I would call in this spot and fold to a bet on turn if the heart or straight draw hits or if the board pairs. As played so far I think villain has a strong draw or 2P+.

Why would you fold if the board pairs? That just diminishes his value range. I doubt he has 97s or 75s in this range, so I'm not concerned about straight completing turns. I'm definitely on board with folding flush completing turns, though.

I would put villain on a range of FDs, 54s (this is borderline, because I'm not 100% sure he's defending this), T9s, and 99-JJ. I don't see villain having any two pair here.

These hands represent 18 combos. Difficult to find pure bluffs, maybe non-hearts T9s/97s?

Apart from sets/86s, the rest of his flop calling range would represent hands with strong equity like over card+FD combos, mostly inelastic imho.

This is a pure flop call, and then call all turns that isn't a or an A.
Unless he's going completely off the handle with his bluffs, we are probably losing in EQ vs his range, but pot odds are still a thing, soooo...


Asking the dealer how much the bet is; ime this tends to lean towards confidence, ie. value, specially since he's sitting directly next to you and should have no trouble actually seeing the bet.
I'm not exactly Mike Caro, so obviously still calling it off. Maybe he just has bad eyesight .

I know down betting is the "sophisticated" play de jour. It is just a terrible bet size for 1/2. You are giving direct odds for a FD to call, at a minimum. The vast majority of LLSNL players either fold too much or too little on the flop. What range do you put him on (not what you would do) that is calling $35 and folding $60? From you other HH, I'd put it at a null set.

+1 ... as played.

Up until this hand I literally hadn't used a solver since I went back to live again. I used it here though, became out of the whole pool, the results will be most relevant versus this player. Take what you want...

1/3 sizing otf solver likes betting with 94.3% frequency, it's favorite hands to check are AK/AQ with no heart and TT/99 with a heart; EV=73.56

1/2 sizing otf solver likes betting with 82% frequency, it's favorite hands to check are AK/AQ with no heart and TT/99 with a heart; EV=73.55

2/3 sizing otf solver likes betting with 68.9% frequency, it's favorite hands to check are AK/AQ with no heart, AA with a heart, and 99 with no heart; EV=72.37

Pot sizing otf solver likes betting with 47.7% frequency, and it's checking all over the place; EV=70.39

Does anyone know why it likes checking TT/99 with a heart the most at the smaller sizings? I get checking overpairs with a heart, but I would think AA/KK with a heart would be superior check candidates for protection reasons?

Obviously these results are only as meaningful as you take them, but I do think they're of decent value, because he'll be playing by far closer to the solver than anyone else. Albeit, he won't be playing identical to the solver. It's largely indifferent between 1/3 and 1/2 siding, but it sees 1/3 as highest +EV sizing.


That's a really good point. Though I haven't played with him long enough to know if he's getting creative with AQ/AJ with a heart and/or his BDFD versus 1/3 sizing. I feel like he is with at least some of the combos given his high frequency of x-r, but I don't know for sure.

This is just wrong. There's a few things about the bolded. For starters, this isn't 1/2, it's 1/2/5, and there's a huge difference. At 1/2, IME, the median buy in is $100. In this game it's $300. After 1-2 hours, the median stack is $500 v. $150. Also, this player is traditionally a 2/5 player anyways and is decent. As far as downbetting goes - sure he'll have some FDs, but the board really isn't that wet. He misses this board so so often, and I want to "establish the downbet" versus him, and he consistent.

As far as what's calling for $35 that's not calling for $60 - 77, and overs (he has a lot of Broadway overs here.) As I mentioned above, he could be getting creative, too, with
AQ/AJ with a heart and/or his BDFD - which there's no chance of at $60.

Lastly, your point "the vast majority of LLSNL players either fold too much or too little on the flop," is actually a defense for downbetting.

Widening your range coupled with increasing your raise size is a losing strategy. If you want to use a larger raise size then keep the range tight.

I know I'm a bit late replying; I don't get as much time for in-depth posts as I used to.

So this is about what I was expecting.

I think given this range that Villain gets to the flop with, plus the fact that he is out of position against us, plus the fact that he is a LAG that the OP says he respects, favors my idea for the flop sizing. I'll explain more below.

So all three of these sentences, I disagree with. I'll take them one by one.

1) We are only going to eliminate a lot of Villain's bluffs if Villain is willing to check-raise bluff with hands that have extremely low equity. Let's look at Villain's potential bluffs that have decent equity. Based on the range you gave for what he gets to the flop with, it's reasonable to assume that all of these are part of his range:

54, which has 15 outs against our hand.

A2, which has 14 outs against our hand.

AQ/AJ/AT/A5/A4/A3/KQ/KJ/KT/T9, which all have 12 outs against our hand.

QJ/QT/JT, which have 9 outs against our hand.

54, which has the equivalent of 9 outs against our hand.

54/54 both have 8 outs against our hand.

This is 18 combos of draws all with over 30% equity against our hand. And since you say 86s isn't in Villain's range, he only has 9 combos of hands that outflopped us (sets). So since you say Villain can balance well, it's very unlikely he's going to need to toss random junk into a check-raise range to be balanced. I would expect that his check-raise range will not consist of trash hands no matter what sizing we use. The difference is that if we size big enough, most of those 18 combos are going to be put in a lose-lose situation--and if Villain wants to raise with them, that raise could be all-in, leaving Villain one chance to make one big mistake for his stack right on the flop.

As venice alludes to, the problem with betting smaller is that you give Villain a chance to make correct calls with other parts of his range.

2) When a Villain that you respect is out of position, you should not expect to see a lot of floats. If I'm betting in position and someone I respect is calling, they're either calling because they think I'm bluffing, or they're trying to trap me, or they have a hand that they think I'm giving them a good enough price to improve (or some combination of the three). Setting a price that's too low encourages Villain to see a turn with a range of hands that's going to be able to put you to the test later, instead of the other way around, like it should be.

3) If you think a large bet is targeting JJ-99 specifically, I would encourage you to think about why, and then go back and look at what you said Villain's range is.

If you think Villain will bluff catch with 99 or TT, you should probably also be thinking that Villain will bluff catch with hands like 98s, 87s, 77, 76s, or 65s. That's another 18 combos in addition to the 18 combos of JJ-99. These hands are probably almost equivalent against your perceived 3betting range. In particular, 8x and 6x with backdoor clubs will probably be very tempted to call as much as TT or 99, if not more so.

I think the flop downbet is major FPS, especially against someone who you think has a chance to win the battle of mistakes against you on the turn and river. If you're not going to overbet, I think you have to at least pick a sizing that is big enough that you aren't offering stack odds to hands like T9 or top/middle pair that also have backdoor flush draws. EDIT: I think given the starting stack sizes, that means at least 85.

@CallmeVernon and Venice,
I have some (rhetorical-ish) questions:

1. Why do you think we need to bet a >80% PSB to deny him correct calling odds? The 30-35% that his continuing range has materializes over two streets, he has like 13-16% equity towards just the turn, which means a ~1/3 flop bet would suffice.

2. How many of these combodraws that Vernon listed are gonna x/raise vs our cbet? And:
--2a How does his x/r frequency change against a 80% cbet vs a 35% one?
--2b What does that mean for the equity of his x/calling range?

3. How do we balance this sizing with the rest of our range? Are we betting this big with AhA? With AhKh? With 99? With AcJc, etc. Or are we just going full out exploit with different sizings and hope he doesn't catch on?

Im pretty sure you can even down-bet smaller in 3! pots like 1/4 or 1/5 pot... also yeah if he is going to peel backdoor sd + backdoor FD to 1/2 PSB on the flop then it's not as bad to size that way but if he is going to fold the same hands to 1/2 PSB as 1/5 PSB then our entire range will profit by using the smaller size when betting...

Six I would experiment with the smaller sizing allowed (maybe remove the other sizings for a faster solve)(obv 1/3 pot is fine and maybe better :shrug: ) then go back and lock his flop c/r range for a more realistic LLSNL raising range and look at he results...also make sure your pre-flop ranges are realistic for V

Kimo down-bet is still texture dependent, so i imagine 1/4 and smaller would not be favored from hero on this dynamic of a texture. (And with plenty of stacks behind)

Now give us some really dry boards such as 22xr, aaxr, kkxr, j62r and some of those small cbets look much better.


Op:
Agree with other posters that calling the xr seems super-standard, even though our plan for the turn is less straight-forward.

So much terrible advice in here. The only thing I don't like on the flop is checking, or betting too big.

We're not deep at all, betting too big (close to pot) forces him into a stack-commitment decision immediately, which will likely make him fold everything except top pair+ or flush draws. It also gets expensive to bet that amount as a bluff and leaves you with few options once you get called.

As played it's a pretty easy shove over the raise.

I'm gonna give it a couple or few more hours before posting the next decision point in case anyone else wants to get a thought in last second...I realize I should've started the thread today, as things slow down a lot on the weekend here.

I don't really understand point one, because villain is presumably going to x-r all of his solid equity draws versus our 1/3 sizing, and will call them when we bet huge. When you look at it like that, there isn't a huge difference between betting and checking with respect to those hands. Also, when we go huge, we eliminate the chance for him to bluff his backdoor flush draws, and won't get action with his broadway overs that have at most one over.

Point two - he will be floating versus 1/3 sizing with his two overs and/or BDFD's, and this is great for us. He won't be doing this if we use your preferred sizing on the flop.

Finally, sure he'll probably call the flop with 98s or 87s, but I don't expect to get two streets if we go huge on flop and huge on turn.

It looks like no one else has anything to add. It's unfortunate with these threads how many people there are to start that abandon the thread.

I digress, I agree with SABR. Another poster suggested it, too, but I don't think he wants to be named. He is gonna have to call with all of his FDs if I jam now. Though, we will fold out three combos of T9s. I'm also a little worried about folding out BDFD and/or his creative check-raises, assuming they exist here. After typing this out, and thinking as I go along, I wonder how big of a mistake calling actually is. What do you think about my concern about getting three combos of T9s and his creative x-r to fold?

We did end up just calling though.

Turn ($328): 9. Villain checks. Hero? For reference, hero has $400 behind and villain covers.

If you are referring to me, I have not abandoned this thread. It's just that your replies to me demand in-depth posts that I haven't had time to write yet.

As played, I think call and jam are probably both fine for the second flop action, and now I am jamming turn. If you still want me to go back and reply to your response to me about the initial flop bet, I can certainly do that (eventually).

I was not referring to you.. There are several posters that just responded to one street. I was moreso talking about how as a whole with these threads, this seems to happen every time. Sorry for the confusion.

This hand is like 110 BB's effective with the straddle. Find the best way to get your money in the middle before the river.

your right about weekends
most of us are on the felt and not the internet!

tough spot with stack size

if you check hoping he'll bluff missed river there's way too many scare cards that will get there.

if you shove it doesn't sound like he'll make a mistake and call his draws not getting odds.

So do we make a mistake to try and get more $$$$ from V by betting $ 1/2 pot ???????

SHIP_IT

1. When I was learning NL seriously, this is one of the first concepts I learned, and it often seems like it is totally neglected by the part of the forum that loves downbetting:

We are not betting to deny pot odds. We are betting to deny implied odds. Villain is not going to decide whether to call just by looking at the pot odds we are offering, because there is future action. We have an overpair that is very unlikely to improve to a bigger hand, and as such, future action will tend to favor Villain's range later more than now. What that means is that I want to charge Villain so much to continue here that even if we make the FToP mistake of paying off later, Villain has made a bigger mistake now than we will make later. Unless we are certain that a small bet will induce a bluff-raise, this is impossible to do with a small flop bet.

2. It is impossible to know with certainty when Villain will call and when he will check-raise with the hands he wants to continue with. I personally am of the opinion, from my own experience, that Villain will jam over a large c-bet with a big combo draw much more often than you think, and that he will NOT raise a small bet with a low-equity backdoor-type hand as much as you think. (He might call instead, looking to see a cheap turn and possibly trying to take control of the betting later.)

3. I am inclined to say that in this spot, against this type of Villain, in position, I have a piece of my range that bets big and a piece that checks. And the part that checks, I would include some hands that I'm willing to call down turn and river with.

Point one: you are correct if all of your assumptions hold. But if any of your assumptions don't hold and you use small sizing, you set yourself up to lose the pot and potentially a big bet later, more often than you should. Using my sizing, if Villain folds a lot of his hands, at least we collect the dead money from him calling our 3bet earlier. And like I said earlier, I actually do think Villains such as the one you described would check-shove over a big bet a significant portion of the time with a high-equity draw. In my experience, LAGs don't like to flop flush draws just to fold them, and they don't like to play passively either.

Point two: putting aside the fact that we don't know whether and to what extent this is true, why is this great for us? It's only great if we know that Villain is calling at the wrong price. But it is not clear to me why such a small bet isn't a good price for Villain to try to outplay us on various turns and rivers.

Point three: if Villain calls a too-big bet with a marginal hand like what you are describing, then getting one street at big sizing is roughly the same as getting two streets with the small sizing you seem to prefer. Not only that, but after Villain sees a turn, he might get sucked into calling a big turn bet depending on if he picks up a backdoor draw.

For example, let's say Villain calls a big bet with 87, 77, or 76. Even if he doesn't have backdoor clubs, any 9 or 5 gives him an open-ended straight draw. If he picks up that draw, which is uncommon but far from rare, a turn jam will really put him to the test. He also picks up a gutshot if a 4 or T falls. There are similar backdoor possibilities if Villain calls with 65 (or maybe even 55 although that might be pushing it). As I said before about the front-door hearts, if Villain picks up a draw on the turn he would probably be very annoyed to "have to" fold it, and might make a big mistake--if you give him a chance!

Betting small means not applying as much pressure to Villain as you could be applying.

You learned NL wrong. Also I hate the term "downbetting" as it seems to imply that small bet sizings are unusual. In many situations it is correct to use small sizings.

This is the wrong way to approach it because it's only focusing on your current holding and not your entire range.

I'll give a simple example. Let's say you are 500bb deep and someone opens to 3bb and you have AA. Do you raise to 50bb (or some such silly sizing) because you are terrified of giving him odds to set-mine? Considering your entire 3-bet range, do you see why this is not a good way to play?

What's nearly certain is that a flop overbet will get zero action from hands that are not strong draws or pairs. You will succeed in folding out all of villain's hands that are drawing nearly dead (except JJ-99) and only get action from the stronger parts of his range. A small bet has some chance to induce (what we want) while an overbet has none.

This is not a bad thing. It is higher variance, but is likely to favor us.

Against a villain that calls pre-flop too often, you actually don't need to split your range here, because he's getting to the flop with too many weak hands. A small bet puts more pressure on his range because it forces him to call/raise more often with a weak range. Furthermore, what hands are you checking back and willing to call down later with? Presumably not any strong hands because you are afraid of giving him implied odds. That is also a problem.

This is simply not the point. Villain is likely to raise any sizing if he has a hand like AT. The result is the same regardless of what sizing we use against that. Using a smaller sizing gets more action from hands that missed the flop (it won't happen all the time, or even most of the time, but betting large will get action from his air 0% of the time).

Betting small pressures a bigger portion of villain's range, because a large bet will just make him fold most of his hands.

If he doesn't have many funky x/raises, I actually think jamming would be the mistake, for exploitative reasons. I'm sure jamming is solver approved and definitely +EV, but we dont have any fold equity vs a set+combodraws only range, and that range does have an equity edge vs our hand.

I haven't done this, but if you plug this into a solver and remove all the GTO-ish x-raises from his range, i'm guessing the EV of calling is higher than that of jamming.

Yes, the SPR is low, but his range is really condensed to sets and combodraws at this point, we have position and >75% of starting stacks have yet to go in. We can make "perfect" decisions on a lot of turns.

For instance, if villain jams AhTh on a blank turn, we can snap him off with a lot more equity than we would've had when jamming flop. Or we have an easy fold on, say the Ah turn, when our equity vs his range plummits. And sometimes villain has a set and we don't go broke because a comes on the turn.

Double post, sorry.

It makes no sense to for him check a set here, so he's either giving up or picked up some kind of SDV with his draw, like maybe the aforementioned T9s. At 1.3 SPR i'm probably just jamming for protection, but making it 175-200 to get some of those SDV hands to call might be interesting as well.

Meh, I guess we miss out on value vs Ah9h/AhTh/JhTh type hands that have to call. Jam.

Sorry for going missing, I was on vacation and reception/connection was way worse than I imagined.

I did end up shoving and he tanked for 2-3 minutes before finally folding. This really makes me think he had TT or JJ, which is really unfortunate.