Hero ($1000) and Villian covers. V is a 20’s WG reg. Not a ton of history. Can raise as a bluff and mostly is quiet and tight. Definitely goes for value. H is young looking 30’s WG with a tight image. Card dead but have balanced my cbets tonight.

AA utg and raise to $25. 3 callers. V in MP

Flop 753r ($93 after rake) and I lead out $40. Only V calls.

Turn J ($173 no back door draws). I check and V bets $110. I call.

River A. Hero?

I’m kind of torn. Lead is nice if you know he’s going to raise you with a set or two pair. At that point he might be so committed he would just stack off when we 3 bet the river. If he just flats against our lead it’s a pretty bad result. If he just has a 7 it probably doesn’t matter if we lead or check. If he has air we want to check.

Overall I think I like check but it depends. If you lead it’s because you want to get raised so I would lead small. Make it look like you have Ax and want to get hero called by a 7. It also lets us get called sometimes by a hand like a 7 or 88 etc.

I would continue betting almost every turn. AP leading river now has its merits but looks pretty strong, so I would go for the ole river checkraise.

On a dry board like this you should bet smaller on turn. You should bet smaller with your entire range not just AA. You are not trying to stack off, and at these stakes most people just treat most bets the same regardless of size. You want to continue with wide ranges of hands because you have a skill edge over your opponents, and you shouldn't vary your bet size against TAGs based on the actual cards in your hand.

Your also almost never going to have better than 1 pair here, which is another reason to bet smaller. $80 would help improve the conditions for a river bet because if villian is paying attention to bet size you get called wider.

Bet river, but it's close. If you get raised GTO is call but if you have a read villian isn't bluffing then go with that. It's fine/good to overfold against river raises at low stakes live but it's very player dependant.

If you bet smaller on turn pot would only be $340 and you could comfortably bet $150 which would help make the situation easier

Maybe we can expound on betting the turn some more. My in hand read was to be very careful here. He is the kind of player who could 3 bet preflop with 1010+ so I'm really not expecting him to have flatted with JJ+. That leaves 88-99 for over pair. He might have a SC with a 7 or an underpair, but honestly I wanted to keep the pot small because it just screams set mining to me. So if I bet the turn and raises me what do you do?

I agree he and I both have no 2 pairs here so my plan was to check turn for pot control and then check call river for one more bet.

I didn't bet the turn.


Like I said before, I was very worried about him finding a set so when the A came I froze up a little. The A really shouldn't have effected either of our ranges (unless one of us floated AJ, and I obviously block that hand). In hindsight, I think checking the river gets me another bet more often and betting the river allows me to get stacks in if he hit a set. Betting also looks like a stupid bluff every now and then because it was an odd line for me to take.



Any other thoughts?

Well played, incl your ribver bet. I probably wouldve made it a tad smaller though.

Sorry misread ingnore my post

Yeah sure. One thing I've noticed from some of your posts in general is that you tend to focus on the hands that beat you when the pot starts to get big and discount that V will call with worse, which can lead to mubsy/monsters-under-the-bed type thinking. I would try to reframe your thought process to consider all V's hands which could call this flop before deciding whether to bet or check.

So if I was in your shoes against an unknown V after he calls this flop, 200 BB deep, I would guess he has the following range of overpairs, gutshots, pair + straight draws, and a couple of combos of sets (assuming that he would raise some of these hands on the flop):

TT-88,66,7d7h,7d7c,5d5h,5d5c,A6s,A4s,97s+,86s+,75s+,6 5s,54s

Against this range we're 75% on the flop, which is about as good as it gets. Even if we add all combos of 64s to his range our equity only drops to 70%. After the J on the turn, we're at worst 78%.

Don't be worried about getting raised on the turn until it happens, at which point we reevalute his range. The only reason I would check the turn is if I think V is floating with any two cards and is looking to take it away on the turn. Otherwise I want to set my price and also put him to a decision with his marginal holdings - often he will call anyway getting the wrong price with his pairs + draws #impliedodds

Something that really helped me change perspective was to set aside time to play microstakes online - you get a ton of volume in at stakes where you're (hopefully) not so concerned if you make a mistake and stack off light, you start to better understand board texture, and it's a great way to realize how often players are actually FOS. Heads up is the best IMO because you're forced to play pretty much every hand and deal with very wide ranges & lots of bluffing.

I don't mind a bet on the river as I said, but I would expect that he's folding virtually all his hands. You're changing your story throughout the hand: when you check on the turn you're weak, but after you call turn and then lead river your hand looks even stronger. He's checking back or folding all his 88/99/67s etc on the river, but if you check turn, and check river, V may think he can bluff you off with his 89s that missed, so at least you win that bet when you checkraise.

My 2 cents, hope it's helpful.

I appreciate your point of view. I definitely tend to play too tight/don't float enough/don't bluff enough/don't apply pressure enough so I tend to project that onto my opponents. It's hard for me to call with A4s in position, call a cbet, and then fire a big turn bet with a gutterball. So I don't naturally assume my opponent will do that. (Granted, some V's are incapable of this and their bets are absolutely pure strength. But this one is a thinking player and I should range him more.)

Grunch.

bigger otf.

barrel turn.

bet big otr.

turn isn't terrible, but pls do not lead this river, you are never bluffing here and if he has a set or good two pair here he will just flat and you wont get his stack. and if he's bluffing or turning SDV into a bluff ever this is the perfect card for him.

Check call river

I don't understand leading the river one bit. Name me one hand Hero takes that line with as a bluff.

Also, rofl

Meaning you're check, jamming?

Absolutely

Once we check/call turn to aggro opponent our range seems capped at one pair
Checking riv allows V to bet river thin with his made hands and bluffs to blow you off your perceived range
I'm never check/calling, I'm c/r here
I mean if we are betting the A river do you think he is going to station off with 88 or something?

I prefer a triple barrel for value.

AP easy check jam on the river. Against a 20s WG reg on this river card AA is the nuts, hes not flatting your UTG open pre with 46s.

Flop
Why bet so small? I think that pairs are all calling something like $60 or $70, especially given you got 3 callers raising 5bb UTG. A smaller size seems to target overcard stuff like KQ.

Being consistent with your whole range might be a good reason, but I tend to think that you could get away with exploitatively varying your size.

Turn
I like a bet here on the turn. Given your description of Villain as someone who is solid and tight, I'd expect him to have mostly pairs that he's playing for implied odds and/or trying to get to showdown with. So a) you want to deny equity, and b) you want to get the money in before a scare card comes. If you were heads up OTF against an aggro, I'd like a check to induce here though.

River
When Villain bets the turn, I'd expect some sets, some bluffs, and maybe some jacks. The bluffs might be something like bottom pair, so I like a small river bet vs them. Vs the jacks, a small river bet also seems good. Vs the sets, I think a small bet may also actually be best. A bigger bet may trigger V to just call, but against something like 1/3, a solid V will probably reraise with their sets. If you don't think V will reraise, I think a check-raise is best, because you make more than you would when it goes bet-call.

Lead has some merit. The argument for leading is V likely has a one pair hand that he will check back or a set which will raise our lead. If he has a set we can then 3 bet the river to try to get stacks. If he folds to our 3 bet that’s the same as if we check raised and he called. Villains are typically under-bluffing with air on rivers so it’s not like if we check we can do much bluff catching. Villain’s also aren’t usually smart enough to see we have a lead range and then try to exploit us for having a weak check range.

We aren’t trying to be balanced and we can and should bet really small if we lead.

wrong. check/fold river

The only thing V's one pair hands can beat when we lead river is a bluff. So again, what hands is Hero taking this line with as a bluff?

If he has a set, we're likely to win more by c/r than we are by trying to go b/3b. DUCY?

Xr for sure

Again, it doesn't matter if he's always checking back those hands. I also don't care if we are balanced, I watch old guys who only raise the nuts get paid off everyday. My first thought would be to turn 65s into a bluff since we block the most likely two pair. If I felt like my opponent was weak and noticed he bets two many marginal made hands on the turn. I would absolutely consider turning a pair into a bluff here. I made this play the other day with 33 on a very similar board (246-A) where I check called flop lead an A turn. Line makes a little more sense there, but you get the point.

Decided to run it through Pio because I was curious how it would play this spot heads up which is admittedly a bit different than this hand.

Solving for a pot sized river bet, Pio leads river about 17% of the time and does so with about half of it's AA combos. It bluffs all 98s that it didn't raise on the turn (about 20%). It's next most common bluff is 44 at 22%.

Solving for a 40% pot sized river bet, Pio almost never leads but leads about 9% of AA and essentially no bluffs with its most common bluff being 65s at 1%.

Pio bluffs 35% of 65s solving for a double pot river lead. It also leads some AA and other strong hands.

It has nothing to do with balance, it has everything to do with that V will fold every one pair hand to our lead anyway so we literally get no advantage out of taking that line.

After xing turn. xr otr. Lead is too strong.

I would have b/b/b. Bet big on flop. 2/3 pot.

I might be in this camp by myself but I like checking these flop textures with my overpairs. Villian has all the sets and straights, plus they generally play very badly against percieved weakness. I most likely check call this hand all the way down and then c/r river.