Prehand Descriptions
Villain 1: Late 20s or early thirties. Wearing a $ sign shirt and a flat brim hat.
Hero: 21. Just sat back down after a dinner break.

$1/2 NL at MGM
HJ = V1 ($328)
BB ($520)

Hero is dealt 44

V1 Raises to 11 and I call out of the BB

Flop ($22) K 7 3

Check
Check

Turn 4

V1 leads 17
Hero raises to 40
V1 reraises to 110

V1 has 200 behind

Hero?

How did he lead if you're in BB? Did you c/r? I would just stuff it, if he's got you beat then whatever.

I checked turn, thanks for response.

Wow, very insightful.

Well calling is bad since there's a bunch of crappy river cards and there should be enough draws and random bluffs in V's range. Hero is OOP, what's the plan for river if just calling? If V has 56/77/KK I'd just chalk it up to a cooler heads up, and if he has 56 hero still has 10 outs.

Not much better, but still, why didn't you write this as oppose to writing that whatever crap you wrote?

Was on my phone before, now I'm not.

For some reason you don't feel compelled to be a model for good behavior and instead are spamming this guy's thread with your rudeness.

Back to the hand in question, I understand why this thread was created. It's hard to put Villain on a reasonable range of hands that check the flop and are prepared to get it in on this turn.

If he opens 56 suited I doubt he checks the flop.

He's repping pocket kings or his play is very very odd.

Oh hey, more vicious cycle.

What's a reasonable range and why is it hard to assign such range? Would it still be difficult if we have absolutely nothing?

Have a question for everyone regarding preflop. I've always looked at implied odds (in this case, $9 call to make up to $328, 36:1 implied) and called without hesitation like hero in a set mining effort. A video I saw recently contested this point of view.

The instructor basically said that with a late position open (ie attempt to steal) the chances that we get into an overpair vs set on the flop scenario decrease dramatically since the raiser now has so much garbage in his range. His example was that if Q6s raises the button and we call with 22 we only get him to stack off when the flop brings the extremely unlikely Q62. I'm not sure that I buy his argument 100% as we stand to at least pick up a c-bet and often a turn or river bet which should net us a $20-$50 profit (3ish to 7ish on our money) when we flop a set and he ends up with a weak hand with showdown value. Does anyone fold 22-55 from the BB in this scenario against a CO open, or do we view the flat from BB as very standard? FWIW the instructor was talking about online 50NL, so he may assume a much lower tendency for the raiser to make mistakes in barreling the turn too often or calling a river bet with a weak SDV hand.

I am below a newbie, but just playing the scenario out in my head...

Since you don't really have much history vs. this guy, I'd always assume somewhat on the side of caution and that he is opening with aa,kk,qq,jj,ak,aq,kq, and maybe higher suited connectors (though his fashion sense could dictate otherwise).

With that range, I would assume it most likely that he hit top pair or two pair on the flop (off chance he played k7 or the such), or possibly still holding aa,jj,qq. If he hit a set of k's, and he checked, I would be surprised-ish.

Checking in return imo wasn't bad, not to be results oriented, but it got you a free card which paid off. Assuming that if you wiffed that (the vast majority of the time) and he bet on the turn I would have laid it down.

In his shoes, checking showed slight weakness or a drawing hand, so obviously the k missed, and his now top pair should be good when the 4 hit. I could be wrong but I would have done the same thing in his shoes when you be the turn.

As for what I would do in your spot... I'd probably call and hope he c-bet on the river, or I would then bet river to increase the pot.

If you shoved, I highly doubt he would call, I wouldn't call in his spot with anything I can imagine him holding short of KK which set over set is very rare odds.

He could be holding kk, but doubtful. Any of the other cards in his range which could improve to best your hand AA,QQ,JJ (which again I could be wrong about) would have like a 98:1 odd of improving over yours at this point unless he is on a flush draw, but then his overbet on the turn would just be spewey to me....


With that being said... I only have 3k hands at .02/.04 online... so I'm more so interested to see what decent players have to say!

Let me simplify this.... You are playing $1/$2 at MGM and have a set, get it in and expect to be golden.

Sincerely,
Lv resident with experience at that room

As far as the turn decision goes, do we have reads to know how wide this V is opening CO? Is the button such a tight passive player that V feels he can raise a super wide range and treat his CO like a button? Have we seen him flop 2pr+ and decide to slowplay it?

His line kind of makes sense for K 4. Check behind flop with TPWK, now on the turn he feels his two pair + FD is good enough to 3bet over a 2.5x check raise that just might be a flush draw hero picked up. Perhaps he also does this with A 4; kind of strange for him to check behind the flop with a hand that often has 50%+ equity and then decide, "Hey, I have a pair to go with my FD! Let's gii!" on the turn...but it's not impossible to imagine.

Unfortunately, his line also makes some sense for the four combos of 65s that decided they didn't want to face a x/r and get blown off their gutshot OTF. May also include the other 12 65o if he raises these from CO as well. Three combos of KK also make some sense as he may think there aren't enough hands in our range that can call a flop value bet when he blocks so many combos of top pair. I would prefer to bet KKK to get value from flush draws and sticky 88-TT, but I know a lot of people feel differently.

I think it would be really bad for him to check behind the flop with 777, 333, K7s, K3s, AK, KQ, AA. Also seems like a decent spot to c-bet hands like A Q, A 3, A 7. It would be nice if we had some reads so we might know his tendencies with those hands. If we can eliminate 333/K7s/K3s/AK/KQ/AA/Ax from his flop checkback range then we find ourselves in a spot where we realistically beat one or two made hand combos, trail seven combos (while holding a 3:1 redraw against the four 65s combos and a 43:1 redraw against KKK), and are pretty far ahead of FDs that decided we were x/ring a weak hand and could not stand any heat on the turn (i.e. 4:1 favorite against A 4, 2.7:1 favorite against K 4).

Seems like a way ahead/way behind situation to me. I like to call the $70. We can't think of that many hands that we're thrilled to gii against so I like to put the brakes on. If he's bad enough to play AK/KQ this way there's no guarantee that he's also bad enough to call a 4b turn shove with those hands.

On the river I shove when the board pairs to get value from the 65 and other worse hand combos (if he has pocket kings then I shrug; we get value the majority of the time). On all other cards I'm checking and evaluating V's bet size/body language before making a decision. There will be times when he has 65, the flush hits and he checks back in disgust, saving us $200.

Overall I think call the turn 3bet and check/evaluate river minimizes our losses and maximizes our gains given those reasonably constructed ranges.

I would jam on the turn, with a double flush draw out there, make him risk his whole stack,and get max value with your set
I cant pigeon hole him having KK here, if he does I think he played it badly by checking the flop.
also RICHARD, WJ94 has some real good posts on here

I'm pretty sure there's a lot of merit to thinking about this.
Once we start to consider this, we're really considering the range of the player. And that's what it comes down to. How wide are they opening? How wide are the stacking off with top pair type hands? Or at least how much money have we seen them put in with top pair type hands so what can we assume?

Then beyond that, if we think that they have a lot of weak parts of their range, can we win the pot without hitting a set? Does the fact that we are OOP make a difference in our ability to do this? How well can we read hands to judge what parts of their range we can drop out of the analysis?

However as you eluded to, I think that people are far less likely to check behind on bad board textures when they should. And far too likely to call our turn barrel with air when an unknown should be pretty nutted when they check call/lead the turn.

That's also why most people will advocate that we should be getting at least 20x implied odds to set mine. All of the factors that are going against us will cause us to not get out full 8:1 sometimes, but when we do hit, and we get the full 20:1 it makes up the for some of the times that we didn't.

There's lots of rules of thumb that LLSNL players use. They are useful for beginner to intermediate players because much of the time they work at that level. However, there are not laws that have to be followed. The better the competition, the less pure set mining will pay off. With 22-55, you also run a much greater risk that if someone is willing to put a stack in, they have a better set. This is why back in the HOH books, Harrington said he wouldn't set mine for less than 25:1 odds. His competition just wouldn't pay him off. Those that put it at 15:1 are just playing softer games.

That's the medium winded answer. The short answer is that there are villains at 2/5 that I'd easily throw 22-55 away in the blinds to a late position raise. Against others I'd call. Finally, there are some I'd 3bet. Just depends on the circumstances.

A good question here is what does are villain NOT do?
Does V ever do this as a bluff? Unlikely.

There is a considerable number of hands that you beat. None of which seem to fall inline with the PF action. What is V's PFR range from LP? Does he raise limped pots often with a wide range in LP making it more likely he shows up with A-2hh or K-7hh. Reasonably he could have A-Khh.

All deep poker thoughts aside, at 1-2 If my C/R 3bet gets 4 bet I'm not feeling great without a nutty hand. That being said I'm not sure I am finding a laydown here. Fold or Jam is all you can do, and I am leaning towards jamming.

Not sure why flatting is out of the question. There are up to 16 combos of 65 that make a lot of sense for V's check back flop, 3b turn large over x/r line. We need 3:1 to redraw against those, and we get that implied if we think V can't fold OTR when we do hit boats or quads.

Yes, we've failed to charge him the max when he does hold a FD, but a) we've at least gotten him to put in $110 to win $130 as a big underdog, and b) we need to make the best decision against his range and not just a portion of that range. Shoving and getting snap called by one of the plausible 65 combos would mean we are choosing to pay $310 to win $370 immediate when we are a 3:1 dog. Seems like that has to be a much bigger mistake than failing to get him to pay max for a FD, and I'm not convinced that FDs realistically make up a larger portion of his range than the 65 combos.

Agree, gii.

V has plenty AhKx, AhKh, AhAx in his range too. I am fist pump getting it in here AINEC. I feel the only cooler hand he has that would play like this is KK. Bless his heart if he has it.

Ya, I'm not really seeing the problem here. Trying to get all in fast.

What'd you have for dinner? Jam turn