C betting made simple:

When you are IN position and you raised PF, you should c bet close to 100% of the time.

When you are OUT of position and you raised PF you should FLOAT most of the time (I.e. Check/call flop and lead TURN, especially lead turn if flop checks through).

Ship it and get ready to reload. I get the feeling villain will fold, though. This type of player and play is all too familiar. They like to gamble by paying too much for their draws, and will GII, if the draw completes. This is assuming he's even on the draw. There's a small chance he has a hand like 77 and doesn't give you credit for the board, but is being cautious in case the spades hit.

This flop texture makes you represent an over pair exclusively. It's usually a bad idea to bluff 3 barrels when you only rep an overpair, its too unlikely that you actually have it

I think I'm stabbing at every flop and turn too try and take down the pot. I was really trying to use my image too my advantage at this point. If hero was playing aggressive and was very active all night then, I shut down when called on the flop. I had put villian on either a flush draw or a smaller pair. I really believe if villian had 2pr plus he would of reraised the turn. From my experience at this level of play not many players can with stand the heat of 3 barrels with smaller 1pr type of hands. I obviously played this wrong due too not being aware of how sticky this villian could be. But I do believe if I bet smaller on the flop and turn I could have possibly shoved river too get the fold.

I feel 20 is too much pre-flop, even with the straddle. With no limpers I would raise to 16.

On the flop I would prefer a couple of backdoor draws. Now you have none. If I'm not check/folding this flop, I'm certainly check/folding the turn.

As played, I would still check/fold the river. If someone's calling flop and turn, they're not gonna fold the river for 90 in a 200 pot with any pair. But I'm hoping I wouldn't end up with 90 behind in a 200 pot with K high no draws in the first place. If I was really determined to win this pot, I would sooner shove the turn for 145 in 110 (or potting the flop first and then shoving the turn). In my opinion that would actually do a better job of repping an overpair. I just don't think you're deep enough to three-barrel bomb your way to victory here unimproved.

I'd consider us to be at a disadvantage on this flop. I don't necessarily whole-heartedly agree with those who say this flop hits villain harder than us, because I would have all combos of sets, a fair bit of combos of 8x, and having QQ+ solidly in our range is not at all unimportant on this board.

I really consider the disadvantage to be that equity is really static on this board. "Value" hands make up a small percentage of both of our ranges on this sort of board (though I think we have more than he does), and maybe more importantly, he has a massive range of hands that have 30%+ equity against most of our value range. QTo with just one spade has 30% equity against 99 -.-

Because of this, money is going to flow to the person IP much more than it's going to flow to the person with the (moderate) range advantage. Also, being the first to bet isn't all it's cracked up to be when there are ~2 PSBs left behind, and being able to shove over a bet is a much higher leverage play.

So against an unknown asian straddler (someone who probably sucks, but we don't yet know how he sucks, and this demo can suck in such a wide variety of ways that we can't play super exploitatively), I'd play pretty defensively with my whole range. This means I'm at least considering checking 88/AJss/KK-with-a-spade/87s/etc. Given stack sizes, there isn't even a massive value tradeoff playing this way because I would just play two-street poker whenever the flop checks through and bet $50 -> jam.

Then again, the Q4cc hand probably means that he's looser than he is aggressive, so I probably play super value-heavy against him, but at this point we've wondered pretty far from discussing what we should do with a dry KJ.

The point is that I'm checking here A LOT. This isn't necessarily giving up on the hand. If he's betting a lot when checked to, then we'll have a nice robust x/r range awaiting him; if he's checking back a lot when checked to, then hands like these play quite well to either bink a broadway or rep any of the other broadways with a $50 bomb; etc.

I don't see why it's hard to believe that hero has AA or KK on this board. When someone plays like an OMC nit in a 1-2 NL game and then raises PF and fires 3 barrels it looks really strong. Players will c-bet a lot with AK but I don't see many turn and river bluffs with that hand. Villain kept calling because he was a calling station IMO.

Also the way hero played this could look like AQ or maybe KQ.

I think you're giving this villain way too much credit. I'm not sure this villain even thinks about what we're repping because some horrible villains don't even think beyond their own two cards.

I'd be shocked if villain is aware of the number of hand combos of overpairs, AK, etc. I'd be shocked if villain bothers to count the pot, knows what his pot odds are and what his break even percentage is. I don't even expect regs to know those things.

Also many 1-2 NL players are horrible hand readers and when that Q shows up they will worry that we have a Q even if that fear is irrational and if having a Q is inconsistent with the way we played the rest of the hand. They often won't think back to how we played earlier streets. The danger with this villain is he will find irrational reasons to call anyway though.

I'm confused. If we're only getting called by better when we have JJ/TT, then wouldn't a bluff also be targeting pairs that are beaten by JJ/TT? Or do you think villain doesn't have those hands on the river? Or am I missing something that's obvious?

One thing I don't think was mentioned is some villains are sticky on the flop and much tighter on the turn. They will float you once with overcards, etc. but fold when you make a much bigger turn bet and look much stronger (many players c-betting AK do it once and give up on the turn). They also don't want to call a much bigger bet with a weak drawing hand like an overcard or two, or with a low pair.

The read didn't mention if this villain was sticky on all streets or just the cheaper streets.

If villain is sticky on the flop and folds much more on the turn, that would encourage me to double barrel. If he is sticky on all streets then that would encourage me to slow down.

This is a good post, but I'm confused that you said this flop is static when it's actually very dynamic?

I agree that checking back this flop is best against a sticky villain. This hand is really one of the ones with the least going for it that you could have here, but you have some SDV and you can always spike a pair. Plus, if villain has nothing he may well check-fold the turn, especially if it's a dynamic card.

AP, you should definitely give up. People don't tank-call big bets on the turn then fold to comparatively smaller bets on the river.

It is kind of a leveling paradox in my mind. Most people would check back JJ/TT because they have showdown value. Therefore, betting the river becomes polarized to nutted hands and air. However, if you have history with villain and he knows you like to bluff the river with missed draws, then you can level him by betting your showdown value hands like JJ/TT for thin value looking to get called by 2nd and 3rd pair type hands.

I would say that is not a standard line to take on the river however, and those bet/bet/bet lines often look bluffy and you should expect to get called fairly often, especially with these stack sizes.

Dont overrate your image in this spot. Once a typical player flops TPTK, they begin to revert to level 1. When the turn does not have AKQJ, and they call, they pretty much commit themselves.

If e been thinking about this, I think a third barrel on the river is probably wrong in many instances where it appears the villain is committed to call down.

Regarding flush draws: most competent opponents will raise flop with the ace high flush draw. Since he didn't raise, we might assume he has a smaller flush draw or a pair hand. He MIGHT have an ace with gutshot wheel draw and backdrops flush - but that's the BEST we can hope for when we three barrel, and then THAT hand is folding to a MUCH SMALLER BET.

Since he probably does not have the A high flush draw, WE BEAT HIS BUSTED DRAWS, so there is not point in getting him to fold.!!!

In other words, there are few hands that beat us that fold when we threebarrel here (and by the same token we need to always three barrel with our made hands like overpairs).

Check turn line:
Now, if the TURN CHECKED THROUGH, and we DONK THE QUEEN, we have a MUCH better chance on getting a small pair to fold.

Checking the turn also has the advantage of US telling a draw, and if a flush card hits the river, we should be able to bluff that effectively as well.

The KEY point here to remember is that players tend to revert to LEVEL 1 unless something changes drastically.

The 9 on the turn is not a "drastic"'change - but if the turn checks through and you do I the queen, that IS a "drastic change".

The raise to 20 after the straddle is a good size. But raising there with KJs isn't.

OOP with an easily dominated hand is bad practice. In a passive game perhaps a limp here is okay (if the straddler does not do what he should, which is raise his straddle most of the time). If the straddler IS active, I suppose a min raise to BLOCK might be okay -

But really, FOLD PF - you won't often get value from a weaker hand and YOU will end up paying off a lot of stronger hands.

Appreciate the explanation, you make a lot of good points. Fwiw by no means do I auto-cbet in these spots, but I'm now convinced I've still been doing it too often vs most opponents

They can be more afraid of the aggressive guy than they are of the nit because in their minds the aggressive guy can have anything. Also the aggressive guy looks fearless and is used to playing in big pots unlike the nit. The aggressive guy makes people uncomfortable and they can't put him on a hand like they can with the nit.

So I'm not sure that people really tighten up that much with the nit compared to the aggressive guy. The most likely case if they do fear the nit is they fold more of the marginal stuff (or what's marginal in their minds) to the nit and make a few more calls against the aggressive guy.