V1 (300)older white man around 50 with glasses(looks nerdy). unknown
v2 (280)unknown
Hero (300)just sat down a few hands ago

1/3 game

Hero is delt KK utg +1 and makes it $12

V1 in MP calls
V2 in small blind calls

Flop: ($39)
1096
SB checks
Hero bets $25
V2 raises to $60
SB folds
Hero Calls

Turn ($159)
J
Hero checks
V2 bets $100


What do you think so far?
What would you do on the turn?

Easy fold on the turn, his range have you smoked at this point.

If i am on my A-game and my reads are in tune/accurate enough i am folding to the flopraise on this board against an older villain that is likely tight and not getting out of line at all.

+1

Assuming no reads, you could fold to this flop raise every time and let them "exploit you", because they arent trying to exploit you. They have you beat almost every time. Now if you've seen the guy raise with TP before, then that's a read and its different. Most people would just call your flop bet with AT or worse.

People who play too tight and only raise premiums have a very tough time folding overpairs. They wait all day for them. They arent folding them. I don't know if that's you or not, I'm talking about people in general.

Yeah there's not many random 1/2 Vs who are raising with AT on that flop. There's no flush draws and gutters aren't raising either. You're basically never winning here. I think I'm folding that flop more often than not. It's just not worth it. Even if V has 2p on the flop, you're not getting the price to call and hope the board pairs and counterfeits him.

As played, once he barrels the turn it's looking even more dire.

Fold everyday. You're beat I think. What hands could he bluff with? A 1/2 average player will not raise you on the flop without anything than cant beat TP, because this is what they're asking to themselves before raising (Can I beat TP? **** yes, here's a 3Bet)

well, you are assuming quite a lot of reads.

Folding flop might still be the play though, and +1 to fold turn.

Meh, I would need a very good read to fold the flop here. But the turn card is awful for you so I think it is an easy fold at that point.

Fold flop is ridiculous but I’m on board with fold now

No way he has QJ here, and continues with his OESD and Pair?

I don't know the V very well but he is an Older white guy with glasses and looks conservative. From my experience these types of people don't raise draws very often.

even with QJ off in his range we would only have %28 equity


Thank you guys. I did fold turn but I was planning on folding when he bet turn. Next time I will just fold flop if I am going to fold turn.

V2 is raising into somebody who just sat down. Easy fold on the turn, could argue for a fold on the flop but that might be a bit too nitty considering this is 1/3.

Agreed but unless I'm misreading it's V2 who's shown aggression here and you didn't state any read on him in the OP, whereas what you just gave us is the beginning of a read.

Yep! Population reads. I'll argue all day that population reads are legit and that we should follow them until we have a good reason not to.



No! Whether or not you could have folded the flop here (I wouldn't have), the lesson here is absolutely not that you've made a mistake to call flop and fold turn.

Against certain players that lesson is OK. If they raise the flop it's because they have better than AA. Unless the turn is immensely scary, they're not checking it. Therefore, you should just fold the flop.

But with only a slight read specific to this player, on top of your population read, there are many reasons you might want to call the flop and fold the turn. I consider JJ, sometimes QQ (if they flat pre), and often AT to be in the population's flop raising range here; the population loves to "protect their hand" by blowing draws out of the pot, and JJ looks at this flop after groaning in anticipation of a flopped overcard and thinks, "Money flop!"

But on the turn:

• JJ improved to leave you drawing to six outs
• The population is usually checking QQ or AT here. Now they're scared that you might have had KK, AA, TT, 87s. (The population gets scared a lot.) They're also scared you have JJ or KQ and improved.
• And of course other stuff that beat you still beats you: weird AA, 66,99,TT, 87.

Since part of their range outdrew you and the other part of their range is much less likely to bet the turn, you have a clear turn fold. THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU HAD A CLEAR FLOP FOLD. Please don't take "never call the flop if you can't also call the turn" as the lesson.

That's fine, but every time this happens to you (you have TP or an overpair and get raised), add up the extra money you lost when you called the flop raise only to fold the turn. I folded the flop and you folded the turn so you lost $35 more than me.

Of course you get to collect whatever money you win when you win the hand. Do this for 1000 hours and get back to me. Unless you play some crazy wild aggro games, you're going to lose money long term calling the flop raise just to fold the turn.

Ive told my friend this a million times. Today he raised and flopped QTx. He bet the flop and got raised. He continued and stacked the guy...but that's because he had TT. The other guy obviously had QT. You have to fold KK when you get raised on a QTx flop. Well, you dont have to but you do if you like money.

There's probably 5% of players who will raise flops like that without being able to beat TP. The tough ones are when the flop is something like 632 and you have KK and the guy could easily have TT-QQ and raise the flop.

Sure, but we need him to have that exact hand, choose to play it this way, and we need him to not get there on the river.

As for the hand as a whole:

I’m folding flop to a lot of players here. The main problem with folding is when we get accidentally bluffed by a T. I’m not worried about getting bluffed here that often.

Turn is a slam dunk fold against most players.

IMO there are a reasonable number of hands that much of the population raise on the flop and check on the turn once called: AT, JJ (which obviously won't usually outdraw us), QQ. There are also several semibluffs that might behave like this: 98, 97, 86, 76, even the much discussed QJ. I find it easy to imagine hands like this raising because "Obviously he's just cbetting AK" since every raiser always has AK if you want to call with a pair. Then when that raise gets called, it seems scarier because maybe OP doesn't have AK. So taking a free card suddenly seems prudent.


Apparently you disagree that some or all of those are in the population's range here. Most importantly, we should each watch our own game's/games' player pool carefully to assess.

In addition, we outdraw a set 4.5% of the time on the turn, outdraw two pair 11% of the time, and pick up decent equity against a straight 4.5% of the time. That's not enough to call a substantial bet if know we're behind, of course, but it could swing a close flop decision if you're unsure whether my view or your view of flop raising ranges is correct.


"the guy could easily have TT-QQ" suggests that you think TT-QQ are often flatting preflop. It's unclear to me why you think JJ or QQ would raise 632 but not T96. (JJ outdrew us but that's not relevant because the context is now "every time this happens to you" meaning on the flop.)




There's a case that you're correct and I'm wrong, involving more specific ranges for the population (or subsets of the population), aside from the fact that we disagree about whether AT raises here (you think 5% or less, I think it's a bit more although certainly not always) you haven't made that case clearly yet. Anyway, this disagreement goes beyond the simplicity implied by the "add up the extra money you lost" game.

Its nice to see someone disagree or debate something without getting all pissy. Kudos to you.

Yeah the JJ/QQ hands are the tough ones that people may raise the flop with but you are still ahead of. I mentioned that at the end of my post.

IIRC, you dont play much live or havent played much live right? I think thats what you posted a few weeks ago?

Anyway, Im using what you call population reads for live players. The overwhelming majority dont raise the flop with AT or even JJ especially if its the preflop raiser doing the betting. They wont fold AT or JJ but they dont normally raise it either.

Some tricky tough players may raise with T8s on the T96 flop. Im not talking about those guys. Good luck playing guys that have that play in their game. Its never going to be easy against them. I just know that even when my opponent has my respect and Im think they may be raising T8s or 98s on the flop, they have a set or T9 almost every single time and I kick myself for just not letting them have it.

Thanks for your kind comments.

I play only live but NLHE isn't the most prominent game in my volume. (I've been playing a lot of PLO lately.) I've also been reading a good bit of Ed Miller and Jonathan Little on small stakes lately but you have to take what books say about ranges with a grain of salt.

I agree that this makes my population reads somewhat dodgy. I also think I'm pretty good at inferring behavior from the psychology of bad opponents. For example people play preflop as a lottery (lots of limp/calling) in both NLHE and PLO. People who are capable of semibluffing flops with equity are incapable of stone bluffs in both games. Etc.

The real question with how they play AT is how they balance "This is scary because he might have an overpair so I'll call and see what happens," versus, "Bingo! This is the flop I wanted, and besides, the raiser always has AK." I think there are some in both groups, but I'm assigning more than 5% to the latter group (plus actual good players). Maybe 30%.

More generally, IME the flop is sometimes a "I think you're screwing around so I'm going to make you pay," street whereas the turn action is more literal and the river action is exceedingly literal.

Also, not really fair to you, I made a lot of edits to my post. I find it easy to imagine even a "typical" opponent raising 98 or 76 here. I mistakenly thought Villain was in position though so free carding doesn't factor in. But I do think there's a degree to which, once called, they figure 98 probably isn't good and they don't want to keep bluffing.

Also note: You get to see the times they show you sets and two pair. That makes a visual impression. If they raise flop, check turn, you get to the river (or maybe the board pairs a blank or you spike a king), you might never see their hand. Even if you think, "Wow, I didn't expect KK to be good there," you won't remember it the same way.

Plus there's negativity bias. We remember burning our hand on the stove, not touching the stove Mom and Dad said was hot but getting away with it.

It's notoriously hard to estimate frequencies at live poker which is why it's hard to say AT raises here 5% or 30% of the time.

AKQJJ10 is basically spot on with how to play hand and why.

The only thing I'd add is that QJ checks back this turn a reasonable percentage of the hand and is the only hand (besides random bluff spew which is incredibly bad on this board) that we beat as played.

Never folding flop except for highly specific reads (OMC type). Folding turn almost always except vs maniacs that exhibit dumb aggression.

Also (while I'm posting in stream of consciousness)....

It's less that I disagree with MikeStarr's ranges specifically than that I disagree with "Never call the flop then fold the turn unless the board changes radically" as a good general lesson to draw from this hand. (That's especially for you, OP)

To steal Ed Miller's metaphor, you want to set up a gauntlet so that your opponent never knows how many bets it will take to get to showdown or to bluff you out. Here, you don't want them to be able to raise the flop knowing anything you call with is going to showdown. That makes their job much easier. This matters more as you move up, of course, but it matters here too. If you're often bet/folding the flop but never bet/calling the flop and folding the turn, maybe only 10% notice and have the courage to exploit it. But maybe that number was 2%. Now you've grown the number of players who can play competently against you and drastically increased your headaches.



Running the gauntlet. Image by Jost Amman. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Obviously you should sometimes bet/fold flops. But if you do it all the time, you'll stick out even to bad players. Therefore, that's another factor shading your decision toward occasionally calling KK here and folding the turn.

These flops always favor the caller’s range. I mix in bets and checks but lean more to a x given this configuration.

You just sat down. You’re readless. You only fear one overcards. Check and see what develops.

As played I just fold flop. Raises at this level are nearly always 2p+ and raising with a player to act behind is even stronger.

Preflop is pretty game dependent for me.

I'm also typically betting the flop here. ETA: Totally readless and worried from physical traits that some of these guys might be difficult I don't mind a flop check as suggested by Johnny.

I'd lean towards a fold against the majority of the player pool to the flop raise; we should have some pretty good indication that this guy is capable of either playing back or overvalueing hands on the flop before continuing, imo. Is this exploitable? Sure is. Is anyone exploiting it? Is this guy exploiting it? Especially against an unknown he has no clue is exploitable in this regards?

Turn fold is even easier when he decides to continue against what looks like a fairly face-up hand from us, plus if we did happen to be ahead on the flop a lotta other stuff just got there (JT, KQ, JJ, etc.).

ETA: Regarding AT/JJ raising the flop, it really depends on who you're playing against. I would argue that 95% of opponents are seasoned regs who have been around the block (I get a lot of disagreements regarding this here, but I still believe my take on this is correct even though it goes against the general platitudes of who plays this game today); they ain't wizards, and in fact they are likely losing players, but this ain't their first rodeo either. If it was their first rodeo, they might more be raising AT/JJ (I HAZ TP+!!!), but these guys have done enough of that in the past and slowly come to realize they might have to be a little more cautious in doing that, especially to an EP raiser who is continuing into 2 opponents. If it's the guy's like first time at the table, ok, sure, he'll overvalue hands. How many guys are you playing against where it's their first time at the table?

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