Card room, full table, 2/3-300 cap buyin. Weekday evening
V: Mid-position. Mid 50s white guy. Friendly. Experienced player, gives off a bit of an "old school" vibe. Seems to play fairly tight and cautiously. Stack ~1,300, mostly built before hero arrived at table. Hero has seen him make some folds to aggression. Table overall is fairly weak/passive, at least for this room.
H: UTG. Mid 40s average white guy. Playing TAG and showing winners at showdown. About 4 hours into session. V probably respects hero as winning player, aggressive, and perhaps capable of bluffs/spew (all true, but not clear if V has seen this in previous history). Stack: 950
Pre: Hero opens to 20 (15 was standard for table) with AcAs. V calls. Table folds.
Flop (pot~40 after rake): 9s9c5s.
Hero bets 35. V fairly quickly calls.
I range V with 55, 99, TT-JJ (I suspect he 3 bets pre with QQ+. V possibly has suited connector draw).
Is this a cooler thread where hero lost to villains 99, and hero wants to know if he can get away from top boat on the river?
River is a clear call, i dont know what else to say. That being said you can size down a little bit, especially on the flop C -bet, to widen your villains calling range and gets calls from bigger parts of his whole range he gets to the flop with. Its better overall for your whole range to, and gives you a better price on your C-bet bluffs like your AQ or KQ.
Your riverbet is kind of big too, and i dunno if i like that either-cause youre really narrowing down the amount of hands villain will be able to call you down with. I guess you maximize value though if he slowplayed trips the whole way and you got there on the river, but when you bet so big he might not raise you on the river with trips good kicker. Thats why i like to downsize a little bit, with a more non threatning betsize so that he is more likely to come over the top with all his 9x, and at the same time pay off with some worse hands if he is a non believer.
To some previous responding posts- theres no reason to be rude here folks. Obviously we all post here for help, and not everything is 100% clear in the moment.
now-
Here I think you played correctly and I realllllllyyyy hope you stacked him. Snap call. Like, i would barely wait for the word "in" of the verbal "all-in" to call and show down.
I have lost to very similar coolers (losing a sweet full house to rivered quads, etc.) but this is an instance where we have to except that a cooler is a possibility but extremely rare.
I learned (or am still learning) to never fear the cooler- with a hand this sick, we have to get it in.
You need to create a diversion and try to sneak an additional $350 onto the table somewhere during the hand. If this is a legitimate question/thread, then i’m Genuinely confused. I don’t get it.
