1/3 NL

CO is limping a ton of hands. He bluffs a lot if checked to on the turn and seems to bet almost always. He seems quite sticky post flop. He chases any draw and will call a decent size bet on the flop with an under pair to the board. He has open raised a few hands as well but hasn't shown down.

I probably have a tight/weak image. I've been card dead and have had to give up a few times on bad boards with bad hands.

CO open raises to 15, I 3 bet Ah8h to 45, only the CO calls. I don't think he is ever folding to a 3b pre unless it was a ridiculously big raise by me.

90 in the pot. effective stack 400

3cJh9d...He checks. How do we proceed?

Hero is on BTN?

Why 3bet A8s?
This hand is 51% vs. a 30% range.
This hand is 47% vs. a 20% range.

And:

Is he only/mostly limping in earlier positions? Because if he's playing say 60% of hands in CO and his limping range is 40%+ you are behind, putting more money in and he's not folding.


Against this villain with this hand I think raising multiple limpers is okish, but if V just open limps then limping behind is also fine. When he raises I mostly just fold.



Pretending none of that matters and just answering, checking and hoping is not a bad plan ... we should call some non-A turns, but still I doubt we are realizing equity fully.

For a "just do it" and play range I guess bet 30 on flop (folding to any raise) and bet big on turn 7,h,T,A ... again folding most raises unless we hit like 7h/Th (and both are dangerous) turn. Checking river if we don't hit 2pair+. We win more medium pots, but lose significantly bigger ones when we lose.

i was going to say pf is fine, but then i read the description and i think your hand does better as a call vs this opponent. i dont think i would fold as villain seems like the type to give you his whole stack when you make a flush or 2p+. and because you are in position if you flop top pair you can control the pot size.

i would actually check this flop this board is bad vs a sticky player and bad for your range

I am on the button. I'm a limit player starting to play more NL. I'm still adjusting to the different ranges pre flop. I wasn't sure what to do in this spot so I raised it to get HU. This is probably the wrong player to do this with. How big does your Ace need to be to 3b here? ATs? Are we ever cold calling in this spot?

3betting in position with a suited Ace is rarely going to be a blunder, but if the opponent mostly limps then on the button calling the 5x open is probably best unless the blinds are unusually loose.

I would mostly check back the flop.

I don't think this was a good time to 3bet him this light, especially since he hasn't shown down the few times he's raised, especially if you expect him to call the 3bet.

As played, bet 55 (are we 3betting thinking he's either folding pre or we're gonna flop big? We have to assume even before we make the 3bet that we're gonna be heads up otf with ace high, that should be a given. It's eaiser to play when you fly ahead of the airplane). If he calls, then you can decide on giving up but if I was gonna c/f flops we miss, there's no reason to even 3bet pre (not that there was a reason to to begin with).

We are button vs CO so we should 3bet a ton of our range. I think I would go more linear in general vs a villain that is sticky who has a limping range, but honestly A8s is probably ahead of a lot of his continue range and any hand played aggressively is likely to have more EV.

On the flop I would throw out a cbet of 3rd pot or half pot, looking to barrel turns for large sizing where you pick up equity like if you pick up a gutter or flush draw (open ender is kind of bad because it is the dummy end and brings in KQ, but has ewuity in checking there). You can have AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AJ, KJ, QJ, 99, J9, etc, so you have plenty of hands for value to bet. Your hand probably has to give up a lot on turns, but at least you can see if you pick up an ace on the river or even an 8 that might be good if he has an underpair. If you do pick up equity on turn and decide to barrel, you can probably get some under pairs to fold, maybe some A highs and straight draws. If he chases a straight draw to the river you might check back river and win with A high.

Likely not a hand you will tripple barrel bluff on a lot of runouts though. Would rather have a hand like AQ, KQ, or even AK that blocks more combos of Jx.

Hi, mongidig! Remember me?

We see an open-raise from a villain who limps a lot. If this were online, we could look at HUD data and get a sense of what their ranges are like (e.g., are they something like 50/20 or more like 30/10?). But we have to make our best guess based on what we actually see. Absent any rough observations, I would tend to think that a frequent limper's open-raise range is going to be pretty tight, even from the cutoff.

I would rather not three-bet A8s against a tight opening range. It is reasonable to flat on the button. Against a reg or unknown I am three-betting A9s and flatting A8s-A6s (and three-betting A5s and A4s). But against the villain as described, I want to tighten and linearize my three-betting range, to ATs+ at least, maybe even AJs+, and flat with all my smaller suited aces.

But three-betting isn't terribad; it's just sub-optimal.

On the flop, villain has capped their range by flatting our three-bet. Both hero and villain have JJ and 99. Villain has all the 33, but we have all the overpairs and they do not. We have a strong range advantage, but nobody has real nut advantage.

As the in-position three-bettor, typically I am going to be betting something like 1/3 pot with my entire range. You describe this player as sticky postflop, but it is difficult to be sticky when facing a second or third barrel, especially if we are playing for stacks on the river. Note that our hand has decent backdoor equity. Any heart, seven, ten, or queen on the turn gives us additional equity and thereby gives us the confidence to keep firing. I would definitely check back a turn ace, and I have mixed feelings about an eight; and a board-pairing J or 9 is cause to tread lightly.

If we do three-barrel, our goal is to get a hand like TT or 77, 9X, or unimproved AQ or AT, to fold by the river. Give up on any street if we get raised. We should size our turn bet so as to have something like a pot-sized bet left on the river.

I do remember you. I'm finally starting to get serious about learning NL. Limit is still kicking but it's hanging by a thread.

Thanks for the great advice!

I feel like we are overestimating how strong villain's range is, underestimating how much of an advantage it is to be the preflop raiser, and underestimating the edge we can have vs villain postflop.

You give yourself more ways to win the pot as the preflop aggressor. And if nothing else we are more likely to play a bigger pot heads up vs a fish than have SB and BB tag along.

Both of you whiff flop most of the time, but hero has the advantage in those situations when he has the betting lead and knows which boards to attack.

We don't need a massive edge, and we are going to lose a lot of pots. But can we be better than 50/50 with position and the betting lead? Absolutely.