5/10 effective 1K

Hero is CO A9dd to 30.
BB good reg calls. (He’s kinda TAG/a little ABC, capable of thin value bets and good bluffs etc)

(65) flop K97csh
X hero bets 35. V calls.
(135) turn 8s
X x
(135) riv 7x
V bets 105. Hero calls.

Unblocking sum missed straight draws idk

I can’t tell if it’s better to unblock missed draws or to block value. It’s all a jumble these days

Was it a regular shot or a baby shot?

I have about 10 hours at 5/10 so take my advice with a grain of salt, but I would've gone $20 otf, x turn, and call river ap

This is basically your best 9x to call, so I would call unless I think he’s massively under bluffing. These spots do tend to be under bluffed in my experience though. I would pay that man his money.

Fold river.

You always want to block value over unblocking bluff combos OTR. There's twice as many value combos OTR as bluff combos vs a PSB.

Also flop sizing is 75% on boards like these.

Disclaimer: I play 5 cent/10 cent.

But likely study more than 98% of players on 2+2.

The thing that makes me want to fold more is his sizing for sure.

Thx Xtra.

We can convince ourselves he has QT/QJ here but I think this is a spot where we just overfold MDF since literally everything got there. There's not many worse run outs for our hand.

I fold. I think Kx hands especially KJ and KT are at the top of bluff catching range.

IMO it's a lot easier as IP to play the flop as betting your range for a small size like 1/3 or 1/4, and IMO it's more difficult to play against as OOP. Also, you won't lose much if any EV from a theory point of view. Either way betting A9s here pure is likely good, maybe some check backs with A9dd/A9o and betting A9s bdfd pure. After we bet flop for 1/2 it defines his range a bit more than vs a 1/3 or 1/4 as he doesn't float ace high hands like AQo/AJo, and bdfd hands like A2s-A6s bdfd so we keep that in mind for later streets.

On the turn we have an easy pure check.

River he ends up with a lot of 7x, in fact, more than double the 7x that IP has, because IP has to check back 7x on the flop sometimes and oop always at least calls with a 7x. Overall it's a pretty good card for villain. As for facing the bet, if I had to guess we are totally indifferent between calling and folding here and likely either one is fine, probably mostly calling in theory. However, I'd lead towards folding in game given the flop size/runout as the bluffing range from OOP likely has to include some ace high hands that real people might check pure on the river or fold the flop (again keep in mind because we bet flop bigger he doesn't float these ace high hands as much), like ATs. His clear bluffs are obvious, QT and QJ, but I don't think that's enough, so he'll need to find some others to be "bluffing enough". Also I think because the turn card is bad for our range we end up checking back a lot of Kx on the turn, so we have more than enough Kx to call down here.

Agree with above, hard to come up with bluffs

Against a competent reg I might be tempted to make a flop check with this hand.

If you don't want to check you should certainly size down to force him to float and keep him wide. It's nice when he's wide on the turn, we check back, and now he's on the river with a good bit of air-ish hands that might want to bluff and we can snap him with this combo.

As played you could probably fold river to this sizing. Just smells like big value with Kx or 7x. After your flop sizing he doesn't show up with too much air besides his missed straight draws.

interesting points here about how the flop size impacts villains continue range. I do generally like to do the 1/3 pot cbet sizing but i went 1/2 pot here because i think villains range contains a lot of gut shots/natural continues. (QJo, QTo, JTo, T8s, 86s, and of course: KQo, KJo, KTo, A9s, K9s, Q9s, J9s, T9s, 98s, 97s, A7s, 87s, 88)

on a board like ex. Q54r i think villain will be more challenged to find enough defends and might even have to dip into some A hi, K hi, and 3 to flush/3 to a straight hands to hit any semblance of MDF if i cbet 1/3 pot. so thats when i bet 1/3.

yeah makes some sense.

i was originally thinking that i would almost rather have A9 than KT since theyre both just catching anyways, and it would just come down to blockers at that point.

But the T blocks QT (bluff) and JT (value) just the same, whereas holding the K makes it less likely villain has the KQ or KJ, so i like just catching with KT after all.

MDF isn't a thing and villain doesn't ever need to continue MDF on the flop vs your 1/3 bet; he only needs to continue when it's +EV or at least 0EV (mixes) and the overall frequency can be higher or lower than what MDF would dictate depending on how often we have +EV continues which is determined by several factors such as range asymmetry, position, and bet size.

For example on KJJr BB v btn srp I think BB is folding 50%~ vs a 1/4 bet, in theory.

*adjusted MDF

also not a thing lol

I also think smaller is better on this board to protect hands like this one.

My assumption was that calling and folding are more or less indifferent here as well, but I tend to just station these spots more than I exploitatively should against population. Especially against big blind specifically, where I find population tends to spew a bit more in a spot like this after turn x/x with random combos that shouldn’t call preflop.

I've been going back and forth on using big sizings vs small sizing's on boards like these. I see the benefit of smaller sizings because

1) We exploit Villain's under XR tendencies/over fold tendencies from weaker players.

2) It is easier to play because we are mostly betting OTF so we don't have to keep track of our check back range as much

But the bigger sizing's also have benefits as well:

1) Higher EV theoretically

2) We get to bring players to parts of the game tree they haven't studied as much, mainly turn probing.

3) Villain's will most likely either probe the wrong sizing or probe too much/not enough.

4) We also get to the river more often when we X back the flop which population will be the least comfortable with.

Those factors make me want to play more GTO in spots like these, since population will most likely play worse OTT/OTR than OTF. Also bet sizing's are bigger in later parts of the game tree on average. So OOP's mistake will be magnified.

Any thought's on that?

Something I also started thinking about is whether or not I would want to value bet this river when checked to, and I think I would if choosing the smaller flop sizing, but not when using this flop sizing.

I’m assuming 2-3 bet sizings would want to be used OTR, and A9dd would have to fit best in the smaller sizing class.

Baby shot

.

FWIW on this flop playing a strategy of 33%/check or 46%/check have the same EV so the bolded isn't true regarding this hand. However, betting 100% of your range for 33% is higher EV than 100% of your range for 46%.

Regarding the flop being easier/more difficult to play as IP, if we bet 100% of our range, we don't have to split any checks/dilute our flop range at all, whereas our opponent now has to split their x/r, x/c, x/f ranges regardless of what bet size we choose. However, if we check, they take an unsplit range to the turn instead of IP, and it is now the IP who had to split their range. Therefore in no way do I think that playing a bet + check strategy is easier for the IP player than playing a bet 100% of range strategy.

So, if a strategy collects essentially the same EV, and is easier to play, why wouldn't we play it? The only reason would be that we think the opponent will exploitatively play worse versus a certain strategy. Unfortunately that is subjective and could only be proved with extensive database analysis of a player group, and even then, would only apply "on average".

Regarding those potential exploits you outlined, you're making a lot of assumptions about villain's/population's future ability to make mistakes in the hand compared with potential flop mistakes and there's no way to quantify or prove anything, or even discuss which mistakes might be made and why, so there really isn't any point discussing it as it's very subjective; while we could debate the objectivity of what the proper response vs a deviation might be, we can't debate the subjectivity of what a person, or population's, tendencies would be. For example, I could argue that it is more likely for villain to play more poorly vs the small bet line across future streets/decisions than it is for them to play poorly vs the big bet, but without any proof or data.

Is betting this river around 35-40% too thin when checked to in your opinion Jarretman?

I know this is value cutting ourselves often, but it seems like a better value bet to me than 89 suited, for instance, as the purpose would be to put 6-8/8-10 suited hands and 9x hands in a tough spot. This could be easily balanced by having some Kx that uses the same sizing and some hands that prefer a larger river size.

And again, this is under the assumption that 1/3rd sizing was used on the flop. I don’t think this works well after using 55-60% OTF.

A9dd feels like the indifferent hand for bluff catching AND value betting to me, and I don’t think that’s really common across a lot of hands... am I way off base in thinking that?

And why exactly do we not bet the turn?

We're still getting value from a ton of pair+draws which do are not ready to turn the hand into a bluff. And it's far harder for Villain to lead into us on the river after our two bullets.