2/3 sometimes straddled to 10, but no straddle this hand. The standard open size is 15 in this game with no straddle on.

Villain is a young guy, probably late 20s, hero is late 30s. Ive never played with this guy before, but I can immediately tell he's a good player and watching a couple lines he's taken in previous hands I can tell that he is studied. Confident that hes a good player we decide to run a bluff. Only battled him in one other pot so far where hero 3bet a UTG 15 open to 50 w red kings, villain cold 4bet from BB, hero shoved, villain reluctantly called it off after 30 secs w black kings and we split 10 bucks after rake.

-Hero has about 570 and villain has me slightly covered.

-Villain opens to $15 UTG +1

-High vpip, bad, and straight forward player who liberally pays off big hands flats in HJ

-Hero decides to flat on BTN with 6s4s because of the bad player and there is another high vpip bad player in BB that often comes along. This time he doesnt.

-Pot = ~$45

-FLOP- 7d 4c 3d

-Villain bets $20, bad player folds

-Hero raises to $75. Decided to bluff villain since this flop smashes our BTN flatting range and we think we can get Villain to fold overpairs and overcards that have good equity against us.

-Villain thinks for a good minute and calls.

-Pot = ~$190

-Turn- Js for board of 7d 4c 3d Js

-Villain check, Hero thinks for maybe 20 sec and bets $150. Villain is staring me down for at least 3min mightve been 5 or more, nobody calls clock but one of the players is sighing loudly and asks for table change and gets up. Villain finally calls.

-Pot = ~$480

-River- Kh for board 7d 4c 3d Js Kh

-Villain check. We have about $330 left so a nice sized jam available. The fact that he took so incredibly long to call on the turn though got me started to wonder if he turned a set of Jacks and he was trying to think if he wanted to raise or let me bluff. And now KK comes in on the river, as that is one of the hands he should have when he calls turn.

- Hero does what? Do we rip it or check and give up? It would suck to lose to 99/TT/QQ here that would fold to a rip, but he also has JJ/KK insta calls, maybe AA if he can find the call, and maybe he occasionally has slow played sets, though i would expect them to XR flop or turn, and 65 probably raises at some point too.

99/tt/qq is 18 combos, AA, KK, JJ is 12. If he has every other set, its 21 combos of hands that probably aren't folding. I think he has at least 3 combos of Axdd so I think we're getting a attractive odds on our bluff as he only needs to fold 40% of the time to break even

Did i write too much? Nobody has any thoughts on this?

I do like the flop raise, it just sucks we got the worst runout. Honestly I think I give up on the river - the King really doesn't matter and I feel like he tank calls this thinking you have diamonds. We had a lot of great bluff outs but the board completely whiffed.

Ugh. Feels like we have to jam here, but I'm wondering if he might have some AXdd hands we beat that will check back.

With our turn bet sizing, it looks like we're repping exactly 65dd. We have a 6, and don't have diamonds, so our hand has good properties as a bluff candidate. The flop does favor our range.

The problem is that he could level himself into calling with any pair+ because diamonds missed, and he's just going to fold out his NFD's. We could play the flopped straight, sets, 2P, and the nut flush draw exactly this way. We might turn the worst parts of our value range into bluff catchers by checking on the river, and polarize with the top of our value range.

If we're jamming our straights here, we need to have some bluffs too. But I think I'd prefer to bluff with a hand that has less showdown value, like busted draws without a pair.

So, I think we can check here, and pray he checks back with ace high. He'll want to lay down in traffic when he sees what he's losing to.

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I like b/f turn small planning to jam river if it is a 4,5,6, diamond. Likely c/f all other rivers.

Why raise the flop? It's heads up against a good player's UTG+1 open. This doesn't seem like a board that hits him very often and we're in position. I guess a raise denies equity to AK/AQ/KQ type of hands. If you're not going to barrel the river, it doesn't seem to make sense to raise the flop. I don't usually call pre-flop raises with 64 though. Guess you need to have a lot more bluffs with it since it's such a bad hand.

Are you raising sets and straights on this flop?

Answered in OP:

I would.



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nobody is folding an overpair to a single flop raise, so if you raise here i think you have to empty the clip and do what you would do with a set which is to take the line you did and shove river and hope he folds all one pair hands.

i also think pre is bad unless you are willing to bluff with your whole stack on boards like this. im not so i dont play these hands. in fact the way i play (im a boring nit) suited connectors are -EV so i just auto muck them unless under perfect conditions to nut-peddle, like a pfr and 4 callers and im OTB (maybe thats bad too tbh).

Yes i would for sure raise sets and straights here on the flop and villain will know i have all of them here.

@docvail wins the thread!

Here's what happened on river:

Villain checked to me.

I sat there motionless for probably a minute and a half going through everything in my head. I said I need to blast this off, but started leveling myself into thinking he bumped into a set on the turn or river or he had aces. I know if I check back though and he shows TT I will vomit in my mouth.

I do wuss out and check back.

Villain flips over AQdd and i exclaim "holy crap", and we win a huge pot w a pair of 4s. I knew I should've jammed river.

Villain threw his head back in disgust and indeed looked like he wanted to jump into traffic. He was a good sport and told me good play before i left for the night.

What do I win?

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Man, im inclined to call flop with pair + draw and see if he checks it to the river, putting the raise in OTT if he bets.

As played I ask myself what an I repping, and whats his range?


Youre repping: 65, 44, 33, 77.

Whats his range? Maybe the exact same range. Maybe AA KK, idk. 7x folds the turn, dont think he has 43. He could have a flush draw, but he didnt have odds to call OTT unless it was a combo draw.

Youre probably not folding any of his made hands OTR, he spent 5 minutes deciding because if he called the turn hes calling a blank river. He might be slowplaying you.


Im checking back and realizing my equity, because you ABSOLUTELY win vs flushdraws here at least some. Like, youve got great blockers against his made hands, but he basically only ever has a good hand here. If you didnt have a pair maybe I ship, but i think you squeezed out most of your FE OTT

i think pre is bad and post isn't very well thought out. pre losing decently at high rake / 5x vs ep (even more so if you do random things post), didnt see flop was 3 ways the first time, i think raise is probably a mistake vs what is likely a strong range. also dont see what 75 does that smaller doesn't accomplish. ott, i dont think you have much fe vs hands that b/c the flop on a brick jack and you have ok equity so id x. your sizing also makes it pretty tough to bluff the river effectively here as it just isn't that much to him. you're just way over estimating your fold equity and i think under estimating how much stronger his range gets to cbet and then continue on this flop 3 ways. your goal in this hand, especially if you're unwilling to fire 3 should not be to fold out overpairs and i think thats the bulk of his range

Glad you won the hand. Nice to hear my reasoning for checking back seems to have been correct.

Not sure why you think you should have jammed here. He can't ever call with worse, obviously, and there's a good chance he levels himself into making a light call with a lot of hands.

He's obviously not folding KK, JJ, 77, or 65s, assuming he just flats your flop raise and turn barrel with all of those. If V calls flop and turn with AA, AJdd, AKdd, or KJdd, he's probably not folding, because all your semi-bluffs missed, and aside from AA, all those hands have improved.

He's probably only folding hands like AXdd, and maybe 88-TT and QQ. But he might get curious enough to look you up with 88-TT and QQ, because what KX or JX do you have here, that flat call pre, raise flop, barrel turn, and jam river? He might even look you up with A4dd, if he thinks you're just completely FOS.

Your line is really only repping 65s when you flat call pre, raise flop, barrel turn, and jam river. Maybe you could play KJdd this way, but that's just one combo, and what would you be targeting for value that might call, other than AA? I would think KJ might check back at some frequency, to avoid value-owning ourselves against 77 and 65s.

I think the rationale for jamming would be to avoid checking back with no showdown value and losing to his ace-high combos. I agree that you already folded out so much of his range on the flop and turn that all he has left are better hands that will call and worse hands that will fold.

Maybe the check back river was correct then. Another player that I respect at the table said check back w showdown value was good. I was only thinking if I jam I dont think he calls w AJdd, QQ, or TT. There is still a good amount back on the river, its a 2/3 pot jam left, its not insignificant.

After he called the turn bet i was definitely worried that he was slowplaying and that he only took so long bc he was thinking of whether to raise me or let me keep blasting.

I did think about checking back turn and realizing my equity but Im repping sets and straights and theres no way I check back w those.

65s is not my only value, I have all the sets too, i certainly would not be checking those at any point here.

And definitely point taken about preflop. My reasoning for playing the hand in the first place was because of the 2 fish (one that flatted, and one in BB) not villain, but the presence of the fish still might not be a good enough reason to play this hand.

I don't mind the call pre with 64s, especially from the BTN, with the two fish also in the hand.

I overlooked some of the sets and other hands you could have here.

I think you have all the sets on the flop, but not JJ on the turn or KK on the river, when you don't 3B pre. V could have KK, JJ, 77, 44, 65s, and occasionally 33. V can have some AK that we won't. We might have some AJ that he won't. Either of us could have KJdd.

The weaker the value of V's hand, the faster he'd want to play it, so he'd want to just GII with 44 and 33 on the flop. But he might also want to just GII with 77, or even 65s, unless he had exactly 65dd.

Conversely, our flopped sets can slow-play the flop and raise turn, to keep V's range wider and avoid folding out his bluffs. Some of the weaker parts of our range like 44 and 33 might actually want to raise flop, but check back river.

65s is really the only hand in our range that wants to raise flop and continue barreling on this run-out.

It crossed my mind that he might be slow-playing a monster, but when you raise flop and barrel turn, it doesn't look like you're bluffing, and I'd think 65s wants to check-raise turn. So it looks like he's got a hand that's too strong to fold, but maybe not strong enough to raise, like AA, KK, or just AXdd.

When he's tanking, it looks like he's just trying to think about whether or not he's got the correct IO to chase his NFD's, whether or not it would be better to raise than to call with his big pairs, whether or not you might actually be bluffing, etc.

You can bluff river. All the big hands on the flop are still big hands after river.