1/3 Live

The tl;dr if my assumptions are correct is: Can we get AQ and/or QJ to fold here? If yes we have a profitable bluff, if not, we don't.

Villain (~$300) is a 40's guy who has been at the table an hour. Seems to be playing fairly loose pre, passive post flop, but haven't seen him show down any hands.

Hero (covers) hasn't been playing many hands since villain sat down.

Hero opens 87dd in the CO to $12 and villain flats the button.

Pot: $25

Flop KcQd9d

Hero bets $15, villain calls.

Turn: 7s

Pot:$53

Hero bets $40, villain calls.

Pot: $123

River: 3h

Hero???


So if I had to guess his range looks something like:

Two pair that didn't raise flop or turn: 13 combos (maybe a tad pessimistic to think he slow plays this much two pair?)

KQ: 1
K9: 6
Q9: 6


Top pair: 29-34 combos

I gave him 5 combos of AK, all the KJ, KT. He might have some K8 and maybe some more AK

Second pair: 36-39 combos

All the AQ, QJ, QT, maybe Q8s

Third pair: 12 combos

This is where it gets a little more dicey when it comes to how much he calls pre and turn with third pair and a gutter I decided on:

4 combos each of 9To, J9o,
2 combos each of 9ts and j9s

Because I can't check/call, it's also worth thinking about how often he has a hand that we beat that he will bluff with.

Missed flush draws: 22 combos
Missed AT/AJ gutters: 3 combos

25 combos of misses, let's say he bluffs 1/3 of the time, that's 8 combos.

So if we don't bet, we lose to ~105 combos and beat 17 combos.

If betting folds out anything worse than top pair, we get 56 hands to fold that we would lose to. We get called by 47 hands. So as long as we bet less than pot we have a profitable bluff. Checking does have an EV of more than zero though so that does have to be factored in.

Check probably > bet, but my instinct is that your calculations are approximately correct, so guessing betting has some merit. Readless I'd be inclined to think we don't get any Kx to fold, & so turning our pair into a bluff doesn't have alot of value outside folding whatever Qx combo draws got to the river, some of which might hero us because all the draws missed (aka we might be bluffing too, which we are).

I would start by x/c’ing turn.

Ap, river i’d probably x/f or x/c. We are not folding a K ever here

I think you might get AQ or QJ to fold -- but I doubt he has those hands very often. You raised pre, bet the flop and bet the turn, with a pretty decent turn bet. I doubt he called all three actions with QJ. IOW, I think your ranging is wrong because he doesn't have all Q's in his range after the action.

I get that he's passive, but unless you have some read that he's calling all but the river with 2nd pair, I think he's either already folded it or won't fold it.

Fair point. Normally I would include less second pair, but those hands also have a straight draw on the turn which is why I left in full combos. I might be mistaken but that was the logic.

From title of thread alone without reading HH: "no". I need some significant history with villain / know his image / he know my image / know he has a fold Button / etc. before I'm attempting a 3 barrel in general. Against unknowns with no history, if you never bluffed you probably wouldn't be too far off optimal, imo.

I'm fine with preflop, although I think there is an argument for making it smaller.

I'm cool with our cbet semi-bluff.

As I say, against an unknown, I'm just not as cool with a barrelly line. We have a showdownable hand at this point (we're ahead of draws), so I just check/call a reasonable bet and hope to get to a cheap showdown UI, especially since most opponents insta-check back TP on the river after 2 streets of postflop betting.

In the end, we just don't know enough about villain / him about us for this to work enough, imo.

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