pre is good

as played:

bet flop
raise his weak turn bet to 120
bet river after he shuts down

You just earned yourself a fanboy for going Bayesian up in here.

Here is a hand that happened a week or so later against a different player.

I limp-called with AQs against a raise to 20 from the blinds, expecting it to be multi-way, but everyone behind me folded. Villain checked dark, I bet 25 on a queen-high flop. He called. He checked the low turn, I bet 50, he called. Blank river was checked through and he showed me KK and an experienced player beside me called out villain's hand as AA before KK was turned over.

My player pool seems to play passively with hands that would be obvious GII hands in California or Florida, but it's more like they take pot control lines with hands they are never folding rather than them being scared money that can be bluffed, which means I have to adjust my play to account for different ranges.

Warning bells go off for me too when someone 3 bets big and then checks blind. I've seen it a bunch of times at 2/5 from competent players, always with low SPR's, and every time it was AA or KK.

Would V really only bet $40 into $130 with AA here? Our hand looks a lot like a PP<QQ. After his flop check he should be looking to get value. A fair number of river cards are going to kill his action/possible put him in an awkward spot if he respects our game. He is pricing us in to call correctly with 77,TT,maybe JJ or 55.

WTF!

Results: After thinking about it before checking, I tell my opponent that his aces are good. He turns over AA and sighs in relief, telling me he was worried I had QQ. I think he would have check-called a PSB or less on the river, but wouldn't have been happy about it. I'm not sure if raising the turn would have gotten him off of his hand or if I would have had to commit to bombing the river to do so.

River bet would have done it.

I guess if a UTG raise to just $15 is narrowing the field I also just open here. Typically I'd limp/reraise at my loose tables though.

What is Villain putting us on? Tighty us has just raised UTG and he's 3betting us and he's not a complete idiot? Weird spot, imo. I think I'm pretty cool with the call and just playing poker postflop in position.

I also just check behind the flop. One of the few hands we are ahead of (QQ) just got there. I'm basically looking to get to showdown as cheaply and under-repped as I can here.

I don't think I can manage to fold to a < 1/3 PSB on the turn either. I feel like I'm being played, but I think we're also doing fairly good overall in cooler situations by not losing *that* much by simply calling here.

And now TT just got there on the river, not to mention all other medium sized sets.

Does AK call here? Probably not. But it might reraise, putting us in a gross spot in a biggish pot. Does JJ call? Probably a lot less than AA does to make that a wash in his favour. QQ always calls. But does AQ/KQ call all that often (knowing they are basically only ahead of AK/JJ turning their hand into a bluff)?

I'm pretty cool with how you played the hand.

Course last week 3bet large preflop with KK to setup an SPR 4 flop, bet a J high flop, checked back a Q turn, and then folded to a PSB shove on a blank river against an aggro with-a-clue player. Which seems pretty bad, but I'm pretty sure it was right.

Gnitsville,populationyouandmeG

He definitely calls a 100 river bet and probably calls 150. It gets a bit harder to tell once you get above 200. Big river bets aren't really my game. I take down a decent number of pots with river bluffs that look like value bets, so I sometimes am a bit unsure about how my big bets get perceived.

I'm certain $150 would have taken it down.

I'm certain that $150 was unlikely to take it down because he was up by so much. The combination of a chance he was good plus curiosity over how he was beat if he wasn't plus still being up multiple buy-ins if he lost made me think he would call. He was the sort to run his stack up then quit if it dropped down to something like $1000. If he had $500 behind, maybe I had a shot because I was threatening to wipe out most of his profits.

Isn't our hand a bit too strong to turn into a bluff here?

GcluelessbluffingnoobG

SPR is 3. Stacks can go in trivially whenever we feel like it, especially in position, no?

GcluelessNLnoobG

Not sure why we would "rep" Qx when we only have a smidge better, nor why we would call a raise if we successfully rep that to the villain (since he's indicating he beats that, and if he beats our range of Qx here, he probably mostly beats KK too)?

GcluelessNLnoobG

Then that's a metagame variable you'd have to factor in to your river bet, should you decide to bet it.

$250 in that case. I don't think his curiosity is worth that much.

Obviously, depends on how I range him. If I think that 3/bet dark check is a strong pre-flop hand that doesn't want to set up playing for stacks with a one-pair hand, so he has a range of AA-JJ/AK/AQ, what would he have to fold in that range to make a bluff +EV?

I do acknowledge that one of my leaks is failing to turn hands with showdown value into bluffs.

I agree that he's setup his hand exactly so that he can make a river call not for stacks. So I'm not convinced a bluff is going to work.

Gmakingpeoplefoldishard,imoG

Dark check is usually a SPECULATIVE hand - mainly hands that, if they do hit, the player will check anyways (small pairs,mconnectors, etc).

Dark check is never the big pairs TT-KK, though it can be AA with some opponents HU I suppose. I can't remember the last time someone dark checked AA. I see it a lot with spec hands though.