Villain sat down a couple of orbits ago, in which time I had the chance to observe the following action:

Villain raises from EP, called by fish in SB, flop is J97 (don’t remember if rainbow or with a draw) villain cbets, sb fish raises, villain goes all in for 500 or so, fish calls. At showdown, Villain shows 67dd.

So my read is that Villain is button clicky.

On to the hand. 800 effective.

Villain straddles, hero raises to 30 on the BU with AT, villain calls.

Flop (65) AJ8

Hero bets 40, Villain raises to 110, hero calls.

Turn (285) 7

Villain bets 320, Hero tank calls.

River (925) Q

Villain quickly checks, hero?

If you could make a big bet I'd consider bluffing but as is your biggest bet is under half pot so the question becomes what is the purpose of a bet? I doubt anything that beats you folds but there are possibly hands you beat that call you. My take is more hands that call beat you then hands you beat that call and nothing you lose to folds from the type of player you describe so I would check as well.

He's legit got like a third psb left, he isn't folding anything that beats you lol. He might bitch about it a bit but he's not folding, if y'all were another 1k or so deep it would be a pretty cool spot for a bluff though.

I should clarify that I just eyed his stack, so I thought he had 400 behind. He could have had more than that.

Also, when the river came, he immediately checked by tapping the felt two three four times in rapid succession.

You'll be giving him over 3-1 on a call, I can't see anything beating you folding often enough to make it profitable.

Described villain is an aggro fish or losing reg. You probably don’t wanna be bluffing fish. Your hand has slight sdv. Take it, expect to win perhaps a third of the time.

don't remember if a flush was possible or if villain had bottom pair + fd?

if villain is perceived as aggro i would xb on the flop and calldown turn river. as played i like to jam on the turn with this little behind. say vil has picked up a backdoorflushdraw or still holds a flopped flushdraw, then he has to call you off anyway.

i also dont see ppl fold 2pair/set for a little river bet, what would have to be satisfied for the jam to make sense.

how did the hand turn out?

Check flop against V who is likely to raise. Our hand isn't happy facing a raise and a turn barrel.

Check river. If we are actually bluffing, it's very narrow what folds out that beats our TP now.



Also, be cautious using single hands to profile a player. Especially when you're not sure if he jammed with just a pair, or a pair + flush draw. Either way.....sample size of one = bad for basing big decisions on......like calling flop raise and turn overbets.

OP: Very interesting spot. Thanks for sharing!

This is a leveling war, as both H and V can be very wide preflop (from Straddle and BTN).

Flop: standard cbet gets raised, V takes polar line. The problem here is that H Th blocks so many logical FDs and also T9s. What can V be raising with?

Turn: V continues polar line with barrel overbet. This is the decision point I think. I'm folding TPWK here against nearly all 1/2, 1/3 population and probably against half my 2-5 pool. We really have a limited read on Villain. To call, I need more history with V. Seems like a Baluga theorem fold here.

AP River: very good card for H because it vastly reduces V's flush combos. Unfortunately H has no FE. So x behind.

Ok, let me make one more effort to explain why I found this hand so interesting.

First, let me concede that we are probably too shallow to have fold equity. However, as a rule in every spot you have value, you should have some bluffs and this is a spot that's massively underbluffed, because it's hard to find bluffs. If you don't have any bluffs in a spot because it's too shallow and villain will call you with his good hands, then vilalins should always fold vs the hand that's represented, yes? Obviously, the usual caveat is that the population doesn't find folds anyway, so check. True.

With that out of the way, one reason I find this hand interesting is that I found myself in a spot in which after playing two streets trying to get a cheap showdown, I found myself on the river with a hand that I didn't feel had too much of a showdown value.

Why? When villain reraised, I thought his range consisted of two pairs and a smidge of sets (mostly 88 and a random JJ) on the value side and a combination of draws (a good deal of which I was blocking) and an x factor unpredictable button clicks. This is why I called the turn after a mandatory call on the flop.

When the river came and villain check quickly, my read was that he did not like river at all. This means that he didn't have a flush draw or that his other draws bricked. I didn't think he had many non-flush draws however, because I find it hard to believe that many people check raise a pair and backdoor flush draw in these stakes.

So I didn't think he had many spade draws and if he didn't have any flushes or straights, because he looked very disappointed.

So what that leaves us with? Two pairs that I lose to and button clicks. I don't know what percentage of his range was button clicks I was beating. Based on a couple of other hands I saw afterwards, this guy seemed like he was an older guy trying to take advantage of his OMC image to make some weird aggro plays that didn't have much logic.


Either way, the point is that this is a hand that on the surface likes to take the cheap showdown, but it seems to me that it doesn't have much showdown value.

This leads me to the other reason this hand is interesting. Forget stack depth. Let's say we are deep enough. Is this hand a good bluff candidate? Do I bluff all AJ and AT with a heart? Are there perhaps other hands to bluff with that are better?

I don't know, because I am not sure about the range of hands that I come to the river this way without having hit the flush.

PS. FWIW, i did bet and villain did fold. I am not mentioning it to brag, but because after he folded he started shaking his head in disappointment. Which again, tells me he either had a better hand than mine that got afraid of the rivered draw or because he had some very strong non heart draw that bricked out.

But again, if he's as button clicky as he seemed at the time, who knows what he had.

I agree, AxTh makes a very good bluff candidate at the river. AJ definitely not, still ahead against A8 and J8. I guess you meant Ax9h, which has the same bluff properties like AxTh. Besides these hands but rather unlikely to be holding on the river: Kh8x, KhQx, QxTh.

Flop I could go either way on bet vs x, AT is still fairly strong btn vs straddle (we have many worse Ax to x back) and having the T is nice bc we turn some equity on board straightening cards that are otherwise bad for us

Turn is the most interesting spot imo. Not a good card for us, and facing an overbet we need V to be bluffing fairly wide (or not betting 2p), so a fold would be reasonable. Otoh the one hh we have suggests he might be clicking buttons often enough to continue - however most of his bluffs have good equity and there’s < .5psb behind, so unless we have a good idea abt how he’s likely to play rivers it is probably better to just jam now if we think this. So I think jam>call, but fold is fine too.

River bluff seems way too ambitious. If you think turn is a call bc he’s clicking often enough then that cuts against him folding 2p vs < half pot imo.

Thank you, I meant Ax9h, yes.

It's poker, he can be deceptive. People are deceptive with tells all the time.

Some possibilities:

1. He has a good made hand like 2 pair or better. He knows at this point worse probably is not calling him, but he is not folding. Maybe there is a sliver of a chance that you bluff or value bet a worse hand though, so showing weakness suits him.

2. This one isn't deceptive, but he has a weak hand and he is giving up. You have him beat, he just doesn't care if you can read him for weak because he knows he is beat, so no point in trying.