V - 40 y/o white rec male. Played pretty tight passive overall to this point. He did show down 1 garbage hand from MP, but he's not playing more than 2 hands/round (we're 10-handed). He's had 2 pair+ whenever he's showed post flop aggression. He's mildly tilted from a few tough rivers. The only hand he's played with hero to this point was cold calling a pf raise in position and folding to a c-bet on a J82 flop.

Hero - Very winning image. Getting hit with the deck. Stacking people left and right. Being ultra-aggressive in LP. Playing more hands than normal because of lots of good starting hands.

$1/2 game
V is on button with $255
Hero covers

Hero opens to $15 with KJ in CO
V says "That's exactly what I was going to raise to" as he cold calls.
Both blinds call

Flop($55)
AT2

Checked to hero who bets $30
V raises to $60
Folds around to hero who calls

Turn ($175)
J
Hero takes about 30 seconds before checking
V checks behind

River ($175)
5
Hero bets $60
V shoves $180
Hero calls

Thoughts?

Snap call. You only get beat by the nut flush and for him to have that he would have had to check back top pair + nfd ott. Sure, he shows up with the goods sometimes, but there is way worse in his value range to make this an easy call.

Bet more on the river

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umm snap call, always..? lol wtf. - Yes. bet more on the river ~110ish imo

Yeah, obviously a no-brainer call with the 2nd nuts after V shoves. I was looking for input more on the flop and turn and thought processes for those streets.

What's the purpose of betting bigger on the river? I bet small because I was looking to get paid on the flush. When the flush hits on the river, a lot of Vs just won't put in that much money without the flush, but they will call a smaller bet. A $110 bet would have to be called 1/2 as often as a $60 bet to be profitable. I could see V calling $60 no problem with a top pair type hand, but I don't see him sticking in $110 with top pair.

What range do you put V on after the turn, but before there's any action on the river? What ranges min raise the flop and check back the turn? Do you ever lead the turn here with a blocking bet to try to set a price for the draw?

You played it ok, bet bigger on the river.

Flop min-raise is going to be a lot of AK and combo draws but he doesn't want to play them too aggressively. I would imagine he raises bigger with 2p+

So did he have AQss?

How often is he r/f'ing to a flop 3-bet with AQ/AJ? Any FE? I prefer to have overs when I play draws really fast but sometimes no overs if I have a fd+sd is good enough with the right amount of FE.

You'd think he's good enough to notice the spades and not shove 2-pair here. You also have sick blockers to worse flushes. The K/J/T are occupied. So is V ever playing Q9ss/Q8ss/98ss? Probably never. Usually I tell people don't draw to the second nuts, get there, then get MUBSY. This is a pretty data-ful (let's make that a new word) exception because of the blockers and the V description. I don't see V showing anything other than AQss/A9ss. I'd lose more on this hand that the river $75 but find a fold. I'd probably lead $100, not with the intention of b/f'ing, just because it's not a great prison rape spot. It's barely even a prison rape, it's a PSB, but still. I think V is finding folds with AT and betting ott with AJ so I don't know what calls ai that you beat besides sometimes KQss and you have that blocked. So I'd lead $100 and when V shoves, the price on you're call is [ (80) / (175+180+180)] = 14.9%. But let's face it, you're not going to be good anywhere near 15% of the time. You'll be good as often as V starts raising naked Q-high/9high fd's after he said he was going to raise pf if you didn't, which I think is < 2%.

This is a pretty solid post.

If we believe that V was going to raise preflop, then he has AQ exactly. All other combos of raise-able AX hands is taken. Seriously doubt V was going to raise with A9 type hands. So the first question is "Do we actually believe V?"

Let's assume for the sake of argument that we do not believe V. Based on the way the hand played out, we can remove 100% of all two pair, straights, and sets from his range because he checked back turn. No way in hell he raises us on flop and then lets the turn check through on this super wet board. Similarly, no way he checks those hands and then raise/jams us on the river when the spade hits.

So, we are looking at V having a flush 100% of the time and we have blockers to every decent flush except Q9. So the next question is, would V raise us on the flop with a naked flush draw?

AQss can raise flop but come turn, every combo of Ax that we would raise with either makes 2p or beats V (AK). So AQss should check back the turn.

But lets back up some. What is V's preflop calling range? How many 87s and Q8s type hands does V have in his preflop calling range and what percentage of those hands is raising us on this flop? Preflop and flop our hand should look like the typical AK/AQ so I just can't see this villain raising us with something like Q9ss or 98ss on this flop when we put in a decent c-bet.

As sick as this sounds, I think V has exactly AQss here and that all the info we need to make a soul read fold is here. In the heat of battle, I'm not sure I could bring myself to fold it. I'd have to be at the top of my A-game

That's what I misread. I had only been playing with him for an hour and half when this hand took place, so I guess the sample size was very small; but typically guys who are only seeing 20% of flops don't flat pf raises with Q8, but that's exactly what he had. What made it even more shocking when he turned it over was him doing one of those Jamie Gold "verify the call" speeches. "You said call right? Dealer, he said call, right?". He was acting like he won the lotto, so I expected to see Ax 100% of the time after that speech.

When the jack hit the turn, I almost fired $40-$50 because I didn't want him to blow me off all my draws. Is that just lighting $ on fire?

btw - It's really helpful to see how others (especially DGI + Eldiesel) would think this hand through. The thought process is logical and awesome.

If I had to single out one thing that I feel I do better than 99% of the LLSNL player pool, it is my ability to recall/profile players in regards to how they have played other similar spots.

Against the villain in question, I would be racking my brain for all the times I saw this villain raise the preflop raiser and then I would try to correlate that with all the times I saw villain play a draw that went to showdown.

Sometimes, we just don't have the data. But it's been my experience that if we have been following the action of all hands (not just the hands we were in) then that data is available.

The last component of this is understanding the meta game part of poker. When someone says something preflop or during the hand, what does that something mean? When someone shoves the river and then starts overtly giving tells, what do those tells mean if the tells are intentional or unintentional?

In any event, I do see this as a sick spot. And this is definitely one of those spots where I'm racking my brain trying to correlate and recall all relevant info regarding villain's tendencies and competency level.

I think this is the flaw here. Villains at this level love to call or overall suited hands because they are playing bingo poker. Even players that seem halfway decent will limp/call or just overcall a hand like this. Especially if they "put you on AK" right?

One leak I still have when I play 1/2nl and 2/5nl is leveling myself with my own biases in regards to how I think "competent" players play. I see a player that i think knows what he is doing and then I automatically start thinking he thinks more or less like I do when that isn't even remotely the case. Usually, I've found that players that outwardly seem competent still have glaring leaks in certain aspects of their game. Kinda like a house with dry rot. It can look good on the outside, but there are still huge problems on the inside...

So this is why I'm birddogging hard when they are in other hands trying to profile them and get a better sense of their competency level and the plays they are making: when they raise, call, 3-bet, shove, etc...

That's funny that you should mention that. Profiling has been my primary focus all week. Do you have any tips on how to do that? There's just A TON of information. It just becomes overwhelming at some point. For the first few orbits, I'm focused like a laser. "This guy limp-called with T9 from EP". "This guy has folded to 3 straight c-bets". "This guy just min-raised the turn with bottom two pair". Etc.

The problem is that after the first few orbits everything gets murky. I'm on information overload and nothing gets processed. I used to play online so I could just type notes into a player profile. Do you have a system? Do you prioritize certain types of information and not spend as much mental energy on smaller pieces of information? or are you just able to process everything?

This 1000X. Even the guys we have pegged as solid and have history with will still show up with some wtf hands some % of the time. Maybe they are balancing their range, maybe theyre bored, maybe they felt you are fos and defending light. That doesnt mean we shouldnt ever make sick soul reads and fold the 2nd nuts, but you should always include some non zero wtf factor in your calculations.

I try to compress the information as much as possible and throw villains into certain categories so that later, I can just remember the category and I don't have to remember the specific hands that resulted in my classifying the villain.

Give you an example.

I see V1 checks back Aces up two pair on a relatively safe board on river instead of going for the value bet. He checks back and then says, "Well, I thought you might have had the nuts..."

So I classify him as weak-tight nit. Therefore, later when I have Q9 and the board is

Board($200) J 3 4 8 2

and I bet $100 on the river and he raises me to $200, I can fold. I don't have to remember the exact specifics of why I classified him as I did, all i know is I'm sure he's a weak tight nit and according to my definition, a weak tight nit is never ever raising me on this river without the near nuts.

Same with a player that overplays his hand. I notice that V2 not only raised his nut flush on a paired board, but he also called when his opponent jammed over the top of him. Not just called, but more or less snapped called. So, I will classify V2 as Aggro Donk that overplays the absolute strength of his hand. So against this player, in the above example where I folded to the weak-tight nit, I can actually jam over the top of V2 if he raises me on the river with a Q-high flush because he is bad enough to overplay sets, straights, and weaker flushes.

I have various classifications I use: thinking player that doesn't get out of line, thinking player that makes moves if weakness is shown, aggro that makes moves, passive tight, super station, etc etc.

I do try to remember one key defining hand per player that best encapsulates my classification, ESPECIALLY if they are deep and I'm targeting them. But otherwise, I just classify all my villains and then later I play against that classification.

the problem I think many players have though is they do not respect nor adequately define the definitions they use. For instance, the term "nit" is so overused nowadays to the point of being a near pointless description. But not to me. to me, the term "nit" has a very precise meaning, as does aggro, as does passive as does weak tight as does rock as does TAG as does LAG, etc etc.

The more precise and accurate you can be in your definitions of your villains, the easier it is to compartmentalize information and then later accurately play against the player profile/description.

Lastly, I try to key in on the most relevant stuff like value bets, check backs, check raises (like when someone check raises what do they do on the next street!!!!), sizing tells, etc. Then I throw this info into my profile:

V1 is aggro donk, bets big when he has it, bets medium or small when he doesn't, check raises on draws. Thus, that is easier to remember than trying to recall the 4 specific hands that led me to the above descriptions...

Grunch. The speech pre flop and his play would lean his range heavily towards AJ+, 88+. Of course it's not 100% reliable but pretty close. This means you lose to exactly one combo, AQss. Take into account spaz (nits do spaz), horribly played set or AJ, or some dumb bluff, etc and you can't fold here. CALL!!!

Not sure I like the flop Cbet. Yes you'll get 88, 99 to fold but those might not even raise pre. This flop smashes his range and he probably won't fold QQ to one bet. You don't want to get raised and have to commit a lot or fold your draw

Great stuff, man! I'll buy your book when it comes out So, do pre-flop calling ranges fit into your categories? For example, "Thinking player who doesn't get too out of line" and "thinking player that makes moves if weakness is shown" might have two totally different calling ranges from MP.

Now, you just have to follow Hellmuth's lead and give your V's animal names like "elephant" and "eagle"

I just jam flop. Vs a range of TP/2p/set with 0% FE I have 40% equity, getting 1.8:1 on a jam (because dead money).

AP you have to fold river. He has to have exactly AQ here since we basically block every other FD we beat.