not necessarily the flop sizing in and of iteself, villain is usually on the high side, he's generally a low variance, patient type, but the flop to pre sizing, he only went 220 pre, then high on a dry flop, now i'm curious

hero calls

7

v fires 650

Fold. This is one of the worst outcomes for the flop call. You have wheel draws and turned clubs which function as better bluff jams and you definitely can't call.

As I said above, I’m done if a brick comes. 7 is a total brick for our hand.

If V has a worse hand than us, congrats, we have plenty of other hands to defend with

It almost feels like he has TT and he expects zero calls from anything that isn’t an overpair so he’s targeting solely your overpair range with these fairly large bets. Or the other possibility is he just wants us to fold. But that’s just pure speculation.

If you were to call here, you almost assuredly need to call him down OTR because at this point a call means you’re putting him on air

I could see a shove being an interesting play, trying to fold out exactly AK. I’m not sure I would try that though

follow up questions

1. if we 5bet pre, what size are we using
2. if the T were a 9 would be be calling the turn?
3. as the hand was playing out, I was thinking about all the times i just got out of the way when he showed aggression, should that factor in our decison?
4. theoretically, he should have suited kings in his aresenal for a CO vs btn confrontation, so how often vs perfect play should bwe be making the dreaded 3 street call down with AQs?

I don't have an overpair range to this board, i wouldn't f around with JJ+ heads up vs this particular villain

1. 500, though I’m not saying I would 5! AQs.
2. What does the T being a 9 OTT do for us? Our 3! Range is still generally the same. We should hit a T more than a 9. Unless your 3! range includes 97s… but then you’d probably turn a straight draw cause 98s would be there too
3. IMO, no.
4. Super V dependent.

Are you jamming over his flop bet or Pre? Both seem wildly overplaying JJ specifically IMO.

I guess the question is what are you doing with JJ+ pre or OTF?

**Against good players, I don’t have a 5! range, so I would actually have JJ+ here, so maybe I’m projecting some

I think there are a lot of reasons to 5bet 100% of the time with JJ+, he doesn't show down enough to stack off post flop is one of the major reasons, i think this is a perfecto spot for him to run a 3 street bluff, that's all i'm sayin

trust me that there are a lot of times i'm trapping, because i have such a light 3bet range in that spot as everyone should, but not vs a calculated player like this one

i feel like against such a skilled and cautious player i get more money pre than post so flatting range is pretty standard here, i'm playing by the book heads up vs a pro

the 9 is better than the 10 because KTs,ATs, even QTs should be in his range, after all, he bet like he had that pre, if there isn't a T on board then i think maybe call and all rivers, that was actually what was going thru my mind, but KTs makes a ton of sense

i did fold here but i think 5betting pre to 500 is a better play because i didn''t have JJ+ in my flatting range..that's what good players do i guess, force you to define your range vs them

which is exactly why i don't have a 5! range vs good players.

if he knows you can never have any overpair here, that's a leak in your game imo

This hand is dumb. 3bet is fine. Call 4bet unless you’re fairly sure he has KK+, AK. Flop is easy fold to this sizing. You’re at the very bottom of your 4bet calling range. AP, if you think it was somehow profitable to call on the flop then I guess a shove must be profitable on your draw so just push it in on turn. But really fold flop.

EDIT: fold turn. I thought you peeled a flush draw (in which case I said ship it in).

5b ranges exist at 300bb 5T, so they likely can exist in this game too.

i'm not saying a 5! range can't exist. i'm saying i don't have a 5! range vs good players when i'm playing in deep $10 big blind games. it's part of the way i choose to make my overall strategy. i have a 5! range vs bad players but i don't feel the need to break down my range into 5!/4! call/4! fold against a player who actually will understand what that does to me moving forward in the hand. it's a personal preference on my part.

if you or OP chooses to have one, that is fine. people play differently, but that doesn't negate that if OP has 0 overpairs in their range on a T high flop in their 4! call range, that is problematic because what is heros 4! call range made up of?

i guess we should start with what is more fundamental:
- what is Vs assumed CO open range? a general % will do.
- what is hero 3! range on a CO open OTB?
then we can talk about how hero breaks his decision tree into 5!/4! call/4! fold

we already know JJ+ is in the 5! portion

i'm guessing OPs strat is going to leave the 4! call portion extremely thin, at which point it might make more sense to just implement a 5!/4! fold strat and completely remove the 4! call from his range completely.

...and you're so far down that he might be bluffing w better. This isn't 'pick a better spot' advice, but I think this whole hand is you getting OOL for the wrong reasons w the wrong combo on the wrong board.

+1 I hate to have induced you to type all of that out -- somehow I construed your single sentence to mean 'you shouldn't have a 5 range vs good players', which is obv something you wouldn't say.

5 bet ranges existing aren't a reason to have a 5bet range. Unless it's vs a whale who isn't folding we shouldn't have one at this (or really any) depth >200bb. Vs a good player it's straight up terrible.

It's so much easier to just default to "what do the top guys do in this spot" I don't watch a ton of poker and I could be wrong here but if anyone can find a clip of someone who is well regarded 5betting in a heads up pot where they are over 200bb deep I'd like to see it

This is closer to correct than anything else. Which then begs the question why bloat a pot IP when we don't have to? " it's also removing a large portion of our edge in playing postflop better than live players

KT, yeah obv this is blind commentary^^.

However, Like Jspot said his own strat doesn't include 5b and that's entirely viable. Thing is, here, this entire thread is about bluffcatching IP deep in a 4b pot... The hand doesn't sit well with you because this is CO vs BTN, reg on reg, and you're already in 'he has a lot of hands' mode POST flop. So now, adjust pre, as it's viable to have a 5b range that includes a certain amount of AQs
I'll add that bc of the depth, I'd be more inclined to use AQs than AQo IP for playability reasons.

TLDR it's CO v BTN and his 4b range is perceived wide enough for you to have plenty of hands to construct a 5.

I would def have a 5b range in some spots when deep and not in others, although I understand the no 5b logic.

In any event having no overpairs on a T hi flop in a 4b pot is crazy, and what other hands are we even calling the 4b with? And yes obv fold turn.

I agree with jdvs that not having overpairs on Txx in CO vs BTN 4-bet pot is a bit strange. I suspect there is a dynamic between Villain and Hero based off some of OPs recent posts.

OP w do you think your 3bet range looks like in BTN facing a CO open from Villain? I assume some suited broadways, mid pps+, etc. Are you 3betting a lot of Ax, including offsuit varieties? If so, this might be affecting your frequencies in a substantial way and correspondingly affecting your 5bet range construction.

nah, you were right from the get go...this is a player who we ALWAYS 5bet with JJ+, he's too hard to get money out of post flop, and if we do that we have to have some balance, and this has to be a top candidate. i just realized that my mistake was actually just flatting pre if I'm always 5 betting JJ+

mandatory 5bet i think

Thank you! Took the words out of my mouth.

It's not like they're weak-tight relative to an unknown opponent in a $1-3 game. They're correct that AQs is garbage against a guy who five-bets AA, and occasionally KK if he's feeling really frisky. In other words, against your modal $1-3 player.



Also 5T is an almost unintelligible abbreviation. It's like referring to $1-3 games as "ace-trey."

This makes me wonder if we should be constructing our 3!/flat range for board coverage. How are we playing the following in this exact spot?

• 22
• 33
• A5s
• 54s

We should probably be semibluff three-betting all of those except maybe the 54s. I'd 3! some SCs but only down to 87s.

Once we get 4-bet, we should be 5-betting the A5s and calling with 22 and 33, so that puts the other sets in our range on this flop. So as not to cap our range too badly, there might be merit to occasionally flatting the 4! pre with QQ or KK.

Anyway, we really need a good sense of his 4! range to construct both our 3! and 5! ranges, and that's hard to do when half the conversation is built around the premise that no live player would ever 4! anything below queens.

Also regarding whether or not we have a 5! range and whether or not we have a flat-the-4! range...

It seems like against a good player, it would be better to 5! or fold. Ordinarily we're trying to keep SPR higher in position, but against a good player, we might want to lower SPR for the same reasons as though we're OOP.

I'm not saying the skill edge here necessarily overcomes our position. But above, it was stated that especially against a good player you would want to have no 5! range, and to me that seems backwards.

I should have given you guys are little more information on this player

a long time ago when i first played with him he said that the game of NLHE is a fight for the blinds, also, he's on online cash crusher, also, he seems to know all the squeeze spots, he absolutely plays like an online multi tabling cash player

flatting can't be wrong, maintain position, and yada yada, but we absolutely 100% are 5betting our JJ+ range so i think 5betting here is optimum by a lot and flatting in this situation may have been a mistake, i need to go broke here pre

barring that i think i needed to call all 3 streets

5! pre >> soul read post

one other thing to consider...villain probably knows i'm the best player at the table aside from him....

my image: villain probably knows that i crushed online also, knows i know the math, on the other hand, knows that in live poker i'm much more likely to take flops, more deep stacked, less time to play, knows i get impatient sometimes and a little tilty, and knows that this sizing means i'm never folding

i'm sure that factors into this but the bet sizing: villain usually goes 3x pre, this is a wierd raise size for him, it's almost exactly 2.5x....i'm pretty sure not 5 bet was a mistake, but i think he has somewhere around a 6-7% 4! and i have a 5% hand, so def ahead of his range

now he knows that my range pre is capped and with the T onboard he can fold me out of all 77+, overcards, etc, i'm capped and here i have one of the best hands to call down light with