1/2. Hero has been playing loose. Got caught by this player bluffing on a double paired board when he had the top full House for a 600 dollar pot an hour or so before this

Villain is capable in my eyes. Definitely not a bit but is tricky. Saw him flat call a 7 dollar raise with pocket jacks and then flat a 50 dollar 3 bet
Hero is about 325 effective villain covers

Hero is utg plus 1 with pocket jacks and raises to 15 ( normal in this game

Gets 3 callers to villain in small blind who makes it 60

Hero and cutoff call. Cutoff has 60 or so after he flats

Flop is 9 5 3 two clubs and I don’t have a club . Villain leads for 65. I flat and other guy folds

Turn is a an off suit 5.

He checks and after about a minute of thinking I bet 95 dollars and he shoves all in. I went into the tank. I lose to Queens Kings and aces and I beat 10s and ace king/ flush draw. I had about 100 behind. Is this mandatory given pot odds?

If villain is LAGy enough to 3b squeeze on the light side here, and our image is spewy/bluffy, I don't see any reason not to just jam pre. By flatting and allowing the players behind us in, we're basically resigning ourselves to set-mining postflop, more or less. I guess flatting isn't "bad" (as our overpair will sometimes flop best, get a check from the PFR, and we'll stack a guy w/ a weaker capped range behind us), but it certainly sets us up for a multitude of ****ty spots in a stack-threatening pot.

Or, alternatively, if you think his 3b range is tight (AK/JJ+), just fold pre. Your equity w/ JJ is not good. Don't worry about where you are in your range, "being exploited", or any of this stuff, @ 1/2. You have tons of other stuff to learn/apply first in a full ring environment that take precedent.

220 out of your 325 dollars are already in. Even though you are behind most of the time, you have to call.

Could avoid losing your stack here by checking the turn and looking to get a reasonably priced showdown.

Yeah I instantly thought I should have checked the turn after he jammed. I figured he wasn’t that strong when he checked the turn I didn’t want to give a free card but when he jammed I was a little confused

I assume you led the turn because you thought there was a good chance you had the best hand? Nothing necessarily wrong with that but when he shoves, its clear you dont have the best hand. Fold and save the last $105.

Yeah that’s exactly why I bet turn. I wasn’t expecting a check raise. I know I should have thought about what to do if he jammed but it’s such a weird line

I’d probably flat pre, but I think you just ship this flop. Plenty of balance for when you have flush draws.

After the flop flat, I agree with checking behind here, but as played I think it’s just a sigh call.

I agree with this^

There's a small chance he has TT....... close to a call given odds

I literally just started a trend on Jacks as they are the most trickiest hand ever. Jacks tend to cost me money regardless so I tend to 4 bet with Jacks preflop if I'm in good position so I'm guaranteed to see the entire board if he calls. Because Villian is SB this was the perfect time to 4 bet pre flop.

As played, its a fold

Fold pre in this game ainec. If you're not folding this pre, then shove pre and again ainec. Easy game.

I think I have a slightly different view to the mainstream here, before we decide whether this is a fold or call, we should first ask ourselves whether there are any bluffs in the villain's range. In addition, what are his bets telling us. Does villain ever squeeze in good spots? Does villain think we are FOS many times from history?

When action gets to villain in SB, could he be making a squeeze play with KJcc, KQcc, AKcc, AQcc and AJcc? All these hands have strong removal and is suitable for a squeeze, though you can make a case for a flat in cases other than AKcc as folding the other four, especially AQcc and AJcc to a 4bet really sucks.

When villain opens action OTF with 1 clubs, betting 65 into 210, would you do this with AA/KK/QQ? betting 1/4 pot into 2 players on a 2 club board? Wouldn't you make it bigger? in fact much much bigger. I do give it to the villain though, if they hold A or K of club, this play might make more sense.

Now let's look at the turn, an off suit 5 rolls off. with less than pot effective, what point is there to giving the in position player another card to look at rather than jamming it in here with AA and KK? At this stack sizes, surely they are better off putting it in here rather than thinking about check folding if a 2c rolls off or similar rolls off. If they held KK and AA with club, now this turn is a must bet, because your backdoor equity with the club just evaporated.

I think the line taken is saying, villain is not too scared of a club on the flop, on the turn villain feels confident enough to check and let a club roll off. What hands does this? 99? wouldn't really 3bet flop. Nut flush draw? more likely. Overpairs? possible, but played really weird.

I personally would prefer a check on turn for pot control as well, but as played, we do not have Jc, that is something we want villain to have, I probably will call off with JJ no club.

Just my 2c, but damn, reading other opinions, perhaps I am just a fish that is burning off money.

Everything you said makes solid sense at a higher stakes game. This just doesn't happen often enough at 1/2. Pre-flop, this is QQ+ 100% of the time (Personally, I think this is around 90% AA, 10% KK, and 0% QQ since we already know that villain flatted previously with JJ). That is why it is a fold pre in this game. If there is even a remote chance that this is not QQ+ 100% of the time, then JJ is way ahead or flipping and needs to 4 bet shove instead of calling. It's only 325 effective, so a 5.4x 4! over the top of the 4x 3! is perfectly fine, but perhaps I just like big bets and I cannot lie.

Every little thing matters in these spots. Personally, I think $15 (7.5x) is too large an open in a 1/2 game. A 3x-4x 3-bet is pretty standard but the extra large open now causes the 3-bet to be larger (30BB) as well. This usually means immense strength. It also denies us odds to profitably set-mine with JJ if we think we're up against QQ+. I usually open 5x, which is also on the larger side (but again, I like big bets and I cannot... oh I already used that, didn't I?). So in this spot if the pot was opened to $10, and villain 4x 3-bets to $40, then you can call $30 to set-mine with JJ with $325 effective. Again, this is why as played this is a fold/4-bet shove pre.

I ended up calling. River bricked out. He said good call and claimed to have ace high flush draw

I still think 99 percent of the time I’m up against queens plus which is why I made the thread. The turn check was just so confusing after he jammed my raise

I just skimmed the rest of the replies but it doesn't look like anyone else has said this, so...

...IMHO a FATAL error that you made was betting the turn and then being surprised that he raised (hence, you went into the tank).

Conventional wisdom says once the flop is down, you need to have a plan for the rest of the hand. Before you even flat the flop, you should already be thinking about what you're going to do if the turn is a Q, K, A or a 3rd club. You should already be thinking about whether or not you're going to call a turn bet, or bet if checked to.

If that seems like overkill, at the very very very very least NEVER make a turn or river bet until you decide how you're going to respond to a raise if in fact you do get raised.

Hope that helped.

EDIT: A big part of planning out the hand is avoiding (or courting) pot commitment. Keep track of the SPR after every action. With an overpair you're usually happy to GII when the SPR is around 1.5. There was about $180 in the pot preflop and the villain bet $65, so there's $245 in the pot and you have about $265 behind. If you flat, now there's $330 in the pot and you have $200 behind. This almost makes me feel like the flop is shove or fold, and the SPR is too low to consider folding an overpair. See how mistakes can compound themselves? Flatting the 3-bet pre was what got you into this awkward situation!

I think if we call all our JJ, the we are calling too much. Whenever we aren’t sure about doing one thing or another, we should be doing a combination of both. Sometimes you will see people flip a coin, you can do this, but for spots like this I think there are other methods to determine what we call and what we fold.

We should probably be folding all 3 combos of JxJc, and calling the remaining 3 combos for a balanced 50/50 split. In this spot, I would probably call all my QQ just because how convinced I am AA and KK does not play this way and 99 got super out of line pre. Sometimes we are gonna just get stacked, but in those cases I strongly believe villain has made a huge mistake and we can adjust our range accordingly in subsequent hands


Just for some candid discussions, suppose you were in villains shoes, what would you have done ott with AKcc?


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Would have a tough time folding this as you’d think he lead out again on he turn with an overpair and fear you checking behind. He has to show up with a full house here for his play to make somewhat sense, cause even with an overpair why would he check raise the turn? He’d have to know that you would bet a hand slighty worse than his and that he’d stack you after the raise, plausible but unlikely.

What boats does he show up with though? Only plausible one is a very overvalued 99 oop pre. I think the villain’s line and sizing gave it away that this is a bluff. Would have been a much tougher decision if he sized correctly on flop and jammed turn cos his range is then balanced with overpairs and flush bluffs, in which case this would be an easy fold.


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I personally think I just shove turn. Maybe even bet bigger on flip if I had the nut flush draw in villains shoes. I’m curious what he would have done on brick river if I checked back. My thinking when I bet the turnwas he must have an ace king type of hand that is sort of giving up. So I wanted to charge for a river before a queen king of ace showed up. When he shoved I didn’t know what to think. If we were deeper I think I would of had to fold to be honest

I never put him on a boat. He wasn’t the type of guy to 3 bet squeeze with 9s or even get frisky with a low suited ace. I thought he was overvaluing pocket tens , had queens Kings or aces, or had the type of hand that he did. When I saw him flat a 7 dollar raise with jacks earlier it kind of made me lean towards queens plus

I personally think if he sized the way he did on the flop, shoving turn and checking turn is saying the same thing, cos all his value hands should be sizing bigger on flop than jam big turn. Think jamming might be slightly better than checking though. As played, his better option is to check call give up. The line just screams bluffs than value, and as we discussed, value hands shouldn’t really play this way if played well.


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Yeah I agree. My thought process isn’t as advanced as yours yet. I’ve been playing for a few years but still see myself as a beginner when I read people’s thoughts and opinions on this forum. It’s hard for me to come up with that thought process in real time. Easier after. Any advice for that. Not to hijack the thread

I’m the same dude, real time my mind goes through a lot of wtf, tf, etc etc, which is also crap cos my local casino has a bloody shot clock. But retrospective thinking is good, and I think eventually once we think about enough of these, we will eventually get better at it I believe


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Bet smaller on the turn or check if you think his range is mostly whiffed overs and occasionally better pairs. Jam if you think he has some worse hands that can call, like TT.

This kind of spot is good to bet very small like 1/5 pot.