This hand happened recently, and I am curious as to your thoughts.

Background: Game is dying down for the night. We are down to 5 handed (7 handed standard).

1-2 NL $300 effective with both villains.

Villain 1: (Main Villian) has driven a couple hours to play as COVID closed closer games. He is rec player who clearly wants to see a lot of flops and make make his night last long as well. Very fit/fold. Hero has been targeting his face up play to consistently win small pots as the game has dwindled.

Villain 2: Limps 60-70% and folds the bottom half of that to raises pre-flop. Tight post, fit/fold player. A reg who gets paid off because others don't recognize that he doesn't get involved without a hand.

Folds to Villain 2 in CO, who limps $2.
Hero: OTB with 2 4
Hero raises to $7

TELL: At this point, Villain 1 picks up more than calling chips. Not in an obvious way, but Hero noticed that he reached for his reds, picked up 4 and then quickly moved to a call. Hero interpreted this as a potential three bet hand. I range Villians 3-bet as JJ+, AK, AQs+, and honestly that might be too wide. Hero considers that he is either trapping with a big hand, or calling with a AJ-AK, 99-JJ kind of hand.

Villain 1 in SB calls $7
Villain 2 calls $7

Flop ($23): A 10 2

check, check, Hero checks with intention to give up as this board does not favor our continuing range against two villains, especially if my read is correct on Villain 1 having a strong hand pre.

Turn: 2
Villain 1 leads for $13
Villain 2 calls $13
Hero raises to $55
Villain 1 re-raises to $155
Villain 2 folds

Hero?

A note on preflop: Villain 2 was actually folding a high percentage to a $7 bet after his limp.

Obviously a fold pre is the standard play. Hero was attempting to exploit his position. C-betting flop seems really bad against two callers who are calling all Ax. We bink the turn as hard as we can, but a three-bet turn screams strength. Based on read, I am really concerned that 1010 or slow played AA is a possibility. However, Villian may also be overplaying a strong A; interpreting my flop check as a sign that I don't have an A.

Hero is at the top of his range in this spot. (Would have bet flop with all sets). Do we rip it in? Fold? Call and evaluate river?

Gross spot. I'm interested to hear what others have to say about the $7 iso... I don't mind doing isoing with that weak a holding depending on the circumstance but I would still go bigger. Or more likely just fold pre.

As played I think I just call the turn 3! and evaluate river. He's really only repping TT. Could he be making this play with hands like Axhh or Kxdd? Or AT? The possibility of those hands make me want to take a river, but I agree that his flop 3bet range is super strong and it's very hard to imagine a rec player taking this line as a bluff.

I probably call turn looking to bet/fold river if he checks to me. If he fires river I think I fold barring a very small size, hoping that he is value owning himself.

Even against described table, I fold pre. If you have to raise pre, raise it big, not pot sweetner levels.

As for turn, tough spot; this is almost never a bluff or even a semi-bluff. I also don't think Ax where x not equal 2 or 10 are likely going to re-raise turn, especially a fit/fold.

I assume he reraises AA pre, what about TT?

I range him at AT, A2, TT (though discounted since he might reraise pre), random 2s.

Without doing the math this feels like i) a sigh fold, and ii) a good lesson in not playing 42, though not sure I ever find it.

I agree that 24 should be in the muck. It is certainly not in my standard range. My only defense, is that many players fail to adjust to short handed play and fold WAY too much, allowing the blinds to be scooped. But I am certainly NOT going to say that pre was a great decision. I consider it semi-bad.

AT does seem like the only value hand that I am beating. I agree that villain is not doing this as a bluff or semi-bluff with any measurable frequency. Unless villain is overplaying Ax. I have also noticed that many players will overplay/spazz a 'big hand' like AQ/AK toward the end of the night as well. Not sure if that should come into play, but it certainly was in my mind at the time.

Grunch - my dumb ass probably stuffs the turn. Soaking wet board, V’s can have huge draw, TPTK, NFD, combo draw, top 2 pair..... stuffing it.

+1 on all counts.

I had position on a SLAG the other night who was doing well but clearly not enjoying life as I was interfering with his isolation of the table fish. At one point he does exactly as you describe, he grabs about $20 in chips, then grimaces real quick and mucks, and as he mucked an 8 was turned over. So it was pretty evident that his tell was genuine hesitation. In your case I think V may have in fact been considering 3betting light but just didnt have the stomach for it and decided he'd rather see a cheap flop with his hand. In that case if he connected on this board it's most likely just draws since most live players struggle to 3bet anything but Kings and Aces.

We have position, no way anybody puts us on a 2, and if you're raising as wide is 24s then chances are your overall perception is LAG so you should expect people to play back at you. I'm with the ship it crowd.

Fold pre, there is no good excuse for opening it and unfortunately live can be so boring that sometimes it seems like a good idea to open these for fun but you already know it's bad to open it so I won't chirp on about it.

As played, everything else is fine and I'm snap calling the turn shove, there are tons of draws and high Ax that a bad V can be overplaying. No brainer, you also aren't calling that much of an all-in with trips. Folding here is a travesty IMO, you literally got what you wanted.

Also, was this at a Mohegun? Sounds like a hand I witnessed recently.

Kinda smells like pocket 10s, but since we only lose to 6 realistic combos (maybe some A2s, less likely) and he should have 3bet AA some portion of the time, folding seems poor.
Call and evaluate the river.

I guess I'm getting it in now.

LOL @ not folding preflop.

Not deep enough to ever think about folding. There’s 1 combo of A2s and 3 combos of TT. And tons of combos of hands we beat / semi bluffs / overplays. No one thinks you have a deuce and you’re capped. I would call so he can keep bluffing. Given the small Spr I assume he’s just gonna stuff hands like AK, AT etc on every river anyways. Calling every river except an A

No, different place.

This was my exact thought process and desicion. Though I wouldn't have thought LOTS of combos, but enough.

Results: Hero calls turn.

Pot ($340) A 10 2 2 K

Villian checks.

Hero?

Obviously a black card was better, back door hearts got there, but nothing else.

Follow up question. If you advocate a turn jam, why do you prefer that line to a call? Are we not concerned that a 4 bet turn jam gets folds from random bluffs and naked A's?

Upon further review, I am now in favor of shoving turn. I just think he can have enough worse value, especially when you consider how wide his preflop calling range might be vs. your $7 iso (idk how much weight you can really assign to his behavior here). Even if he doesnt 3bet TT and has AA occasionally... well he basically always has AT and that alone is more combos than [TT, A2ss, K2ss, and a couple combos of AA]. (And AT seems like the type of hand that might almost 3bet then just flat ). And considering all the combos draws he could be doing this with, perhaps even hands like T7dd, and basically every combo of Axhh and Kxdd... I just want to put all the money in on the turn and protect my equity/get it in ahead.

Turn jam is the best play here.
AP, we didn’t protect our hand and the worst card in the deck hit. I’d still jam river. He almost never checks back a FH or Axhh, and if he’s a station he’ll call here with AT, which is what we’re mainly hoping to get value from when we shove.
Re your questions about turn jam, nobody in 1/2 or 2/5 has a bluff when they bet/3-bet the turn against the PFR.
Nobody at 1/2 is folding to a 4-bet after they 3-bet for value. They like their hand and they’re going with it. You only have less than half pot behind. He’ll be getting 3:1. He’s never folding AK/AQ here on turn.

I don’t have to tell you that preflop is bad. If he’s only limp folding 50%, we’re still risking $7 to win $5 outright, and we have 4 hi if called. Plus we still have two guys in the blinds yet to act.

Given your tell you lose to TT exactly. On the other hand, I can’t imagine a worse value hand you show up here with. So if you want to use that logic, you can fold. But if I somehow had trips here, I wouldn’t be folding.

As played on river: a jam is thin. But his line just smells like AT exactly. If he has any bluff in him, we might lose to QdJd or something that doesn’t want to blast it in there on this “get there”.

To everyone though, we do have to be careful here. This is a pretty common 2/5 player type, especially here in the northeast; they love to limp or open a wide range pre, they love to call raises pre, they almost never 3 bet, they play bingo on the flop, and then they fold a huuuuuuuuuuge portion of their range on the turn.

So sure while TT probably won’t be the only hand in their range, it’s the only hand they could show up with that gets played this way at a high frequency by these kind of loose passive guys who like to call off chips until they run into a big hand by the turn.


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While I understand that we don’t give credit to rec players for hand-reading ability, even the most MUBSY villain is going to recognize that AT is the effective nuts against us on this board; nobody expects us to have a 2x here. He should have all 9 combos of AT and just 3 combos of TT. This isn’t a close spot on the turn IMO. We should jam.

It is because they cant handread that they will easily put us on trip 2's. They play these kind of garbage hands themselves all day every day and drawing just to suckout with air is part of their strat. All we're hoping for here is that he has tunnel vision and cant lay down strong hands.

There are way more AT than TT combinatorially. Even if he only 3-bets the turn with AT half the time, he still has more AT than TT. He could also have AK and be protecting against the double flush draws. If he takes this line with AK just 10 % of the time, there’s another 1 combo of value we beat. I just can’t lay down trips here when we’re only losing to 3 combos and he could be overvaluing.

Why can't hero have AA/1010? Or even A10...all are preflop raising hands.

And I've played with way too many players who will check in ANY position when they flop a set...fancy play syndrome etc.

I guess I've played with too many clueless and "tricky" players to give much credence to "capping ranges".

+1. People play so random and bad in an attempt to “disguise their hand strength” (which in reality is because people get a much bigger dopamine kick when they get called on the river and/or feel like they tricked someone) that you can’t really discount much from their ranges. And in turn, they’ll just put you on a 2 way more often than you think because that’s the hand that just improved.

How often does it happen in here where villain turns over something almost no one even thought was in his or her range, for example?

This is kind of where I don’t like hyper exploitative advice. We’ve no idea what they’re up to. We just know it probably has a fair amount of wtf


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Good thoughts all the way around. I see a general consensus that is that we are never folding turn to the given action.

This spot was interesting to me, and I really appreciate the discussion around it. I felt that Villain's value range is super small; TT, A2, AT, small chance of AA. All of which beats us except for AT. So the in game decision hinged for me around how much air/overplayed Ax villain might have. I really don't know how often Villain shows up here with Ax, and I'm pretty sure he almost NEVER shows up with back door hearts/diamond draw. Rec villains seem way too passive to bluff their big draws with enough consistency that including even 1-2 combos might be too much.

Final Results/Action Recap: Effective $300ish

Preflop Hero raises to $7 OTB over CO limp.
SB Calls $7
CO calls $7

Flop ($23): A 10 2
SB x, CO x, Hero x

Turn: ($23) A 10 2 2
SB bets $13
CO calls $12
Hero raises to $55
SB re-raises to $155
CO folds
Hero calls

River ($346) A 10 2 2 K
SB checks
Hero jams for ~ $140
SB sighs and folds

A little later SB told Hero that he had a big A and was chopping at best with Hero, who the SB thought had an A as well. LOL. Obviously he could be lying but I believed him in the moment. We had a fair bit of friendly chit chat throughout the night and it seems reasonable that he was massively overplaying the Ax. I was very surprised that he found a fold on the river.

I'm certainly going to work on my shorthanded game, and 24s will not find a place in my opening range. But I appreciate the general confirmation that folding was wrong, although the consensus appears to be that turn jam >> call >>>>fold.

Find it weird to 3bet AJ/AQ OTT and then fold river, though I suppose he's right in that he's never good after that action.

Also AQ is a good candidate to 3bet pre.

I guess the results of this hand illustrate why turn jam is the only correct play here.

By just calling turn:

We lose value on the rare occasion when he is semibluffing on the turn with a massive combo draw (KQ,KJ,QJ diamonds or hearts).

We allow him to get away from worse value hands (Ax) when the river brings a scare card.

By not reraising the turn all in we allow him to realize his equity and play perfectly on the river.

I’ve never seen a player 3bet turn for half his stack and fold to a 4bet. So if we’re going with the hand, best to jam on the turn.