Linecheck please , ty in advance.

Game is 5-5 nl, max buyin of 2500, 9-handed, saturdaynight about 3,5 hours into the session.

Hero: Quiet 30-something, playing somewhat taggish. Showed down QQ vs AQ on JT98K board (i 3bet pre, c-c'd every street) and Ad8d on an A high board where i backed into the nutflush vs a fun player. I'm down about 800, currently ~1200 stack.

Villain: friendly 30-something hipster reg, ive played a couple of sessions with him, seems like a typical decent reg. He's likely somewhat valueheavy but definitely not nitty. A couple of hands earlier he bet turn and river vs preflop raiser on AKQxT with T9o and somehow got called and won . Villain bought in for the max and covers.

MP and HJ: MP is new to the table and just posted, HJ is a touristy/businessman looking fun player. I've iso-raised his limps twice before, with not much succes. Neither player really relevant to the hand.

OTTH:
MP posts and checks his option.
HJ limps
Hero is on the BTN with AcKs and makes it 35
Folds to Villain in the BB who makes it 120.
MP and HJ fold.

Villains valuerange is probably AQs, AK,JJ+. I cant recall villain ever 3betting light and he seems somewhat cally in these spots, but i'm reasonably sure he has at least some 3bet bluffs in his range. Either way i don't want to 4bet gii vs that range and folding seems ridiculous, so.....

Hero calls 120.

Flop (275)
Th8s7d

Check, check.

Not sure what his checking range is here, but this board definitely favors my range over his. He might have 99, TT or T9s once in a blue moon but i have almost all 2pair+ combos so i guess he's pot controlling often here. For that reason i check behind. Standard??

Turn (275)
Th8s7d As

Villain bets 160. Hero calls.

Again, seems standard.


River (595)
Th8s7d As 9s

Villain checks.
Hero bets 440

So in my opinion i'm mostly up against AQs (2 combo's) or AK (6 combo's) here, which i expect him to mostly fold. He also has 1 combo of AA, and lets give him 1 random combo of TT and 1 random combo of QJs for good measure. I expect him to call with all of those. So 3 calls vs 8 wins.

To be clear: the backdoor flush comes in and i have the Ks.
I definitely have KsQs, JsTs and QJs in my preflop range, as well as 77-TT obv.



Did i range him correctly? Good bet? Good sizing? Or just a spewtard play ? Let me know.

Will post results later on.

I kinda like it.

4bet pre

I don't think you need to bet so much if you're trying to bluff him off AK. Too much money invested trying to get him to fold 1 hand that is also one of the least likely hands for him to have. He could have QJ or KJ on occasion or a 99/JJ that will call. I like a check to make him show his hand. We also can't bet for value and this hand has enough value not to turn into a bluff.

Bet seems too big.. make it smaller to look valuey if you're going to bet imo

Flat pre is fine, esp when he 3b that big over your iso. I dont like 4-betting at all.

Flop should be a bet. He should be x/f'ing here a lot, and even when he doesnt you have a ton of equity and can get free rivers.

Turn std.

River is okay spot to bluff. Would go smaller

You're not going to make money trying to bluff LLSNL players off of TPTK. Most of the time, you're going to be bluffing with the best hand. Anything better than TPTK is going to call it, not believing you played this with a backdoor FD or a set.

And we do what to a 5 bet?

I don't think 5/5 descent regs are typically getting into btn/blind preflop raising wars anymore. It's just usually not worth it when there are 3-5 morons sitting at the table


As for the hand...


I like the way you played it. We block the nuts and have a value hand that can get called by worse

Thanks to all for the replies!

I somewhat agree with the people saying i could've sized down but i'm also pretty sure i bet around the same when i do have the flush. Maybe i should size down in that case as well.

Anyway, the results:

Wow, you found the one player in LLSNL who could do this. You want to be at his table all of the table.

I like your play but villain's fold is ridiculous.

I don't really think so. 440 is a big bet in relation to the pot and in real life $. If we're in Vs shoes, there is a flush and a 4 straight on the board, we have a bluff catcher with top set because how many Vs at this level are turning made hands in bluffs in position?

Can't fold AA here. If villain isn't 3betting light, it's literally the best hand in his range and we can be betting worse for value, in addition to the occasional bluff.

I can't believe V checked the flop. Once he did, I can't believe H didn't bet flop.

Don't blame V for folding river. Nice bet by H, if a little large.

A) If V isn't 3! Light, he still has a straight in his range, so a set isn't the best hand in his range

B) just because a hand is "the best hand in our range" != we must call a large river bet. Especially when the best hand in our range is like the 37th nuts


Had OP phrased this thread as:
" V has a set, this is how the hand went down.... what amount can I bet OTR to get him off it?"

I would have said basically no realistic amount because most Vs aren't folding sets except for extreme situations

What do we think of villain b/f the river?

I actually check a lot of my over pairs on flops like this, so I would get to the river a lot in roughly the similar situation that V did. If I was V and I thought OP was a bluffer, I would check/call. If I thought he was straight forward, I would bet/fold. But for me, it's all going to depend on my view of my opponent.

I'm not shocked at the fold. Whether it's a bad fold from V's perspective depends on his reads of us.

There are a number of straights and flushes in our range (AdJd, KsQs, QJs, JsTs is 7 combos). There are also plenty of worse combos we could have.

But that doesn't help V at all. If we're nitty and don't bluff very much, we probably don't have a bluff. If we're more aggro and will stab scary boards, we could well have a bluff here.

What matters isn't our combos, but our tendencies.. He eventually decided that the "quiet taggish" opponent was sufficiently unlikely to be bluffing here that a call for 3/4 pot wasn't profitable.

Turn this around and ask the forum "nitty opponent bets 3/4 pot on 4-str, 3-fl board; should I call with top set?" and I very much doubt it's going to be a chorus of "Yeah, nitty opponent it totally bluffing more than 30% here!"

This time he read us wrong. I've heard that sometimes reads aren't perfectly accurate.

In my games, the regs are at least roughly thinking about ranges and can lay down TP+ if they think we're unlikely to be bluffing. At 1/2 I'd be much less inclined to bluff here. But at 5/5, against a reg, I think it has merit. V is not always calling, even if they beat us. And if they're calling AK, it's probably because they think we're on a more or less pure bluff, in which case their AQ is good too. Even if they call all better and lay down all worse, as long as they're folding AK about 90% of the time, the bluff is good. It gets better with even a slight chance that they fold better or call with worse.

Anyway, my point is I think turning our hand into a bluff is thin, but reasonable. I don't think V made some horrible error in folding. It may well be perfectly reasonable from his perspective, given our image.

We have plenty of worse for value here too. 99 is obvious, 98s and T9s are plausible, and other sets might play like this occasionally. Throw in a few bluffs and AA is an easy call.

Middle set or middling 2P on a 789TA board with 3 to a flush (not really back door since flop was checked through)? That's not for value against most V's in my games. I think I like your game better .

I wouldn't bluff river because I think you are ahead a decent amount of time here. I wouldn't value bet this board neither, villain is probably not calling with worse. I'd check behind and make him show his cards. But anyway, just saw results and well played I think in villains place I'd also tank for 10 min and sight fold lol

Crazy results. I personally would have checked the river and lost as hero. Called the river and not feeling great about it if villain, but won haha.

And that is definitely not an easy spot to be in for villain. Villain might have not realized that our flatting range of his 3! does not include as many Jacks as villain must have thought. Honestly, that is what won this bluff, which realistically our flatting range of his 3! only includes 4 combos of AJs and 6 combos of JJ. Little bit loose but okayish to toss QJs in there too. KJs might not be there. All AJo, KJo, QJo really wouldn't be flatting here, it would be a fold pre, and I believe that last part was not something villain realized. All of those offsuit combos are not in heroes range.

I dismiss that 4-bet IP notion where we aren't squeezing any other players out.

The flop play seems reasonable by both players. Hero has a range advantage over villain on this type of texture, so it seems reasonable to check a lot of his range OOP. AKo seems like a crappy bluff in a spot where we should have many better hands.

I like the play. From a theory perspective, AQ with or without a spade is better to use as a bluff because it has less SDV and doesn't block AK as much, but AK is still okay also. The spade blocker doesn't matter much as villain rarely has a flush. There are only three realistic combos of flushes and we're not sure if villain is 3-betting that light. AK is one of the worst hands we can have on this runout with this action and we actually don't have a ton of showdown value. Really only AQ is worse. We credibly rep tons of hands. It's a great spot to turn a showdownable hand into a bluff.

I'd prefer to ship river. Sizing down gives thinner value bets more credibility, but we don't really get to the river with tons of thin value bets as most of the hands that would qualify would have bet earlier. Our range is more polarized on this river.

When over 95% of villain's range is one pair, value betting two pair is pretty standard.

How is villain's range >95% one pair here? What do you think his range is?