He just got 480bb in the middle

Why didn't you raise turn?

As played you have to call it off your hand is extremely underepped if you're beat its because you didn't raise the turn

Guy just knows you're playing well, knows you have a set heavy turn calling range, and has AA for value more than AK/Q as a master class bluff. I personally have some better calling hands here including AA at some frequency, JJ of course, and 3 KTs that might float this deep sometimes.

For anyone raising a street, you have a lot of work to do.

I mean, good for him if he found the guts to do this with some sort of T9s type hand, but I doubt this player archetype is capable of playing chicken for stacks.

At what point in this hand would you feel comfortable getting 480bb in the middle?

Cool spot, I think its a call

I don't think villain took a great line if he had aa - its hard to get max value
I'm also not really convinced villain would take this line with qq, betting a larger proportion of pot on a good card for hero range
That leaves jj, ak and ax 2p hands where this line looks a lot more reasonable (or at least consistent with the bet sizing)

So if we give villain something like 1 combo of aa, all combos jj, .5 combos of qq vs all combos ak, various aces up seems like a mandatory call, if villain can have kt here he can also some weaker and bluff/bluffy hands so it would remain a call

All of you who want to call, how many times have you seen someone stick in almost 500bb on a bluff? I have seen this maybe once in about 1500 hours or so.

It could be that the games are much wilder in Australia (or the US) than where I play, but still it surprises me how many people think this is a call. Based on the potsize alone this would be a clear fold in my casino. I guess I'm just trying to say how difficult it is to weigh in on this spot as an outsider who doesn't know anything about the existing gameflow.

it´s not a bad point.
otoh, how often did you see a 7.5k stack in a 2/5 game?

I just need some serious history with villain to consider this is ever a bluff, and I'm not seeing that here. The more I think about it, 77 is a fold. Very curious about results

Terrible spot. I'd fold, but more out of could not stand losing such a large spot. If you have ice water veins or the stakes are not an issue, calling may be right move. Love to see results.

He puts you on a big hand.

Results:

FIFTY DOLLARS?

You played the hand fine until that point but thats a huge leak.

If V has AA, he put in a 3/4 psb expecting what exactly to call OTT? Jx?
If V has QQ, is he really blasting off here OTT? He doesn't block any of the Ax 2P combos that we could have and does he really want us to fold JT?

Once we call OTT, our range is middling hands, draws, and some % of the time we have 2P or a set. If V has a strong hand, why is he shoving for 1.5psb? Are we calling with busted spades? Are we calling with Jx? 7x?

His hand feels more like Ks+Q/Jx and he thinks we floated OTF with a weak Ax and he's trying to push us off it. Also hands that flopped GSSDs make sense too

Granted, I want to hear the hand that we called the 2x psb OTR and we were good



When the turn or river is a 7

Quick aside: The $50 isn't a huge leak at all. I'm comfortable we can give away 10BB every single time <we flop a set at 2/5 and someone jams 366 BB OTR and we have a really close decision and we end up folding and V doesn't show> without making any noticeable difference to our win rate.



I think the moral is that we should consider how we'll respond to an increased likelihood of bluffing before we take a line that under-reps our hand.

Of course, we were fully prepared for a more standardly sized bet on the river but we should also consider that sometimes we face decent V's who can recognize a capped range and a huge overbet bluff opportunity and who has overbet bluffed before.

It's often considered Divinely Revealed Truth that we should never act in a way that folds out someone's bluffs. That's not a terrible first approximation, but a more nuanced approach is to consider whether we're encouraging some bluffs that we then won't call. After all, when we fold out a bluff that we aren't going to call, we fold out the absolute nuts.

No, I'm not suggesting we should always try to fold out every V's bluffs; I am suggesting it's not quite as black and white as sometimes it sounds. Deep stack poker against decent V's doesn't really go well when we're just applying rules of thumb.

We played this hand very passively: the only aggressive action we took was our PFR. I think that can be a perfectly good line, but it's not a good idea to play hands passively and then fold to aggression.

*If* we were going to do that, *then* we should have taken aggressive action earlier in the hand. Taking aggressive action earlier in the hand may, in theory, not be as good as laying back, but it's way the hell better than laying back and then folding. It's not actually a crime to take a somewhat less good line that we can effectively execute rather than to take a theoretically superior line that we're not comfortable going through with.

I realize like this sounds like I'm faulting OP's play. That's not my intention. I've often advocated snap folds when V is effectively turning his hand faceup, so I get the difficult decision here. (And "difficult" very often means "roughly the same EV whichever decision we make".)

All I'm suggesting is that we shouldn't consider folding out a potential bluff to be horribly negative EV. Sometimes when we're passive, we're encouraging V to exploit us. This hand just happens to be an example of that.

50 is literally nothing for peace of mind. Villains just massive spew clicking buttons. Guess it worked but might as well just do this every single hand.

that´s totally results oriented. most of the time, we do exactly what we don´t want by taking your line, we fold out his garbage and isolate us against the range that beats us.
most of the time, he either checks or bets something "normal" otr which we snap off or shove ourselfes.
We just happened to run into this ubersick spot 500bb deep against an ubersicko. how often do you run into spots like this? how often do you experience this river action? it was totally unexpected.

I respectfully disagree.

The fact that it was a hard decision and that we ended up folding is an illustration of something I see as blind faith in the 2P2 community: folding out bluffs is inherently bad and you are a Bad Poker Player if you ever do that.

That simplistic and ignores important theoretical and real-world effects.

I'm NOT saying we should routinely seek to fold out bluffs.

I'm saying we should evaluate V's bluffing range and the foreseeable consequences of both keeping them in and folding them out.

I'm saying we should not be blindly thinking that handling possible bluffs is a decision that requires no thought. I believe I see too much of that type of thinking. (I believe it's often blended with "only folding worse and getting called by better", as if that's all the thought that's ever needed).

I am saying the following:

a) Encouraging someone to bluff when they're still not going to bluff enough is just donating equity. If someone bluffs half PSB 10% of the time on the river, we should fold our bluff catchers. If we encourage them to bluff 15% of the time, we should still fold our bluff catchers. All we've done is donate some money to them. It's better to get his bluffing frequency to 0 if we can -- perhaps by getting him to fold his bluffs.

b) Bluffing hands very rarely have 0 equity. Folding out opponents equity adds to our equity. We want to keep their bluffs in only when the equity they'll donate back by continuing to bluff exceeds the equity we give the by letting them draw against us. If he's not going to bluff enough to make up for that equity, perhaps we should fold out his bluffs.

c) Sometimes we will make FTOP errors. Keeping bluffs in with the expectation that we will snap them off 100% of the time is objectively incorrect. Sometimes the nutworst card will come and we'll fold. Sometimes V will bet enough that we decide he's not bluffing after all and we'll fold. Sometimes we'll think we pick up a live read that we think means we should fold and we fold. The fact we might sometimes incorrectly fold means we should be somewhat more likely to fold out his bluffs.

The truth is that keeping bluffs in is very often something we should do. But a reflexive, "you're folding out bluffs! Bad poker player, bad!" is overstating it. This hand is an excellent example of one of the reasons that's true.

This hand is a great example of exquisite play by two players who respect one another's game. Villain in this hand had a perfectly good handle on hero's turn calling range and there is nothing under-repped about it. 77 and JJ are perceived to call call a lot, especially when V is holding KQ no spade exactly. V simply found the nut river+nut bluffing hand with which to fold out hero's entire range (enough of the time, including 77/JJ). It's a really well played hand by Villain -- or perhaps it was just an accident and he was just gonna 'rep AA' and pile it in because he didn't know what else to do.

Point is, otr against a player whose game I respect (but is mostly tight), I'm ok with folding 77 because it's not even the strongest hand in my perceived range and V is aware that his perceived range contains hands better than 77 that will bet for value and I do not think that includes AK ever. You don't click call because you think you under-repped yourself against a player that knows how to extract from his opponent under-repping in the first place.

but nah. its just blind button clicking hoping he doesnt have it.

Its very clearly this and nothing else.

Paying $50 still clearest mistake ainec

We are better off calling with AQ or AJ, or QQ/JJ if we have those in our range. All of those are better calls so we're not at the very top of our range. But still very high up there, and theoretically I think a call is correct. Folding seems very exploitable

Does anyone have any input on bet size incongruity? Villain went from 1/3 pot, 2/3 pot, to 1.5 pot overbet. Does this line makes sense with villain's represented hands of JJ/AA/QQ or KT. I can find reasons why each of those hands seem odd at different points. In my game, big changes in bet size relative to the pot means either villain made a big hand or is bluffing. Not sure if that is true anywhere else.

JJ seems like it should go for bigger value earlier.
AA seems like it should go for bigger value earlier as well.
QQ seems like it might not barrel OTT with the Ace.
KT 3b OOP and then barreling is not as likely.
AQ is too good to turn into a bluff here.
AJ same as above.

With the benefit of hindsight, KQ makes sense at pretty much every point. 3b pre depends on how he views hero raising from the button, which can be wide. OTF is a small cbet hoping for a cheap fold. OTT is a barrel with a chance to improve to the nuts. The river pairs our queen but villain should know it won't hold up.

Whether I would be able to call in this spot live is questionable, but when I read the OP my thoughts were that either villain made his hand OTR or it's a bluff, and the made hands seem out of whack with his line. Am I dumb? With how I've been doing lately, everything feels dumb.

Yeah, it's me. Are you doing well live??

Online is dying really hard, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone tbh lmao.

Lowkey I was hoping you had called in this hand, haha. It just seemed pretty bluffy to me, and not blocking any bluffs helps. Also, your hand looked extremely weak here and you'd have to level yourself like crazy with Ax for his shove to be profitable with his value range

This is a tough spot. IMO, whether you have to call with 7-7 depends on three factors:

1) What does your button raising range look like pre-flop? Are you always coming in for the raise or do you limp behind with a good deal of hands that you would normally open with due to less fold equity?

2) How frequently are you trapping aces pre-flop (flatting the 3-bet)? I'd think that you'd do it occasionally, but mostly four-bet them.

3) How many combos of A-Qo are you floating on the flop? I'm playing a mixed strategy with A-Qo here, folding the hands with a club in them.

In this spot, I show up to the river with 41.25 combos (I sometimes limp behind with sevens pre-flop). Given his bet size, we need to defend with 38% of our hands to remain unexploitable in the polar/bluff-catcher scenario. Since he generally has a range advantage on us with this board texture, I'd advocate calling with 15 combos here.

Let's write out the potential calls:
A-A (1), Q-Q (3), J-J (3), 7-7 (2.25), A-Qs(2), A-Qo(3), A-Js(2), Q-Js (1)

for a total of 17.25 combos. This means that it's possible to fold 7-7 if we call with Broadway two pairs. Should we do that? I think we can, because of blockers. Assuming Villain is only doing this with a set of 7s or better for value, Villain can have nine of those combos if we have 7-7, but only eight if we have A-Q, A-J, or Q-J. If he's only doing this with J-J or better, then it makes even more sense to use two pair as a bluff catcher, since he's then reduced to five combos.

In sum, 7-7 is a borderline fold according to my strategy, but it's very easy to construct a reasonable river range that makes this a call.

Here's how this answer can change according to the three factors mentioned above:

1) The wider your button raising range, the wider you need to defend the three-bet, which means you show up to the river with a wider range. This increases the number of combos you need to be calling with, so 7-7 should be a call with a wide button raising range.

2) The more aces you trap, the more nutty hands you can have on the river, so you don't need to call with 7-7 as often.

3) The more A-Qo hands you float on the flop, the more strong bluff catchers you have on the river, which means you don't need to call down with sevens.