Live 2/5, both hero and v are 200bb deep, v seems to be the typical rec player

Hero straddle to 10, V opens in CO to 25, BTN call, blinds fold, Hero raise to 140 w AsQc, CO calls, BTN folds

Flop: Ah7d9d
Hero check, BTN bet 150, Hero call

Turn: Qd
Hero check, BTN check

River: Kh
Hero bet 280, BTN shoves, Hero folds

Any thoughts

200bb with a $5bb or the $10 straddle?

You have $1k or $2k stacks?

Pre: fine overall. I don't think you need to make it more than $125 though.

Flop: what is you reason for c/c here? We should be betting or c/r.

Turn: once we c/c flop, checking turn is fine.

River: What is your reason to fold here? You have under repped your hand checking flop and turn. Do we think V won't shove with KQ here after we checked two streets? Not saying the fold is wrong. Just asking your thoughts.

Sorry, I was still at the table when I posted.

So, we’re each 1K deep, with 10$ straddle.

Flop - I don’t know if it’s correct, in general I think I mix it up here, bet sometimes, x sometimes. I mainly check because I think I also need some strong aces in my checking range

River - tbh villain also did some hollywooding before moving all in + I know I’ve only played with him for 2-3 hrs but it didn’t seem to me like the type of player that would shove with worse 2p w 3 diamonds on board also.

Flop - a mix between checking and betting is fine but once your opponent bets, I crai. When he bets $150 and you call there's already $600 in the pot and you have another $700 behind so SPR is only slightly more than 1. There's a flush draw on this board so you can get called by any ace here along with flush draws and your opponent should have a bunch of Ax type hands. If he folds this is still good b/c you let him know that you're checks aren't an invitation to barrel you. The other thing to consider is that villain can easily have hands like JT, T9, 98 or PPs with a diamond and since you're oop villain can easily be checking back a lot of turns and since the pot is so big you don't want to be giving away too many free cards. Another thing to consider is that there aren't many cards that your opponent can hit that make him a second best hand wants to pay off so there's not a lot of downside to blowing off his bluffs b/c they are likely to be of the one and done type unless they improve to beat you.

River - I think folding to the raise is fine here, your hand is a pure bluff catcher. I would check this river, maybe you can value bet KQ but even that is so very thin. Your 3 bet range just nails board so hard b/c you have all the sets (AA/KK/QQ) and AK. You can make a case for check folding this river just b/c it's so suicidal for villain to be bluffing

Yeah I think flop x/c is the worst of your three choices, vs lead out yourself or crai.

If you lead, which I think is the default play, there’s cases to be made deciding between leading 1/3 pot or leading just over half pot.

As played, I think river is a fold…. This is just never a bluff or worse two pair here.

Why the need to "mix it up" when you're playing someone for the first time?

And If I said it once I said it a thousand times, don't do this that many times or that this many times just to "sometimes do this" and "sometimes do that", especially since you're playing against an average rec for the first time. We should do the things that best fit the current circumstance at hand, so just cbet the flop and keep initiative instead of letting someone else take over the betting when we often find ourselves in no mans land like we did here, so we shouldn't jus flip a coin so to speak to decide how to play a hand (the only time I mix it up is when I'm in a hand with a good player or pro who I've played against for years but it's still rare for even me since I don't have to do that with the majority of good players).

As played we may as well fold, since AK after 3betting is well within our range which even the average recs know that, and instead of just calling he raised an amount he probably expects you to call after you bet 280 into 600. He would probably just call if he thought he had SDV (this is a 3bet pot so it kinda makes people play more straight forward).

I think you played the hand pretty well. The only part of your line that's not solver approved is the river, which I am seeing as a pure check, but it's a $5-10 EV difference, not huge.

In general, going for thin value and being able to raise fold are decent live exploits. This one might be better to check and potentially check call though. This way you keep the depth a little larger so it is a little more likely he bluffs.

On the face of it, it seems nitty to not try to go for value when you have the second best 2P on the board. The problem with value betting river is, it's a narrow range you get value from on the river. KK and QQ which kind of make sense from you as checks on the flop have improved by the river, plus there are traps and flushes you could have, so he isn't necessarily just going to call you with Ax. You have the Ac, Ah is on the board, so that leaves the Ad and As. There is a good chance villain folds AJo and worse pre. So that leaves him AsJs, AsTs, maybe a few worse suited As hands than that depending on how loose he is. And he may not want to call with those hands anymore, as he really isn't beating much anymore.

Other than that, he can have AQ, (4 combos, 1 that beats you with AdQd, the rest of which chop), AK (potentially 9 combos, all of which beat you). Up to 4 combos of JT that beat you. For every AsXs hand, he can have an AdXd hand that beats you. He can also have other diamond flushes in his range. He can also have sets with 99, 77. You might straight up be behind his continue range when you bet river when you really think about it.

This is not a spot to pot control or balance your checking range on the flop. It's a 3bet pot, you're not expected to have a strong TP range that cant cbet for value. Any action you take will always look strong so there's no sense in trying to underrep your hand, so just go ahead and bet to extract from worse pairs/draws. I cant comment on the rest of your play because the hand is so far off the rails with the combined turn check that V could have anything.

Ideally the way this hand would have played out is either x/r flop just to get max value from something like AJ which is going to shutdown on any further streets anyway, along with his bluffs that will never continue, OR cbet 100 followed by 200 on the turn and 300 on the river. Maybe on occasion just jam turn with 2pair in case he peels wider than expected with a hand like JTo bdfd or even tries to bluffcatch.

i think the hand is fine although i think its actually pretty tough to get called otr but vs rec i see merit to betting

This is the opposite of why you mix things up. We make adjustments to favor on or the other, or go pure one way or another.......*AFTER* we have history with a player. Not before.


You're basically going into exploit land without info to exploit.


Also, we aren't just playing against this V and take his skill level into account. We are playing against the entire table. Unless history with most or all of them......when you don't mix and you showdown hands, you have no idea if the players at the table are capable of recognizing you're playing a pure strategy in certain spots.





Also, the "betting lead" really isn't a thing anymore. We've learned that just wasn't good strategy. We play our range and our position. Many times, that keeps the "betting lead" but that's not the reason for it when we continue OOP.

And having a robust c/r range OOP is how we keep control of things OOP.

Ok, now that I have stack sizes and such.


Flop: you should be betting this flop almost 100%. 1/3 pot is ideal.

Once we check.....we should c/r at a decent amount. We should be checking this flop so little, you can just go nuts when you decide to check this flop. Since you shouldn't be doing it much at all.

When we do c/r, we are calling a jam.


Turn: once you check flop, we are checking this turn 100%. Not much else to do when we drill top 2 but it also completes FDFD.


River: AQ is bad for leading after the line we took. We will have flushes, JTs for straight, AA, KK, QQ sets. All are better betting candidates.

A shove is also much better than small sizing.

We can c/c a small bet.


As played, we have to fold here. V's jam is just too strong here.

Pre sizing is fine given the BTN's flat, we can even go bigger since I think CO's continuing range is relatively inelastic, and we prefer BTN to fold as we don't really want to play a 3 way pot OOP.

Flop: we should be betting AQ no diamonds at a high freq for value/protection to get value from all worse Ax, diamonds, and straight random gutters. We have a strong but vulnerable hand. With 860 behind, and 300 in the pot, we can go (860 - 300)/3 = 180 to set up an easy pot sized jam OTT. I would jam any non diamond turn.

If we have the Ad, that would make a better check as we are much less worried about getting outdrawn.

AP, just c/r jam flop.

Turn: Check is good, he has a lot more flushes than you. If he bet smallish you might have to peel and probably fold to a river bet.

River: AP, I prefer either a smaller bet like $150 or a check. We can only really get value from AJ/AT, maybe some suited wheel Ax. When he jams easy fold, they almost always have a flush here.

Keeping initiative in the hand (the betting lead) is detrimental to this type of hand. It lets us be the ones who decide how much to bet each street, instead of checking then tanking over a pot or pot and a half size bet at times for example, and in most circumstances it also helps us narrow our opponent's range on later streets (for example if he's calling quarter pot size bets on a wet flop, he's probably got less than two pair or a draw). And furthermore, if we check and he checks back, we lose money in a big value hand.

look. if you bet every time you have good hands you're going to die if you ever want to check. a good part of your range is medium stregnth hands here (TT-KK) so you need to keep that in mind from a range perspective.

First and foremost, we're not playing against an expert pro who we have tons of history with who's thinking about our range and his perceived range. We're playing against the average recreational player who's most likely just playing his hand, having fun, and trying to hit flops.
If you wanna check it to him for "range perspective", or because that's how you might play aces, that's your prerogative to do but it's not how we make (or save, meaning cut our losses) money in these spots.

We just 3bet and flopped TPGK, OOP, in a big 3bet pot. The flop also includes two diamonds (imagine how terrible it would be if the flop went c/c and the turn is a diamond) so our goal should be to keep the pot somewhat under control such as by down betting (instead of blindly check/calling whatever he decides to bet, in this case it was half pot where we coulda gotten away with a much smaller bet) and we should wanna try an get to showdown somewhat reasonably without going broke. It would suck if we lose to kings when we coulda gotten away losing less money or even folding if he raised a smaller bet.

So if I bet every time I have good hands I'm gonna die? Really? LOL This was the first time hero's played with the guy if you read the OP.

I don’t really get what you are saying, why would I die if I ever want to check? I’m not criticising, I’m just asking for more info.

Second, thank you all for your replies, I do believe the best play should’ve been to bet flop and I think we have to get it in if he raises (kinda sucks if he shoves but with the straddle we are 100bb deep so nothing else to do).

i think you guys are heavily over estimating your ability to predict villain's strategy and maybe overestimating the ev of AQ on this board / dynamic pre. the point of looking at our overall strategy isnt just to avoid exploitation by someone with perfect information, its to make your you dont have huge awareness gaps in your overall strategy. a large part of your range needs to check here so it makes sense to use some stronger hands where the ev difference between bet and check is non existent to check with as well. if you think you can make large node locks to your strategy off of a 4 word description of villain im all for it but thats pretty difficult in my experience.