1/3 nl weekday morning 9 players

Hero may been seen as aggressive with top pair plus hands but mixed in bluffs as well.

Been at the table about a half hour. Villain dressed in suit. Thought awhile after flopping top two pair with QJ and faced a river jam. His hand was good.

$400 effective in hand

Villain in said description limps UTG, hero UTG AK raises to 18. All fold back to villain who calls.

Pot $40.00

Flop K73

Villain donks $15.00 and hero raises to $45.00 and villain calls.

Pot $130

Turn A

Board K73A

Villain leads for $100.

Hero has $337.00 What would you do now?

I think I mostly just call the flop donk. This guy showed to be a little cautious in his two pair hand so I'd treat his donk with a little respect plus not want to blow him off TP which is drawing very slim. Plus overall we don't want to build a huge pot with just one pair. Let's see a turn in position and go from there.

This is why I don't like raising the flop, as the pot is way too big for our hand even though it "improved" on the turn. But really our hand didn't improve at all, unless we think we just somehow moved ahead of K7/K3. He limp/called preflop; this reeks of 77/33 hoping we have exactly what we have (and AA/KK aren't totally out either as they might limp to reraise and then decide to just call to disguise when just HU). I probably call and likely lean to folding the river UI to a big bet unless we've got some reads that suggest otherwise.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Nice hand. Now shove. Call has benefits but in a vacuum against a random guy in a suit at 1/3 I lean towards shoving. Without the Ah I lean towards shoving even more. Only real benefit to call is if he's total spewballing some crazy no equity bluff.

Don't listen to GG... raising flop is good. Call turn and planning to fold river is bad beyond belief

So we're basically targetting Axhh and that's about it? Does a cautious player with Axhh even donk the turn given the preflop/flop action?

What worse hands are we expecting to run into that this guy plays this way?

GcluelessNLnoobG

Fist pump jam. Nice hand.

Raise flop is good, you need to also raise with some bluffs. Jam turn. I wouldn't call it a "fistpump jam" but it's a jam.

The pot is large and the raise is all-in, so the raise is more hand protection than value. We need to raise (rather than call) to protect our hand against the flush draws. In addition to the NFD, I'd expect to see JThh, QJhh, QThh and a scattering of other flush draws (at lower percentages). He might have A7. He might have AK as well. He might have random nonsensical stuff like 87, we don't really know this guy very well.

You're complaining that the worse hands we're targeting are thin, but his value range you're scared of is also super thin (77 and 33, so 6 combos) so we don't have to come up with many combos to offset it. Most players also don't play 77 and 33 this way. The majority of players don't donk 40% pot with a set there. The majority, when raised, would take that opportunity to reraise. If they didn't reraise, probably the majority check turn rather than leading. So while 77 and 33 are definitely possible, we're talking about 6 heavily-discounted combos.

We raised preflop. We raised the flop. We've shown maximum possible strength at each opportunity, and yet this guy doesn't seem to care and bets $100 into $130 which sets up a trivial play for stacks by the river. I just don't see nearly as many weak hands / draws as everyone else, which leaves hands he thinks are best against our very strong action, and there simply ain't too many of those hands which are worse that ours.

Admittedly, we don't have much of a read on this guy. But the only read we do is that he didn't snap hurp durp a river bet just cuz "two pear!" and that he actually put some thought into it.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I think a huge part of his range is the NFD, which it makes total sense to me that he plays like this. I'm sure if you sat him down and went "but you're still losing to AK and stuff" he'd get it, but his hand just looks so pretty that he wants to bet it. I'd need to pull out equilab again but I used it earlier and from memory the NFD alone was enough to make it a jam.

I just don't think a player that could perhaps be on the more cautious end of things is betting the nut flush draw that backed into TP into our strong actions nearly as often as others do. He's super happy he has TP and can now check/call a turn bet, but instead he's going to bet a large $100 into a guy that just raised him twice in a row and risk facing a shove that he'll now have to call?

Gnotinmyexperience,imoG

We've been at the table for a half an hour why are we assuming this villain is on the cautious end of things.

Also why are you assuming villain is thinking at all. He's a guy in a suit playing 1/3 who limp called pre, donked a flop he should never donk, then donked a turn he should never donk.

Honestly the biggest leak of all LLSNL grinders in aggregate is making HUGE assumptions about players ranges based on little to no info, and then making gigantic adjustments to their own ranges. "Oh I saw him check call the flop once with a set so he slow plays all his big hands so when he raises the flop here he never has a big hand" "he took a while to call an all in with QJ on QJx so he's a cautious player and I should apply this logic to a totally different spot and make ridiculous range adjustments based off that"

I don't know if our experiences differ or what, but the overwhelming vast majority of poker players sitting at a typical table have 1000s of hours of poker under their belt and have mostly been beat down to being fairly MUBSy (due to their lifetime of losing, "god I run so bad"), so alarm bells should be going off whenever someone takes an incredibly strong line against this.

I mean, if you somehow have randoms sitting in your game with 10 hours of poker experience then maybe it differs, but it's my guess that is pretty much not that case anywhere by now.

OP can probably clarify what he thinks the situation is in his market / room / table.

GcluelessopponentnoobG

Thank you for all of your insight and thoughts on this hand.

Results: I ended up jamming over his $100.00 turn raise for an additional $230.00 on top. He ended up snap calling and turned over AA.

A cooler or could/should I have played it more conservatively?

What other hands that I beat would be leading on the turn after my aggression? On the same aspect if I fold to the $100.00 bet on the turn would I only be jamming with sets?

He seemed not to be scared or care about the turn Ace which should of sent of alarm bells or he could just of been representing a scare card to get me to fold a king?

Thoughts? Thanks.

I think we way overplayed our hand on both the flop and turn, and don't think it's a cooler for $400 stacks in just a $36 pot on the flop.

Others will disagree, and of course we have to be mindful of posting bias (i.e. typically posted threads in this forum tend to lean towards batbeatish-cooler etc. which might not accurately reflect the majority of situations we are in). But these stakes are mostly made up of MUBSy passive players and he just took an incredibly strong line.

Gimo,imeG

Once the turn card comes, I don't think we are getting away. I think you played it fine and it is a cooler. You are going to get stacked when simultaneously you turn top 2 on a draw heavy board with 133 blind stacks and V turns top set at the same time. If you don't get stacked in that spot, then you are leaving a tremendous amount of value on the table with your strong hands (hint: magnitudes more than the 133 blinds you lost in this hand).

Wp OP.

OP you played it fine. Not that it matters but you were going to lose a decent amount of bbs in this hand no matter what happened

Beware of the donk lead, it’s always so imbalanced. However, even knowing the results of the hand, I’m not sure how you fold top two. Maybe the $100 turn sizing polarizes some opponents to sets plus. But, I would have to classify that player as fairly nitty in order to make a rare fold here.

Im not saying id fold in real life. But i agree. Feels like we just got coolered by a set

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