Hero: Stack around $1000. Definitely opening pre the most to $20 and in general the most aggressive at the table. Made a few bluffs and c-bets with air to take it down but also been hitting a ton, and table has seen me table hands like AA and JJ at showdown. Not sure if image is really that important in this hand though.

V1: Stack around 400. Quite new the table. Weak/tight and easy to read...not important in this hand.

V2: Probably late 20's white guy. Only been at table for about 45 minutes, showed up with 4 $100 chips ($400 max bi) and has played almost every hand since he sat down, some pre flop raising but mostly limp calling. Surprisingly was up. Looked tired and smelt a bit of alcohol. For this hand just think of him as a loose fish. Stack about $575.

HAND

PF: V1 raises to $10 UTG which is a very small open for this table. Most raises being $17-$20. I call with 44 from BTN. V2 raises to $30 from SB. V1 calls and i call. I hadnt played long enough with him to put him on water tight range as he was a bit spewy but i was putting him on JJ-AA tentatively at this stage.

Flop (Bout $90): 548. Spike my set. V2 C-bets $45. V1 folds. I think for a while and pop it up to $145. He calls pretty quickly. Now im pretty much certain he has JJ-AA. Small chance AK hearts type hand i guess but at the time i just didnt think he had a hand like that.

Turn (Bout $380): A V2 Checks. This is where it gets a bit interesting. Now my thought process, given my read, was that either that Ace gave him a set which would be a horrible beat, or it would scare him if he had JJ-KK and did not think he would call a turn and river bet with one of these hands, and maybe might not even call a big turn bet. I check back. Thoughts? Given my opponent, is this correct thinking?

River (Bout $380): Q. Another terrible card in my view. However he checks so im confident he does not have me beat. I tank for quite a while and bet $190. He insta-sighs and slowly counts the chips and calls. I show my set and he shows KK.

He had around $230 left and so i was wondering if you guys think i could have got his whole stack, most likely with a Bet, Bet line on turn and river.

you got max value on the river, so the only way to get more value out of this hand would be to make some kind of donk bet OTT.

but it would have to be small since the turn is such a big scare card.....like 110 into 380

almost like you are scared of the A and you have QQ or JJ. then you easily stack off his remaining 170 OTR.

but the problem with that is that even if you only bet 110, you still might lose him OTT.

you did get max value OTR, so it is not like you lost out on a ton of value.

It is a great result, because you get river value that you likely don't get on the turn. If he was reeking of alcohol he definitely doesn't give a crap and yeah you probably could have got his whole stack. The ace is a scare card, but it's good to check because you get him to check-call with the worst hand and if he did have aces and put a beat on you, he bets the river after you check the turn back, so you limit your losses while maximizing your win against 90% of the players, except of course this one being one you might have been able to get his whole stack carelessly.

You are very likely up good with a $400 max buy-in and a stack at a grand, so getting this nearly $400 in this pot with bottom set, while potentially limiting your losses to the pre-flop and flop action. It's a +EV play to check back on the turn in my opinion, especially given the hand he had.

From your description, it seems like V2 is a loose passive player. Also, given he bought in with 4x $100 chips, he is likely there to gamble and doesn't care if he loses.

Given stacks, the fact that it's likely going 3-way to the flop makes the call pre almost mandatory. The strength shown by V2 does indeed give him a very narrow range (3-betting ranges at LLSNL are ridiculously narrow), which boosts your implied odds massively.

OTF, despite the half-pot bet, this is actually a significant show of strength from this sort of player (it's into two players, and is more than his last bet). As such, your decision to raise is definitely the correct one. However, from this sort of player, I would bet much more as a raise, since the effective pot is $180 after you call, I would raise by about $170 ($215 total). Given his show of strength, he is probably not folding even to an all-in, and since TT-KK are in his range, we want to get as much money in as possible before over-cards fall. However the notion of all-in can scare otherwise fearless players, so a $215 raise would be my play here.

OTT AP I would go for the 'same bet' once he checks to you. His hand is face-up as TT-KK at this point, and is scared of the A, but the same bet can send the message that you're scared of the A as well. He will also likely think 'I didn't fold for $145 before, I'm not going to now!'.

OTR AP I think you bet a good amount since he is likely going to be hoping you have 99-QQ at this point, so the Q is a scare-card. However given his sigh-call, it would appear he had the attitude of 'I have KK, I'm not folding', and would likely call almost any bet OTR (and therefore, OTT as well).

well it was just a faint whiff of alcohol rather than reeking of it haha but its good to know you were thinking the same as me about the turn check.

I think you're right about the flop. I think my raise from $45 to $145 was sort of a 'standard' raise and with a better turn i probably would have got his whole stack comfortably anyway but i definitely think i should have raised more against this sort of player. Then i could easily shove turn given how much in the pot in relation to his stack.

TBH any player would have a real hard time folding an overpair like JJ-AA in this spot even to a big raise like $215, given how little is beating you and the straight and flush draws out there...this big raise move could work even against a very competent player.

Ive seen a lot of threads in this forum asking the question from the point of view of the Hero having the big OP and getting re-raised or c/r on a flop like this and many people say call or shove, not many say fold.

Im interested that you speak purely of value of him having 1010-KK but you dont consider the possibility of him having Aces? I realise with combos blah blah that its unlikely for him to have it, but it obviously still does happen, and while you cant always be scared when you play, AA is certainly in his range and i would save myself a lot of money by checking back turn if he did indeed have AA.

Pre Flop. All good.

Flop. I like your raise here. Sizing is good. But I think you have to remove some AA from V2's range here since he doesn't 3B you. I'm taking 1/2 the available AA out of his range now.

Turn. Here's where you have to go for the PrisonRaping(TM)*. Remember that there are only 6 combos of AA available preflop. (4 * (4-1))/2. But now that an ace hits, there are only (3 * (3-1))/2 = 3 combos of AA left. If you really put him on [JJ+], then you are still ahead of 18 of the available 21 combos, which means you're now 85% ahead. Having said that, I'm still removing 1/2 the AA combos from villain's range given his flop action, so we're really only down to 1.5 combos of AA left in 19.5 combos possible. (Now, I think we can add all the AQ+ combos too... btw...)

You still want to get some more $$$ in the pot here if you can.

A bit part of villain's range here can still be A-big, and since he called your flop raise, he's not going anywhere now that he's "caught up".

Alternatively: Are you ever going to bet this card in this situation as a bluff? Hero is in position in a 3b pot and villain checks the A turn. What would you do if you had JJ here? Are you giving up? Maybe, in a general sense, giving up is the right thing to do, since we don't expect villain to ever fold KK here, but maybe we can get him to lay down the rest of his range which still has some pretty good equity against us. E.g. [-flush, QQ]. (ETA... actually, now that I think about it, this is a pretty bad card to bluff since Villain can easily have the A. So no... I probably don't bet here as a bluff.)

So, this is one of those situation where the A on the turn is a fantastic card for us. Since we're super strong here, we're betting for value and we want villain to call. We have two options here:

1) Bet big and really turn up the heat on a villain who we think cannot fold,

or

2) Bet small, and see if he will spazz out and x/r shove over us, which we will snap call.

Given the hand as played, I prefer to bet big and let villain make a huge mistake in calling.

There is about $400 effective remaining, I think we can make it $225-250 here and be pretty well assured that we can get the rest in on the river.

I also like to shove here since it looks most bluffy. In fact, the more I think about it... let's just shove and make villain puke in his mouth.

*PrisonRaping(TM) copyright dgiharris, used herein without expressed permission written or otherwise.

I think you played it perfectly and the responses (sorry guys, no offense) are kinda results-oriented and just trying to say something different from what you did for the sake of saying something different. :\

I mean, I know alot of players who will instantly fold kings if an ace hits and there's a bet. It's a source of pride for them. It shows them how disciplined they are, how much self-control they have, how they won't lose more money than they have to with kings. It's standard for these players to assume they are beat with the ace comes and to assume their kings are good when it goes check-check. To me, he sounds like one of these players with his sigh-call.

When you check the turn, you convince him that you don't have an ace and therefore can get more money from him OTR. If you had bet the turn, I think he folds 90% of the time.

It would've been nice if you hadn't posted results in the OP.

Meh...

For every 1 guy who is capable of folding KK when the A hits, there are 10 who are not.

And even that 1 guy is not capable of folding KK every time the A hits.

So after we have a definitive read on Villain that he's folding KK to an A-high board, I start to bluff him relentlessly.

The texture of the board vs his perceived range leads me to like a flop shove. Villain always puts you on a draw and snaps it with his over pair.

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^ V leads 45, we shove for 545 eff? If he's drunk out of his mind maybe we can get away with that, but most of the time I think we don't.

Whole hand is solid, but don't put results in initial post.

The only way we could have gotten it ai is a turn shove imo. The A terrifies KK usually, but given our big flop raise he's going to have trouble thinking how that A helped us. It's possible he hero calls the over shove, but I have no problems with the way you played it.

Preflop: Standard

Flop: You're up against a strong range on a connected/flush draw board that will have a lot of potential action killing cards on the turn (any 7,6,A, or a heart can slow things down). In this spot, I want as much money going in the middle as I can get away with. In a perfect world we'd be up against a guy that's never folding an overpair here, so we just shove and pat ourselves on the back for being so awesome at flopping sets. Without such a nice read, I think we gotta put a nice pot sized raise in, I.E. slide $180 out there. So I like you're flop raise, but I think it was a tad too small.

Turn: In terms of making money this is a terrible card for you. The villain now has two reasons to hate his hand: your flop raise and a overcard to his probable pocket pair (only 3 combos of AA like that turn, and 12 combos of KK/QQ hate it). Even players that call down too much can release in this spot imo. Without a special read, you basically have two choices. 1) Generally speaking, bet smallish, whatever you think will garner a call from KK/QQ type hands, or 2) check behind trying to induce more action on the river. You chose the latter route, and frankly I'm not sure which choice is better, but on this particular board, I'd probably bet smallish (around $100 or 1/4 pot) on the turn because there are still a lot of scary cards on the river that can **** up our turn check strategy (again, any 7,6, heart). So I prefer choice 1). Get some more money in now--but not too much that he folds--before more action killing cards possibly come.

River: AP, I thought that was good sizing.

Overall, I thought you played this hand well.

so not trying to be results oriented here. but I like your thought process the entire hand. turn was the best. you got max value. he def folds if you shove river.

I agree with your thought process but because I am bat**** crazy and weary of draws in large pots, I'd prolly barrel the turn as well.

I think checking turn gives you max value since villain barely called, it wouldn't be likely he would call turn and river even if the sizing was small. Checking back shows that you're scared of the Ace and would like to get thin value from your Qx hand.

Here's the thing, if you bet small on the turn and a scary card like 7,6 heart came, what would you do on the river? Now the pot is inflated with one of the worse cards for you.

Given preflop action, the [7 or 6] are not bad cards for Hero. The sux, but w/e, we haz set, so F-him.

In terms of winning this hand there are no bad cards for us except Broadway cards. A heart, 7, 6, is a total blank for us. The problem ofc is the villain is gonna hate those cards since there's a chance we improved. So a 7,6, heart are only bad in terms of extracting monies from villain. Theoretically, when we likely have the best hand on the river but a bad card hits that weakens villain's range relative to our perceived range we should bet a lesser amount than we would if a blank hit.

So back to your question, if one of those "bad" cards hit the river, our decision has not fundamentally changed. It's still about betting the max that we think a hand like KK/QQ will call with.

Check on turn is fine. His range here is like 1010+, aqhh, akhh on turn. U wanna extract max value from 1010-KK and that means either bet super small on turn or check.

If he's really bad and can fold overpairs you could even shove flop