1/2 NL Effective stacks $360 villian covers

Hero: recreational player who doesn't get to play as often as I want. Been playing tight pre and aggressive post including attempting one river bluff on a KKQxx board and calling down with A high twice. Also been C betting the majority of my preflop raises on good board textures.

Villian: late 20's WG. Seems to be a regular. Thinking player. Has a very wide range from LP from hands I've seen him go to showdown with. Laid down AK on a KJx flop when he got check raised.

OTTH

Hero UTG raises to $12 with AK
2 calls and Villian calls $12 on the Button

Flop 268

I Cbet $30 and it folds to villian who raises to $75. I thought about it for 30ish seconds and 3 bet to $215.

Villian goes into the tank for 2-3 minutes and shoves putting me all in.

Any other line I could have taken that would have looked stronger? Was my 3 bet too small since I still had 130 behind? Maybe because of this he thought going all in would fold out things like JJ, QQ, KK, AA?

Also I know "don't bluff in 1/2" but I play for recreation and sitting around mostly card dead for 4 hours waiting for big value hands isn't much fun

Don't cbet OOP into 3 people when one of them is thinking and the board clearly misses your range.

As far as the best line, check/call reasonable bets OTF

AP: you're toast. Worse hand he has here is 97cc/75cc, but he probably has 2P or a set

I'd never cbet that flop with AKs into three players. You're at a huge positional disadvantage and likely behind someone who will call/raise.

A 3bet commits you, to the point that you're almost getting the odds to call against an overpair. You could also be practically drawing dead against a set. Check this flop oop multiway.

Check fold flop. Seems weak and it sucks that you sit around and wait for hands, but sometimes that's what you have to do.

Isn't my utg raising range pretty strong though. I'm only opening 1010+ there. Also isn't the fact im betting into 3 people represent strength? Or should i be checking my whole utg range here?

By raising UTG and c-betting the flop four ways you're repping mostly overpairs here, but villain is raising you anyway. The 3! is spew because villain mostly has strong made hands and high equity draws. You shouldn't have a 3-betting range here at all.

I would check the flop. This is one of the worst hands you have in your range to c-bet with. You dominate a lot of other Broadway hands in villains' calling ranges and have no draw. Check and hope for a free turn.

If your UTG PFR range is strong as it should be and you're betting into 3 players, the BN raise should tell you you're beat and there's no need to reraise.

It's ok to c/f when you have nothing...especially oop and first to act in a 4-way pot. It feels weak but it's the best play and it's unexploitable.

This is a starting place for thinking about bluffing villain. Raising pre, then cbet the flop, and Villain raises is not what you observed Villain doing.

!!Danger Will Robinson!!

If you want to run a bluff, you need to identify a pattern you have seen repeated more than once. In this case each of the three players willingness to fold on the flop to pressure and there willingness to continue when they have a hand.

It was a good learning at any rate. gl

So even if my read is he doesn't have a set or 2 pair here I shouldn't try and take the pot from him? Even if he's shown the ability to lay down that type of hand to a raise?

Or is it just basically top pair or 99/100 is bottom of his range and he'll have sets and 2 pair alot of the time?

This is not a good spot to bluff, it completely misses your range and hits all of the callers pretty hard. Think about it, even if you do have an overpair here the callers have tons of equity vs you with straight draws and flush draws, as well as being way ahead with 2 pairs and sets. Sure the V here could have complete air occasionally, but you are risking $185 to win $150 and you have almost no showdown equity.

I also think your 3! size is very wrong, When you 3! to 215 you leave a very insignificant amount of money behind compared to the pot so you cannot threaten big bets on further streets. You either need to 3 bet smaller (~150) or just shove.

Why do you think he won't have a set or two pair here? If I had those hands, I'd play them this way as I wouldn't expect you to fold an overpair on a dry flop and I'd want to start building the pot.

In his spot JJ is probably the worst made hand I'd raise with here. A 3! probably doesn't even get him to lay that down because your 3! range is only bluffs. You don't 3! AA/KK/QQ here do you?

He could have Ax clubs a pair, a set whatever. Once you three bet he's not jamming TT here.

Against a range of big clubs, sets and 86, we only have 22% equity. Not to mention we arent deep enough to run a bluff like this.

Personally I might bet flop if I had an amazing image and some backdoor equity, but 3 bet bluffing here is lighting $$$ in fire.

Looking back and reflecting on this I think my image was the biggest factor in the way he played this particular hand against me. I wasn't thinking about it in the moment but my image was probably a 2/10 at best. Having just come back to poker after a long hiatus moves like this even if I read villian as weak probably isn't the best idea. Thanks for the replies everyone

It was an expensive lesson to learn but you definitely wont forget it. Trying to push people off of hands was my biggest leak for a while, the value just isn't there at this limit most of the time for it to be worth it.

You can bluff at 1/2 but you must pick your spots. As a general rule avoid bluffing into strength. a) 1/2 players don't bluff enough so you aren't re bluffing them and b) they have a hard time folding especially after showing what I call abnormal aggression.

You're welcome for the thousands of dollars I just saved you

I actually bluff quite a bit compared to others and there are a lot of spots where I am exploitably over-bluffing. You just need to learn to identify the spots where bluffing is profitable. I am almost never making low equity bluffs into uncapped ranges on boards where I don't have a range advantage, which is what you're trying to do here.

As much as this advice annoys me, until you learn to identify good spots, the advice to play strictly for value (with the exception of c-betting) is probably best.

As played I hope you didn't fold once he 4bet shoved.

But yeah, you're risking your whole stack to win this little pot with ace high, he'll have you drawing close to dead way to often for this to be good.

Sometimes ace high will be the best hands here but will still be behind his equity (97cc 57cc).

this is your equity agaisn't a massive bluffing range, only the most aggros of aggros have this range and you still only have 36% equity. I gave him all open ended, all double belly (45o), with some fd (not all of them but like 80% of all realistic fds)

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 36.046% 36.05% 00.00% 37113 0.00 { AhKh }
Hand 1: 63.954% 63.95% 00.00% 65847 0.00 { QQ-88, 66, 22, Ac6c, KcQc, KcJc, KcTc, Kc9c, Kc6c, QcJc, QcTc, Qc9c, JcTc, Jc9c, Tc9c, 97s, 9c6c, 8c6c, 7c6c, 75s, 6c5c, 6c4c, 54s, 97o, 86o, 75o, 54o }

edit : i forgot a bunch of combos of nfd, w/e

I think you are clouding things here? On the flop your read, and your idea of Villains range should be discounted when Villain raises your flop cbet. Read and Range are driven by our perception, may or may not reflect reality, and definitely are not in agreement what Villain is saying by his flop raise.

Once Villain comes over the top, money talks and everything else takes a walk. Villain is telling you something in a very loud voice. When we ignore what Villain is saying with a flop raise, is to do so at our peril.

Previous to this hand you say Villain has folded to pressure. Makes sense, Villain would fold a weak hand right?

If you had seen Villain raise a flop cbet and win the pot previously, would you be more likely to believe Villain when he raised the flop in this hand? Of course you would be more likely to give Villain credit for a hand. Because this was not observed does not mean it isn't a possibility when Villain has a hand he/she thinks is best and raises our flop cbet.

c/f flop. youve flopped next to no equity.

so, you're just openfolding 99 and AQs? lol

It's not illegal to limp UTG you know...

grunching a little bit.


If you are going with the logic that your range is TT+ and therefore a C-bet is good because this V will respect your range, then think about how strong that makes his raise here. He is not expecting you to fold, and he is never folding once he makes this raise.

Better to wait on big value flops instead and work a few more questionable combos in PF. Youll be the fish, but you'll win sometimes and youll likely get more enjoyment from semibluff sweats than just stacking off AKhh with drips of equity against a gii range... That's worse than being dealt out for 4 hours.

Depending on the table I might raise AQs but I would limp 99 most likely.

Results time. I called because I don't like money and I wanted to see if my read was right. Villian tabled 99. Obviously he put me on AK considering I he shoved after my 3bet. Looking back obviously i should have just check folded otf.

Another question is what would be the play here be if I had AK?