Home game. We’re all wearing our masks and using sanitizer liberally.
Blinds are $5-$10, I have $1,000. Villain has me covered. Villain is typical of the losing players in this game. Drinking whiskey and playing too many hands. He is fairly passive. He doesn’t bluff or semi-bluff enough.
Comments on all streets appreciated.

6 handed. Folded to me in HJ. I open to $35 with two black jacks. Villain on button 3-bets to $100. Now, he isn’t the type of guy to 3-bet with A5s type hands or medium pairs or SCs. He’d just call. I give him a range of JJ+, AJs+, maybe ATs. Blinds fold.

Flop ($215) Td6c4s. I check. Villain bets $125. I’m still ahead of most of his range of impaired Ax hands. Only AA, KK, and QQ are winning. I call.

Turn ($465) 7c. I check. My plan is to fold if he fires a good size bet. If he goes small again, maybe I call, maybe I check-raise cuz check-raising on the turn is gangster. He checks behind.

River ($465) Tc. Do I lead? If I check, how to respond to various bet sizes?

Thanks in advance guys.

Pre and flop are standard.

Turn I'm just exploit folding in general...Villains almost never double barrel A high here.

Would villain ever hero call A high on this river? How sure are you of villains range? Are you sure he couldn't ever have 88/99 here? If the answer to the first question is no, and you're sure he can't have 88/99 here, then I x-f here unless you're confident he's going to turn A high into a bluff, then this would be a rare spot where I actually x-c a river.

I’m confident he would just call pre with 88,99, not 3-bet.

Then we have an easy x-f, unless he's heroing with A high or bluffing A high when x to. If you don't know the answers to these, then I would x-f.

People are horrible at value betting - I would not be shocked if he x back AA, afraid of a T. That of course would be dumb.

Mostly x/c unless V picks some ******ed sizing. But pretty much check calling anything.

Why do you run on the assumption that the villain will bluff his A high hands?

TBH, this is a fold pf with JJ pf and the range you gave to AJs. He's got a 60/40 advantage with his range. Don't worry about him exploiting you with this range, he isn't going to be doing this often.

On the river he's going to whine, swear, then call you with QQ. Just c/f.

grunch

Pre doesn’t really matter imo. Can’t go wrong either way. I’m calling vs this guy but not loving it OOP.

I play flop and turn the same way.

I probably lead river <15% pot ($75~). It’s unlikely that this player ever finds a raise here with the range you listed considering our polarity advantage. Even if he doesn’t recognize it I can’t se him bumping it up to $325 with KK~ as I would do in his shoes facing a $75 lead after the turn x/x. Also we may induce some A high calls.

c/f river is okay with our read that he doesn’t bluff enough But in reality this is a home game and we don’t really know how he plays his A-highs in 3-bet pots . If he’s 3! AQo+ pre that’s a lot of offsuit combos of A highs he’ll arrive to the river with and it’s a disaster if he bets a reasonable sizing with all of those combos and we fold an overpair.

I’m not convinced this guy checks back AA-KK on the turn either despite it being a possibility.

Also we’re 6 handed. We should be widening our ranges across the board vs non nits.

Pre is probably a fold given your read. I guess you can setmine. I might let the flop go, too, but I understand the call.

Turn is fine, of course.

River is a c/f unless he is so tight that he will fold AA to a bet, and that tightness is very rare.

I would rather 4 bet pre than fold. I don't get folding, at all...We aren't even purely set mining, but if we were, we have the right odds to set mine.

Leading river is atrocious, burning money bad unless villain is calling with A high.

Despite what Bart may have lead you to believe, we can't just extrapolate LA population tendencies to everyone, everywhere. In other words, if you're always c/f here to a reasonably sized bet, you're getting bluffed a healthy % of the time given the texture and configuration in this spot- you just don't know it. We don't have to be good very often at all.

The turn isn't the greatest one for him, but people overplay overpairs all the time. We have no reason to believe he's checking back the turn with those.

Yes, a lot of people shut down after getting called on the flop. But assuming that every villain does is pretty ridiculous.

This is a 6 handed 5/10 home game. Even against a rec/fishy villain you're kidding yourself if you think we have enough info to know with anywhere near certainty, especially on the outside, that he almost always has us beat when he bets the river.

I think getting creative and leading super small (15% pot~) against this player type is fine, but c/c river> x/f after x/x turn.

imo.

So in these spots, I'm confident that the EV of blocking very small (leading 15% pot) and rarely getting bluffed off of our overpair, while getting called by A-high a non zero % of the time, is greater than checking and opening the door for our opponent to get us off QQ-JJ with all his combos of A-highs.

I strongly disagree that we're getting bluffed a decent % of the time when we x-f this river. People take unconventional lines, but a river barrel is heavily weighted towards an overpair. You may run into an instance where it wasn't, but that's few and far between, unless we're up against a very specific villain.

I disagree with your second paragraph, too. The population tends to be sticky with overpairs, but that doesn't mean they're aggressively overplaying them...I mentioned this earlier, but people suck at value betting. I wouldn't even blink if villain checked the turn with AA; it just happens so often. People don't value bet anywhere near as often as they should, not the other way around. I wouldn't be shocked if villain x back an over pair here.

I'm gonna x-f river until I have reason to start taking other lines. You're lighting money on fire vs the population if your go to line here is to x-c.

Betting $70 on the river genuinely might induce a bluff more than just x'ing. Interesting thought to ponder.

And again on your last point, you're way overestimating how often people bluff, especially on the river. Do what you want though, experience is a great teacher.

We're up against a range that's stronger than ours and we got an amazing runout. We're just bound to lose money sometimes. Looking for ways to avoid doing so (x/f regardless of sizing after calling over 1/2 pot otf) is just bound to cost us more money, especially when we don't have a solid read.

Also, people in games at every stake both online/live don't bluff raise river nearly as often as they should, regardless of sizing. I think that exploit is much more sound than assuming people bet over 1/2 pot otf and then just shut down in 3! pots IP with A-high.

Re experience, it's beside the point but that's analogous to saying going to school is a great way to learn imo. It is, but it takes way longer to improve that way and there are drastically more efficient ways to get better quickly.

I don't understand why you believe the flop call to be so standard and then x/f turn or river on this run out to be just as standard. You're "heavily overestimating" the correlation between your knowledge on population tendencies and how that actually ties into everyone's strategy.

Based on your logic, why isn't your flop call burning money? You're mixing strategies incorrectly and you don't even realize it. I'm just trying to point that out. I do the same.

whatever, though.

Because people c bet A high, but give up when called

yo you're extremely dense. Just like me at times lmao.

Was a rhetorical question. The point is that you have *no clue* whether that applies to this villain. My assumptions could just as easily apply, but I would be losing *far* less money if they did.

Due to pot odds and the range vs. range implications in this configuration that I was talking about.

When you say "Standard" you're referring to what you, Bart, or a CLP sub would do. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not nearly representative of how every pro would approach this spot.

doesn't make everyone else's strategy atrocious.

Positional ranges shouldn't change much. 9-handed vs. 6-handed there is a small difference the first 3 positions being more likely to have folded small cards but you can ignore that.

It's off-topic so I won't go into all the differences but a very simple one is that we are going to be in the blinds/pay them way more often. This incentivizes us to play looser (compared to our 9-handed ranges) in every other position 6-max, assuming we have an edge.

We also have less people to get through, so we should be opening wider. BTN, even if not aware may recognize this and 3! wider and so on. Stakes are hardly representative of skill level, especially at a home game, but it's not unreasonable to give more credibility to a 5/10 fish than at the average stake live.

It's amazing how some people don't realize the flaws of calling a 3-bet and a 1/2 pot+ flop bet OOP and then c/f an overpair to additional pressure on an amazing run-out.

An extremely transparent strategy as well. How are we going to magically adjust vs. a capable player?

My thinking on the river is if I check I can pick off a bluff with missed AK, AQ type hands. If I bet and he raises, I can fold knowing I’m beat. However, I also think betting is wrong because if I bet and he just calls, am I ever good?

RtP plays in Houston, where the game is more loose/aggro than average. 67o plays in the Midwest, where the play is more loose/passive than average.

Both lines have merits, but 67o's default Vs are more common than RtPs, imo.

Could be a good spot to make a stupidly exploitable block bet to maybe get cry calls from AK/AQ.


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Exactly, which is more of a case for us calling on the river.

I think the river decision largely comes down to reads, but this is 5/T, and a home game at that, vs a terrible whiskey drinking opponent. We really shouldn't be in the habit of folding to him in spots like this.

If this was a decent reg then we should be check/shipping the river some percentage of the time.

This is truly the most awful thing that has been posted in this thread thus far regardless of whether you think we should proceed in this hand.



Regarding preflop, I'm just not going to fold for $65 more when the villain isn't a complete nit. We are getting a pretty good price so it can't really be too terrible to call here. That being said, folding preflop does make a lot of sense. This villain isn't 3betting us very often and is never exploiting our folds, so I can understand passing up on this potentially high variance spot for better/easier spots where we have the equity advantage. Also, if anything we may be a bit optimistic thinking that he 3bets AJs/ATs. That being said, I do think he has to have some percentage of spazz plays, which would be more reason to call.

So yeah, I'm calling pre but can't fault anyone for folding given that we have equity and positional disadvantages. 4-betting just defies all logic whatsoever though. I'd expect that out of a tournament player or a 21 year old kid that lacks discipline and patience.

ding ding ding.

Our goal should be to maximize EV in every spot not minimize our losses. Session to session results mean nothing. Seems like a lot of people itf believe they do. Sometimes we just got to pay the man his money.

Also, sixsevenoff, there’s about a 0% chance you’re able to make the proper adjustments on the fly against someone who is better than you based on your logic itt. Can guarantee the best player in your game doesn’t listen to Bart Hanson.

Ranges are constructed by position so you don’t have more or less players to get through. Positional ranges already take that into account. Your BU 3! vs HJ RFi range should not be different 6-handed vs 9-handed. The only difference is the card removal influence of the ranges players have folded which exist in 9-max but not 6-max. Paying the blinds more often is completely irrelevant and I don’t understand why you’d think it matters.

All you live players are terrible at 6max so let's just stay on topic.

Although one of the players t this table played against Bart on a televised show, this opponent would have no clue who Bart Hanson is. That I know for sure.