New to table but have played with villain before. Last session he saw me crai on a paired flop and muck river to villain's flopped full house. Villain is a reg, has some moves but super leaky pre (called 3bet oop with 34dd v shortish stacks) and does stuff like overbet bluff river v calling stations. He thinks but doesn't seem to get it quite right. Hero's image is generally tight. This guy definitely thinks i'm a newb bc halfway through session he asked me even I even knew how to calculate odds (I do).

Hand isn't super interesting but I can't seem to come up with the best line. I feel like I played it fishy.

Effective stacks 500.

Villain opens button for 15. Hero defends bb with qjo. I think his range is super wide here, q8s+, all pp, suited connectors 43+, don't see any reason to 3bet.

Flop kt7r. Hero donks 20 villain calls. Good chance I win pot there, with my image if he raises he's not making a move and I can fold depending how much.

Turn is a 7. I check, he checks. Honestly I'm confused about what he has here. A ten? Same hand, king with backdoor bdway? I didn't think he'd fold to another barrel so that's why I checked. Did I miss a chance to double barrel?

River ace. I thought he would definitely value bet or bluff this card for sure so I checked planning to cr. Faulty thinking?

Thanks in advance for responses, I get a lot out of these posts.

His range being super wide sounds like a great reason to 3bet.

Very faulty thinking. Why is he bluffing if he has a pair? Also, you are overplaying your hand by check-raising. Just bomb the river. Flop and turn play are fine.

Only like donk betting this flop if you plan to continue the aggression on the turn as well....feel like your hand is face up once you check on turn. As played though....not a big fan of c/r the river in these spots on paired boards...believe long term you're giving up value given the times he doesn't bet and generally you will only get a call from hands that are beating you (not that I'd be really worried about a boat here but still possible against fish w/unusual playing style). I recommend betting around $55 on river.

Don't like going for a x/r on the river because the river x/r is so rarely a bluff and I think V can easily fold Ax.

I don't mind donking flop but I think betting turn is crucial. What value hands are your betting the flop with then checking the turn... Seems like a super small range.

Don't like c/r the river. You look so fos right now as is that he will hopefully call a big river bet light especially if he just binked an A.

We could quibble about a few streets, but the river is the one that I think is clearly sub-optimal. After he flats the flop bet, how many hands in his range are air on that river? Pretty much J9 and 89 only. He's probably checking back Kx, Tx, and mid pairs, but he might hero call with them if we lead. If he has Ax it's basically irrelevant; most likely he'd call a bet, and if checked to he'd bet and then fold to a cr. At least if we lead out, we get to ensure the bet size is reasonably large.

Side note, I love this description:

Flop bet is fine, however I'm always betting turn as well. As played, still fire river. I really dislike C/R here with the paired board. He may check through (as he did), also he sets the price with his initial bet and he is likely folding to your raise.

I think everything is OK up till river. You have the sort of low end value hand OOP that you can take all sorts of lines with.

On river not betting is a mistake. After he checks turn behind he probably isn't going to bet this river unless the ace improved his hand also. The ace is more likely to shut down his betting then encourage him to bet more. It's generally better to bet here and hope villain raises.

Another good example of why it's hard to play out of position - we have the nuts and no good way to make money.

I would bet river, on the larger side. He's not calling any bet with air. Let's hope he either hit two pair or he bluff catches thinking we're FOS.

I like a 3bet pre since your range is ahead of his, it sounds like this opponent you need to just let him make mistakes against you so I don't mind calling pre and hoping to hit a hand and have him make mistakes.

OTF why not go for a check/raise? If it checks through you get a free card, but a check/raise is very polarized on this flop, you could have a set of 7's,T's or be on a draw. After check/raising flop I would lead turn almost always and eval river. With this line, you're still OOP but you gain the initiative.

As played, lead the turn for 1/2-2/3 pot.

Bet river, his line/play is representing possibly QJ but more likely pairs that would call a decent bet

You need to review the reasons to bet. Our range being ahead of his is not a valid reason to 3bet.

(hint: you want him to fold QT?).

I kinda have a problem with every street...
As played bet river. You get to 3! here a decent amount of times as well!

Few notes:

#1)Get in the habit of just betting the nuts whenever you semibluff one street and turn the nuts the next street. Seriously, trust me on this, for one month just bet every single time you hit the nuts and see what that does to your game and winrate. And this goes DOUBLE for when you semibluff the previous street then hit the nuts the next street.

#2) 98% of players at this level are just never folding trip aces. They just aren't. There are some hands that just turn 98% of the player pool into level 0 or level 1 mouthbreathing droolers. Trips are definitely one of the hands that turns off our villains' brains. Whenever I recognize that my villain has trip aces (or could have trip aces) I just blast the pot. They will say, "Why so much...." and then call. Or they will say, "You got the ace??? How big is your kicker??? okay nice hand I call..." You can always pot it or even double pot it or if the pot is big enough just monkey shove it.

#3) Speaking of the semi-bluff. What I find interesting is that thinking players have no problems double or even triple barreling their semibluffs but on the flip side, when they hit their semibluff and turn or river gin they seem to check it a high percentage of the time (especially when they are OOP.). Think of the implications of this and how that ends up being a tell and significant leak in our frequencies. One component to our bluffing (besides winning the pot) is so that when we do make a hand we can realize value as well. In order for our bluffs to be more successful we have to bet when we have strong hands. Or put another way, there is a relationship between our bluffing hands and our marginal hands and our nutted hands. IN order for us to have a cohesive and strong overall game, it is IMPORTANT that we properly play each component in our overall range of hands. Thus, in this case, it is important we bet our nutted hands! By not betting our nutted hands, we are actually impairing and hurting the other aspects of our game.

food for thought...

+100

Absolute bullseye here from dgi. I have to laugh when i read how you describing the stations here, because its so spot on. " Yeah, i am probably behind here- i CALL!!" (God i love that when villains announce out loud that they know they are beat but still call, lol)

My own game has evolved tremendously when i just started to generally bet more instead of checking so much. Force your villains to put money in the pot or/and to take difficult choices about their hand. Both my C-bet freqenzy and double barrell frequenzy are much much higher now compared to when i started playing live poker.

One thing is that it makes it easier to build pots with semibluff bets and easier to get paid off when you actually hit the nutz- but it also does magical things to your overall game and makes your range much more elastic on every street. Put in other words: betting and raising with a higher frequenzy makes you a lot harder to get a read on, and often can make villains make huge mistakes against you because your manipulating your range by betting with air, draws, A high or made big hands.


Quick example. You raise it up with AQ and flop comes J-2-3 rainbow. You C-bet half pot and villain calls. Turn is and A giving you top pair. You barrell again on turn/river and villain gets frustrated at showdown when he sees your ace figuring out his J was the best hand. He will remember that you was betting the flop with pure air and sucking out on his J and will call you down alot lighter in the future.

Next hand you pick up A10 on the button and raising it up, same villain calls with 10-9 suited in the BB. Flop comes down 2210 and you of course C-bet as usual. You will now be able to valuetown villain huge over several streets, because he will "put you on AQ/AK" and station you down because he remember how you C-bet bluffed and sucked out on him last time. Your range in villains eyes is much wider when he has seen you bluff and he can easily level himself into putting you on a wider range than you actually are playing against him.

Pre - QJo is near the top of my folding range here so I'd probably turn it into a bluff by 3betting. You can flat if you really want to, but unless the guy is a real drooler postflop, but against most players the positional disadvantage will lose you more money than your slight equity advantage will gain you; it's not like QJo plays amazingly post, and much of the time you'll be hurdling along in the RIO speedwagon with villain behind the wheel (as he's IP) and just a middling TPGK hand to hold on to.

Flop - Against a good handreader I like your donk, as your range has very few combos of >1pair (77 and maybe KTs if you're into that), so a good player would correctly determine a c/r to be very (semi)bluff heavy. But if he's as fishy as you describe (fishy enough for you to flat pre to outplay him OOP) I'd just c/r anyway cuz **** him that's why.

Turn - Whatever, checking and barreling are both fine; against someone I view as fishy I'd prob default to checking barring a more detailed read. If he thinks you're a newb who doesn't understand betsizing, you can even get away with what would otherwise be a transparently small blocking bet. The felt is your oyster here bro.

River - just b/shove because he usually has marginal showdown value when he checks behind turn and thus his calling range is likely to be wider than his betting range. C/r does get value from missed draws like 98 and JT but I don't think that's enough of his range to justify the play.