Welcome to the next post in my live hand reading practice series.

I am not actually the Hero in this hand, which comes from a YouTube video. I have not watched past the decision point in this post so I know as much as you. I will post the YouTube link after some discussion. :-)


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$2/5 NLH @ MGM
Match-the-deepest-stack buy-in structure
Effective stacks $675

Villain is young, European, seems competent. He made two reasonable but failed bluffs recently. Does not appear to be tilting.

PRE-FLOP
Two players in EP limp.
Villain in CO raises to $35.
Hero is on BTN with A K and 3-bets to $100.
Only V calls.

FLOP ($215) K Q 10
V checks.

What is V's range? I am bad at figuring out OOP call ranges here, but that's why I'm doing this. How's my read?



Most of the time, V will 4-bet top hands, so I weighted those down to 15%. V could perceive H as 3-betting light here, so there are a bunch more calling hands in V's range.

Hero bets $100. [Not sure if I agree with this decision, but let's focus on the read for now. ]
Villain calls quickly.

TURN ($415) K Q 10 ... Q
Villain checks.

I think Villain's range narrows to:



This would make sense if V is folding under pairs, calling middling hands, and slowplaying big hands 15% of the time.

Read?

Hero?

Stack sizes should massively limit the hands in this situation. Pot on the flop will actually be around $215 and remaining stack will be $575. No calls with drawing hands or weak hands, if villain thinks hero is bluffing that much then villain reraises. For the same reason villain doesn't have much reason to 4 bet with big hands, he can get stacks in post flop easily. If villain is good his flat call range is something like AK, AQs, JJ+. That said, this is a hand that a huge number of people will miss play and villain's range could be much wider.

On the flop hero has TPTK and SPR < 3. Flop is terrible. Hero has to decide right now if they are going with the hand or trying to get to river cheaply and ready to give up. Either could be reasonable depending on what hero thinks villain's range is.

When villain calls hero's bet villain is either trapping with a set/straight or is bluff catching with a mediocre hand. All of the draws like AdTd/KJ should be shoving flop if they want to play with those stack sizes. There is a chance villain can get AK to fold and if not then villain gets to see both cards.

Solver likes betting small flop and turn and it’s folding to a big re raise. That’s kind of tough to do sometimes to bet bet fold with so much money out there.

Gah, you are right. Thank you for catching my arithmetic fail.

Is there any way a mod can edit the original post to correct the pot-sizes? I don't have the "edit" button any more.


It sounds like you think this is a spot where villain should bet in opposite to the strength of their hand, but you're not sure if he would.

I'm not sure why you think it will be so easy to get stacks in post-flop. If villain has QQ and there's a bad/scary board for QQ, then isn't hero typically the one to decide whether or not to play for stacks?

And what range should hero assign villain?


Though I think I agree with all of this, I still don't know what you think villain's range actually is.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Given the limited information that villain seems competent and is flat calling in a situation where the pot will be big and SPR < 4 I'm only giving him AK, AQs and JJ+.

That range is very subjective though because it depends on a nearly blind judgement of how much villain thinks hero is 3 betting light. Villain's range should still be pretty tight though because villain is going to be playing a bloated pot OOP. With that much of stack in the pot villain should be looking to shove with medium strength hands that might flat if stacks are deeper.