3/6/12 with $15 of total antes and effective stacks of $2.1k

Villain opens to $33 (very good reg) and hero defends big blinds with 98o

Flop ($85): QT2 rainbow - Hero check calls $28

Turn ($141): Jx - Hero check calls $110

River ($361): 5 - Hero checks, villain bets $448, hero raises to $1,111 villain jams $1,968, hero ???

I think the interesting spots are whether to call/raise both turn and river and then as played should we fold vs. jam for $800 more, curious what people think

what position is villain and how many handed are you?

OP: Are you "heads up" to the flop here?

V has all AK, as well as all sets TT-QQ, and you have none of these hands.
In theory, I suspect Turn is never a raise facing the large sizing.
Facing the 1.2x sizing with a lot of money behind, I think your river raise is quite bad.
AP, idk what to say. We put ourselves in a hell of a spot raising the river.

button, headsup to flop

Why are you defending, OOP, vs a good reg, with trash like 98o

Being this deep makes it even worse... precisely for spots like this.

As played, I don't think sets are 3betting all in over a c/r, I think you're usually beat here.

Just x/c river as played. You underrep your hand in a spot where RIO really sucks for you, as you're finding out here.

Don't love the flop x/c either, with a gutterball to the idiot end, while we're at it.

Unless I am missing something, we are defending straddle vs. 2.75x open from button in an ante game, and on flop are facing a super small bet. Do you not think these are both super standard calls or you think you should fold in both spots as an exploit?

And obviously his river 3 bet is repping AK/K9 and not a set he is a good player, question at that decision point is if he has enough bluffs

Large River Raises are so rarely bluffs. Large River Reraises as bluffs are even rarer.

Fold unless you have evidence he can make this sort of bluff.

BB defend seems in line to the button raise based on all the charts I've looked at

echoing some other folks, I don't understand that river raise. are you trying to extract value from sets?

He has over twice as many combos of AK/K9 has he does of sets. He might have as many as 3 times as many combos of better straights than sets if he’s opening K9o (as he would on the BTN — his position wasn’t specified). Does QJ even use this sizing on the river? Maybe, maybe not. Point being his value range is more often ahead of 98 than behind it, so I cannot understand any justification for the river raise. Seems like a significant blunder.

OP you shouldn’t have 98o as a call in the big blind, but I think it’s okay to defend the straddle with it, closing the action. In your post you said you defended big blind, but in the comment above you say you defend the straddle. Not sure which is accurate.

By the way, what do you mean by $15 of total antes? NL hold em doesn’t typically run with antes in the US. Are you playing out of another country or is this a home game? More explanation on ante structure would be helpful also for determining our preflop defend ranges (we obviously get to defend wider with antes in play).

yeah, I'm not a solver guy and there are so much we don't know in terms of villain, hero's image to villain etc that I find this a difficult to think through in detail.

I would also probably fold flop tbh.

I think if I was gonna check raise I'd do it on the turn to get value from a ton of hands that might check back the river unimproved...KQ, KJ, K10 as well as the two pairs and sets that bet river anyway.

(what does villain do with a set on the turn if check raised?)

on river...IDK, it's a really tricky spot as played. villain obvs has the Nuts advantage but is he really bluffing an amount that you almost always have to lolpotoddscallitoff? in my game, against anything other than the top 2 or 3 players this is a clear fold and it's prolly a fold against the rest of them too. (which....does suggest it's a great bluffing spot which contradicts the above)

but tbh against his river sizing, I think I'm just calling

I'm straddle, 5-handed (cutoff, button, sb, bb, straddle) with $3 ante per person so $15 total

And to answer some other comments:

Definitely capable in general, in this specific spot not sure if anyone is

Not sure if he pure bets AK on the flop

He is very good and can be going way thinner than just straights with that river sizing, would bet as weak as I think Q2 for this size. If he bet calls hands like QJ or sets idk, but definitely capable to bet thinner than some people here are comfortable, and he knows I'm capable of bluffing in most spots so don't think he is bet folding QQ but not sure

Do you have history where you are perceived to have any bluffs in this spot when you raise river?

I am trying to think of the last time I saw a low or mid stakes player bluff with the line x/call x/call x/raise (raising an overbet on river). I think I’ve probably never seen it. X/c, x/c, x/r is one of the most underbluffed lines in live poker.

If you can’t really have bluffs and Villain recognizes that, why would he call with QJ/QT, which are close to bottom of his value range (when he has all AK/K9/sets)? He can overfold to your raise if you’re under bluffing, right?

If he folds 2 pair to your raise, but calls sets, your raise is probably -$300 EV. It’s just basic combo math. You’re beat by 28 combos and you beat 9 combos of sets. So you lose 650 75% of the time and win 650 25% of the time. Net EV of raise is roughly half of -650, or -$300.

what do you make of his sizing? is he thin value betting 1.3x pot? feels like this is more polarised to me?

Q2s is only two combos. I don’t think he takes this river sizing with JT, even if he is a super thin value bettor. He loses to a good portion of hands given you have K9/89 and you can’t have any good Qx cause KQ/AQ are 3bet a lot out of the straddle.

For your raise to be neutral EV you NEED him to call with ALL his QJ and QT. QT is essentially the stone bottom of his value range.

I am not sure that QT/Q2 even fit the betting pattern given he went 1/3 on this flop.

Am I missing something?

Actually, for him to take the 1.3x sizing with QT is pretty spew. Not only do you have K9/98, but you also have QJ. You can’t raise QJ on turn/river given the presence of 48ish combos of straights in Vs range. So he can’t go for 1.3x river thin value with QT or Q2 for that matter.

Honestly, the 1.3x size really looks like a straight or a bluff. I think even sets would go smaller on river.

Couple of comments:

This is on an app, not live

I definitely bluff more than anyone else in this pool and in spots certain people aren't capable (and he's seen me do this before) but not sure I would be that aggressive here, only hand I think I would ever xc xc xr bluff is 99

This is button vs. straddle in an ante game so I think he is aware that given my wide range preflop I need to call way wider than just sets vs. a small overbet, so I think hands like JT/Q2 he might overbet and definitely QT+ is in his range, he also has a lot of potential bluffs here (A9, K8, etc.) so not like I wouldn't be looking him up a bit. Not sure if he calls any of these hands vs. a raise, but he can theoretically go thinner than just straights for initial overbet in my opinion, although whether he actually does not sure

Fact that this is an app game is useful information for me. Means we can use solver ranges for one thing. Second, Villain is probably making thinner value bets than I'm accustomed to in live poker.

I ran this through PIO. It took a hell of a while to compile due to the high SPR. I had to use fixed sizings on flop/turn. Gave both players two sizings on river (60% and 1.3x). Used 2.5x raise sizings on each street.

I used Jonathan Little's tournament ranges for BB vs BTN, since these are the closest approximation for ante ranges I could find (https://poker-coaching.s3.amazonaws....lop-charts.pdf).

Flop: QT2r
OOP checks 100%, IP gets to cbet range for 1/3 sizing.

Turn: Jx
OOP checks 100%.
OOP is allowed to check/raise the turn barrel infrequently (5%). OOP turn value raises are K9 and some 98 and your bluffs are Kx suited hands (preferring the backdoor suit if it's available). OOP gets to raise 98 on turn (EV is indifferent between raise/call), but PIO strongly prefers to use this hand as a call (to protect OOP x/call range, I presume). 98 gets raised at 10% frequency, called at 90%.

River: 5x
OOP checks 100%
IP takes the 1.3x sizing with all sets, straights, QT+, Q2s is a mix between smaller and larger sizings (you were right about this)
IP takes the 60% sizing with JT and worse.
OOP check/raises facing the larger river barrel with some K9 and some 99. OOP check/calls with some K9 and other hands like QJ/98 are pure call.
IP calls with sets and two pair at a mixed frequency (IP is indifferent to calling/folding QQ-TT, QJ, QT, Q2)
IP jams over the check/raise with all his K9/AK and that's it (no bluffs)

It was interesting for me to discover that QT is nearly a pure bet on the river for the larger sizing. I wouldn't have expected that IP would be allowed to go this wide based off my live poker experience.

I think this hand plays a lot differently in the live arena cause I don't see hands like QT going for the overbet in this spot all too often.

Interesting, I see preflop has K9o and 98o in PFR range, not sure if thats an open with 3 blinds but I feel like he opens them

Guess I went a little thin to raise, and I guess jam makes sense to try to fold K9 off chop

Does sim change if you add third size on river for jam?

Yeah, unfortunately there aren’t 3-blind ranges available anywhere on the internet AFAIK. I would guess 98o is a fold and K9o is cuspy but I really have no idea if that’s true. (My guess is because K9o is cuspy in CO but 98o is pure fold in CO for 2-blind games.)

Do you mean adding a second size on river for the OOP x/raise to be a jam versus a 2.5x?

I think you want to give villain 60%, 1.3x, and jam there, could be wrong but I think if we're playing deep in a spot where he can have 16 combos of the nuts and I can't he should have some jams

Yeah, so I allowed OOP to either raise to 1120 or jam the river. Solver doesn't care which bet size is use, but IP response is different. This is probably because IP is being offered worse odds on the call, so he folds more of his indifferent hands (sets/ two pair).

Facing the jam: IP calls with AK/K9 (obviously), fold or call with 98 (indifferent), fold all QQ-TT,QJ,QT,Q2. And IP calls with 22 about 50% frequency. It is strange that solver prefers calling off with 22 rather than QQ, as neither hand interacts with OOPs bluff/value (K9/99). This is probably a rounding error in the solution as I only solved to 0.5% accuracy.

Ohh, interesting. Yeah, I can run that too. I've never seen a 4x pot sizing in real life, so I never thought to include it.

Adding the jam option for villain changes the hero's response to the 1.3x sizing. Hero raises the 1.3x bet with K9 at 100% frequency, and 98 is mixed between raise/call.