You could actually contribute to the thread instead of acting like king **** of turd mountain

What do you want to know, other than what I had? I already said what I thought V's raising range from SB was.

Are you intentionally acting like a pedantic tool?

Hmmm....yes....shallow and pedantic

Keep trolling bro, glad this thread brought out the real you

Sorry, I make bad jokes. Let's move on.

At the very least you could elaborate on your honest perception of Hero.

Telling us his opening range wasn't helpful (we already knew his range).

Tell us your overall read / label for him. How are you looking to exploit him / play optimally vs him?

I think hero is going to play almost everything ABC and is probably not the type to bluff much if at all other than a standard cbet. Would not expect him to double barrel this board without an overpair but do think he cbets this super dry flop 100% of the time. When I called his PFR my own range is going to be suited connector type cards, suited aces and kings, and pocket pairs, pretty much anything that can crack big pairs and won't cost much to get away from if I happen to flop top pair. I did check out of turn by accident because I think he had a $5 chip in the SB and thought he called but had not acted yet.

Anyone who has played with me knows I will make the occasional double or triple barrel bluff depending on board texture, stack sizes, etc. I'll often reraise if I think I can get someone off a hand. For example two days ago playing at Red Rock I raise QJo in LP to $7 accidentally leaving a red chip behind the line (supposed to be $12 raise), I tell button he gets a $5 discount, he 3b to $22, I 4b to $77 and tell him I tried to give him a discount. He folds AQ face up and says I have AK. If he had a big pair he probably makes it $30ish and younger kid 3b on button is going to be lighter than just QQ+/AK. Same situation with the hand I mentioned earlier in this post when I raise AQ to $15 and get one call, cbet $22 on an 899 flop, get raised to $60, I 3b to $122 and he folds. V range should be mostly mid PP there when he limp/calls heads up so I doubt he wants to get in $400 with an underpair to the board.

Agree with my double barrel continuing range being total air, backdoor draws that picked up equity on the turn, and 22/33. 99 I would almost always raise out of the BB so hero is right to discount that. I do like to raise people that are racking up or leaving soon since they rarely will play a big pot without the nuts. Heros hand was pretty face up as an overpair when he calls my flop raise but given his small cbet size and check on the turn I expected TT/JJ more than QQ+ He didn't tell me what he had until I saw this post.

Sorry if the above is rambling a bit, typing this on my phone.

KK is very high up in our range on this board. this means a few things wrt folding (assuming brick runouts for the sake of argument):
1) if you fold to his flop raise, you believe he is extremely unbalanced and are seeking to exploit him pretty substantially by folding
2) if you c/f the turn you believe he is fairly unbalanced and are seeking to exploit him also substantially by folding. it probably also means you believe that he checks back/gives up with a good amount of air from his flop raising range
3) if you c/f the river you think similar things to the above

another few points that i think have been missed: although TT and KK are the same in relative hand strength, you can fold TT at some point and call down with KK as part of a reasonable strategy and in doing so deny a lot of the positive expectation to a strategy from V that includes only raising sets otf

if you think that you should be folding KK to the flop raise or to a turn bet you are implying V could unilaterally improve his strategy by bluffing more on these streets (or only bluffing). on the other hand, by calling down with KK (and folding worse hands along the way), you are not incentivizing V to only raise flop (and barrel) with sets bc KK+ is not a large enough portion of our cbet range, or b/c range, or c/c turn range (in theory of course)

If you consider villain so relentlessly aggressive that your plan with 9x is to call down, wouldn't you also call down with sets?

That "loose passive donk" flop strategy of "raise strong hands, float marginals/draws" brutally exploits players (2p2ers) who unplug their fold button when they perceive their opponent's value range is narrow.

Also, villain's strategy is not transparent, so sets are still in his range if he flats and a turn raise from him will look even stronger.

Trying to counter villain's barreling by getting sticky with bluff catchers is, in itself, exploitable, by one of villain's safest lines. A line which he is liable to use often when he doesn't know much about Hero.

CallMeVernon is right: Avoiding being exploited by a solid player here means avoiding the situation entirely, either by not cbetting, or by going into a different metagame altogether where villain doesn't have so much control (bet/3betting flop).

if V was so aggressive that calling down with 9x was profitable, then obviously we would call down with sets (and jam remaining on riv if any behind)

sure thats true, but that's a horrible adjustment that you shouldnt make. also it doesnt apply here because 1)calling down with KK is probably part of a balanced strategy so its not an adjustment 2)we were not told that V was a "loose passive donk" who is likely to raise only with strong hands.

why do we need V's strategy to be transparent? and the fact that he (likely) plays a mixed strategy on the flop (calling some, raising some) only changes the weight of value hands that we assign him in each instance. we still have to estimate his strategy, whether it is mixed or pure, to form our own. also, if he is flatting some sets otf, he has fewer value combos which makes it more likely he is overbluffing, because most people dont adjust for this.

it is only exploitable if we call down with a larger than optimal portion of our cbetting range. you are insinuating that the gto solution in this case involves folding all our bluffcatchers, which i think is clearly not the case.

no, it does not. not cbetting any hands here (if not KK, then what?) is going to lower your EV substantially. b/3b could possibly be a good strategy (depends how wide he raise/calls flop), but you cant possibly believe that V has sets so often when he raises that we should fold the flop/turn and simultaneously believe that we should consider b/3b the flop. why does it matter that V has control? all that means here is that he is representing a range which is polarized wrt our holding, and thus we should either call down or fold with our bluffcatcher based on our estimation of the frequency with which he is bluffing.

Jvds once again with great analysis.

To clarify KK is the top of my call down range, 9x is the bottom of my call down range, and i obviously adjust my call down range to counter my opponent and his raising frequencies.

The more he bluffs in this spot, the wider i call down, the less he bluffs the tighter i call down.

AA-KK should always be called down here as part of a gto strategy, unless you were facing the biggest nit in the WORLD. In that case, we would exploit said nit by always folding.



In this particular spot, against wj, its clear as day that we can never fold. If AA-KK isnt in our bluff catching range, what is?


And adjusting our strategy so that we never cbet because hes on our left is absolutely terrible. If we arent cbetting KK here then we become terribly unbalanced towards only cbetting air in this spot.

Fwiw i stand by my call flop call turn likely chf river

So from a balance perspective, what hands are you calling all the way down with on this texture? If AA-KK isnt in your bluff catch 3 streets range, then capable opponents can exploit you by always triple barreling, because your call down range over 3 streets is too narrow.

You are over thinking it because I'm not multi tabling villain over 10,000 hands, I'm being exploitable intentionally because I should never be check folding this river and he should never be bluffing.

A wise man once said it's very hard to make money with a break even strategy which is what calling down here is. Also given wj94s reads he is not bluff raising this flop because he could just flat and take it away ott when it bricks and we check our AK etc... so you can probably just bet fold the flop.

Also when somebody checks out of turn then calls a raise and makes a move immediately afterwards, that's lol strong. If he was going to bluff he would likely pass on this spot because he had checked oot. That is just a live read etc.

Also the most difficult spots in nlhe are being oop otr with a face up hand and an inelastic range.

Yeah this has been my stance as well.

I don't like folding, and shoving at any point in this hand will get worse hands to fold, so I think the best option is to take a bluff inducing line.

*grunch*
Did anyone bring up the possibility of AA? Seems like a shady way to play the hand but I've def seen that angle before. Maybe too much play at commerce has jaded me.

Did not have AA

Take bluff inducing line, yet fold most rivers? Seems counterintuitive. Unless you expect some checking back.

Wj, did you have one of the hand combos i posted earlier or a set?

He isn't going to say what he had--probably because he had a set and wants to advertise that he "could be bluffing" in this spot. That's the implication I got from reading his long-winded post where he emphasizes how he made some big bluffs earlier but danced around talking about this actual hand.

But after all this debate, he really shouldn't say anyway.

I had a set, but I could be bluffing.

Ha! Nice.

(And for those of you who need this parenthetical: yes, I know he's leveling off my last post. But I find it humorous. And I also appreciated the "shallow and pedantic" joke, wj. Your humor is not lost on everyone.)

Sure