$3,500 effective.

Villain 1 SB is a winning reg and one of the most difficult players I play against. Very aggressive and polar player. Can run huge bluffs and also gets max value Covers hero.

Villain 2 BB has been shot taking the last few weeks and seems to be buying in bigger than he is used to. About even with hero in chips. He has some decent poker instincts, like correctly bluff catching sometimes, going big for value. Have not seen him run bluffs. Also, he does some things that are just wrong. Like, sometimes his 3bet size is on point, but today he 3bet an open raise of $30 to $70 from the small blind with AK. Seen him get really upset at bad beats, but just saw him leave the poker room after. Haven't seen him go on monkey tilt unfortunately.

6 handed, folds to V1 in SB, raises to $30. V2 in BB calls. Hero in $10 straddle with J9 calls

Flop ($90) 975

V1 checks, V2 checks, hero checks

Turn ($90) J V1 bets $50, V2 raises to $180, hero calls, V1 calls.

River ($630) 7 V1 checks, V2 bets $250. Hero?

I feel like this is a great spot to raise huge, to like $1,400. I block boats like JJ, 99. I block some flushes with 9h. Villain is playing exactly like he has T8 on the turn.

The only thing I worry about is that I am not sure that villain will fold a straight or if they might level themselves into a call. If they managed to river a flush, I think it is every harder to get them to fold. V2 made a pretty big lay down a few hands earlier, golding AK face up on a K high paired board that had 2 queens, but the other player refused to say what he had, which I think made him skeptical that maybe he was being bluffed. I worry that he is going to feel attacked as a shot taker and level himself into a call.

There is also some chance V1 could have a flush or better and not be folding the river.

Also, it is kind of hard for me to have boated upby river, as JJ is not in my range, and a hand like 99 or 97 would likely bet flop. J7s is another potential combo I could have. I also feel like J9 is nearly good enough to call, but it seems like we lose to a ton of straights and flushes.

So what should I do on river? Pull the trigger and bluff? Fold?

Since we can’t really have JJ and 99 here (maybe we can have 99, depends on our perceived range)….I’d want Ah instead of 9h in hand to bluff.

Probably just call here holding a heart.

Bluff with AhJx or Ah9x.

We block JJ and 99. We block some hearts. And it will be hard to rep anything except J7 and hearts. T8 is likely just calling. So hard to rep that.

Puts us in a semi good spot to call since we have decent blockers.


Fold J9 without a heart.

We’d have 3x AhJx and 3x Ah9x.

So that’s 6 bluffs.

Value, we have 2 combos of J7s. 2 combos of 75s.

Nut flush can raise.

And any small frequency of 97 and 55 we may check flop with.

Calling range is J9 with heart and T8. And small flushes.

So, might need to bluff with less combos of Ah to balance.

I completely disagree with previous poster. First of all AJ is just a squeeze pre, you shouldn't have it, and A9 is a snapfold on the turn. If you somehow had AJ on the turn I'd fold that too and I don't think it's very close. So you shouldn't have any Ahx non-flush combos, but that's not too relevant in a rare spot, so take this as a sidenote.

The key here in my opinion is V2 river sizing. It's hard to imagine a bluff going for this and at the same time it looks very capped. I guess a good flush+ would just bet 400-500, it's very likely a straight/weak flush. So calling is bad, not to mention that V1 probably has you beat too with an overpair or a flush and I can easily see even the former overcall here.

About raising, without thinking about sizings I'm not a fan of it, because you checked back the flop, but against this weak 250 I kind of like going for it. You can still rep some boats and I think you basically always make V2 fold, he has nothing better than a bluffcatcher and bumping it up to 1000+ looks extremely scary. My main concern is actually V1, he can easily have any boat/quads he opened pre. He might get sticky with the nut flush too, but I'd fold that in his shoes. Anyway this is very close between raising something like 1250 and folding and calling is by far the worst option. Maybe this leveling stuff about getting bullied while shottaking makes this more of a fold than a raise.

Very interesting spot.

I think we may debate between calling and raising if we were HU.
In case, I'd slightly lean towards calling because top 2p seems too good of a hand to turn it into a bluff, and also I am in not too keen on bluffing on paired boards in general, but that's questionable.

Unfortunately, here we are 3-ways, with the most dangerous V now to act after us.
Moreover, ott H cold called a 3bet, which is usually a sign of big strength. Nonetheless, V1 over-called the raise ott and V2 fired again otr, into two players ...

I think we can find a tight fold in this specific spot, hoping that the two Vs go to showdown so that we can see what they both have and take a note.

AJo is mixed as a squeeze and a call in this spot.

And you’re playing face up if you’re always folding AJ on turns that bring in backdoor draws.

Same with A9 with Ah


If you never have AJ here and always fold A9…..have run getting fun over at games this big or higher.

Your entire post is some single level 1/2 strategy that will get crushed in bigger games like this with anyone who has any skill at all.

You’re now folding top 2 that blocks flushes or turning it into a bluff.

You *never* show up with top pair or flopped top pair. So now you’re overfolding and you’re going to get squeezed every time you call in this spot now.

And once you fold those hands, your continue range is screwed over. When you call or raise, they check or fold their medium strength hands and stack you with nutted hands.

You are now raising with hands that should be calling and have no real bluffs.

All because you’re not able to make a call on a raise when a scary card hits.

I don’t have time to construct a custom range….but here is more or less what our squeeze/call range should look like when deeper than 200b with a straddle.

This is a SB open, BB call, action on UTG straddle spot.

Anyone interested in further info:


We have to start constructing a bluffing range before we find ourselves on the river.

We have already shown that we *absolutely* should have AJo and A9o in our preflop calling range. Both are mixed. ThereÂ’s various reasons for this. But we know they are both there.

Since it checked around, we see the turn with them both.

V2 is going to have a lot of bluffs here with this turn card. And V2 is going to have fairly free rein after we didnÂ’t bet flop IP.

So, on this turn, we have to construct a range that gets us paid with our J9, 77, and 55 when we fill up on river. Especially heart completing rivers that pair.

That means we have to have bluffs. But we donÂ’t have a very wide range for value. So our bluffs need to be narrow as well.

Hence Ah being very good to have on flush completing board. We want to be sure the nut flush isnÂ’t out there.

Now, we canÂ’t just take any Ah and call with intent to bluff. That would be too many.

AndÂ….we also canÂ’t just call this turn with sets, top 2 and 8Ts and hearts. If we do, we will be too big value heavy.

Which in turn lets villains play perfectly against us.

So, AhJx is an obvious candidate. We have TPTK and we continue with a hand that keeps us from being run over as well as having bluff qualities we like. It blocks JJ and nut flush. And itÂ’s TPTK.

But thatÂ’s only one bluff.

Ah9 (or whatever 2nd pair is on turn) give us similar bluffing opportunities. We block 99 and nut flush.



This allows us to pick very specific and narrow bluffing hands that block a good amount of VÂ’s calling range. Which is pretty important.

And it keeps us from taking every Ah out there and overbluffing heart rivers.


So, I would construct my range on this river:

Calls: small flushes, straights, and top two with heart blocker

Raises for value: full houses and nut flushes

Raises for bluffs: AhJ and Ah9


Fold everything else.

So, to drive a single point home….

1 dimensional thinking has us folding AhJx and AhJ9 because of their individual value.

But, we have to choose our bluffs very wisely and they need to be very narrow in this spot.


So, we need a system to make sure we are not overbluffing.

AhJx is easy because TPTK and balances our calling range when we get to cheap river showdown when V’s give up and get to table that hand.

Ah9o is just being chosen because it was TP on flop. You can choose another way if you like. Ah5x would work as well. You block 55.


The point being, we aren’t calling this turn with AhJx or Ah9x for their showdown value.

We are using a logical system to construct bluffs and these two make very good condidates.

That’s why they aren’t “snap folds” on the turn.

You and I clearly have a different approach. This is live 5/10 not 1kNL, essentially still a shitshow, much closer to 1/2 than a really tough game. Jesus, one of the villains minclicked AK from the small blind pre and you want to play GTO, it's just giving them way too much credit.

I try not to play mixed strats pre, because it's not really worth the effort. These should be 0 EV decisions in equilibrium, but in practice one of them is always better than the other, so I'd rather try to get an edge here too, even if it means sometimes owning myself. My understanding is AJ just wants to squeeze, but if you always squeezed solverlike villains can pressure you in the SRP lines. This would make AJ perform quite well there as a 'surprisingly' strong hand, so you should start calling it. Then villains adjust, you start squeezing it again sometimes, and there you have the equilibrium. Now there are some underlying assumptions here that are 100% baseless in practice.

First of all, they have no way of finding out your strategy of always squeezing in a live environment. If they were really good they might notice you're often squeezing but that takes months at the very least and it isn't a huge read. The other thing is exploiting never having AJ in the calling line is not easy at all especially mw, and it takes very delicate adjustments for a small EV gain, not even close to just bombing any A/J hi board and straight bust your roll. So I'd rather just stick with squeezing until I see some tendencies flatting would exploit, like cbetting too much, 4betting too much etc.

About the rest of your points I can mostly just repeat the logic above. They don't know your strategy and people who could crush you if they did aren't playing these games. Do you have any idea how much time it would take live to have a clue how someone plays wide range 3way pots as the straddle on dynamic boards where flop went xxx? Not to mention even most regs nowadays are scrolling Instagram instead of taking mental notes of hands they aren't in, so my estimate is it would take longer than a lifetime.

This comment that 'now I'm overfolding so I get squeezed every time from now on' is the highlight for me. We are not in PIO, how would they know what you fold? And when did you see someone at live poker xr their whole range as an adjustment? It would definitely be good sometimes because of inbalanced strategies, but people just can't find these extreme exploits. And just one more thing, if I overfold, my continuing range becomes too strong, so you don't want to squeeze that range every time, the adjustment should be the other way around. That might have been only a typo, in that case don't mind this, but it really shows how 'easily' people would exploit my leaks.

About calling the river, I get that it looks like a nice bluffcatcher, but what exactly do you plan to beat when villain goes 40% into two people who called his turn raise? Not even taking V1 into account, who should have mainly overpairs and flushes, both beating our counterfeited 2p.

You’re still thinking one dimensionally.

We don’t attempt to play mixed or non exploitable strategies because a single V might figure us out (that can happen, but another conversation).

There will be countless villains who will play similar strategies. They will be very unbalanced.

These are “accidental exploits.”

I’ll give a simple example:


V1 (random) is opening to loose pre. But we don’t know that yet. And we may never know if we don’t play with them long term.

V2 (random) is opening to tight pre. Same rest of description.

We will play hundreds of thousands of different V’s who will accidentally fall into one side or the other.


If we knew this info, we would obviously adjust accordingly.


Now, if you make too much of a population adjustment…..you will find yourself in very bad shape when we are wrong and the population ends up being unbalanced the opposite way of our deviation.

So, you can make very small adjustments, but stay closer to balanced than not. And long term you will have much less variance and likely a higher win rate.

The only way not is if you’re constantly changing and that’s just leaving things up to variance more so than not.




In spots like the OP has found himself in, he really has no idea which way either villain is going to be unbalanced.

So, you want to stay closer to balanced than not.



Your approach is taking a line in which we are giving V a very unbalanced value heavy range.

Which is going to be a very high variance strategy. We are literally losing tons of EV when we are wrong and overfold.

I would say the same thing if we were trying to overbluff or overcall. We would be losing tons of EV when we are wrong and overcall.

Staying closer to balanced reduces both of those. And since most players will be extremely unbalanced…..we will profit much more than not.


*AND* to top it off, if there is anyone paying attention that does play with us long term, we are now losing loads of EV when they start pushing us off hands because we have no bluffs here.



You’re attempting to make huge deviations with no long term info.

We look like a hero when right and we go broke when wrong….long term.

Balance keeps our winrates and profits in a steady uphill graph.

Really interesting discussion, although I do not 100% agree.

For instance, do we always raise nut flushes for value, 3-way and given this action?

Related to the previous point: when we raise for value, I think we have a FH more often than a NF.
Therefore, I am wondering if J9 no-heart is not a better bluff candidate than AhJ or Ah9.
Or actually, we could perhaps use J9 with a heart as a bluff, since those reduce the number of flushes that might get sticky and call us ?
Then, I would bluff very rarely in this specific spot, but that's another story.

You have some good points in your last reply, but once again you assume our AK-minclicking, shottaking 2/5 grinder friend, V2 has a balanced and wide raising range on the turn. I strongly suspect that QT, KT and combo draws he can find, but some obscure low frequency stuff (like Ah9 in our case) he can't. Vs that fd heavy range floating garbage with blockers to bluff on hearts is not exactly a great idea.

On second thought I admit AhJ is an ok turn call, and at this stack depth it's closer pre than I initially thought. Still would default to squeezing, taking down pre is nice, people notoriously under4b live and I mostly encounter people who open too wide not too tight.

Btw A9 I'd just stab the flop with, I understand you should probably check some % in GTO, but again, they don't know what they should exploit, they couldn't exploit it anyway and TPTK is just a nice bet. Our range is very strong otf, so I don't expect to face much heat and there's plenty of useful value and protection to be had.

That is more or less also my (perhaps too naive) thinking process.

First of all I don't think I recommended any extreme exploit, just making theoretical mixed decisions pure in a certain way. Ofc you can't solve mw and we don't know ranges, but everything I said was reasonable, not something like 'take A4cc and 3b turn' because I think pop overfolds. These should be equal in EV so you don't risk anything in theory.

Secondly, there are always exceptions, but in general it's pretty safe to assume that villains at this level are conservative, valueheavy, passive, but a bit too sticky and loose in general. 90%+ of people I play live are in that direction from equilibrium rather than in the other. And the exceptions are mostly of the whale type, so they make it obvious in the first 1-2 orbit.

I have the confidence to assume I can guess which way people are inbalanced more often than not. It is a pretty big issue if you can't be right more than 50% against the average guy playing live about which theoretically mixed action should be better. There are times I own myself obviously, I admit I take it too far a few times, but it's still well worth it. Ofc to a novice player I would recommend just playing ABC and waiting for mistakes, but OP plays 5/5/10 3.5k deep, so I think assuming a higher level is justified. Not trying to go for every possible, but sensible exploit is leaving money on the table. With the high rake games have nowadays, just playing a sound strategy and waiting for villains to blunder EV don't lead to very high winrates in the usual lineups public games at non-cheeseburger stakes have.

One more thing, I disagree with this approach having anything to do with variance. Aggressive plays raise variance, passive plays lower it, playing exploitatively in itself has nothing to do with it. This dispute is a perfect example, I advocate folding Ah9, you advocate calling and bluffing it on some rivers, obviously your recommendation brings higher variance.

Cool bluff spot in a situation where it’s hard for us to have bluffs.

This is one of our weakest hands that we make it to the river with and our hand has very nice blocking properties. We also have the side benefit of what appears to be a nitty shot taking player sitting on a uncharacteristically large stack.

I say go for it.

I think people fall into the trap of waiting for the perfect spot with the perfect hand to pull off a bluff like this (I.e. yogurt daddy only wanting to bluff with Ah). Our hand is certainly not good given this river and this action. Calling is torching. Put this dude to the test with this hand or, in practice, you never will.


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Also, V1 cannot beat a full house with this action. Best hand he can have is a flush. He also leads some flushes on this river. If you raise huge, V1 is folding a flush facing bet and raise before it gets to him.


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i just dont think you actually rep much if you raise huge given flop and turn line

its interesting spot because i wouldnt expect v2 to bet a straight 3 ways otr but the sizing and description makes me think he might so idk (this is relevant because if you think he doesnt bluff and youre targetting flushes+ i think youre burning money)

also a weird point but i think v1's range has the most full houses in it so idk about the guy saying he can never continue

Ok, but what bluffs do we have? It’s a lot more plausible to put H on j7, a flush, or a weirdly played JJ or flopped set sometimes than it is for V to bluff for 100+ BBs with two pair.


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Don't see how we can credibly rep a FH when we checked back the flop. J7 is the only credible FH. J9 is nice to block JJ and 99 but I don't think we can credibly rep either hand. I would imagine the tough players at 5/10 would 3! with JJ or 99 in the straddle. As far as bluffing like we had a flush, even if we had Ah, are we ever raising so big with nut flush on a paired board? V2 can credibly have more FHs than us. I think to make any play we would need Ah at minimum.

And why did we check back top pair on the flop? If we were trying to pot control against V1s possible overpairs, I can understand that. But then we should be betting our 2prs and sets on the flop to get more money in against supposed overpairs.

I think H is ranging V2 on a middling strength hand that is barely better than 2pr and is looking for reasons to push him off. If V2 is a thinking player and has a straight or flush, I think he can piece together that you almost never have a FH here. And a flush would almost never raise that big. But, if you think the guy is scared money and taking shots, then the $$$ aspect might override any logical conclusions he might come to. Good old fashioned power poker. I hope you went for it and when he asked if you had it, you showed and said, "Yea, 3 pair. Good hand, right?"

Interesting discussion guys, I appreciate all the thought. I have a couple more thoughts.

My blockers are not just about what I can rep, but what I can block my opponents from having. I block JJ from V1's range, though that is a likely flop bet from him I think. I block 99 from either range, as being top set it makes some sense to check on flop as a trap. I guess I don't really block J7s here since I have J and 7 is out there. I also don't block 97s since I have 9 is out there. I do block 9X, but a lot of that would likely bet flop anyways.

I might be able to credibly have 99 here as well since I might check it back blocking top pair, hoping for an over card to give someone else top pair on turn. I also could squeeze 99.

Give me 1 combos of 99, 1 combo of 77, 2 combos of J7s. I really only need a tiny amount of bluffs here. If I do a pot sized raise, then like 1.33 combos of bluffs. Surely I have better combos of J9 because I could block more suited combos that boat up, esp from V1. Jd9h or Js9h are maybe the best, and even then if I bluff those pure, it could be too many.

If I start putting flushes in my raise range, then I could have more bluffs. But with non-nut flush hands it becomes a little thin when V1 can have flushes and boats too. Also, what flushes do I really have here? Ah9h is drawing very thin - the 9 is almost irrelevant. KhTh and QhTh are both open ended/doubt gutted. AhTh are all very likely to squeeze pre. At the end of the day, maybe calling with nut flush draws on turn is okay because I have position and the possibility of realizing on implied odds.

Another idea would be to have 2 different raise sizes, like 100% pot for boats/quads, and 55% pot for strong flushes. At any rate, Jx9 will probably be my best bluff candidate as I expand my value raise region to flushes. AJx is probably close to a 0 equity call on turn. Having A is not good for what V2 reps on turn.

That is all theoretical though, at the end of the day, if I read V2 correctly and get him to fold, I don't need the best blockers in the world. I should at least consider that it is possible to overdo it here. This might be a rare spot, but there does seem a fine line where if I bluff too much, opponents may pick up on it. But if I bluff to little, my value bets also never get called.

Maybe a slight meta to add here is that a lot of the regs have gone for the day and we are short handed. If I bluff and have to show it, it would suck not to get the benefit of having the other regs see it. Tight image pays off when you have bluffs, but not nearly as much as it pays off to be the guy who isn't afraid to bluff big and gets paid with value.

why dont you think v1 is checking range otf. to me it looks like one of the most obvious range checks of all time. hes at a severe nut disadvantage oop against 2 on a board thats going to change poorly for him while being mega deep

Do we really think V2 is still betting with 810 here on one of the worst possible river cards, into 2 opponents, one which overcalled his turn raise?? Hmm, seems a bit suspect.

And we're repping what, J7 and nut flush basically?

I don't like popping here.

He could be. I tend to think V1 might try to exploit for max value and value bet until he meets resistance.

Result: