WhatÂ’s 2+2, been a lurker for years and decided to finally make an account after getting back into poker after a 10 year poker hiatus.

You may have seen this post on Reddit so please donÂ’t spoil it if you have.


Villain: Seems to be a good reg. Early 30Â’s. Familiar with quite a few players around town. Aggressive when he gets into pots, frequently squeezes in good spots.

Hero: Mid 30Â’s Rec, who likes to think heÂ’s decent, but definitely no world beater, to this particular villain likely has a tighter image due to being quite card dead this session, and being blown off a hand in a previous session in which Villain bluffed hero out of a big pot.


Playing my usual private game that runs on Sundays, thereÂ’s a good mix of Regs and Recs. In this particular hand the guy IÂ’m going against is someone I consider a good reg, not afraid to squeeze, be aggressive when it calls for it etc etc, I actually have some history with him from about a month ago where he bluffed me off a 3 bet pot by jamming the river for 4300 after a 1400 dollar 3rd barrel bet by me then showing 86s for bottom pair, he had opened on the button then called my 3bet out of the SB.

Hero is a rec, doing my best to improve through study but still have a ways to go.

Anyways to the hand in question. Hero hasnÂ’t really showed down much if at all, did call down Villain on an attempted overbet river bluff but otherwise pretty card dead but have managed to do fairly well on the day picking my spots and getting through some bluffs but doing a lot of folding otherwise. HavenÂ’t 4Bet once on the day.

10/20/40 8 handed
UTG+2Hero (7300)
BBVillain (5700)


Hero is dealt A♠︎4♠︎

2 Folds, Hero Raises to 140, 1Fold, LJ Calls, 2 Folds, BB B]3Bets to 600[/B], Hero 4Bets to 1700, LJ Folds, BB calls.

IÂ’ve seen villain squeeze fairly often and decide to make a move, my first 4 bet of the day and given prior history I thought it would come off as quite strong, in retrospect I think I sized it a little too big, I like 1500 better here as I think it seems less like IÂ’m trying to blow him off the hand and if I have AA here I imagine that would be my sizing.

Flop

J♠︎T♦︎3♠︎
Villain checks

Hero????


Hopefully I did this right as itÂ’s my first attempt at a HH/post on 2+2, IÂ’m not sure if IÂ’m supposed to post about my thought process here at this point or wait the 24hours, appreciate everyoneÂ’s input!

You have top flush draw, two backdoor straight draws, and likely a good Ace as well assuming you get called. Pot is 3400 and V only has 4000 left. I'd bet the all-in and be a near coinflip against a call and happy with a fold. Less chance we get the stack if a flush hits the turn and we believe he will then bluff at it but I want the fold equity for the 3400 already in the pot. What would you do if you had the over pair?

If my math is correct, the preflop sizing has the pot at around $3600 and villain has $4000 behind. So, 1.1 SPR........

Villain's squeeze sizing is pretty good at 15bb. Maybe even a little small since you opened for 3bb. Your 4bet is a bit large. Something around $1300 or 33bb would be better than around 43bb. 4bets can be more in the 2.2x rather than 3x area.

So, you'd have a pot of around 2800 and V would have 4400 behind. Then you could be making a 1/4 pot bet of 800-1k or checking. However, with the sizing used, we have much less post flop maneuverability.


As played, we really don't pick up much fold equity between betting 25% and jamming. The SPR is low enough that it's not a mistake for V to call or fold with hands like 99 and 88. And they should never fold Jx or Tx if they have it in their range. They can even just open jam a hand like AJ and be fine (again, if they have that in their range, which, some do, some don't). The fold vs 25% and vs a jam is pretty close. So we'd be risking a lot more with a jam to fold out the same as 25% *should* fold out.


So, I'd probably jam most AA, all KK, all combos of AK. I'd consider betting 25% with suited Ax that have no front or back door equity (hearts and clubs). Some of my AA I'd bet 25%, maybe a small amount of AK at 25%. That's if I wanted to have checks, 25% and jams. If I was only checking or jamming here, I'd jam most all AA, all KK, all AK, and some of the non front or backdoor suited Ax. I'd have some AA checks as traps and check most all QQ.

That would be my default.


If I thought V will fold some hands like 99, Tx, AK, or maybe even a hand like Jx QQ (especially if they would fold a hand that strong).......then I'd just jam most everything.

If I thought V will likely not fold hands like the above, I'd check with Ax spades. Especially if I think V might auto jam most turns with most of his range that we might still beat, like straight and combo draws. I'd check flop and call all turn jams except maybe non spade K or Q turns.



Would just depend how I felt about V. If I think he folds the same against a 25% and Jam. If I think he will fold hands he shouldn't to a jam. If I think we can bait him into jamming turn with hands he would have c/f the flop. Etc.

Your open sizing is a little big. Your 4bet is enormous. You can just make it like 1300. As played I would bet 1/4.

I don't play these stakes, but if you bet 1/4 pot and he jams a blank turn, I guess you have to call, but it seems close? Is the idea to usually jam the turn if checked to?

I would shove the flop with AK with a gutshot. Maybe you would also shove with an overpair partly for protection on the wet board, representing AK or a draw with some preflop bluff like this.

Yea, with the SPR this low, you're never folding the NFD on the flop or turn unless a non spade K or Q comes in on turn. You jam AA/KK because in theory V is calling with QQ, AK, T9, and some amount of 99, 88, 98, 87. Since the SPR is low, he can't fold those.

Other than AK, there's really no bluffs we jam with.....since the inverse is true.....with the SPR so low, V isn't folding much, so we only use a hand like AK that has good equity as well as blocking AA/KK.

Something like As4s has too much equity to benefit from jamming. As when we hold something like As4s, it's more likely V has one of those hands he can't fold.

All you can eat. You fuggin four bet junk and got top 5% of flops you can ask for.

I don't understand. If you are likely jamming AA/KK/AK, then why not A4s. You want to fold out at least better A high.

I like Solving LP's theoretical analysis.

But I would just add that, given H's history with V, I think V can level himself into over-folding to a jam here.

Yes, in theory he should be calling his MDR but that's a lot of US dollars to call with a midpair, AJ or something like that.

Given that V knew he would be oop post-flop, I wonder if this changes the analysis. Does this strengthen V's range and argue more strongly for a 25% PSB?

Does he 3bet that large regularly? Either way he 3b very large, you 4b fairly big as well - I would be very concerned with his sizing but if not you flopped as best as you can and should just bet large to let him know you aren't folding.

With 3400 in the pot and only 4k back i like a jam to fold out 99, KQs, ATs if he calls that, AQs, and AK. Even if we get called we have tons of equity and we could certainly play our overpairs this way since it is a wet flop.

I don't play this big, but I agree with those who say jam and for the same reasons.

Your 4bet was too big, not much room to maneuver after.

What do you make of V’s flatting range here? To me it looks like TT-QQ, AA, which crushes that flop. Im assuming AK, KK just shoves pre

Thanks for the post, very much appreciate analysis. For what it’s worth my read on V, especially in the face of a 4Bet by me, is he’s likely not calling here with worse than QQ/AKs and maybe AKo with a much than standard frequency given my image and our history, which he specifically mentioned when making an over-bet bluff against me on the river I looked him up on earlier in the session, and hero hasn’t shown any hands that were light 3Bets and hasn’t had a single 4Bet in the session. I think JJ/TT show up here much much less often than standard.

ranges are pretty strong given positions. would bet small and see what happens i guess but am not overly thrilled about it. dont really see the point of jamming or checking. think its reasonably clear from like any kind of situation / sim you look at that when in these small spr situations you want to stretch the betting out over multiple streets.

Im betting about 1/4th pot here. Theres just zero advantage of jamming with your range in position because youve got plenty of opportunities to GII.

You can likely put in a nearly range bet of 1/4 pot otf. The only hand that doesnt like the CRAI is AQ AK, your bluffs are fine to let it go and your TT+ is all calling. The only card in your value range that doesnt love letting a turn card peel for cheap is QQ.

For Vs range, if they have TT JJ, youre stacked anyway with QQ+, and you save money with your bluffs, you put them in a tough spot with QQ KK AK AQ AJ and under pairs.

Splitting your range in this way seems bad, and theres no way V can call hero as described with Jx much less 88 without a read

If V folds Jx (if he has it in his range), that's a huge mistake for the SPR. 88 also is pretty much indifferent to a call/fold at this SPR if he got to the flop.

Unless you're referring to pre-flop, in which case, the OP stated he has history with V and he's worried his too large of a 4bet might tip his hand to V that he's bluffing. So......OP has literally given a scenario in which V can have a read in which to make a hero call. Jx would not qualify as a hero call at this SPR. Tx and 88 type hands would be hero calls.


Something many, many (many) players overlook is indifferent hands. The over or undervalue their fold equity by classifying indifferent hands as either pure folds or pure calls. and then base their strategy around that. When the actual fact is those indifferent hands literally don't matter unless we decide the V will pure fold or pure call hands he should mix. And even then, it's virtually impossible to exploit someone who pure folds or pure calls an indifferent hand without a ton of hands against V in which to possibly exploit very long term.

he probably never shows up with any of the hands you're talking about being indifferent bc preflop. idc that solver does it with trace amounts of them, here is squeezing bb vs ep and peeling a massive 4b vs a rec he thinks is nit at like 150 bb

Because in this situation, on a theoretical level.......villain has to call off with hands like QQ Jx, Tx, 88 and AK and even some AQ. Some are pure calls, some are indifferent.

The other hands like AXs that fold to a jam, also fold to a 25% bet. So, you don't need to jam your bad AXs. And your As4s has too much equity to warrant turning into a bluff.


You use Ac4c and Ah4h as 25% bet sizing as bluffs because they have something like 30% or less equity. And you use hands like QQ and A4ss a checks. This will balance out your range.


You'd have something like:

Jam: AA KK, AK, AJs, KJs, As5s (low frequency)

25%: AA, KK, AK, AXs (non spades)

Check: AK, QQ, AQs, JJ, TT, AXs (spades)

Anything listed in two or more categories, you can mix.



As far as the folding aspect, different hero hands target different villain hands. Your 25% bet hands will fold out most any hand that will also fold to a jam......and you have hands with exponentially less equity than As4s to do this with.

Villain also doesn't have much AX lower than AQ unless he's continuing pretty wide. And even then, we don't need to jam As5s as we have plenty of lower equity hands to do this with.



The TLDR: As4s has far too much equity that we can realize via checking in position and doesn't need to be turned into a semi-bluff. You have plenty other combos that will benefit from jamming more than As4s.

That may be true. Which is why my initial post had at least three different ways to approach the situation.

Pick the one you feel is better for your villain. I'm not going to pretend I can make the perfect reads from a computer with limited info.

This is perfect example why we don't need to be jamming with As4s in position here. There's two things that are at play here and both are bad for jamming:

- The 4bet is too large. So, either we have isolated ourselves against the top end of V's range......or we have tipped our hand to a bluff.

- The SPR is too low to fold many hands with a jam that wouldn't fold to a smaller bet.


So, those things (among others) make the chance of getting called when we jam very high. That's not what you want with a hand that has as much equity as As4s in position.


It's very easy for our first instinct to be to "maximize fold equity" via jamming. We are all very guilty of this. But when you take the time to break things down, many times you'll find we really don't have that much fold equity. When that happens, we don't want to be jamming with hands that we can realize our equity checking behind.

1000% agree on the 4Bet sizing, egregious mistake in retrospect.

Maybe its different at higher stakes but a rec player 4 betting me is almost always a big hand, i would expect them to check the flop with AK AQ. QQ is dead to all of TT+, so im never finding a call with QQ much less 88. V almost folding KK shows he likely wouldve never called with Jx either.

There is absolutely nothing indifferent about a hand like Tx against hero as described. It sounds like hero MIGHT be better than the typical rec, which we know from reading it here, but if H is right about V reads, then he probably overfolded pre, and is probably overfolding flop as well. Once that J and T come out, my guess is KK is around where V becomes indifferent to heros range.