Your other post and this post are my exact thoughts. My only deviation is that I narrow the range to stronger holdings as he bet each street, which makes the river a tougher and tougher spot.

I think calling pre (also reasonable to 3B), flop, and turn is standard, despite many others saying to fold pre. I think the river is where you start to need live reads and population heuristics to help inform a decision. I think any pocket pair wouldn’t barrel the river, but missed draws might. Then I tried to think whether AJ would go for three streets of value

If you guys were pre-flop raiser, how would you play AJ or better? I'm three barreling because Hero's hand looks exactly like what it is. I guess I might go $75 on the river, but $100 is probably fine for pure value.

Would you three barrel worse than AJ just hoping an unknown will fold a hand like KJ? I'm not (and that's obviously a good decision because almost everyone ITT is calling!).

Without putting too much thought into it, not trying to split, and without knowing whether the 5 on the flop is the 5d or not (which def changes things):

Range betting (or close to it) flop for 1/3rd. Double barreling that turn for 3/4ths with most of my jacks+ (gonna check behind some strong hands with diamond blockers a bit as well), a lot of diamond draws, and a lot of straight draws. Gonna triple barrel for 3/4ths with my strongest jacks and everything better, as well as a lot of my non diamond draws that bricked out, esp those with no showdown value. 67s, 64s, A4, A2 non-diamonds all strike me as excellent river bluffs in this spot.

KJo has to call in that spot, even if one of those is a diamond. Not blocking any bluffs while blocking J5s, J8s, AJ, JJ, and KK.

411heelhook’s post is solid and mirrors my thinking. I would take AJ+ for three streets with the larger sizings on turn and river. I might size down on the river with KJ to around $75 (60% PSB). River bet with QJ- is iffy since we do lose to a fair bit of Jx.

KJ is really high in our range and not something you should be hoping to fold out with a bluff from BU’s perspective. So the fact that forum wants to call river doesn’t make bluffing in this spot bad for villain.

If I were in villain’s shoes I would be betting worse though, for value expecting even worse hands than Jx and Jx with no kicker to call.

Hmm, I've been away for a while, but it pains me to see long time posters on 2+2 are actually advocating a KJ fold on the BB to a button openraise these days. Or saying things like "clear 3bet or fold pre" with no doubt in their minds whatsoever that they are right. Luckily the responses got a lot better in the end, with some solid contributions by 411, Chaos and browni.

For me this is a pretty clear call on the river against someone I would deem capable of bluffing. I wouldn't be happy on the river, because I don't expect him to value bet QJ or J9 here (for this sizing), so we're solely bluffcatching at this point. But there are so many missed draws (even two obvious open enders with 76 and T9) and missed overs here, and we basically have the top of our range... So I would need some very specific reads to be able to lay this down. And against the players I would have these specific reads on, I might even have already folded the turn.

The need to defend your blinds decreases in these 2-3 games where the standard raise is 4x the big blind compared to 2-5 games where the standard raise is 3x the big blind. In a 2-5 game where the button raises to $15, you’re paying $10 to win $22. In a 2-3 game with a standard raise of $12, you’re pay $9 to win just $14. In a 1-2 or 2-3 game, you hence have to narrow your range in the big blind to get the right pot odds to justify defending your blinds.

KJo is at the bottom of that VPIP big blind range. If you call, you are playing a trouble hand out of position without the initiative. If you get a piece of the flop, you’re going to have to donk bet, indicating a strong hand, or check and hope the button calls, in which case you are going to have a hard time knowing where you stand on the turn. Even worse, you’ve got no fold equity. If you 3-bet, you can win the pot right there. If the button calls, then you can take the initiative and C-bet a dry flop. Hence, I would prefer 3-betting KJo and calling with a medium pocket pair where you can set mine, fold on a wet flop, and donk-bet any dry flop with fold equity and knowing you’re ahead most times against a late position preflop raise.

Position, position, position. If you are still learning, I would fold KJo in the big blind even against a late preflop raise. You have to be confident in your flop game to 3-bet and even more skilled to call preflop. KJo is not in my BB range unless I am playing against a good player acting on my image as a nit.

By the way, beware of semantic arguments on this forum about “Good players do x… Good players do y...” There are some posters on this forum whose advice is superb, and others I would take with a grain of salt. As you can see from the posts here: fold, call, or 3-bet preflop are all reasonable plays. It all depends on your skill and your read of the villain.

I definitely call KJ vs. some players, but I need to know something about them first. We don't even know if this is an OMC or a young guy with gold chains and a puffy shirt. Ditto on the call down -- some read would help. Vs. a complete unknown, I'll wait for better than top pair second kicker to risk half my stack.

^This.
I'm willing to make a population fold here. I'm pretty sure a solver would call down though.

Well, OP may not have included this particular information, but at the table you obviously would know if the button is 100 years old or not, so you still can't advise someone to fold pre-flop because he knows absolutely nothing about the villain, unless he had his eyes closed.

Your second point is definitely valid. I included "someone I would deem capable of bluffing" in my post, because I would also need to have that read. The question is if "the population" in general would likely be capable of this or not. It probably depends on your game, but you're right in stressing earlier that this guy is actually three barrelling, which might further reduce the chances of this being a bluff.

LOL. How can we tell him to call?

Vs. the average, ~30 - 60 yo poker player with zero in-game reads during my first hand at the table I fold KJo from the BB (I'd rather 3bet than flat), and I fold the river now that I'm here and save 1/3 of my stack until I know more.

Maybe OP can tell us something about V? Did OP get any vibe? Was V a rec, reg, gamlb-y, OMC, meth head, etc?

I'm obviously out-of-step with the forum, but I typically play one pear hands as two street hands postflop. I think there is a bunch of value in playing them this way (prevents hands that are crushed from folding the turn, starts inducing bluffs / light calldowns / valuetowning themselves, prevents big pots when we're crushed, etc.). Course read / stack size / board / etc. dependent.

And again reads are super important, but I'd wager that your typical run-of-the-mill opponent almost never goes for 3 postflop streets with one pear and are fairly happily checking behind the river a *huge* percentage of the time (not particularly close, imo). Overall, unless your game plays incredibly different than mine, not enough here are giving 4th barrel river bets nearly enough respect in your typical MUBSY/no-empty-the-clip-bluff environments, imo.

GcluelessLLSNLtendenciesnoobG

In your games you would expect most opponents to check back the river in position with AA on J8535?

That would never happen in the games I play.

If your game is that nitty, I don’t fault you for folding KJ to the BTN open.

Everyone should just be cognizant that OPs game doesn’t have to be as nitty as the games they play in, such that KJ is a “clear 3b or fold” as some have suggested.

When you say X action is clear you’re implying that not taking X action is a mistake in most games at a given level. How anyone can have such confidence in this case is a mystery to me.

I'm pretty sure the reason we are so confident is because we have zero idea if the game is loose or nitty or something in between. Zero. I am shocked that so many people want to put half their stack in the middle with top pair, second kicker against a player they know absolutely nothing about. I'm repeating it because it's astounding to me.

OK. I'm done until we hear from OP.

I don't get what's so LOL about calling KJo in this spot. Even with zero reads we probably have some idea about an average button range for raising an unopened pot. Even though this situation hardly ever occurs at a live low stakes table, since by the time the action gets to the button, half the table has already limped or called a raise. But when it does occur, I would think the button's range is incredibly wide. Definitely wide enough to call KJo here, without any question.

At LLSNL, absolutely. All sorts of reasons for this: MUBSYness, the pot is big enough, I got my AA cracked by 85o last week - 85OFF!, I'm scared of exposing the rest of my stack and getting check raised, I put you on T9 which isn't going to pay off anyways, I like you so I'm not going to bet again, etc. People checking back TP type hands is one of the most common things you'll see in a typical LLSNL game.

At least that is my experience, and assuming games haven't changed drastically in the 597 days it has been since I last played a hand of poker (sigh).

GcluelessLLSNLnoobG

The less reads you have the more you should rely on fundamentally and theoretically sound poker to dictate your decisions. Theoretically sound poker is not nitty, being nitty is an exploit against players that don't bluff enough or don't fold enough.

So all this talk about not defending KJo bb vs btn without a read, or not calling the river in this spot -- all of which is firmly in the realm of exploitative play -- strikes me as cart before the horse thinking. We should not be naturally biasing ourselves towards exploitative play without reads. Not only will it hurt our winrate in the short term, it'll develop bad habits that will limit our ability to move up and play bigger, tougher games in the future.

LOL @ being exploited in LLSNL.

Old me would probably go on and on about why that's just silly, but the new me thinks that more people should defend more often in BB.

It's just as cute to read that people think that you should maintain certain approach to the game to train for a bigger game.

I appreciate being called cute, I am cute tbh.

Committing yourself to mediocrity and having the nerve to act haughty about it is definitively not cute, though.

I've taken this route before, but my take on preflop is this:

Imagine you and I are casual observers of the game and we're betting on who wins each hand.

In this hand here, all we have is OPs information, which is a Button open, a call by the Hero in the BB with KJo who will now play the rest of the hand OOP readless, no significant dead money, and all in a raked game (the latter two points guaranteeing that both players can't be long term winners in this spot, and also noting it is possible they could still both be long term losers in this spot).

I'll let you take your horse first. Who are you taking?

I know who I'm taking. And it isn't the guy OOP readless without initiative with a mediocre hand.

If you told me the guy in the BB was an expert and way way way better than the guy on the Button, maybe I change my mind.

Gbut,ifyou'reexpert,obviouslydowhateveryouwant(for real)G

Sure, let's go through it

Preflop: Are you giving me 5.5:3 on my money? If so, I'm comfortable taking KJo

Flop: Snap KJo all day

Turn: Snap KJo all day

River: are you giving me 226:100 on my money? If so, I'm comfortable taking KJo

My comment was specifically at preflop (and obviously assuming the call isn't an all-in getting decent odds which prevents Hero from playing the rest of the hand OOP). You're still picking the BB as the long term winner in this spot?

FWIW, I have no problem with the flop/turn play.

But I think we have a real disconnect on the river play given how the typical run-of-the-mill player plays. Coming up with 27 (or whatever) combos of worst hands that he could possibly show up (pot odds!) is pretty irrelevant when like only 5% of the pool is capable of playing those combos like that (and only 20% of the time at that anyways).

GcluelessLLSNLnoobG

Let's see.

I follow a chart that tells me a range in which I shall defend.

My plan post flop is to check-call if I hit and check-fold if I miss.

If I win - the plan worked. I am awesome.

If I lose - the plan worked, but I lost to variance. I am still awesome.

The end.

And if you don't follow the plan, you won't be ready for tougher game.

Poker is so easy.

Let’s make it simple.

If the guy is opening JTo (and better) on BTN to 4x, then folding KJo is a mistake in a rakeless game. You’re losing dollars with your fold.

If the guy is opening a much tighter range, I can get behind a fold, but that information wasn’t given. Villain is a MAWG. Not tagged as an OMC.

Forget charts. No casual rec player is opening 50% on the BTN as they should. But even if they’re opening 20% (like a standard CO range), KJo is a call. Folding is a mistake if you know V is opening that wide. The reason is related to equity realization. KJo in OOP realizes 80% of its raw equity against a standard CO range of top 20% (equity realization drops dramatically to around 60% against a tight EP range, which is why KJo is a fold versus EP open).. KJo versus that CO open range has 45% raw equity. So KJo has .8*45% = 35.5% realized equity. We need 33% in pot odds to make the call, so it’s a call.

What do you mean by long term winner? Our call down can be +EV despite the fact that BTN usually wins the hand. BTN obviously is the favorite in the hand, but that doesn’t imply we should fold river. Pot odds are a thing!

Your pool vs OPs pool. Discussion is never gonna get anywhere. Only need 12 combos of worse hands, not 27. I’m okay with the river fold but it’s an exploit to the tendencies of a player to underbluff. I see enough random crap in my games, like AK triple barreling off with this line, that my default is to call river.