This hand occurred Thursday night. Effective stacks are $750. We are playing 5-handed, because a few people have recently busted and others are up from the table for some reason. Also of note, hero has chip racks on the table and has made it clear he is leaving at his big blind (two more hands).

Villain: A solid 2/5 reg who has some history with hero that goes back several months. The first time we played together, I bluffed him off his KK on a J75Tr board with a turn c/r, and I know he hasn't forgotten it.

On the hand right before this one, another good reg opened the button and Villain 3-bet from the BB. The reg called and Villain bet 3/4 pot on a T92 flop. The reg called, and on the 8 turn, Villain bet 3/4 pot again and the reg folded. Villain showed a 7 and smiled while mucking his hand.

Hero: Sitting on about $1800 thanks to a recent hot streak at the end of my session, after mucking everything for the first 8 hours. Viewed by Villain as mostly TAG but certainly capable of making moves, due to our history.

***The Hand***

Hero (CO) raises to $20 with KQ
Villain (SB) calls
BB calls

Pot (minus rake): $55
Flop: Q72

Villain checks
BB checks
Hero bets $45
SB c/r to $175
BB folds
Hero ???

Hero Folds. even if he is c/r with a hand that you beat like Ahxh or 7hxh he has plenty of equity vs you and is not folding. OTOH if you are convinced he is bluffing because of some strong live reads, and he has a bare flush draw with 8h9h type hand then raise all in and hope he doesnt have a set.

Side note: if this is a casino game(non home-game) and your planning on playing until your BB dont tell anyone, you are giving away free information. wait until its your BB, tell the dealer to deal you out and rack your chips.

fold

Certainly could be a quick stab at a departing winning player who presumable doesn't want to get tangled up for stacks a couple of hands away from booking a nice win. (Perhaps goes to what previous poster said about keeping that info mum).

So - he's likely only got 22/77 or a FD (probably a NFD). I guess the first consideration I have is whether this villain will barrel after making the turn c/r. If he's capable/likely to do that - I'm inclined to fold.

ps - even if you give him all suited ace - he's got 46% equity

If this isn't in our continuing range then what is? 77/22 obviously. AA/AQ without a heart? A7s? NFD? We are potentially being heavily exploited by folding this to this player, especially when he knows we are leaving soon. It's not like we're up against a loose passive fish who we can b/f all day long.

I think we should call in position against a solid TAG with a good idea of which turn cards are bad for us.

If KQ is within the top ~40-45% of your flop bet range, call and see a turn. If not, you can fold.

It's probably within the top, so call. Otherwise, you will be crushed against a balanced range long term, since most of his range here should be bluffs.

If you weren't using the term balanced right though, and villain's range here is like 75% 2 pair+, 25% nut flush draws, we can fold.

I'm using the term balanced correctly here. I'm ranging Villain on 77, 22, Ax heart combos, 7x heart combos and maybe some other heart combos that can pick up equity on some turn cards (KJhh, 89hh, etc.). He never has two pair in this spot, fwiw.

My thoughts exactly. But if we're going to call the flop, we have to be prepared to call down and lose to 22 and 77 on turn and river bricks, correct?

I fold and don't even think twice. If hes bluffing, good for him.

If KQ is in our best 40% cbet range we likely cbet too much.
3betting flop is the worst option here.

How can c-betting a flop with KQ on a Qxx flop that includes a flush draw possibly be our worst option?

Open folding would be the worst option, but checking sucks pretty hard also. Cbetting is the clearly the BEST option. If youre afraid to bet TP because you might get check raised, you're going to have a long day.

He didn't say c-betting flop was the worst option, he said 3-betting, i.e. coming over the top of villain's check-raise.

Oh, sorry. My bad. I misread obviously.

I think a balanced range would actually have significantly more air here. Like at least1 air combo for each of the NFD combos plus a few more.

If we are folding TPGK here to a truly balanced range it's instantly profitable for v to bluff us with ATC.

If otoh v's range is entirely sets and semibluffs with good equity (the range op is suggesting) an exploitable fold is fine as he's going to have enough equity to easily dbl barrel us and may be comitted to 3 barreling.

There really aren't too many bad turn cards for us against this range, however.

Hearts Aces 7s being the most obv I guess roughly 1/3 of the deck. Like you said are you committed to calling down. I'm just saying it's easier vs a truly balanced range than one that's all sets and draws.

This is correct. A balanced range for villain here should looks something like 30% sets or AQ, 70% bluffs. For there to be that many bluffs, the bluff part must consist of more than just flush draws since there aren't a huge number of possible flush draws in his range.

76s or 78s, 66x, 55x, A10 are the types of hands that should fill the rest of his bluff range.

KQ should certainly go into our flat flop range, but I'm not certain it needs to go into our "call all the way down to river" range.

We only need to call all the way down w/ ~20% of our flop bet range to not be exploited against a balanced range (assuming he bets like 3/4 pot on turn and river).

AQ, AA, KK, and QQ may fill that 20%, meaning we can fold KQ on the turn or river.

***RESULTS*** (sort of)

This thread could have been a PAHWM, but I didn't want to give away the fact that I decided to call on the flop before getting some discussion on it first.

Anyway, I called.

Pot: $405
Turn: T

Villain thinks for a full minute, staring at the board, seems to be counting/doing math in his head, then finally bets $225, leaving himself $330 behind.
Hero ???

Since you have history with v what are his bluffing tendencies? Is he likely to 3 barrel his bricked draws or marginal sdv (esp since he's oop)?

I don't have enough history with him to answer that question, unfortunately. The background I gave was all I pretty much have -- and that maybe he'd want to "get back at me," although I wasn't really accounting for that at all during the hand.

The fact that he also 3-bet pre OOP the hand before and showed a 7 against another good reg I think is the most telling thing we have for this hand as far as tendencies are concerned.

Shove turn seems like the best option once you flat the flop. Flatting flop obviously means you could lose a big pot, but if you are calling flop it is because you think he has a lot of draws in his range. The 10 completes none of them. Shove now for max value from draws and if he has a set we stack off.

Flatting turn would be bad as it allows him to freeroll us with his draws and still stack us on river with his sets. Folding a blank turn after calling flop also seems suboptimal. If you were planning to do that, you should fold the flop.

balanced range being 70% bluffs, are you nuts?

The OP answers itself, if his range is truly balanced of course you can't fold.

Also, his stack size isn't revealed until you update the hand, but given that stack size, and the description of opponent as balanced, you can't fold this hand if the draw bricks.

I said effective stacks are $750 in the opening paragraph, though I guess I didn't put it in an obvious place, so easy to overlook.

If he's balanced, he'll bet turn 70% of the time. If his turn sizing is 1/2 pot and we call, pot will be 800 with ~400 behind. He'll then bet river 75% of the time with that bet being a bluff 25% of the time.

That means his flop raise must be 61% bluff to be balanced. But that's if his bluffs have no equity. Since his bluffs have some equity (we assigned him some flush draws) he can bluff more than 61%.

After rechecking the exact amount behind, I'll correct my post:

A balanced flop raise range for villain should look something like 35% sets or AQ, 65% bluffs.

OP, you need to write out your entire pre opening range and flop bet range, and flop call raise range.

At this point I think KQ will go into either the call turn, fold river range or fold turn range.

AK+ would probably have to go into the call turn + call river range.