Effective stacks $650

Hero opens MP with 88 to 20 over one limper

Active villain OTB raises to 75. Limper folds H calls

(160) Flop 833 H checks V bets 100 H calls

(360) Turn 5 bringing in the front door flush. H thinks for a minute that if the V checks here then he assumes H hit a flush and thus H will bet small on the river to get a crying call from over pairs. If V bets then he could be doing that with AhAx, KhKx, AhKx etc that are all in his 3-bet range.

So H checks V bets 175 H just calls.

(710) River Q putting four to a flush. H checks again assuming V with the Ah, Kh combos will mostly bet here with four to a flush and less than a half pot bet remaining.

Is hero checking here the correct move? Or should he have taken a different line earlier?

Thanks.

I know my old school rule of thumb is about 10:1 is enough to set mine but with people 3b so light these days and not stacking off in 3b pots so much, I'm not so certain.

Flop and turn are good. There's no reason to take away the opportunity for him to bluff.

River there's 300 effective left and 710 in the pot. It's a pretty interesting spot. He shouldn't have any pure bluffs at this point so he either has a flush or some showdown value like black KK, AA, AQ that will probably check back the river and hope to be good. Our range will have a lot of hearts in it also. I don't want him to be able to check back the Jh or Th. Since I think he doesn't have enough total airballs here I just jam on the river to prevent him from checking back a weaker showdown value hand.

Preflop is fairly thin. I will go as low as 10-1 but only against a villain I know will usually stack off with one pair.

Flop call is fine, you should occasionally check/raise to represent a good flush draw. Turn you should mix between leading, check/call and check/raise. Favor leading with the more passive opponents.

River is a pretty obvious shove. Hero's range is heart heavy and villain's range has a lot of check back hands (pretty much anything without the Ah).

I don’t know that his JhJx/ThTx/9h9x are betting half pot on the turn here. You decided to check two streets, I disagree with th bth t two. I think it’s time to check again and let him get the last $300 in for you.

The only hands I think you lose value to by checking are QJhh and JThh which 3b pre and I just don’t see many V’s 3b’ing those hands. They’re almost always flats. I think he either has the Ah here, he’s going to bluff if you check to him, or he’s folding to your $300 donk jam. I just don’t see him calling your jam with anything you beat ever that he wouldn’t bet himself. He would need to find more than 25ish% hands that you’d bluff here and I can’t imagine him thinking you’d bluff donk 25% here.

Just check/raise the flop.

If the flop was 873hhx you would check/raise. Just because you have a boat doesn't mean you shouldn't check/raise. If it was 833r I'd be more likely to flat call since opponent can't have a flush draw yet and you can't rep a flush draw.

Check/raising the flop is the best way to ensure you get all the money from overpairs. He might even still jam AK over the c/r if he's super aggro.

Thank you all for you interesting suggestions. Some additional comments then:

- I ruled out raising the flop because there just isnt much for me balance that with as a bluff ... specially if the V holds Ah or Kh.

- I checked the turn since that was the most obvious draw coming in and if I bet anything decent he might find a fold with over pairs with no heart. But yeah I agree that I should lead or raise here sometimes and call sometimes.

- River is where I was most confused coz if it was me as the V and someone donked 300 on a four-to-a-flush board I would easily fold over pairs with no heart. And if he has a high heart then he should be betting himself. Him holding QhQx is not possible so only JhJx remains (if he 3-bets that) that might check back.

I feel the rest of the hands were either going to bet themselves or fold to a bet and by betting out of game flow I give him a chance to play perfectly.


Results:

PokerSnowie likes min check/raising the turn and jamming the river. I guess the thinking here is we've already gotten max value from bluffs after villain bets the turn, and we're getting maximum value from flushes and some overpairs.

At first I liked check/raising the flop, but we have so many hands that we'd rather flat, even if we can find a few bluffs.

Fold pre, not enough IO to call. Also, 4x after one limper is too small.

+1 to fold pre btw. We didn't get villain's stack in one of the best possible circumstances (villain has an overpair), and we even ended up losing a massive pot in the end.

Nice results oriented advice.

We have a great hand to defend a 3-bet with. If we start folding our pairs we are going to be over-folding to 3-bets by a wide margin.

What are you defending 3-bet with? JJ and QQ and then 4-betting AA, KK, AK?

Yeah, that's not exploitable....

Okay, it's not that I'm being results oriented. The problem with this hand is that we need to stack villain almost 100% of the time to profit flatting here. This hand shows not only that we aren't winning villain's stack 100% of the time, but that we will lose our entire stack here sometimes too (not just the preflop bet).

As far as your proposed range goes, we'll obviously have to put in some bluffs. We'll have to (have to in the theoretical sense...) defend some opens as flats too, but we're not set mining.