V(3200, UTG+1) Middle 20s white guy. Inexperienced player. Doesn’t have concept of pot size, raise size. Stack size against pot size. Etc. but running hot.

H1: flop all hearts. PFR cbet, call and call. Turn he check called 3b with A high flush draw out of position and then called 4b jam. 3 ways(1700) and he won on river
H2:He raised to 50 preflop with QQ and bet 50 on flop T87.Turn 6 he bets 100 river 3 he bets 100
H3: he donk leads 100 three ways pot on QT8 two spades with K8o. Turn 9 he bet 125 again. River blank he bet 200.

The hand:

Button straddled to 10. BB called. He raised to 50. Hero($2300)called with 77. Btn called also.

Flop(160):Ks4s8h.
Checks around.

Turn(160):7h
V bets 100. Hero raised to 300. V 4b to 600. Strong line for inexperienced player. Hero didn’t like it but called.

River(1360):8c
V bets 200. What do you do?

Previous hands suggest he plays his draws passively and raises big preflop with big pairs. At the same time his lines with QQ and K8o display a kind of happhazard aggression that doesn't really make much logical sense. Therefore I hesitate to make any kind of big-read here.

On river you've got 1650 behind (I think). It's a big stack if you are playing in a capped buy-in game. You want to be able to double up off this bad player, not lose your big stack and be back to 500 or 1,000 with the whale sat on 5,000.

Question is, is this the moment you double up against his AA or the moment you have to reload after paying off his Kings-full or eights full of kings? I honestly have no idea and I don't think we can know against this type of player.

For that reason I think I'd take the cowardly route and just call the 200. It's a big pot already that I'd be pleased to win but if we lose we still have $1,450 to take more shots at this whale's stack.

Lol. Take a break from posting man...you are in every thread and I think your brain is fried.

Not raising here is criminal. This is a classic blocker bet from a fish. He probably has Kxhh and only now realizes his hand is vulnerable on the river but thought he had a monster on the turn. Possibly a slowplayed AA that thought he was being trappy on the flop.


He's never betting $200 into $1350 with a motherf***** full house.

Bodybuilder - usually I'd agree but was going on this read in OP.

I'm not convinced I'm right though hence admitting it's a cowardly decision to flat river.

My brain may also be fried. Hard to tell from my perspective

Ship if he puts busted /'s in your range and likes to hero call. $700-800 otherwise.

River is a perfect card for getting max value either with villain seeing it as a good bluffing card or villain having it himself.

i think clicking it back to like 650, 700 is reasonable.

its honestly hard to know because it looks like a blocker bet, but villians do tend to play the nuts goofy.

tough to get value from worse

I guess his value hand is KK and 88 if he has that it's pretty gross.

But this player probably isn't betting small like $200 with KK.

I think I click it back to $500 and hope to get a crying call.

Maybe he thinks your full of **** and jams?

I wouldn't blame you if you just called river - but I'm going $500

Not so sure Ragequit is wrong. The issue is that the conclusion seems near inescapable that he has lied about his hand, either OTF or OTT. If he's lying OTT then he's bluffing and we don't need to raise. If he's lying OTF... your proposal is that he has Kx or AA there. I find the idea that an inexperienced player checks those hands there less believable than him betting 200 OTR with a boat, given the information about his cluelessness with sizing and given how bizarrely people tend to play when they flop the nuts.

The other alternative is that he's not lying at any point, which involves having exactly 65s. I think it would be kind of inconsistent though for him to be aggressive enough to raise 65s pre, but passive enough to check his gutshot OTF on an obvious cbetting board. He appears to show in H1 that he knows what cbetting is.

This is one of those hands that it's pretty hard to give advice on because it's not really a poker theory question, the question is "what kind of player is V exactly" and we only have OP's presentation of him to go on. Like it's possible OP is overemphasising this guy's difficulty with sizing and underemphasising him just being a complete button masher, in which case my whole post here is drivel. I could definitely imagine either flatting or jamming here at the table depending on my exact impression of V.

Sound like when he doesn't know what to do he just bets. I'm definitely raising this river to an amount that AA and AK can call, and making it like $800 more. This $200 is basically a check.

Given the description and background you gave about the V in this hand, part of me just wants to rip it in. In terms of the pot and stack sizes it seems reasonable, as it'd be less than a PSB. A lot of players, especially inexperienced players, look at bets and raises in terms of actual dollar amounts though, and a ~$1400 river raise may blow away all his holdings that you're ahead of. So in the end I'd make it something like $650 and try to get a call from his entire range. If he 3! jams on you, I'd throw up in my mouth, but would sigh-call it off given the history of this V.

The 200 seems super weak, but when he clicks it back ott, is he ever really doing that with AK? The argument can be made for aces since ppl get so sticky with them, and if his plan was to raise the flop, then it makes sense that he clicks back the turn. I dont think V ever had K8 here either.

AP, make it 700 otr and beat aces, imo.

I think it's somewhat telling that nobody has suggested ripping it in on the turn yet, and I think it's because everyone agrees that V's line through the turn reeks of the nuts. Everyone is completely overruling that based on the river sizing, even though the opening to OP's description of the guy is "Doesn’t have concept of pot size, raise size" which is actually kind of a heavy hint that he has the nuts imo, I mean it's basically "don't make reads based on his betting size" where his betting size is the one and only reason people have for not thinking he flopped the nuts.

I try not to be led by OPs dropping hints but in this case I'm operating more on this guy's flop and turn play and I'm happy to write off later weird behaviour as part of this theory, because after all:

"Otherwise normal seeming" is a stretch here, but there's no evidence to suggest that this guy is the kind of player to check AA on this flop, nor to click it back OTT.

I suppose my main issue with the small-river-raise route is it risks us folding to an unreadable river-3bet when there's already soooo much money in the pot.

So the upside of the plan is an extra $400 but the downside is potentially a bad river fold when we could have just picked up the current $1,560 pot.

When our stack is very large compared to pot we protect our stack. When the pot is very large compared to our stack we try hard to win the pot.

Here the pot is 300bb which is absolutely large but SPR is 1:1 because we happened to start hand with a nearly 500bb stack. So I think our goal is to give ourselves the best possible chance of winning the pot because it's absolutely large. Because V is clueless and hard to read we have to conclude that a small raise poses an unnecessary risk to us winning the huge pot.

If we were 100% calling his river 3bet shove of course I'd be happy to raise any size on the river to induce. I just don't think that's the case and if it isn't I don't think we should raise at all.

Poker is alive and well in 2018 if a button clicker’s calling range is exclusively over-boats when the front door and back door flush draws both brick out and he has a multitude of Kx, 8x and 56 combos that are going to be in a bluff catching mood when you jam it in his face.

If you’re not raising the river you have huge leaks or are playing in a game you’re not rolled for. We’re also 230 BBs effective, not 500.

Thanks All

Here is result:

Hero raised to 850. V tank tank tank tank tank called

Hero showed 77 and V flipped over

^ JohnnyBuzz yeah true, forgot straddle was on - that'll be my fried brain, kindly diagnosed at a distance by Dr Bodybuilder.

Of course you are absolutely correct to raise river against a villain if he has the range you give him here.

My assumption is the villain described in OP would seem to be unlikely to have any of those hands if he were playing this hand consistent with how he played the other hands referenced in OP.

Obviously if you're de-emphasising OP's reads and instead ranging this V based on your experience of inexperienced players then the reason you and I differ in our opinions is due to using different data.

My huge leaks and tiny bankroll are irrelevant in this particular situation.

Ignoring the incomplete nature of the HH’s, a guy that ends up in a raised pot and donks three streets with K8o on a QT89x board is just clicking buttons with no rhyme or reason. I don’t know what you’re gleaning from there that places his calling a raise range at exclusively KK/88.

OP...

He just tried a bet OTF there and then had no idea what to do when he got called.

I think you're confusing not knowing how to play poker with not having a thought process. Confusing cluelessness with total randomness. When there's a deliberate attempt to deceive like there was OTF here, it's very different. Like the argument here is "he didn't know what to do with Kx/AA on Kxx flop" which is absurd. If anything what the HHs show is that he's overeager to bet. It's not just some wild coincidence that I predicted that he flopped the nuts and then he showed up with the flopped nuts.

It is kind of a coincidence given this is 2p2 and people post coolers and hands they lost at a disproportionately higher rate than hands they won.

Johnny-Buzz

1) see spoiler above

2) I think ChrisV put his finger on it: it's obvious the Villain was lying about his hand on flop or turn.

That's because in all the previous hand histories, as incomplete as they are, it seems like V is completely straightforward; aggressing when he has a pair, playing passive when he's drawing.

Combined with OP's read that V is inexperienced and clueless on sizings (also demonstrated in other HH) it's not a great leap to conclude he's probably only raising big preflop with the bigger pairs and big unpaired. If he's inexperienced he's not going to understand why SC or AXs are worth raising preflop. On the other hand it's obvious to a naïve player that bigger cards and especially big pairs are "good" starting hands.

So my hypothesis was he's naïve and straightforward and I ran through the hand accordingly;

First he raises big preflop (straddle makes little difference if he's naively thinking in absolute $$$ terms, though I did overlook this) so I conclude he has big pairs and big unpaired hands.

Second he checks flop so I figure he missed with AQ/AJ because I think he'd bet any pair.

Third he bet/raises turn when it only improves 77, K7 and 87. We know he can't have 77 and it's unlikely he raises K7 or 87 preflop but fails to bet the flop because that's not straightforward. So I conclude he has not played straight forwardly in this hand and that's a divergence from what we've seen of his approach so far.

Question is what would make a naïve player stop playing straightforwardly? I suppose hitting flop really hard might do it.

So if this V only takes this line with flopped 2-pair+ he's only got 3 combos of boats we beat on river (and possibly he doesn't raise 44 preflop anyway). If this hypothesis is actually an accurate theory of how V plays then he cannot call our raise and lose here more often than he can call and beat us.

This is what I was trying to say, just in far fewer words!

And this...