What is your range for V after the preflop 3bet?

Now, what part of that range will continue to a c/r from Hero on the flop?

What part of that range will fold to Hero's flop c/r?


A flop c/r never folds better and seldom gets worse to call. i.e., it's a terrible idea.

The plan is to get max value. If Villain is betting into your very strong hand raising on early streets can trigger a good players radar and prevent max value. The better the player the weaker the hand you can use this concept with. I do it with sets and two pair hands where there aren't a lot of cards you dont want to see peel off, but better players (I'm trying to do this more too) use it with AK TPTK hands and similar pair plus draw hands. It can make the hand more uncomfortable to play but it promotes max sized pots by keeping weaker hands and bluffs in on early streets. If you raise flop you fold out all the times your Villain had a weak hand or slowed down on top pair because they think you may have them out kicked or have two pair. At any rate, this is not to be confused with slow play, if your smooth call also slows down Villain and they check you should still be betting for value and raising on later streets when the pot is bigger. If you have a set this gives V a chance to hit two pair and play for stacks. With one pair it's tougher but the same idea. This concept says the later the street (bigger the pot) the better to show your true hand strength but in practice there are times where you want to go ahead and get your value before an action killing card hits.

some may hate the CR but I despise passively being a calling station all three streets for most of my stack.
I don't like that plan and never would devise that strategy preflop.
as for range he's unknown but 60 means something so based on zero description I have to assume hes not a lunatic and this represents 99,1010,JJ, AJss ,AQss,AKss, AKo,QQ,KK,AA maybe A10ss.
and hes going to cbet 90+% and hes not going to be afraid of a single overcard until we signal we like that card.
maybe the flop checkraise isn't best but I can not believe being a calling station is the optimal play.

we have a garbage hand OOP and got about the best flop we could hope for
most on here range V on AA KK QQ or AK and your trying to figure out how to get your stack in?
you should be trying to win the hand on the flop or get away from it with some chips left

Most are bad at ranging. Can't tell if you're serious about calling AKo a garbage hand.

Yeah, are you serious about AK being a garbage hand? Your 3-bet calling range must be non-existant.

Agree with the 4bet pre Bc oop and readless/call river Bc underepped and top of range posts.

Was describing the general concept for colt as he requested. My thoughts on this particular hand were in my first post dude. It says nothing about getting stacks in and is clearly concerned about even calling.

thank you for breaking it down
wasn't targeting you
look at how many posts on here are AK hands and nasty beats for stacks

AK is a hand that wins small pots and loses big ones and IMO should be treated that way
far and away the most over rated hand on this forum
give me 98 or 87 suited any day

It's really not that hard if you pay attention to SPR, identify your commitment threshold, and have a logical plan for the hand. I'm paraphrasing Ed Miller here, and I've found these concepts to be incredibly valuable when playing under 200BB's deep.

Ed says commitment usually comes when 1/3 of the effective stack gets in the middle. At that point, you can never be offered worse than 2 to 1 on the rest, and if you're in that spot with less than 33% equity, you probably ****ed something up on a prior street.

So we can spend about $200 here, and still reasonably get away from the hand if we get in trouble. 4-betting pre-flop commits us to the hand. Against a complete unknown in a 1/3 game, I'm wary of that play. I tend to give unknown 1/3 players a default read of loose-passive, thus I perceive their 3-bet ranges tend to be pretty nutted, until they show me otherwise.

I like the call pre-flop, but I can see the merits of a 4-bet with some better reads. And it probably wouldn't take much of a read. In-game, when you can see the guy, and interact with his personality, you can sometimes make these kind of determinations without much of a hand history. In-forum, it's not really a decision I can make with just the info provided.

On the flop, we are still $140 away from commitment, with TPTK. A reasonable pre-flop 3-bet range for an unknown loose passive villain at 1/3 should probably have some 99-QQ, and Ax hands that are now way behind us as the bulk of his range. This is a good spot to check and let him c-bet with all of those hands rather than lead out and get him to continue with just the strongest parts of his range.

Now Villain bets 50. It's an oddly small sizing, which is probably indicative of a missed or weak hand.

Now it's time to re-visit the commitment question. If we raise here, we will have passed our 1/3 stack commitment threshold. Do we want to do that? We have TPTK. We are unlikely to improve. Our most likely holding at showdown will still be TPTK. Do we have reason to believe that V will come along to showdown, for all the money, with a hand worse than TPTK?

We don't even have any evidence that V would even get here with KQ, or a pair+draw of some type. So we certainly can't know if he would go broke with those hands. So I think, all things considered, committing here is a bad idea. Just call.

On the turn, the heart draw missed and that card doesn't do much for what we can reasonably estimate as his range at this point. We can reasonably estimate that villain has a small range of better hands (AA/KK), a larger amount of weaker hands (underpairs, draws, some ace-high hands), and fair amount of ties (AK).

Do we want to commit? I would say the answer here is still no. We still don't know if V will go broke with a worse hand, and we still think it's reasonably unlikely that he even has a worse hand that will call. So, what are our options...?

We could check. If V bets we're still relatively in the dark about his potential range, and even a half-pot bet puts us over our commitment threshold. So if we knuckle it here, I think we will either have to fold, or raise all-in if V bets. And if V checks, it means he has junk and we just let him free roll his residual equity. Or it means he has a medium strength holding that he's trying to get to showdown. In other words, we missed value if we let him check through the turn.

So I like a bet/fold on the turn. We can bet $100 here and fold to a raise. Yes that technically puts us over the $200 mark, but it's close enough. This hand is a little unique as it's rare we'll be the passive one pre-flop with a premium hand. So we can bend the rules a little.

If V flats our bet, I believe that caps his range somewhat, and we can comfortably value bet river for maybe 1/3 pot. If V raises, we can obviously fold. And if V folds, we win the pot without letting him realize any potential equity he might have had.

So that's how I would play it. And it seems to make sense. As played in the OP, I think it's really hard to even name a hand that V could be bluffing with here. You just don't see many 3-barrel bluffs go down at 1/3 in general. So there's no reason to expect that from an unknown who 3-bet pre-flop. We've stated pretty clearly to V that we have a king, and he's stating pretty clearly that he can beat it. I think it's a pretty trivial check/fold on the river with the way the hand was played.

raging owl
agree that each hand is an it depends
based on read of V or lack of read
stack sizes, position etc....

you were 1st to respond with bet/fold turn
I say c/raise flop why let V see another card

as posted OP said no read on V and most posters state you should have 4-bet pre than go on to say they range V on AA KK QQ AK
so if you range an unknown V on premiums like that then
AK off are rags and its an easy fold

someone asked what would I call a 3-bet with?
OOP with zero read on V and giving him credit for premiums
I say nice hand and fold
no need to throw good money after bad.
I can make up 7BB a lot quicker than 300BB later in the game
these players who think they play TAG but really play LAG
are easy to stack as they can't wait to GII bad

Do I win something?

I think this has been explained to you already, including in my very long post above. You have to weigh all the options, and choose the best one. All options have their pros and cons, including a check/raise

As I mentioned, that play commits us to the pot. How can we fold to a re-raise getting better than 2 to 1 with TPTK? So we should only make that play, if we're prepared to commit to the pot. Such a move gets us value against worse hands that would call, and equity protection against worse hands with outs. However, I can't think of many worse hands that would call. And any made hands he's likely to have, probably have only 2 or 3 outs (JJ/QQ/AQ,etc). So there is minimal risk in letting him freeroll a tiny slice of equity.

On the other hand, just calling lets us see the turn card and make a decision about whether to continue betting, or check again. We can narrow V's range a little, and make some predictions about his potential actions. For example, an Ace on the turn allows a good portion of V's range to catch up a little and make a 2nd best hand. A heart on the turn could require some thoughtful evaluation (OP doesn't mention if we have a heart in our hand, and knowing whether or not V could have a nut heart draw on the flop should weigh heavily on our decision to protect equity on all streets)

It's also possible that there are some turn cards that could induce further bluffing from V's missed hands. 50 on the flop was a tiny bet, and we just called, so he could think we have a lot of trash that will fold to further bluffing.

Another consideration, is that calling flop and bet/folding turn is less strong-looking, even though the money is roughly the same. But playing it this way means we can get called by weaker hands more easily.

So when you weigh all of those things together, the opportunities for value on the turn seem to outweigh the risks of villain improving on the turn. Furthermore, the risk of getting snapped off by AA for all the money seems monumentally higher than the risk involved by letting JJ catching a turn card when we aren't committed. The math doesn't lie. C/R the flop is obviously not the most +EV play to be had here.