AKo,KQo, then we have >52% equity on any non spade card 2-T and should call.
any J gives us 83%.
a Q gives us 9%.
a K gives us 0%.
an A gives us 61%.

if we give villain a more polarized range: AA,99,KJs+,KQo
any 2-8 and T gives us 76%
a 9 gives us 83%
a J gives us 75%
a Q gives us 14%
a K gives us 0%
an A gives us 83%

based on this analysis coupled with jesse's read, i'm leaning toward calling any river card that isn't a Q or K.

xb turn = trivial river call on bricks

and yes, always betting the turn with AJ here is a leak imo