2/5 Live.
Villain – 800. I cover.

Playing for a few hours. He is one of the better players at the table. Pretty tight (prob too tight for this table), we were sitting next to each other for a while before I changed seats and quietly discussed hands & stuff.

I have been more active than him, opening more frequently from LP, C-betting and taking down from loose passive players. I have been doing well and have the largest stack at the table by far.

I open QQ from EP to my standard 25. Folded to him in the cutoff. He makes it 80. He very rarely 3 bet during the hours we were playing together. I think I saw him do it twice. I opened from EP so Im pretty sure he doesn’t think Im up to my usual LP BS. So Im putting him on a pretty narrow range. Not even sure he would 3 bet JJ here. Way more skewed to AK, KK, AA.

I called 55 more. Even though I am OOP I think that 3 betting would be - oh I hope he has AK - semi-suicidal in this spot.

Pot - 170

Flop – QJ7 (some would call this a Favorable™ flop)

I check. I guess betting out would be interesting here, but checking cant be horrible.

He bet 115. He now has ~ 600 behind.

So Im obv OOP and can either smooth call on this pretty wet board that I have smashed and hope an action killer doesn’t come on the turn (maybe any diamond, an Ace if he has KK, another J or Q) and also hope he doesn’t spike his miracle card (prob an A, K or T).

Or I can 3 bet and hope I don’t scare him away. Im not sure I can extract multiple streets from him if he has an overpair and doesn’t improve. Earlier when I was sitting next to him he pretty easily dumped AK on a A93 RB flop when a tight player chk shoved on him with 99.

Its weird because this seems like a pretty standard spot that should have a "correct" answer, especially since Im confident in the narrow range Im putting him on which is a rare case, but I was pretty torn at the table between the 2 options.

?

Call flop, lead most turns, can't allow check through. He has a fold button, so C/R flop likely folds AKo/KK.

If he has JJ, click it back, he isn't going anywhere.

If he has AA or KK, and we click it back, he may or may not call, so if he has AA or KK then we check the turn and let him bet again.

If he has less, we are not getting any more from him no matter what.

Those are the "correct" answers.

All you have to decide is what he actually has.

There are 6 AA combos, 6 KK combos, and originally 6 but now 3 JJ combos.

Since he will likely continue betting with anything we might get more money from, seems like flatting the flop and checking the turn is best.

I probably check call down to keep in the 1-off chance he is making a move. I think if he has aa or kk or jj you probably still get most/all of his chips this way too


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On this flop, your range is more balanced between value and draws. You have all the sets, QJ, T9s, KTs, NFD, combo draws. You should be playing that range fast on this flop. If he's folding KK/AA to a c/r in this spot, you should be c/r bombing away with all your draws.

C/r to 350, jam basically all turns.

The board is wet and you are out of position. Don’t let him get there.

V has to know this flop smashes your range and yet still decides to c-bet 2/3rd pot. I am assuming V knows that you know he is capable of making folds. You describe your play as being somewhat active. He should be expecting you to raise pretty much all your holdings. I am raising to 375.


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What does this v even 3 bet pre that has a strong draw on this board? We're going to c/r and let him off the hook with literally the 1 draw he can have, AK for the gutshot?

You're open/calling K10s, QJo, even hands like A10s vs this guy? I think AKd/109d are reasonable hands to have here.

C/r is bad imo. It will scare the hell out of his overpairs and he may find a fold at this depth, you're just letting him off the hook.

My line here lead flop and bet, bet, bet. I take this line with AKd, 109d, and top set. If he has AK and you missed the 1 bet he would have made to follow up by giving up and giving you no more $ then so be it, I just think this is the best way to get value from AA/KK. If he has JJ you can get it all in on the flop.

Yea check-raise 290

C/r ~$300; shove all turns.

This guy folds too much. I would c/c flop hes folding if you raise. C/S or even c/c turn and lead river.

Against anyone else i'm raising this flop but against him i'm calling nut hands and raising air.

Turn any non diamond and im c/c or c/s. I might lead a diamond for value since he will call with the Ad and most likely check it back if checked to.

If I do raise flop its always a shove. looks like it could be a draw and a small raise to him looks more nutty so if you have air min raise. If u have nutz shove if you raise the flop at all.

Call ainec and don't donk turn like a monkey

RESULTS

OP here. Thanks for the replies (at least to those who wrote more than 2 words...).

So as I wrote he bet 115 on the flop.

My live experience (and listening to Bart Hanson & Ed Miller) taught me that if its close just go with basic value extraction and dont get fancy. So I check raised to 280. He taaaaaanked, showed me AA and folded. FML.

In retrospect, against this specific opponent I would have made more by either bet,bet,betting to quote Calldown88. He cant fold AA if I lead flop and will prob need to call almost all turns.

I could have also got more if I just check called flop. He would prob bet almost all turns and I would have a decision to make if to chk raise there or call and another on the river if I was afraid he would check behind.

So for sure "it depends", I think that >80% of the players I play with would have never folded Aces there, but in this case I guess I chose the least profitable option out of the 3 I had.

I would just call there. I put him on AA or KK. Therefore, I don't fear the board texture as I normally would. 110 into 170 tells me he'll be around through the turn. If there's another diamond I Turn bet 250 and then there's no way he won't gii on the river. I CRaise there 70% of the time but not against a solo opponent who we think is that strong.

Tough luck, but correct play. So now you know against this opponent to c/r basically all your draws as well. He's dumping the top of his range far too easily.

Edit: I think your raise size was too small and screamed value. If you make it 350, you plausibly make it look like you want fold equity with a drawing hand.

Also, when he flashed AA, did it include a diamond?

It has nothing to do with fearing the board texture, it's that we have tons of draws in our range so we can and should raise our value hands as well - and we want to be able to jam the turn OOP. There's too many runouts that will prevent us from getting max value from KK/AA.

What draws are in our range besides 109s and AKs? You're opening from EP and calling raises with K10s, A10s, etc? When you have AA on this flop and are facing the action OP presented you're mainly just concerned with running into sets, there aren't many super strong draws here imo.

We have 9 combos of sets in our range. Maybe 3 more of QJs for a total of 12 value combos. It's not hard to get to that many combos of draws such that we should be playing those parts of our range fast (especially if this guy is going to fold AA to a raise). 4 combos of T9s, 4 of AKs, add in just a few ATs (which I absolutely would play this deep) or KTs and you're there.

If he has a one pair hand it sounds like we'll likely only get two streets of value.

I check/call the flop, expecting him to check back a lot of turns and we can go for a bet of 280 into 400 on the river.

His range is made up of mostly AK followed by AA/KK. Of course we can't entirely rule out the possibility that he reraised us light.

I'm not afraid of a third diamond (there is only one combo of AK). I'm also not that afraid of an A or a K (he'll make one pair with AK more often than hitting set over set). I am a little worried if a T peels off.

Against a thinking player this is entirely going to depend on your image in his mind. If you can actually have bluffs here besides AKdd then go ahead and raise. I'm exploitatively folding overpairs a lot here so I suspect he might too. Unless someone has shown me they can show up with 89dd here I'm generally assuming they aren't capable.

i think this is a pretty solid post. $350 might be slightly large but i agree with the logic and think OP should be x/r this board.

i saw OP's results and still stand by it. obv adjustment is to be mixing in some more bluffs vs this villain