I would have pushed on the flop.

However, if you were wearing khakis and a striped polo shirt, I think a fold would be a better play.

This. Hero showed a lot of strength with a good size raise from UTG. Villain showed more w/ a 3 bet from the SB OOP. There is no reason to think villain is 3-betting light from this low stakes game. A prudently tight range for villain pre would be QQ+, maybe AK (40%). To this, hero is a 2-1 dog with no FE w/ a 4-bet.

A somewhat sloppy tourist range for villain would be: JJ+, 10's (50%), and AK. Hero is roughly 40% against this but faces potentially severe RIO if he flats. I think there is enough FE to get hero up to +EV if he 4-bet shoves and stacks sizes are right. But they are not. Also assuming sloppiness without observing first is a good recipe for losing money.

This.

My first thought was... good place to 4b/f. $150 seems like a good number. If just called, shove all flops.

But I probably just tank fold pre.

TBH... his turn bet is very suspicious. It seems like he either loved the J or hates it. Fold turn. Its obvious now we're only beating basically 1 hand, QQ, from his expected range.

Call turn. Evaluate river. Do not call a shove - then you know what the small bet on the turn was for.

Turn bet is either weakness or induce a shove/setting up pot for a shove on the river.

What happens on the river will tell you what the turn bet was and consequently what to do.

I played in the Wynn 1/3 games daily for just over a year and with the exception of 2 or 3 regs, the number of three bets in these games are so infrequent that I think we can comfortably fold pre here, especially when we open UTG.

As played, I agree with Lionhat, I think we call turn and then evaluate what we are doing on the river based on Villain actions. On the turn he is either betting for bettings sake with a hand like QQ or he is betting on the small side with KK or JJ to not fold you out and then will be jamming river. Based on the board, I doubt he is even betting AA on this river. People will happily bet twice with AA here and then decide that the pot is big enough and check the river.

If jammed on on the river, I am folding.

+1

Assuming a preflop range for villain of JJ+,AK, we have almost 47% equity on the turn:

I just don't see any way we can fold here getting 3.93 to 1 odds on the turn and 2-1 odds on a straight call down when villain's betting pattern mimics QQ pretty well. And yes, one can argue that villain's betting pattern mimics JJ pretty well too, or for that matter one can argue that villain's betting pattern pretty much matches anything in his range given stack sizes as GG's post implies. Although I would discount GG's worries a bit only cause how many players do we come across at this level that plan their hands that well? Most people at this level bet in the moment, street by street, based on how they feel about their hand. So I still think the turn is an indication more of weakness or perhaps a suck bet (JJ/KK) than a well played/planned hand like AA.

Anyways, what's interesting to me is I think one can make a decent argument for discounting some percentage all the hands hero is worried about:

1) JJ: how many 1-3 players 3bet preflop OOP with JJ in that spot? Not that many imo.

2) KK: Most live players are not betting that big on the flop when they flop that big of a hand. I consider this discounting argument to be pretty weak but still, I feel like most small stakes live players are gonna check that flop some of the time, or bet half pot or smaller. Just my opinion obv.

3) AA: If villain had AA I think his turn bet sizing would be more consistent with his flop bet-sizing. Villain bets 68% pot on the flop and then goes down to 34% pot on the turn? WTF. Villain is obviously committed with his AA, and there's really not a reason on the turn for him to all of a sudden not like his hand nearly as much as he liked it on the flop. I mean you'd think he'd bet at least half pot. And yes, again it's true villain could just be planning his hand really well, setting up a good all-in size on the river, but again, planning hands well is not something I see a lot at this level. Again, I also find this discounting argument to be pretty weak, especially given that so many live players are "absolute value" bettors, but I think it's worth something.

Either way, once villain makes that weird turn bet, there is just too much uncertainty + our equity is too good + the pot is too big relative to our remaining stack to make this fold. And at this point I wanna correct one of my earlier posts. Earlier I said: "Call and see what he does on the river" as if seeing what he does on the river is gonna matter. Actually no, if we call the turn we are definitely pot committed. On the river, assuming villain puts hero all in, hero will be getting 3.69-1 to call. There's no way we can fold there without a super read (which we don't have). At that point, gotta call and hope to see a chop or a badly played QQ.

Cliffnotes:

I agree with your entire post. But I come to the exact opposite conclusion. I'm not getting AI so I can hope to chop.

By your math, which I think is correct, 1/3 Hero's equity is comprised of the chop.

The majority of the rest of our equity is comprised of QQ.

But even though there are fewer combos of KK, JJ and AK available with all the blockers, Villain's actions do not really justify QQ as a very likely holding.

Villain's range is still [JJ+, AKs, AKo], but I'm heavily leaning towards this being just AA. He didn't like the turn because he's suddenly afraid Hero could have JJ. But I'm not in the business of trying to get people to fold AA post flop.

pre I am either folding or 4 betting, probably just folding.

As played, which is obviously not optimal for me, I would call the turn.

Unfortunately there's no way, as far as I can see, that we can escape my conclusion. We have to call the turn getting those nice odds because Villain's hand looks too much like QQ to fold. But IF villain puts us all on on a blank river, then at this point his hand DOESN'T look like QQ--at that point now we're just hoping that a badly "**** it, I've went this far might as well ship" QQ is still in his range. But EVEN IF we discount QQ 100% on the river, and just put villain on AA,AK,KK,JJ, we actually still have to call the river hoping for a chop.

Our equity on the river assuming no QQ in villains range is 23%:

Getting 3.69-1 we actually still gotta a slightly +EV call hoping for a chop. So we gotta call.

When villain makes that small turn bet, I think QQ is squarely in his range. But I agree that if villain puts us all on on the river, THEN QQ is not a likely holding, but at that point it's now too late to fold given reasons above.


If villain had AA, and if villain sized his turn bet not out of fear, but sized it to strategically mind**** us, then he played his AA hand extremely well. This hand should really be a lesson to all of us should we have AA in villain's spot. Given these stack sizes, betting 1/3 on the turn basically traps a good thinking player in with AK on the turn because if he doesn't know us that well, he'll have to call hoping QQ is in our range, and then he has to call the river. If say, villain was on autopilot and mindlessly bet $200 on the turn, we could probably get away from this hand knowing that QQ is now most likely out of villain's range, a disastrous result due solely to not having a good postflop plan.