I said I don't like the line in this specific case, not that you should never take this line. I mean, geez, every possible line is justifiable under some possible conditions.

KQ is a strong hand here, if villain bet/folds it then he is folding too often and that's what is exploitable against a known opponent (again, this is not a one time battle against a rec).

There is a possible missed straight and possible missed flush draw. Because he flatted pre-flop hero's hand is quite disguised and he could have gotten to the river in a variety of ways. Suppose hero has AK. He called the flop with TPTK, then called the turn after picking up the flush draw. Then on the river he misses the flush draw but the board pairs so he represents AA or a slow-played set, whatever. KQ folds b/c obviously he is beat?

Save the bet/fold line for weaker hands and/or when missed draws are less likely is what I'm saying in case it's not obvious.

it is if you are oop, you should 100% 3bet aa ip.

I raise the flop, you gotta be getting some ops value out of K/great kicker. I think Q's lead here too. Your hand is well disguised. AP, I call the river. Minus the "should have 3! Pre" this hand getting down to showdown is WP, and certainly a viable option.


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Bet fold is popular here but usually isn't a good play imo. It only has value when you're up against a solid thinking player who doesn't have the heart to bomb river on a bluff. If you're bet folding something that v would never fold it's at worst neutral EV to just go ahead and call. Sometimes you're up against a nonsense bluff or players over valuing their hand.

In late but AP, I'm calling river bet, not really thinking of folding or raising here. Probably a snap call for me.

In correlation to what is villain "folding too much"? If hero (like 98 percent of 1/3 villains) never bluffshoves the river for this amount of money, why does it matter that KQ is "a strong hand" when the shovingrange youre up against has you smoked everytime?

Everything is relative, and KQ is a very strong hand here wich suits well for a bet/bet/bet line where we can get called by plenty of worse.

That being said, i think villain is sizing his bets too big-especially on the river. I think he will get too many tank folds from hands he beat and wants calls from like KJ or AK when he goes this big and polarizing with the sizing. Plus you are getting fewer bluff attempts against you when opponents miss a draw,because you discourage your opponents with the big sizing.Unless villain is extremely well balanced and also goes this big with other weaker parts of his bettingrange its too easy for a decent thinking player to detect that this sizing means business/nutted range.

Again, the point here is that villain & hero have played each other in the past and will probably play each other in the future. They are not like "98 percent of 1/3 villains", this info is in the OP, I'm not inventing it. Balancing your actions and not being exploitable matters here. You actually have to play GTO poker, or some reasonably approximation.

If hero has villain "smoked everytime" he shoves river, then hero is not bluffing enough and that is exploitable with a bet/fold strategy by villain here. But if villain is bet/folding a hand as strong as KQ in this situation then that's exploitable with a bluff raise by hero.

The more GTO plays here are for villain to be sticky when he is raised on the river and for hero to sometimes bluff raise.

Why do we have to play GTO against a reg that is most likely extremely unbalanced towards value when he trippel barrells this board for close to pot sized bets on this board texture? What does it mean to "bluff enough" into an obviously nutted 3 barrell range, and why the hell should we want to add bluffshoves on the river for a total 300 BB stack when we so easily can detect that villain has a strong valuehand? And IF villain is bet/folding KQ on this river against a hypothetic shove from hero, how the hell should hero know this AND be able to shove the river into a totally uncapped range?

This isnt Doug Polk who plays in high stakes cashgames, in lineups filled with more or less balanced wizards where having more bluffs makes sense due to being up against less defined less readable ranges. This is a 1/3 game, where nobody have a totally balanced game: not even close. So attempting to play balanced or "GTO" just for the sake of it seems really counterproductive, and reminds me of seing ghosts in the middle of the street.

Your whole argument is based on a false plattform because even regs that log plenty of hours is extremely unbalanced in LLSNL. And correctly so due to the population tendencies,high amount of clueless fish/rec players and the pure stationy high VPP nature of small stakes live games.

That is the whole point, we dont need to adjust to something thats probably not there. Its like you are constructing a strawman, and is arguing against that strawman- but he isnt really excisting.

From the OP:

You don't have to be playing in a high stakes game to worry about balancing your actions. It's more about who is paying attention and who you are playing against repeatedly. If you play too predictably you make it too easy for a decent opponent to read your hand, so then it becomes important to disguise your hand to some degree against some opponents. This is one of those opponents.

Saying that you don't need to balance your actions against 95% of 1/3 opponents is not the same thing as you never need to balance your actions.

Or think of it this way. How would you play a single hand vs a table of unknowns vs how you would play that exact same group of people every night for a month? If you play against the same people long enough, even most of the fairly bad players will pick up stuff like "hero only 3bets AA/KK preflop".

I noticed you didnt answer any of my questions, but instead stated a long line of needless to say generalizations. That isnt very productive,neither is it relevant arguments youre providing.

I asked what it means to "bluff enough" into a valueheavy 3 barrell range from a reg, and why that is even relevant to do. And even more importantly i also asked why we should even think about adding huge rivershovebluffs into an obvious nutted 3 barrell range and into an uncapped potsized bet/bet/bet range?

Why do we need to overcomplicate things talking about perfectly balanced and "GTO", why cant we just use our knowledge and information available- then use that to never bluff when we detect that villain is on a nutted range? Why do we need to tell ourself excuse me pure BS that we need "enough bluffs" in order to not be exploited?

Before we even remotely need to think about applying a totally balanced game,we need to be in a playing environment that require that kind of adjustment. We need to be up against highly skilled opponents that is capable of ripping us apart if were playing too unbalanced and too easily readable range. We need to be playing against opponents that are willing to ship 200 BB on the river against us as a bluff if they can identify that were bet/folding too many hands. We need to be on a table filled with highly skilled fearless live pros. Live 1/3 tables is so far away from that premise that you can possibly come.

Edit: Just to have it stated, i pretty much play against a small group of 20-30 players or "regs" every week. I play extremely exploitative and my game is extremely unbalanced. Even so i am printing in those games for 10-12 BB hour over the last 1000 hours. Because even though "regs" i have logged hundreds of hours with can identify some patterns in my game, they simply arent capable of executing proper exploitative strategies, or they arent willing to take that battle when its 5-6 fish in the game every night that is ready to give away their money. You are simply creating a problem that doesent excist when youre telling yourself you need to bluffshove enough, or that you need to play a perfectly balanced GTO style.

Edit 2: The "fairly bad players" make comments like this when i 3 bet, " oh here comes Petrucci, he got kings again". Then, they call anyway with their 9-7 suited or A-J or whatever. Its just small small adjustments to make if you starts getting too many folds.

Sorry, I sincerely attempted to answer your question. I don't have any other words to convey what I'm trying to convey. Obv you are not understanding what I'm saying or simply disagree. Either way, moving on...

I understand perfectly what youre trying to say. However, i think that you are fighting against strawmen in this debate, and/or creating problems that really isnt a problem in reality.You are trying to shoot small birds with a huge rocket launcher,instead of realizing that the most accurate appropriate weapon is a sniper rifle and just bom bom shooting those tiny birds down. That is what i have been trying to explain and illustrate over my last couple of posts.

Well, hell, let me make one last attempt, but you don't seem to be paying much attention to what I write. I never said you have to be "perfectly balanced" and "GTO", just that you need to move a little bit in that direction. Maybe on this particular hand, GTO says hero should bluff exactly 20% of the time with the range of hands he could hold on the river. I'm not saying hero has to bluff exactly 20% of the time, only that he prefers villain to think he's capable of bluffing here. Maybe 5% is fine here, or 2%, I dunno, don't care.

I'm going to make one last try at this. The key is whether opponent is singular or plural. You don't need to be against 9 skilled oppenents. This hand is headsup against a skilled player. None of the standard 1/3 players matter on this hand. You need to mix it up against that particular player, not the entire table.

Btw, some history for the younger and newer players with disdain for "GTO" and "balancing" and "exploitative": they used to just call this "mixing it up", "changing gears", etc. which didn't sound as fancy but is the exact same thing.

I like the way the hand was played and sigh call this great river card.

You know how many regs play AK this way (barrelling 3 postflop streets, including $200 on the river when the draws bust)? 0%. No one does. Right? They check/call there like 100% of the time. So the fact he's barrelling is a pretty scary, but KQ could definitely play it this way, as could the occasional 3 barrel bluff (although I highly doubt that happens enough) and so we're forced to call.

Gnicehand,imoG

I think 0% is a bit harsh, but yeah i dont think they 3 barrel + PSB very often on this board. He coudl have some bluffs like JTs but i also dont think he goes PSB on the turn/river.

GG i think this is my first HH in a long time where you didn't tell me to fold pre

Well played pre, not folding AA

But seriously though, GG has a good point here that i also tried to get across in some of my posts. Some posters are completely dellusional and think that a good reg/good hand reader blasts off 3 pot sized bets with AK on this board as standard line. Some also tells themself that they can raise the river and that all AK combos (IF they are in villains 3 barrell range in the first place) will call a huge riverraise/riverjam from hero playing deepstacked. Its safe to say that some people also see ghosts in daylight on the Las Vegas strip.

I mean, its not hard to grasp why so many posters report about absurdly long breakeven stretches, and massive losing stretches when i see what stuff that gets presented in the threads. These things relate strongly together, no doubt.

Yeah, I'm pretty much touching on what Petrucci says with my comments on how most people play AK here. He very rarely has it, and he very rarely pays off a river raise, at least in my experience.

Which is why I think the river is a sigh call, and you could possibly even argue it's a crying one.

But that's just my reaction in general to $200 river bets at the 1/3 NL level in the game I play in.

GinmyexperienceG

My thought process on river when the 4 binked was "might be able to thin value raise vs AK and KQ." Then he bombs PSB, and I go from raise to wanting to fold. My call was indeed kind of a sigh call, but I just don't think it's a good habit to fold the very top of our range vs a good reg

I could see myself taking this line in villain's shoes with AK, and definitely KQ. I might even overbet the river with those hands. He can play it this way and he's not even overvaluing it. How often is AK no good on this river? I mean, I wouldn't call a raise with it, but it's rarely beaten and is clearly good enough to value bet profitably.

How about we don't de-rail the thread into a silly win-rate/variance discussion? Although the thread has pretty much run its course anyway.

I think the correlation between the advice several posters give in hands like this, and the fact that we regurarly see players talk about insane downswings and insane breakeven/losing stretches is pretty obvious. Thus, i also believe its important to adress this- when i rarely ever see posters execute self critisism, or change their opinion after they have given bad advice-instead they just dissapear from the discussion because they arent capable of answering the arguments they are facing. Its just gives the whole picture a more complete story.

And regarding the hand- sure, you could see yourself take this line from time to time with AK and for sure KQ (and i believe you, with KQ i could do it some portion of the time myself but probably sizing down little bit on both turn/river to entice more calls from wider range), but that isnt really what i am trying to say. My main points is simply:

1) Many villains as GG stated will slow down at some point in the hand with their AK combos, and looking to check call at least one street with a one pair hand-often the river.

2) The bet sizing is really alarming, wich was the first thing i mentioned in the very first post i made ITT. Even very experienced regs is extremely weighted towards nutted valuehands when they blast 3 streets with close to pot sized bets being deep stacked, and especially the $200 riverbet. In my experience you see alot weaker sizing with AK type of hands, just because many regs sizes down in terms of aiming to get calls from a weaker/wider range. Wich of course totally make sense.

Rec players, fish or bad regs just have the nutz here like always- i woudnt even put AK combos in their river bettingrange with this sizing.

3)Raising/shoving the river with AA here being deepstacked is pretty bad when villain pots the river after this 3 barrell line with an uncapped UTG raising range. Personally i would describe it as pure spew, and wishful thinking.

I mean obviously it depends on how you play your other hands (i.e. are you 3barrelling your busted draws here a lot too, or muscling people out of the hand when you have air, etc.), but overall if I saw you play AK this way (including the big river bet) I'd immediately make a note on how you can overplay TP.

But more important than how *you* play it here is how do most other opponents play AK on this runout. Regs who manage to survive more than the shortterm become very MUBSy (for good reason, imo) and I just don't see hardly anyone playing AK like this. It's pretty wishful thinking to have this in his range at this point, imo, and even more wishful thinking to think he'll pay off a raise with it.

Gatleast,inmyexperienceG

It's not bad advice just because someone disagrees with you. I made my position clear and provided combinatorics to back it up. You disagreed with those combinatorics which is fine, but that doesn't make me wrong. I still think there is no way Villain folds KQ to a shove OTR, and he can find a hero call often enough with AK because Hero should never have 4x or 77, and he blocks KK, and Hero could JT in his river raise range. I understand you think raising JT would be suicidal OTR, and I wouldn't do it either, but that doesn't mean a "good hand reader" like V wouldn't assign some combos of it to our raising range.

This hand gives me nightmares. I dont think he has KQ in his river range. Dont believe he bets kq hard like that and being UTG he may open muck the offsuit variety, leaving us with exactly 2 combos we beat

...well, good call sorry i berated u earlier. I am not good enough to fold, only in retrospect, but it may have been correct

This hand and discussion is ridiculous. Snap fold the turn rack up and call it a night.

Deluding yourself into believing villain plays AK this way or has all combos of KQo is terrible.

Pro tip: A good player opening 6x UTG and tripling his turn bet size on a KQxx flush draw board is at minimum KQ and nearly always a set.