Hand I played last night...

Scenario:
*400NL live, buy in 200 min with 400 max. Have approx 3-4 big fish on the table- very soft game with 6-7 limpers every hand. One of those tables where it's better to get in cheaply because ISOing to $45 is getting 2-3 callers minimum, just very loose/fishy. Been playing for about 5 hours. Mostly have control of the table and run it up to about $1300 after hitting nut flush vs fish's 2 pair and getting it all in-which Villain witnessed.

*Shortly after, I bluff raised a river bet by a casual fish after he bet $25 into $120 (stank of weakness and I raised to $90 so he folds.) Villain also witnessed this.

Then this hand came up. 8 handed 400NL.
Villain has been playing for around 40 minutes and has won a few pots vs fish. Is constantly limping in position although he is on my right and I have ISO'd a few times vs some fish in the blinds- he's called a few of these because the fish just won't fold anything pre flop. He's 3 bet QQ to 14x after a raise and call in front. Is good enough to avoid playing out of position which, in live poker, means they usually aren't complete droolers.

Hero (Button) $1300 in front
Villain (CO) $650 in front

Preflop:
UTG raises to $10
UTG+1 calls $10
MP Calls $10
HJ calls $10
CO (Villain) calls $10
Button(Hero) calls $10 holding 4 4
BB calls $10
Pot: $70, 7 runners.

Flop K 7 J

Checked around to me on button. I check behind.

Turn 4 (boom)

HJ bets $35 (same guy that I bluff raised on river earlier-but they never saw my cards when I did bluff.)
Villain CO calls $35
Hero Button raises to $135

HJ folds
Villain thinks for 20 seconds, calls $135

Pot: $375, 2 runners

River
A

Villain: takes 10 seconds, bets $320.
Pot: $695
Hero: ?

Board on river: K 7 J 4 A

Reads: only played with villain for 40 minutes but appears to be semi competent and ABC tight/weak. Is disciplined and won't play anything out of position. He is an Indian guy and I noticed he was reading CNN on his phone whilst not in hands. Also Overheard him mumbling about implied odds in earlier hand and watched him steal a few small pots in position as last to act. Basically wants to get into most pots in position, for cheap, and chip away at these pots while he waits for real hands.

Biggest questions for me are:

- Assuming he reraises KK, JJ, AK preflop so they are out.
- 77 is possible but surely he wants to build the pot up before the river and either bets flop or raises turn?
-KJ is possible but again, once the Ace on the river hits, he's better off turning his hand into a bluff catcher and check calling?
-Does he think I'm raising the turn because of another weak round of betting in front of me and this is a bluff? If so, what hand did he have that he thought was in front? And why wouldn't he check call the river when I barrelled again?
-Is he bad enough to lead out for 85% of the pot with 2 pair here ie AJ ? (probably not from the read I had on him being above average casual player.)

Plenty of times I would call pretty quickly in a spot like (you have a set and this is live 400NL with no flush on the board!) depending on the player and how bad they are, but I tanked for a solid 5 minutes here after thinking through the hand with this opponent. Obviously two hands I'm concerned about are Q 10 for the nuts or 77 for an overset (less concerned about this).

Call or fold? (or raise! lol).

I only lose to q10 never folding here close to a shove prolly call though

QT is sixteen combinations (this is a lot) and certainly fits with villain's line.

Getting slightly better than 2:1, we need to come up with about seven combinations of worse hands to call.

AJ is perhaps possible given postflop, and that makes nine combinations, but he probably raises that preflop some percentage of the time and probably folds to the turn raise some of the time. Maybe you'll assign him four combinations of AJ, though I still think that's optimistic.

Can you come up with any other hand he would play this way?

Let's forget about the fact that we have a set and think about what villain would check flop, check/call/call turn and then donk river for a pot-sized bet. It's a very unusual line and would be one pair about never. The type of villain to bluff like this is very rare -- if you've never seen him make a similar move it'd be unreasonable to expect a bluff. It's also incredibly unlikely he had a strong hand on the turn as he would have raised. That leaves, almost certainly, a hand that was weak on the turn which improved vastly on the river, and there aren't very many of those that a set of 4s beat.

Your hand is actually a bluffcatcher here as it's so unlikely villain can be valuebetting with worse. And if villain isn't capable of bluffing like this -- hardly anyone is -- you don't really beat anything.

Unless he can have a7/a4 then easy call I guess.

come to think of it I guess the turn raise was small enough to keep those hands in often enough. Think it's a pot odds call then.

we only have to be ahead here about 30% of the time to make this call +EV (320 to win 695).

If we shove we only get called by better.

call>fold>shove IMO

Don't know how V can have anything but QT or AK on this runout, possibly 77. Does V just call the $10 pre with AK is the real question here....probably not. If I'm calling I'm not loving it.

I think the question is does he call the raise ott with an up and down ? his hand is either QT or nothing IMO. but if it is QT how is calling the turn raise? he is getting 2.75:1 to call. if he is a thinking player he would have folded I think. I believe I call but I dont like it.
thats a good HH

I would call here for sure. Any two pair (AJ most likely) seem at least at likely as QT here. I don't feel great about raise/fold.

There's zero chance I fold this hand. With the flop 7-handed and checking through, I think lots of hands stay in V's range. Even AK. All sets don't really make sense, since they should've shown up earlier, but lots of Ax that hit a pair on the flop make a lot of sense to me from his line.

I think V's call on turn is questionable if he have QT, but i think he got there, dont pay him off, you dont beat much here.

After reading responses, it seems like we are either giving V credit for being a smart thinking player (therefore discount range to eliminate hands that would be "badly" played with his line) or we consider V to be more of an "average" player (his range is wider if we think he can play fishy).

For the first case, how does Hero's line look to V here? Not super strong. Basically called pf, whiffed flop, and took a strong stab at the turn after a weak bet and call? Pretty much 44 or air, right? What if I'm V with 65s? My line all of a sudden makes a lot of sense here.

So all of a sudden we narrow a thinking V's range to QT or 65s (some combos at least). I still think AJ shows up here too...

If he's on the fishy side we add some combos of AK, A7, KJ.

I think it's bad to just say QT and call it a day.

Grunch.

Bah... that sucks. I think your analysis is pretty good though. Unfortunately, QT actually fits the line he took perfectly. That's kinda hard to say about any other combo IMO. Most would be either betting the flop or taking a different action OTT. His sizing is pretty polarizing OTR. I would probably fold this and then try to get him to reveal something about his hand after and take note. It's always tough in spots like this when you have limited reads. I definitely seem some indian guys spas out and make a crazy play.

Great hand to post, tough decision for sure.

Ultimately this comes down to how fishy V is and how big of a station he is, and how aggro he is. I mean, V would have to be pretty fishy to bet/call AJ on turn. So on one hand we need V to be fishy enough to check/call turn then aggro enough to lead out river when he binks a non nut improvement.

On the flip side, I can't tell you how many times I've leveled myself in these spot giving V more credit than he deserves in thinking he knows what he is doing. If I had a nickel for every ******ed hand combo I've seen a V show up with in these spots I would have a lot of nickels.


The more competent and/or nitty V is, more likely I am to fold. The more donkish and aggro V is more likely I am to call. Lastly, it also depends how often V has put in a big bet. $320 bet is a big bet. If this is Villain's first big bet at the table I'm more likely to fold since he is likely nutted.

I'm leaning more towards fold here.

the only problem I can see here is you raised the turn and he called. You could have 777 in his eyes plus the 444 is almost face up and he still lead out almost half pot on the river when the third broadway came out. If he thinks you raised with an OESD, you would have gotten there.

as played this looks like Q10 but I would need reads on him to fold (there are pleanty of players in my player pool who I would fold this against and feel good about it).

Meh

After spending a lot of time reading and thinking about this one, he has 77 or very much less likely AJ.

He is slow playing his monster flopped set after limping with a middle pair.

As for what I would do? Call of course! Only because it's in the heat of the moment and without really taking the time to read and think about everything for five minutes I would be pretty sure he had AJ/Ax for two pair.

Hi guys.
Awesome responses and this is why I love 2+2.

The hardest part about this one was knowing just how good this player actually was and what level he was thinking on.
It's always difficult to narrow down ranges in a spot like this.

I think my problem was that I stereotyped this guy into thinking his range here is only the nuts. ie: he's a tighter/solid casual player who isn't leading out for 320 on the river with 2 pair like AJ or AK. I think he's check calling.

In the end I folded and showed the set.

He showed 8 9 for a busted gutshot!

I outleveled myself but it was a very tricky spot- but I used *most* of the information around me to make a decision- although I didn't think enough about what hand he would put me on- I just thought that the ABC/slightly losing casual player doesn't bet $320 on the river with a bluff and if I ran this situation 100 times, he's showing up with the nuts there most of the time as a casual player.
He basically thought I was bluffing and check call 'floated' me, barrelling any river that appeared scary to my range or my bluff attempt.

We just come across these situations every now and then where we the regular player too much credit.

As Nozr said, I only need to be right about 30% of the time here to call but it just smelled so much like the nuts.

I had concluded that my hand was a bluff catcher- rather than thinking enough about what this 'better than average' fish was perceiving my range to be on the turn.(He thought I had sweet %*&^ all!).
My ISO raises on his left and earlier turn raises probably had him convinced that I couldn't have a hand in that spot- or I could lay down a small two pair.

He actually said that he put me on two pair and thought he could get me to fold which I guess is possible. The most likely truth is that he thought I was bullying with a turn raise and the river Ace was a good card to rep.

Haha, that's pretty sick. There's always going to be a random spew factor when trying to put villains on a range but I would not expect to see that very often in this spot. If I called it would not be because I thought it could be a bluff.

I wonder what effect if any your turn sizing had to induce it, because relative to the pot it is a small raise. I'm not saying it's correct to raise bigger to make hands "easier" (because, really, you'd love opponents to play like V did) but it is something to consider when we think it's unlikely villain got to the river with certain hands because we bet or raised.

still, results are meh, I think folding is fine.

I feel its player dependent. If you feel he only bets the nuts then fold.
Qt seems very possible. That was my instinct. I sigh fold and wait for a better chance to make money.

He actually almost potted the river, the pot is like $350 and he led $320. Op included Villains bet in the final pot calculation OTR I think.

But yeah... after seeing what this guy showed, I would have him pegged as a donk and would not be giving him much credit in the future.

Great post +1

I can think of hundreds of hands that could use the A as a bluff

I call

Just read results. Sicko!!!!

Don't think folding there is bad at all. I had zero bluffs in his range.

and this is really all that matters, whether you made the correct +EV play out of every hundred times you make it.

You raised the turn over two players this was a risky play on his part.

V's stack size??

165 BB ($655)

Obviously his call on the turn is terrible. I think he just put you on a much weaker hand and decided to randomly bluff the ace. But there are a lot of hands he could be bluffing with that make more sense like T9 or 65. Still tough to call without information on your opponent considering this line is the nuts most of the time.

Just unfortunate that this is one of the worst river cards for us(other than maybe a 9) I would focus on this opponent in the future to see what his bet sizing is when he actually has the goods and see if it matches up with his bluffs. If there is a notable difference in sizing then he might regret showing you the bluff, since you will pick the next one off.