1/3 Maryland Live on a Saturday afternoon

Hero: Young 20s white guy wearing tee shirt and jeans, playing TAG since I sat down about 2 hours ago, stack around the $300 I bought in for

Villain: Early 30s white guy in a bucket hat arrived at table shortly after Hero, super aggressive on the button and in the blinds but otherwise mostly limping preflop, when he raised preflop it was usually to 7-8x (standard PFR at table was 4-5x), raised somewhat often postflop and was saying to himself that he needed to stop spewing and getting out of line, recently won a big pot and covers Hero, have not played any big pots together

Rest of table: loose passive, a few nits that played pretty straightforward, one guy that kept reloading shortstacked for $100 and went through three buyins in my first hour at the table, one OMC I've played with before — you just wait for him to tilt


OMC ($600) limps in EP
Shortstack ($100) limps in HJ
A player ($500) limps in CO
Hero ($300) raises to $14 with AKo in SB
Villain ($400) quickly 3bets to $25 in BB
Folds around to Hero, who calls

Flop ($59) AK6r
Hero checks
Villain bets $20, Hero calls
(I figured he is cbetting here fairly often)

Turn ($99) AK6, K
Hero checks
Villain checks
(Villain has double-barreled previously so the plan was to let him continue bluffing, and casino had $500 high hand where an ace or king on river would qualify)

River ($99) AK6, K, K
Hero ?

Assuming Villain's 3bet range is {77+, 65s+, AT+, A5s}, 69 of his 89 combos will have made a full house on the river, while his suited connectors except 76s and 65s have trip kings with ace, queen high at best.

Lead river and hope Villain has a full house and can't fold it (Zeebo theorem), or check it over to him expecting him to bet his stronger boats and a few of his bluffs?

Randy,

I’d bet $50 on the turn.

As played, I jam the $250 on the river and hope he has an ace he can’t get away from.

14 seems too small pre with 3 limpers. Make it like 21. The tiny 3-bet is weird...I guess call is fine but I probably 4-bet this villain to 75 or so. Based on the speed of his 3-bet I think he almost never has KK+ here.

Flop seems fine.

Turn I prefer a bet though I get your logic. However this is not a good board for villain to double barrel air, in fact the 2nd card pairing is probably the worst possible turn for him, and if he doesn't have an A or K I think he just gives up most of the time. As for the HH, I would ignore it. How much is the chance to win a $500 HH worth? It's worth 3/46 * 500 = 32.60 if you always win it. If it's like where I play and it has to last a certain amount of time it's worth considerably less (particularly as the Ace outs will rarely hold up). But either way it's probably worth less than building the pot. And that's before tip.

River...hard to imagine villain has much here. I think he probably has something like QQ or JJ, in which case he may call a reasonably sized bet. But it's possible he checked the turn with an A thinking he was slowplaying it. I'm honestly not sure what I'd do here, short of a read on how strong I think villain is. Does he like to bluff catch? I probably bet pot and expect him to call with most of his boats, maybe raise with an A. I don't like checking. He might x back hands as strong as QQ.

x/r flop, bet turn, jam river, ez game.

The thing with this flop is if he doesn't have an Ace you aren't getting more than $20 out of him, so rather than worrying about the weaker parts of his range, just start shoveling money in and hope he has AQ/AJ and never folds.

Pre-flop I could go either way. OOP I think I might just 4-bet and GII vs. this guy. Against a normal tighter 3-betting range flatting is good here given the price you are getting.

The river I can go a couple of different ways here. Option one is bet stupid small, like $25, and hope he calls with 100% of his range. The other option is to jam and hope for the best. Given his small bet and turn check here, he likely has AA and is trapping, or something much weaker that is scared. Maybe it's the wrong play, but in general when his range looks weak here I go for the tiny bet. But the jam is certainly a fine play. If you think he calls $25 95% of the time, he'd have to call $250 10% of the time in order to make the jam better, and I just don't see him having an Ace or calling the $250 that often.

Your pre sizing is way small. I’d like to see 25. As played Pot river I think.

I’d 4-bet pre.

Flop call seems standard. This board crushes his range and we hardly ever have a strong hand here so an aggro villain should double barrel a lot.

it might make sense to lead the turn with some parts of our range as this card is better for us than for him, but we block a lot of value and no bluffs so I’d check and try to get something out of the weaker parts of his range.

River I check/raise for the same reason. Overbet jamming is kind of obvious as quads. Most players can’t fold an A anyway, but those same players probably pay off a x/r too.

Kinda not a fan of our fairly small raise in the SB. This is just going to created a bloated very multiway pot OOP which will turn into some meh postflop spots, imo. I either raise very large here or limp.

I think I'm ok with just flatting the minraise. I'm not in love being OOP, but this guy did just 3bet from the blinds against a tight guy who raised from the blinds. I *think* an argument could also be made for a fold (low IO vs high RIO) but it's admittedly hard to pass on this price. ETA: FWIW, I'm sorta assuming that as aggressive as this guy has been on the Button (and blinds, which I just reread OP) that nothing has been said about his 3bet frequency, so I'm assuming he hasn't 3bet and that this should be given respect especially if he's attempting to stop spewing (OP can correct me if I'm wrong)

Totally cool with flop/turn. This in many ways goes back to why folding preflop to the 3bet (so long as we're convinced it's a strong range) ain't horrible due to low IO vs high RIO.

I ship the river. He could have AA, in which case he has to call; he'll also probably have to call all his Ax hands. We may lose QQ- some of the time, but go for the gold against the hands that absolutely will pay you off, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I forgot to mention in OP that I had seen Villain 3bet a few times, and at least one of those times showed down something light. So I was least worried of his 3bet out of anyone at the table. I think I still like the flat over 4bet since the limpers all folded to the 3bet, since there hadn’t been any 4bets at the table since I sat down and it would look super strong, but it’s close.

As for the small raise size, the casino switched over from 1/2 to 1/3 in January and I noticed that most players are betting with and responding to sizings just as if it is still a 1/2 game. After thinking more about it I agree that 18 or 21 would have been better since the limpers might get sticky preflop.

No reads on if Villain would bluff catch here. I like jam more now, considering Villain could reasonably call down with enough Ax.

Ditto

Yep...his min 3 bet is trying to rep AA but he did it way too fast. Just smells like BS to me.

Yes, he knew his 8 high was beat on the flop, lol.

It's typical fish thinking to assume that when they bluff that you should just put them on the top of their range. I would've asked him if he would have folded AK to a min 3-bet, and then top2 to a min 3-bet on the flop, and when he told me yes, I would call him a liar to his face.

I think this hand was misplayed on most streets. Raise pre is too small (min $20 since we are OOP). When we flop top 2, let's x/r flop and bet turn and river to get it in.

LOL, yeah a little funny to say this if you are going to show your cards.

Joey, what holdings do you expect Villain to continue with if Hero x/r flop? AA, KK, AK, maybe AQ and AJ?

I dont expect AQ or AJ to almost ever fold. And there are way more combos of those than the 2 combos of AA and KK.

What hands do we expect him to keep barelling? Unless he is bluff happy, his turn betting and flop x/r calling ranges are fairly merged, so we should pop this flop.

I'm not trying to be MUBSy about AA/KK, I just think it results in a lot of flop folds. If Villain has AQ/AJ, he probably isn't feeling great about his hand getting x/r, and if he calls, I'm not confident I'm getting him to call turn bets as much as I'd like.

I considered Villain bluff happy, so I assumed it would be better to keep in all bluffs, pocket pairs, etc. that would fold to a flop x/r. You could be right that there is greater EV in just targeting AQ/AJ.

Even bluff happy villains don't bluff all the time. In fact I'd guess most of us severely overestimate how often villains are bluffing. I might see a guy bluff 10 times in a session, which is a lot compared to most guys, but in relative terms he might be bluffing 1 hand in 4 and for major bluffs it's lower than that.

Like your bluff happy villain already did 1 bluff preflop, and fired a c-bet. How often is he going to just barrel away with zero equity? Not much, IMO...

I'm more in OPs corner on the flop/turn, especially since we'll still likely make decent value (although admittedly not maximum) against AQ/etc. and meanwhile won't lose the other huge parts of his range (bluffing air and mediocre made hands like underpairs) plus not putting in as much when we're coolered.

GimoG