8 people at the table and I am at the HJ (seat 8) with A9. Seat 5, a fish who got lucky all night and has a huge stack straddles. Seat 6, a passive player calls. Both play between 40-50% of their hands and obviously with a straddle I am against a random hand so I decide to raise to 30.

Seat 10 calls, Seat 2 (villain), who is the small blind also calls. Now, villain is relatively tighter than the other 3, since he plays around 30% of his hands. He's also barely aggressive pre flop only raising premiums. A couple of orbits before, he made half pot bets for two streets of a monotone board drawing on the the nut A and earlier in the night he reraised big a hand -which unfortunately don't remember how strong it was- and said that he needed to make the flush pay.

Both seat 5 and seat 6 call.

I ve got a bit less than $480 in front of me which counts as effective.

Flop (120) A K 9

Seat 5 checks, Seat 6 checks, Hero bets 90, Seat 10 folds, Seat 2 raises to 250, seat 5 and 6 fold.

Now, this looks like a board where we have a very strong hand in absolute terms, but it's questionable how many hands we are actually ahead. Moreover, that reraise is pot committing and with the flush draw being out there and completing some of villain's range and scaring the rest of it away if it comes, this looks -at least on first look- as a fit or fold situation.

Let's analyze his range. We have blockers for his AA and 99 and I think it's unlikely he doesn't 3bet his AA and KK pf. So, I think there's only one 99 combo that's at play here. OTOH, AK is very much so part of his range and this makes for 6 combos. These 7 hands absolutely crash us.

Beyond that, there might be Khxh combos, most likely KhQh, KhJh, KhTh. But although we are ahead of those, they have decent equity against us.

Even we go as far as assign him every Khxh combo, his range is ahead of us 61-38 in which case we might get it in because of pot odds. But I think he has a narrower combo flush draw range here, both because he should be folding the weakest part of his range pf and because he might not feel comfortable trying to get it in with something like K7 or K6.

So, in order to be able to continue this hand, we need to think that villain is 3betting us here with AQ. And if we re really lucky he does it with some AJ combos in which case we are crushing his range.

But here's the problem that I have. Even in a relatively aggressive game for live LLNL like 2-5, I don't think that the vast majority of players 3bet in this spot with just top pair even if it's as strong as AQ. Which only means that as gross as it sounds, we need to fold A9 here.

What do you guys think?

great analysis. you forgot about K9, which is in the top 30% of hands and is plausibly in his flop raising range. maybe if we were deeper, we could find a fold, but with 35BB behind and some indication that V is capable of aggression (even if it is with strong hands) as well as a V that is playing 30/5, im not folding. if youre beat, its pretty much a cooler 48BB deep.

how is this a 3! on the flop? plz explain also gii how is qjhh j10hh not in his range?

So using a range of:

99,AKs,A9s,KhQh,KhJh,KhTh,QhJh,QhTh,JhTh,AKo,A9o

Which was put together using your analysis and adding some hands I think should be there, we win 24% of the time, chop 23.5% and lose 52.42%.

I'm not saying this range is accurate, just trying to use it based on your analysis.

Let's pretend he raised flop all in rather than to 250, to simplify this.

EV call = .24(690) + .235(60) - .5242(390) = 166 + 14 - 204.

EV call shove = -$24, so we should fold.

What about the EV of calling with the plan of folding to a turn shove on a but calling on a non-heart? To simplify, let's say the turn is a small card if either heart or non-heart. I'll use the 5 and 5.

EV call flop raise with above plan = .213(-$160) + .787(.279($690) + .2352($60) - .4853($390) = $34+.787($193+$14 - $189.3) = +$47.9

So if we knew for a fact the turn would be a 8 or lower, the plan above wins $47.9 (calculated on flop).

In reality though, there are two main issues I see. First, we are assuming NO bluffs and NO AQs. I don't think that's accurate, but this is very very read dependent. Second, the +$47.9 result will be lower when the turn comes 10 or higher since it gives him a potential straight or trips.

I changed the title since he didn't 3bet you on the flop, he merely raised you.

The big decision to make in this hand is whether you are going all in eventually or not. If you are not, you're best to fold immediately. The reason is that if you call, the pot goes to 620 and you have 230 behind. You'll be getting 4:1 on a shove on the turn no matter what happens which will be difficult to fold. In addition, you'll have committed over 50% of your stack to the hand. Committing 50% of your stack and folding a blank turn is losing poker. So if you are planning to commit to this hand, you want to make sure the villain's range is as wide as possible when stacks go in. In this case, it means shoving. All his FDs have odds to call. His TP hands will call thinking you might have a FD plus he has outs if he's behind.

I think it is a fold at the raise. Just mutter something like "AQ is never good" and move on.

How sure are you that we can exploit him by folding for having too strong of a range? Note if we are folding A9, then we are also folding AQ. Let's pretend our flop betting range is super tight and is AA, KK, AK, KhQh, KhJh, QhJh, AJ, A10, A9, and AQ (62 hands). If we fold all AQ-A9, then that's 46 hands or 74% of the time, allowing anyone to check/raise bluff profitably with ATC (i.e. if villain has 23 he should always check/raise this flop).

They can, but they don't, as one guy said, they don't have the balls at these stakes.

I also agree it's either a shove or fold, I said as much.

My bad on calling it a 3 bet. Yes, his range might include QhJh, JhTh, even QhTh. But that doesn't change our situation.

The question still remains whether his raise includes AQ and I would like to hear Venice expound a bit more on why he think it doesn't.

@Ben: If he's good enough to turn his hand into a bluff on the flop, he's good enough to realize it is dumb to commit over 50% of the effective stacks to a bluff at low stakes. He'll know he'll get called light unless he knows Hero can make a tough laydown.

@Over: Your read is that this is a cautious player unless he has a strong hand. You've shown no weakness at all and he looking to play for stacks. It suggests he thinks he has a strong hand. He could very well have AQ here. However, your read would be off then. Best to go with your read until you have better information.

fold pre

$30 is too small pre. $45-$50 is better sizing. Folding pre is also fine.

Standard shove against almost all players. I would only consider folding against well known uber-nits or OMCs (the no sugar, no cream, variety). If V is playing 30% of his hands pre, then I'm shoving and feeling pretty good about it.

We are essentially committing our stack here so we need ~35% equity (360/1020) to continue.

I don´t think the described player has hearts.

If he folds K9o/A9o pf I think it´s a trivial fold OTF (We are crushed by 7 combos, chopping 2, and only beat 2).

If he calls pf with K9o/A9o and then puts in a big flop raise with it, then it´s a trivial call (crushed by 7 combos, chopping 4, crushing 6 combos).

Passive players don´t raise unless they know they have the best hand though, and I don´t think K9 fits the bill. Only you were there however, and are qualified to make a fair assessment of Villians range.

Don't we lose $360 (480-30-90)if we go allin and lose not $390?
Don't we win $660 (120+90+450) if we go allin and win not $690
Don't we win $150 (.5x120+90+90) if we go allin and chop not $60?

I think we definitely need to add K9s.

Mind blowing analysis! The described Villian is never exploiting us in that way though. I've never met anyone capable of that actually.

Hero needs to confess that he was playing his B- game due to winner's tilt after a great winning month (i.e. suffering from complacency) and extreme tiredness after playing 8 days straight in the heels of 200 hour playing months. So my reads weren't really in depth.

But beyond this, my issue goes much further than the player in question. In one of his books, Ed Miller says that every time we go into a game we need to have a bayesian hypothesis (I am hoping I remember the name of the concept correctly) about how people play. Even though I ve played live for two years now and winning, in a lot of spots, I am still uncertain about villains' ranges. This is such a spot. I don't know if the average 1/2 and/or 2/5 table reraises with top pair good kicker or not.

Put another way, if I have a baseline about the average (or rather the median? ) player's range in such a spot, it's easier for me to say "oh ok, this guy is more conservative, he doesn't do this, or this guy is aggressive, he does this and more". You know what I mean?

So far, I gather from posters' responses that two people think it's unlikely he does this with one pair and another doesn't. My inclination is to side with the first two, although this hasn't set as settled knowledge in my mind. After all, in the heat of the battle, I did assign AQ to villain and shipped regardless (there was also a **** it, I ve got strong two pair component).