I got lucky and got the seat left to the whale. I started to play more tight then usual, put i picked my spots to play against him! He limpcalls 90% of his range no matter what it is and up to 16 Euro. He raises some good hands and complete trash. He is there to play. Saw him overbetting, checkraising with small flushdraw. Some times he is doing good aggressive stuff, but most of the time he has to much trash ín his range and is also sticky on the flop. Later streets he tends to fold to much, because the flush is out there. I always putted pressure on him and stole some pots. One time he caught me bluffing for 2 streets.

Villian:320
Hero: 350
TTH:
2 unimportand limper and he raises to 25. It's a bigsizing, but i tend it not to be AA or KK --> Want to get some people in. Put him on a pocket, suited connectors/gappers. AK-A2. Hero is in the SB with AQ and raises after some seconds to 75, mainly for value and information. As excpected he calls pretty quickly (Time tell --> i want to discount some of his toprange Like QQ-AA; AK. He would definitely thinking about reraising. Keeps in some pockets, Ax and any 2 cards above 10.

Flop(155) 229
Hero? I still think i'm ahead of his range or can rep a much better range than him. Hero bets 70. Would also to this with my value range. Do you prefer to check? Or going much larger?
Turn(295): K My first instinct wasn't sure what to think about this card. But actually it should hit my range much harder then his. Hero went allin for 170. I thought it's a good size because he is folding all the pocket's, putting me mostly on AK or a pair myself. It was part of my flop-plan to push a lot of turns.

What do you think of my play? The results i'm going to post later on. If you can't wait you'll find them in my Blog, but there was no reaction to this hand and i'm still not sure if i played this hand well.

Pre is fine, i like 3 betting for value alot versus described loose fishy opponent who is in there with a very wide range.

Flop bet is also pretty mandatory on this dry of a board, alot of combos besides pocket pairs will have really hard time to continue on this flop. I am not so sure i like the turn ship though versus a stationy whale like this. I would guess that his callingrange is pretty inelastic regarding a turnshove-when he decides to call the flop and reveals that he is a non believer. What i mean is that i think whale is gonna call a turn ship from you at a very high frequenzy when he does decide to call your flopbet. I think you have alot less fold equity on the turn than you may convince yourself here.

So yeah, pre and flop played fine in my opinion- but my first gutfeeling is that the turnship is borderline spewing.

I wouldn't 3b his 12.5x open here. Even against a fish, our range for continuing's going to be so narrow that our 3b is mostly going to be very strong/obvious value hands with a very selective smattering of playable hands in the other pole, and I think AQ falls solidly between those two. Seems closer to a fold than a 3b, but I'd call (and would x/c this flop, FWIW).

As played, I think it's helpful to realize from the get-go that strong A-high is a made hand on this sort of board against described player. Betting small like you did (or even smaller) isn't a bad way to just keep him from FPSing your pants off as your hand isn't really strong enough to pull off a lot of x/continue shenanigans, but just thought it's helpful to point out this really isn't a bluff.

OTT, we now have the nut no-pair, though the K obviously puts more pairs out there. I definitely wouldn't double barrel shove as I expect him to call with all 9x/Kx and TT+, so you're only folding out worse hands. As wild as it sounds, it's not a terrible spot to bluff-catch as this is the sort of spot where a check or small bet is stronger than a shove from him. His flopped overpairs/top pair aren't thrilled by the overcard and even Kx/AA is going to want to string you along on this scare card on such a dry board with only 2/3p left behind.

All-in-all, I just wouldn't have started this war against this sizing with this hand in these positions. Even a total maniac is repping strength and has the effective button to play with, so it'll take a strong hand to realize both FE and actual equity.

He showed up with KQ and obvious called my turnshove. After the hand i thought i did very well. Got in 75bb and he got his 3outer. If his range is really wide loke this, i think my plan was fine. Is it to resultoriented? Do you think Kq is the bottom of his flopcalling range? What was his plan in this hand? I never give him a bluffship on the turn! Think he is not capable to do that. Maybe on the river if it goes check check.

I think he just got mad on me because i run over him so much so he decided to play back. Obvious calling with Khigh on this flop is his idea of "playing back". In the evening im going to post another hand with him.

Absolutely mandatory 3b vs described v. Calling and playing (possibly) mw, oop is the nut low line. 3b is for pure value and needs to be bigger. $100 pre and shove all flops. His large sizing actually makes this a very straight forward short stack play. These players are great to have at the table. Just wait till you have an equity advantage vs his silly wide range and start shoveling money in. High variance but it's the most +EV play.

Also, don't post results so soon. Give people a day or so to chime in. ^^^^^^^^All of this in before reading results.

Yeah, when i think it through one more time i am on board with bigger sizing pre, and get the SPR as low as possible without going berserk with the sizing- then shove 95 percent of flops with the equityadvantage that we have.

I am shoving everything but the worst of flops if called with the bigger sizing pre, like the only flops i give up on is the absolute worst for our hand lets say 5-6-7 all spades and we have red AQ.

I'd say yes to both of these. I don't expect him to raise 12.5x with much worse, except for when he's wildly polar (see next paragraph). We're a slight dog to KQ+/AJ+/QJs+/99+ and he's not going to fold those to a 3b, so we're just bloating the pot OOP and overrepping our hand. We can't credibly rep the 65% of flops that whiff us because whales don't put people on overpairs (see the rest of the hand), and even K-high flops are mostly going to get at least one call and it's not pleasant shoveling money in on multiple barrels when he has just as much Kx in his range as we do.

When he does open for $25 worse than KQo, I expect it to be just total airball/steaming type stuff, and even then we'd rather flat and bluffcatch against 72o and double up when he tries to rep an A-high flop. You don't respond to polar ranges by raising them.

I'm not seriously arguing too strongly that you should x/c the turn, but I do think it's considerably better than shoving as a bluff, which I'm confident is very bad.

How is a 3b for pure value when we're behind their continuing range? We're certainly not making up for it with position or a hand that realizes its equity well or unexpected board interaction.

The bold in OP is an extremely important read that only OP can make. I see players like this on a regular basis and with him being IP in a limped pot, I think your range for him is way, way to narrow.

Equity Win Tie
BU 43.32% 40.56% 2.76% { 22+, A2s+, K9s+, Q9s+, J8s+, T8s+, 98s, 87s, 76s, 65s, 54s, A9o+, KJo+, QJo }
SB 56.68% 53.93% 2.76% { AQo }

This, imo, is far more accurate and may still be a bit narrow. Gotta blast away and gamboool here.

Because we are crushing is opening range. V folding pre is a good outcome. Also we are clearly not behind his continuing range. I'm willing to bet his continuing range is something like:


Equity Win Tie
BU 47.53% 43.94% 3.59% { 22+, A2s+, KJs+, QJs, JTs, T9s, 98s, 87s, AJo+, KQo }
SB 52.47% 48.88% 3.59% { AQo }

Lololol at we are behind either his opening range or his continuerange according to the described info from the OP.

Playing 9 out of 10 hands dealt, raising both trash and good hands and is described as a huge whale with skyhigh VPP.

If V opens 15% of his hands to 12.5x, I imagine we would have heard from him by now, not l/cing 90% of his hands.

Also, OP says his raising range to this point has been polar, so I don't see why throwing 5 red chips in the middle of a blank 1/2 pot suddenly makes his range so starkly linear.

He is described as a gambooly whale. You are trying to apply concepts to this player that simply don't apply. He is not thinking linear/polar. He is throwing a party.

Also read op's range for v when he throws those 5 red chips in. It's extremely linear, not polar.

He's limp/calling 9 out of 10 hands dealt, not opening them for $25. Someone can't play most of their hands passively AND have a lower standard raise size AND have a lot of trash in the narrow remaining percentage of hands that are left AND have enough medium strength hands left over to raise them all for $25 for the first time.

Just because he's a whale doesn't mean he gets dealt a special whale deck with a bunch of dominated crap in it; there aren't enough medium strength hands in all of NLHE for him to have the tendencies listed AND be making 12.5x opens with enough linear crap in it for AQo to be ahead of the upper pole. I realize ranges are dynamic for a player like this, but holy **** we can't just throw Bayes totally out the window and start making reads that are totally probablistically unrealistic.

If there were a way to settle the bet, I'd wager two black chips that the upper pole of this player's 12.5x opening range is stronger than your standard TAG's MP 4x range.

I don't care what he's thinking; I care what he's doing:

Unless by "complete trash" OP means that he's raising A6s, 22, and 87s, he's raising with polar ranges. Only with the most obstinate, retconnned logic can you assume that raising a massive amount would make it more likely that he's got a medium-strength hand.

Questioning reads in OP is sticky territory because we weren't there, so if we can't trust that then what can we go off of. But questioning ranges is absolutely our job. It's impossible for OP's reads to be correct (that he plays most hands as a limp/call, that he raises both good hands and trash, that he generally opens for smaller sizes) AND for villain's $25 open to consist of 100% of the top 15% of hands. I'm not saying that this doesn't quite add up, because if that were the case, that could just be made up for by his tilt and general whale whackiness; I'm saying it flies directly in the face of everything we know about this opponent.

And, for what very little it's worth, the theory doesn't back us up here, which is fine, we should be playing massively exploitatively against this player. But if you're playing exploitatively, you should be doing so because of the reads, not flying in the face of the reads saying, "Sure, this is what has happened so far, but now that he's tilting, who knows?"

Ok i confused you guys with my description of Villian. I give it another try, but it really depends on his mindset and table dynamics. He also has a strange sizing in a lot of hands! So him betting 3× of the pot with toppair. 2× with overpair

Preflop he limp/calls nearly his entire range down to 72o if the raise is not to big.
Saw him opening with 73s for 8
Saw A3ss and AK for 22. So he is mixing in some raises oovertime
But you have to trust my reads that im better with AQ than his raise/3b calling range because especially against me its wide. He also knows that im playing a lot of Hands and that im capable of 3b light, but normally it's for value, especially against him.
Postflop its kind of Random because his range is wide. He definitly is able to read boards. He is really afraid of flushcard coming in. He can fold some hands but is on the sticky side unless it gets to real action. He lost some pots against me where i overpotted for value. He caught me one time where i did it as a bluff.

So V is clearly just clicking buttons with little regard for hand strength. I think that was made clear enough in op. Would love to see what some other posters think about this hand.