Hero is middle age. Has played 5m hands online ending as a 50NL reg. Stopped playing 3 years ago and now this past 2 months slowly feeling the love of the game again.

Villain is a young kid who is a friend of a fish at the table. The fish views him as a good player who is playing below his usual stake, and by the looks of it, he plays like a good internet player.

Game 1/2
Hero in CO with QQ at $500 effective

Villain limp, mp limp, hero bets $18, villain call, mp call.

Flop $57 J92
check, check, hero bets $40, villain call, mp fold.

Turn $134 J92 J
check, check

River $134, J92JK
villain bet $220, hero?


Hero's range here is 99, TT, QQ, KK, AA, AK.
What is our calling range?
Do you guys ever have Jx here?

Turn is player dependant, against a sticky villain on this wet board I would bet/fold something like 1/2 psb, against tricky player I see me checking this behind to induce a lot. Against this player i think you have to call. You are on the top of your range. Assuming your description is correct and this is the typical laggy online kid he could wake up with so many hands here. I think this should never be a king, All draws bricked, you block QJ and QT and I think he would have raised Jts, kj and AJ type hands preflop. If he had JTo or bottom set, then well, pay the man his money.

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if description is accurate I agree with above. call with this hand because of the blockers and the not blocking missed flush draws or T8

Fold. Unless you’ve seen him show down a bluff in a similar spot, I think you have to just let it go here. 1.5x pot river overbets are heavily weighted towards value live, especially at 1/2, and this is basically how I would play my value hands against you. He’s going to have a hand like K10cc a certain percentage of the time here as well.

You’re near the top of your range but I don’t think you have evidence that he’s capable of bluffing nearly enough here for this to be a profitable call

I’d call against a 3/4 sizing and below after under repping your hand OTT. Would still be a large absolute bet for 1/2. I’d start my calling range vs this sizing against what I consider a potentially capable unknown at AA no club

I might have some J9s here myself. Hard to think of a better hand to call with here than this one. Guessing villain raises 99 pre so his only set should be 22. He could have J9s if he’s loose, but most internet style players won’t be open limping much, and J9s should be a fold in EP.

The hard part with using this sizing is being able to balance appropriately. The advantage to this sizing is that it allows you to have way more bluffs than a conventional sizing, but the tricky part is having the stones to actually use it when you have the bluff hands. I haven’t seen too many opponents, live or online, that are capable of doing that. I’m going to fold everything but the top of my range when facing massive overbets in a live setting until it’s proven someone is capable of bluffing enough.


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QQ is probably one of your best bluff catchers here. I like a call especially vs a guy who will have a decent range of polar bluffs here. AA with a club I would fold before 2 red QQ.

I think this is a fold.

Villain probably does realize we should not have Jx and that for that reason, it seems like it should be a good bluffing spot and we should call.

The problem is that Villain can have a lot of Jx hands. Despite being pegged by Hero as good, he limp/called. Then he just check/called the flop, so I am guessing that we can de-weight combo draws in his range. His range is likely Jx, 9x, and maybe some medium-strength draws or smaller pocket pairs.

While this could be a bluff, it could also be a value hand, but I think there are two things that make this a fold for me:

1) Against this large an overbet, we don't actually need to call with all the 1 pair hands in our range. We should probably have Kx here a lot as well as AA and KK. So I don't want to throw QQ into our calling range here, on the off chance that somehow Villain had Kx (or perhaps even K9) and passed us.

2) If Villain is good, he will know that the way we played this hand, the king hits our range--and he will also know that against a relatively unknown LLSNL Villain, which Hero is to him, it's really risky to try to bluff people off top pair, especially when they have a good kicker (as Hero might since he raised preflop) and it's only one more bet to get to showdown.

So it is worth asking, if Villain is a thinking player, and he is trying to bluff us, what hands is he trying to make us fold? Is he trying to make us fold Kx? If he is, we should call; but more likely his bet size is chosen to maximize value against a rivered pair that he thinks his opponent can't let go.

By the way, against a Villain that we are even considering calling here against, maybe we should have bet the turn?

Tough spot here, V has played this hand well.

But KK is a boat...

Also he shouldn't have AJ/KJ and JT is at reduced frequency. We block QJ. So how does he have a ton of Jx?

a few too many combos of trips and better to come up with enough bluffs

This. Plus, H could easily have AA/KK/AK, and I doubt V expects him to fold those (obviously not KK )

Basically, if he is bluffing, I don't know what V expects you to lay down (if that makes sense). QQ is about it.

What? He has tons of bluffs that take this line.

Sometimes I think you guys just look at river action in isolation and be like, wow that's a big bet I guess we fold everything.

?

The question isn't the size of the bet, it's what V puts H on. And I know a lot of players who over-bet the river to look like a bluff when they have the nuts. I do it.

If the river weren't a K, which is so easily in H hand, I'd call.

Maybe I'm leveling myself into giving V a higher level of thinking than he has. I agree limping UTG pre is usually bad, but I do it w/ hands like 76s, QJs, JTs, small pairs, etc., when I know how the table plays.

+1

The turn went check check.

Villain's view should be Hero doesn't have a J.

So even using your logic it makes it more of a call

Sometimes I think this entire forum is a troll.

I don't think V expects H to fold AK or AA (or QQ for that matter). And he's right, because I don't think I'd fold AA or AK. If it's a bluff, it's a good bluff.

Your logic just winds arounds the parts that make sense against your line. It's like arguing with a flat earther.

Throw in a x otf and this hand is easier to play. We hate a lot of runouts, pot control is fine.

It's like arguing with a round earther who doesn't expect other people to know how to play poker. At least you are right not thinking the earth is flat

Ok I'll use your argument. If it's a value bet, then good value bet.

Based on everything I see in this forum I can say live poker is very very healthy. And this is the population that takes the game a little more seriously. I can't imagine what the avg rec out there is thinking.

write them down for us

For the love of god, this is a live 1/2 game. Vs don't have polarized betting ranges. They just have it. Readless, I am snap folding. You don't make your money at low stakes by bluff catching large bets. You lose it that way.

The whole point here is that we don't really know this.

Does he have tons of hands that get to the river and are candidates for launching a bluff? Absolutely. That much I agree with.

But "this line" includes a more-than-3/2-pot overbet on a river where he could easily run into rivered top pair.

I see this mistake all the time from thinking players, and it's so subtle it's hard to catch. You are arguing that the probability that Villain got to the river with a hand we beat is high enough to call. And with that much, as I said, I agree. But that's not relevant, because what we actually need to know is the probability that Villain got to the river and put in a big overbet with a hand we beat.

In order to actually know this, one thing we have to know is that Villain wouldn't use a smaller sizing with his bluffs. In this instance, why couldn't Villain have bet something like $160? How much less fold equity does he really have if he does that? I bet most of the responses would be the same or almost the same--it's still an overbet.

I have been on the forum enough that I have seen this pattern in posted hands every so often. Thinking LAGs at LLSNL are aware enough of their bet sizing that I don't expect them to put in gross overbets as bluffs, when they could put in smaller overbets with the same fold equity. That, along with the fact that we are not high up enough in our range that we should consider cry-calling, is the main reason I think this is a fold.

Alright at least your reasoning goes from to A to B. I can buy that.