hero has been playing pretty snug, only real hand played I stacked someone with AA on QJ22 after I bet 2/3 pot on flop and he bet/called all in on the turn.

OTTH, hero($2800) , utg straddle on, with AQ opens MP3 to $70 when folded to, CO calls, and SB calls and covers;

flop(~220) Q96
SB checks, hero bets $140, CO folds, sb calls

turn ($500) 10
SB bets $300, hero calls

river ($1100)J
sb tanks and checks, hero???

open to thoughts on raising turn too, i think before that pretty std. this villian is middle age asian guy who plays pretty lag but tight enough to be tricky. def capable of making folds but not scared money at all.

saw him squeeze Q2o off in sb after opener, and 4 callers in straddled pot previously

Tricky spot. It's going to come down to your read on him and more importantly his read on you. You can credibly rep AK with the A of spades, as well as AJ spades. You're not going to have too many K's in your range other than KK and KQ, and the AK i just mentioned.

I'd probably check it back since this is a great spot for him to trap with a flush.

Having the As is nice, but I still don't see a lot of value in a river bet. You don't describe V but I'd be happy with a hand that has solid SDV in a pot controlled pot.

I think most of his range here is 2p or weak 1p hands, with the occasional flush/set/air.

I just don't see a range here that he can reasonably call with where we still win the majority of the time. I think checking it down makes sense unless you think you can reliably bet him off an 8 or 2p. If you think you can get him to fold 2p+, then i'd bet 700. As described though, I just don't think this guy is going away if he has a value hand.

Top pair, even AA, is usually not worth three streets of value.

Count your blessings if it holds here.

What $300 hand does Villain hold that he will call more, that we beat?

^^
He is asking if he should turn his hand into a bluff. Technically this one of the best bluffing combos we have and we still have all of the nuts in our range.

Played a hand very similar to this awhile back except a bit deeper and i ripped river and got absolutely fuggin fist pump snap called by JT. Didnt sleep for like 3 nights straight.

So he’s not going to have many Kings other than the ****load of combos of kings he can get to the river with in this manner? Good to know.

Pretty good combo for OP to turn his hand into a bluff. The only combo you need to avoid from villain is KJ. Sucks if he has it but I think $800 gets the job done.

$800 will get the job done all right.

Question is, who gets jobbed?

Especially if Villain has KK or Kx.

One way or the other.

Surely there is a smaller number with ALMOST the same fold equity so that we don't have to risk the rent money to find out? And surely there are better spots to bluff at - mainly like when the straight AND flush don't come in on the river together?

Dude the flush didn't come in on the river. Also, the straight coming in on the river is precisely what makes it a good bluff spot.

I would definitely bluff here. It's not likely that SB has a flush, because what flush would he have? It can't have the A in it and virtually every other flush combo is a combo draw OTF and I would expect a laggy villain to have gotten more aggressive with it. Most likely villain turned two pair.

If villain is a thinking player I reckon 600 is good enough. It's credible that we would size small with a king here.

Let's read your hand.

AK is a possibility, especially with a spade. You're betting the river hoping to get value from his K's and bluff catchers.

You have one combo for the royal and 3 for the nut flush, assuming A9s and KJs are in your LP opening range. You're betting for value from underflushes and bluff catchers.

There's not much reason to bet KQ, KJs, or KK here unless you're merging your range and expect him to bluff catch often. (Which, if you do think, should probably be the answer to whether you should bluff here.)

You could have AQ, AJ, ATs, maybe some other hands you're turning into a bluff.

On combos, I think he should snap you off. I think this looks like such a good bluffing spot, and you have so many combos of hands that would want to bluff that I think he might well think your frequency is higher than the odds.

If he thinks you're a nit, or you think he's a nit, you could fire it in. If river bluffs like this are rare in the game, you could fire it in.

If you do bet, I'd bet on the high side. Underflushes will call a big bet and the big bet may not significantly change his bluff catching tendencies. Since your value bets would be big, so should the bluff.

Unless, of course, V doesn't think that deep and will just figure small wants a call and bold wants a fold.

This doesn't make sense. If I expect him to call, say, 15% of the time with bluffcatchers, then I should both bet my K hands and bluff. One of the keys to this hand imo is how unlikely V is to be strong here. Given his flop and turn play he is quite unlikely to have either a flush or a king.

We can have AT, AJ, AQ, AA, that's it for bluffs I think?

I'm not sure if this looks like a good bluff spot to SB since he thinks we have to put flushes in his range.

all in

Very interesting spot. You are literally never good here unless he is insanely out of line so bluffing is definitely your only way to win. I was pretty torn on if bluffing should work so I ran both your ranges through flopzilla. Basically, 2 of his 35 combos are a K and 6 are a flush. You on the other hand, should have 18 K combos as well as 12 flush combos out of 65 total combos. With that in mind a bet seems very reasonable. 2 pair hands have 25-30% equity after card removal effects so you'll want to bet enough to deny odds to call. A bet of around 800-900 seems pretty reasonable to me.

If we do want to bluff this river it is definitely all in.

$2300 into $1100? So you 2x'ed pot when you got snapped off by JT?

Maybe that's what PIO says - I haven't really played around with it. Seems unnecessary, if not more bluffy.

This one to me is so heavily V read dependent that I am not sure any of us can give the "correct" answer. Sure, it looks like a great spot to bluff for all the reasons mentioned, but it really depends on what we know of V and have seen him do (concrete proof as someone put it to me in another hand). If he is capable of laying down any part of his turn value range, then ok it makes more sense. If he is visibly annoyed that now a naked K beats him then absolutely. But against a random player who isn't scares $$, seems like a tougher spot to pull the trigger then some are giving it credit for.

Mine was $3K into $1.8ish, but yes.

Its about our value shoving combos vs our bluff combos and making him make a big miskate vs that range with our chosen sizing. The biggest mistake is made vs. an all in.

If it looks more bluffy, thats great for the Ax part of our range, which we have all of and also should be stuffing.

think overbetting river is really sexy with our exact hand.

checking back is ok too though. i dont really like anything in between tbh.

We can credibly rep more hands with a smaller sizing. We would never shove KK or AK on the river, whereas we would bet both for a normal sized value bet.

With stacks as deep as they are, I also don't believe we would ever flat the turn with the nuts given we will still have >2x pot remaining on the river with virtually no chance of getting that money in with a flat.

We would flat turn often tho, specifically bc we can take this exact line.

Try to get out of the trap of thinking in terms of 50%/75%/100% pot bets and instead think about your range and what it wants to do and use your sizing around that. This has helped me a ton, esp. with overbetting turns.

Most of our range wants to flat turn, and we also have zero bluffs in a turn raise. This point may be a bit less important, bc villain has taken an unbalanced line himself, but I can safely say that thinking about what your whole range wants to do is very important, in balanced spots and in exploitative spots alike.

Our range splits otr between value check backs, Kx value bets, Ax value bets, and bluffs. We can split our vbet sizing for value/bluff with Kx/bluffs and Ax/bluffs. However I think Im explotatively sizing very small with Kx and having no bluffs, and stuffing Ax/Ax combos. Im pretty certain of my stuffing range. The Kx I'd have to think about.

For the overbet polarized sizing...I didnt get this from pio exactly but more from high level reading about what ai like libratus did in its heads up matches. It bet all kinds of crazy amounts, and a funny comment in one of the threads stuck with me.

"It took artificial intelligence to realize that in a no limit betting game you can indeed bet any size you want"

Considering only his frequency for calling with worse isn't sufficient to determine whether value makes sense. If he's calling 15% with worse and 16% with better, our value bet fails. By the same token, if some bet got called 2% by worse, but only 1% by better, it would be profitable.

I'm pretty sure you know that. Is there an assumption above I'm not catching?

Your point about his range is well taken. I should have considered that. See below.

In the first para, you're suggesting we should think he doesn't have a K or flush. But the sentence above suggests he thinks we can't know that. I'm not sure we have sufficient reads on V to be confident he's getting it 100% wrong.


OK, V's range.

V has shown he can squeeze with ATC, but didn't 3b us here, instead choosing to play a pot HU OOP with SPR 20. I'm going to guess he put snug H on a snug range and didn't figure enough folds for a light 3b. Let's say he's playing something speculative like...

22 - JJ, A2s+, 54s+, 75s+, AQo+, and some fudge factor. Some of those may well be discounted because they'd fold or 3b for value.

I assume he's continuing with any piece of the flop, which is basically draws, Q's, and 9's.

OTT, he has some 9's that fold (97s and A9s). He has some double gutties around an 8 (T8s, 98s) that he might let go (but I'll leave them in). Otherwise, I think he's continuing with everything.

OTR, we're behind everything except 6 combos of AQ

He has 7 flushes
10 straights (8 of them with an 8)
6 sets
8 2P
6 TP (AQ)

I think there are arguments for taking flushes out of his range:
* He'd lead or x/r to capture value before board gets scary

I think there are arguments for leaving them in
* We don't have much worse that can call a x/r
* His playing passively lets us continue bluffing
* In the unlikely event we do have the boss flush, he's going to experience an certain uncomfortable feeling of fullness.
* Unless we think he's bluffy, leading out tends to let us play more correctly against him.

With no flushes...
We chop 6/30 = 20% so our EV is 110 if we check.
A pot sized bet would require folds 55%+ (17 combos) or TP, 2P and half of sets. (This assumes he never bluff jams.)
A jam would require folding 71% (22 combos) or TP, 2P, sets, and 2 straights with an 8.

If he has flushes...
We chop 6/37 = 89 equity for checking back.
A pot sized bet would require folds 55%+ (21 combos) or TP, 2P, all sets, and an 8 straight. (Again assuming no bluff jams.)
A jam would require folds 71% (27 combos) or TP, 2P, all sets, nearly all 8 straight.

As always, it all depends on assumptions. I'm not particularly married to the ones I made, but I think they're reasonable.

awesome analysis, thank you!

I ended up tanking for a long time thinking it seems like a great spot to bluff but eventually talked myself out of it. I too was thinking its unlikely he has flush but I think he would check it on this river alot of times if he did have one (and would expect him to bet alot of the baby ones on this turn), also thought I was unlikely to get folds from any straights unless just jam and even then was unsure of my FE vs this particular opponent.

ended up checking back thinking there were better spots, villian has 106

OK, um, wow!?

There are about a hundred combos I might have put in before that one. Time to update notes on this guy.

A quick note on "better spot". That's applicable in tournaments, but not in cash if you're adequately bankrolled.

Think of EV as money lying on the street. Would you walk past $5 because you thought there would likely be $10 later? In tournaments, you might get only one chance to pick up money. In that case, sure, wait for the better one. In cash you can have $15 or $10. $15 is better

My point about his range IS the assumption. When I vbet a king I'm expecting him to have a better hand very rarely. Once in a blue moon he'll show up with 54ss or something. I'm expecting a large majority of his hands to be bluffcatchers.

I guess if I have a king, I mostly don't have the A, so it's more likely he has a flush in that instance.

Maybe this is to some extent semantics, but it does carry an important general point.

I get that you believe we'd be ahead of his range if we had a K. You've made that assumption clear, which is good.

Your unstated assumption is that we'd be ahead of his *calling* range if we bet. That's not necessarily true even if we are way ahead of his overall range. Whether he calls often with his bluff catchers is dependent on his tendencies as well as his range.

Betting because we're ahead of someone's range will often lead to making bad bets.

Anyway, I suspect this horse has been dead for a while now. I'll stop beating it.