Good flop discussion so far. Hero went against the grain a little, as perhaps evidenced by my questions. I didn't see much, if any, of V's range that would pay off a flop value bet, so I went for some deception and continuance with my play of my entire range on A-high flops OOP in 3bet pots.

Flop ($106): Q A 6

Hero checks. V bets $50 in rhythm. Hero?

If flop wasn't so drawy and the fact that this is a 3bet pot where competent Villains shouldn't be showing up with Ax, I could more get behind a flop check.

We could check again and continue to let Villain attempt to bluff us, but if they end up taking a free card with a draw that would suck. So I'd probably lean towards a check/raise at this point (although that has much more risk of blowing him off a hand that would have happily called a cbet).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Actually ran numbers. Need to be good 18.6% of time

Have 17.4% chance to be ahead after turn. So your overbet makes it slightly -EV.

However, most his flush draws are going to pick up equity on turn. So they may also call a turn jam. If they can improve to pair+ draw, or open ender plus draw.

But if he has K10ss, KJss, 10Jss, he has plenty equity to call.

The major point is. You are losing value, from large chunk of his range, because your afraid of him realizing his equity. Which with bottom end of his calling range. He is almost drawing dead.

You are likely only getting value from hands you have coolered. Which you would have gotten anyways.

Decent reg is probably only calling with his nut draws, which almost 100% of those have a gutter.

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checking allows him to control the pot, and a c/r risks him folding med Ax hands. I would rather risk him folding the bottom of his range than risk losing more value on his value hands by cbetting 75. Also another spade either kills his action or makes it harder for us to call a huge turn bet (especially a b'dway spade)

as played though, I would still c/r to 165.

This is my point: a competent player has no bottom end of his range here that is calling a flop bet on this board. What, we're worried about losing 6x/87hh/99/etc.? Those hands aren't putting in a single cent more.

I guess I'm trying to figure out what hands a weakish bet is going to eke out some value against that a bigger bet isn't, and I can't think of a single one. What, the four combos of KQ?

GcluelessNLnoobG

Tilting.

You find the most profitable flop for your hand and your immediate concern is that he has no hands with which to call, but you expect him to bet? Do you want the flop to check through?

Checking isn't deceptive the moment you start adding money to the pot facing bets.

Middle sets are our big money makers. Play them accordingly.

Ya, with a set. I am looking to get value from 6x, Ax suited, flush draws. Not just cooler someone.

Him even having a flush draw is rare.



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This really isn't relevant to the thread at all, but whatever.

If we turn our hand face-up and bet $150 now, intending to jam 100% of turns, villain does not have a profitable call even with KT For the call to be profitable, the following must be true.

150 <= 1/45*(806)+3/45*(35/44*1206-400)+7/45*(34/44*1206-400)

150 <= 138 is false.

We shouldn't be playing with the intention of making villains strong draws unprofitable, though. Those are strong hands which should be profitable if both players are playing reasonable ranges, and they are a small part of villain's overall range.

This is my point!!!!

Over betting flop is not a good plan vs decent reg.



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Checking was terrible.

Now you force him in a spot to play better.

Done with hand, because it's awful. What do you 3-bet check/call or c/raise here? Very little.

Agree with pre opinions. Id go $70-75 myself. 50 is standard, so 60+ based on reads seems ideal.

checking flop is terrible. You turn your hand face up. 3 bet pot, checking this flop doesnt show your hand, but your next action will. After a checked flop: KK maybe calls a single bet, or will make one bet on turn or river if it gets checked. JJ- checks it down folds to a bet, maybe bluffcatches on river. AK isnt checking here, really, but i guess AK would call it down flop-river. AA, QQ is trapping. So if you raise his flop bet, its AA/QQ 100%. AK/66 can happily fold. Same thing is the case for betting out turn, or betting out river, or check raising turn or river.

im not really worried about FD, im betting flop, mostly getting folds here. wouldve bet $75 but the srgument for $150 is compelling. I cant reasonably say that the guy doesnt have weak Ax hands, because even competent 1/3 players tend to have a spazzing percentage where they could do something stupid.

as played, call flop. turn is check/call no matter what hits. Basically he may be bluffing and put you on KK or JJ and fire again, if he has 66/AK they will fire again of course. River check/ship on non flush, i guess check/call on flush

Making a small 3 bet pre, maybe to 50 or 55. Normally would be a silly bet but I don't want the maniac to fold. We are going to have a huge edge against his range and his skill post flop, no need to excessively punish him pre. If he's overbetting the pot anyway, the most important thing it to keep him in.

I'm leading this flop. We want to build a pot obviously and this flop is wet enough that there is a good chance he got a piece. He's flatting your 3 bet with a lot of suited connectors and hands like AJ, A10 etc. If he flatted you with a small pocket pair, he's done with the hand on this board.

I think 85 is a good sizing that allows for you to get called by hands like draws as well as hands like AJ A10 or AK that flatted.

As played, I'm probably putting in a decent size check raise. I don't see him making that bet with a strong ace. He probably has some kind of draw or maybe he has a set of 6's and is hoping to induce.

Don't play fancy. If V2 is incredibly unbalanced to have no AX or even HAS AX and folds to a flop bet then you can exploit that in other hands. People also don't generally punt off in 3b pots with air so x to induce bluffs doesn't make sense.
If the above is true (we haven't got a solid read) you probably aren't earning much from this hand, but personally I'm going to be betting because V can have AXs/6Xs hands here or he could have been playing fancy with AQ/AK/AJ pre, and when he does have a hand like 66 or a FD it's much easier to get stacks in by betting. Another bonus to betting is that we deny free equity to hands like JTs KJs etc that aren't calling a flop bet, are checking back and potentially are making a lot of money off us if they bink.

I'm open to the idea that the flop check was bad, but I think there has to be more to it than "hit middle set, bet," and I completely disagree that a check turns our hand face up. If we bet V can safely eliminate KK/JJ, probably even AK. Why is even AK a good bet here?

At the table, I reasoned that a bet or c/r at this point would allow V to continue only with the hands that would GII with us anyway (66, AQ, KJ/KTss) and that a check might, just might, throw him off enough to widen his continuing range, even if that meant 2 streets of value instead of 3.

But again, I'm here to learn, it's why I posted the hand.

Flop ($106): Q A 6

Hero checks. V bets $50 in rhythm. Hero calls $50.

Turn ($206) 8

Hero?

It's not about turning your hand face up, it's about you have a super capped range. And you make it hard for him to make mistakes.

Unless you have reasoning that he is very aggressive and will bet a large % of time when checked to for multiple streets. You can't check.

As played on turn, c/c and if this checks through you have to bet/fold and wow super exploitable. Albeit, I would be tempted to bet/call simply because flushes should be betting turn. Unless he really thinks you have underpairs and never check sets. If you always check sets, he's barreling his flushes @ 100% rate.

But if you go c/c here, you have to even c/c river. Which is pretty unappealing. But it's the line you made for yourself

This doesn't make any sense. Regardless of whether Hero bets or checks the flop, my range is never capped. Unless you mean "capped at the nuts - AA"

That's because you're not ranging correctly and/or lack experience. It's super bad AINEC.

You're capped to underpairs or sets. And you really don't want to c/c you want to c/r and you don't want to c/r because then you're more capped to nuts and what can continue other than flush draw combos. You force out Ax.

Nobody c/r's KK on AQx. You may have a couple combos tops of combo draws, but, it's highly unlikely. If he ever has a blocker, you clearly don't have any.


Who 3-bet checks 2p on AQx with flush draw? It's actually a very good flop for QQ to get lots of value, by bet-bet-bet.

It's value bet 101

This hand is a very poorly played hand. Getting fancy OOP is often just that, especially at these stakes and most higher stakes games.

I don't even play like this at 10/20. Checking requires a very specific opponent.

^What you're describing is not a capped range; it's just a narrow range. "Capped" means there's an upper limit to your hand strength, e.g. a nit who 3b pre on a 567 flop.

If we had a stone read that V can only have 22-99, checking this flop would be 100% correct, but pragmatically speaking, we should pretty much always be leading out here. We can't completely remove Ax from his range, and we hate giving a free turn card to any of his spades & gutshots. Obv he often has air and folds, but unless he's crazy aggro, we're rarely getting any more money from those hands anyway.

OP, I understand your logic for checking ace high boards in 3bet pots... I do the same thing to balance my range against good players.

But in this particular situation I would not take this line because of the unique dynamic at this table - since both V1's opening range and V2's flatting range are very weak, I'm going to be 3betting a whole lot more hands for value in this spot - hands like KQs/KJs/QJs which are going to want to bluff on ace high boards. Given this wider range, I should have a good balance of value/bluffs on these boards, I no longer want to be checking everything with all of the extra hands I can have, especially oop.

On this particular flop, I get that his continuing range is going to be very small when you cbet. But as others have eluded to, you're not going to induce a whole lot more action from him by checking... all of the hands he's folding to a cbet are also going to check back and fold to a turn bet unless he turns a set (pretty hard to do), a straight (really bad for us), or he has exactly KJ off and turns a spade (a hand that's pretty likely to fold preflop imo). Maybe checking is ok if he has a lot of weak aces in his range but that seems very unlikely to me.

As played, once you check the flop you can't raise his bet. You have to protect your range as intended. And now you're in a really annoying spot on the turn in which you probably just have to begrudgingly check/call again. Check/raising has some merit if you don't think he has many flushes in his range. Leading is terrible for the same reason c/r the flop is terrible. And btw he literally never has AA ever... idk why some people itt think he does.

Here's a question I was thinking about: how are we playing KK or even JJ in this spot? it's a terrible flop for jj but there's definitely a case for playing like qq/aa on this flop with just bet, bet, bet (maybe we check a spade turn). it's villain who's capped here.

we definitely can't only put villain on 22-99, i think a call with pretty suited connectors is standard this deep. he still shouldn't have too many fds all things considered, but they are there and if he's a thinking villain he knows that we have no fds at all.

that's being nitty with the word, but I understand you or others can think of it as one thing

I'll use the word narrow next time to make it more easily understandable.

It's not being nitty; a capped range has a very specific meaning, and you described something completely different.

Discgolfing's post was very good, IMO. I think it sums up my thoughts. Again, I'm fulling admitting I probably overthought and/or misplayed the hand. If I didn't, I wouldn't have posted it.

Speaking of not ranging correctly, exactly what % of villain's range can hero target for a value bet?

Villain c/c preflop on the button. I agree with OP that AQ+/JJ+ should be almost completely eliminated. Maybe villain got fancy with a few premiun combos, but not many. Nearly all of villain's range is pp. He has a few sc and maybe weaker Axs like AJs/ATs.

The flop smashes hero's 3! range. Nearly every hand in villain's range folds to a flop bet. The hands that do hit are never folding regardless if villain checks or bets. A check allows hero to get one-and-done bluffs from villain.

I'm reading a lot of hyperbole (Terrible! BAD! FPS!! Check?! ) with no analysis of exactly how to make the most money postflop. I'm not saying a check is best, but defaulting to 'always cbet', 'always bet sets' is very poor and lazy commentary.

Oh well, the idea holds true. You're making a big mistake by checking.

And about balancing AQx flops oop, you should really be doing it more on non flush draw boards than ever flush draw boards.

And, it's 1/3, really balance?