$1/$2 at Mohegan Sun on a Saturday afternoon.

Hero is a 31 yo white guy. Have been absolutely crushing the last few hours and I have a $1500 stack in a $300 cap game. Should have an exceptionally clean TAG image at this point, though I was stuck early in the session after a spewy bluff or two.

Villain is a younger white guy. New to the table. He is at the casino for the country music concert. He seems to be playing solid but he’s only been at the table for 20 minutes and I don't think I've seen him show down a hand. $325 stack

SB is an extremely loose fishy young white guy. At one point he said that he didn’t want to play any pots against me without a premium, but it seems like he will play any two cards more or less.

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UTG limps
Hero raises AdAs to $12 from UTG1
V calls UTG2
SB calls
BB + UTG limper fold

FLOP: Kd 6d 8c (Pot: $36)

SB checks
Hero bets $15
V calls
SB folds

TURN: Kd6d8c 6s (Pot: $66)

Hero bets $50
V calls

RIVER: Kd6d8c 6s Th (Pot: $166)

Hero bets $100
Villain jams for ~$250

Hero?

Is this a standard bet-fold spot on the river? That was my plan when I bet $100, but thinking about it, Villain doesn't have that many better hands (88 that slowplayed flop, a couple combos of 6x which slowplayed turn, maybe 97dd). This would be a crazy spot to bluff though. There are also two combos of KTs available as well, but that seems like a pretty thin river jam.

Would welcome feedback on prior streets as well. Thought about overbetting the turn, which would set up for a river jam. 6 on the turn seems like a great card for me, though obviously there are some combos of 6x that villain could have.

I kind of want to pay this off. Guy has only only played for 20 minutes. Raise is less than half pot. Call $150 and the pot will be $666. Only need to win 22.5% of the time. He could have KTs for value. Otherwise he would have trap a set (or 86) or trap a 6 on the turn. Even if he could have 9d7d, couldn't he have a bunch of suited connectors/gapper/queen high diamond type hands? Ad is not great since people in live poker tend to bluff missed flushes more often than they should. Hard for him to bluff without diamonds when he called 2 streets though. 8dXd would not be a bad combo for him to bluff I guess.

Multiway on flop, I feel like you could check or bet like $10. You have Ad so don't need that much protection from flushes, and small bets and checks are so nice multiway. If you do bet flop, recognize that you will likely be playing for stacks on a lot of runouts.

Turn I think seems good now that it is heads up, at this point I think we should be okay with playing for stacks.

River I might size up more, $125 or $150.

Prefop I would only open to $12 if your normal open is a lot smaller, like $8. When I play 1/2, I open to $10 and am going to $15 or $20 with a limper because they limp call so wide in my experience.

Definitely looking him up here. And feeling pretty good about it.

Hand looks good - his river jam really makes no sense other than maybe he's jamming KT. Either way going to call here - if I had say KQ I might consider folding.

instcall

this is KT plenty

Cool, I'm glad I posted this hand then because it seems like I botched this river spot. Kind of surprised this is viewed as a clear call by the posters who have responded, thought this would be a close spot where making a tight fold would be best.

The result of the hand is that I tank-folded river. I didn't show and villain didn't show either. The SB player announced that he folded a 6 on the flop which didn't make me feel great. I ended up leaving about 10 minutes after this hand because it was near the end of the time I had allotted to play. As I was racking up, I asked villain if he could beat Aces in this hand. He said no, and that he had KT.

Couple general questions for the posters above, or anyone who wants to weigh in. Want to make sure I am thinking about spots like this correctly.

1) As I have gone about studying how to beat live low stakes poker, there seems to be a strong consensus that I can exploit my opponents by over-folding to river raises. In fact, the morning before I played this hand I watched a Crush Live Poker training video where the instructor says verbatim: "...when you show aggression, when you go 'bet, bet, bet' and they raise the river, they are not bluffing. They are never bluffing... you can just fold every hand except the nuts and you are printing EV"

Given this, does it not make sense to bet-fold this river with Aces? Obviously villain can value-jam with one worse hand, but he should really only have two combos of KTs and even then, a lot of $1/$2 players are not going to make a thin value jam in this spot facing three streets of betting from an EP opener.

2) If you are villain in this hand, and you get to this river with KTs, would you jam river for thin value? Is this a good play against an unknown player who appears solid and has triple-barreled? Curious because I'm not sure I make this play, but I know for a fact that I miss out on thin value spots all the time.

As usual, thanks for the feedback. Frustrating to make a mistake in a big spot like this, but going to try to use it as a way to continue to get better.

You need to think about what range your villain has, what your range looks like, and how each street changes the action. Every action in this game narrows down someone's likely hands - focus on each street and how that changes their holdings. In the hand his hand makes no sense other than KT or some nonsense bluff - he would raise sets/two pair on the flop, he most likely doesn't call 6x on the flop but would raise the turn with it, so on the river either he has KT or some kind of draw he's getting silly with. His jam is good even if you call with AA.

I think rigidly bet/folding is not as viable when you have a hand that beats value and getting a good price. For the heuristic you mentioned (live low stakes players don’t bluff raise rivers) When the pot is like 50 and you bet 25 IP on the river and get raised to 150 you can comfortably fold - they are not bluffing. But when it’s a safe runout for you and you are ahead of all Kx hands including his rivered 2p, and it’s only another 150 to win a sizable pot for 1/2 there’s no reason to fold even though yes you will lose sometimes.

This feels very close. River raises are nearly always for value at these stakes, and given its an unknown I think we should assume that.

I think there's probably enough KT, and random BS, to just about get us to the 23% we need, but I think he's going to show up with a 6, straight or boat the majority of the time.

Appreciate the perspective. You're right that his hand definitely looks like KT, which people on this board were able to pick up on. I don't think I took enough time to make my decision on this river. Needed to think a bit more street by street. I do think players will slowplay on the flop sometimes, not wanting to scare their customer away. But no raise on a flush draw board definitely discounts sets and two pair. As far as 6x goes, I would imagine Villain calls flop facing a small-ish cbet with hands like 56cc and 67cc (pair plus multiple backdoors) but you are probably right that these hands almost always raise turn.

This is a good point, thanks. A bit of a misapplication of this concept on my part maybe. Good to remind myself that it's OK to call the river and lose sometimes (or even the majority of the time, when getting a good price like I am here).

I actually feel like I am somewhat of a calling station in general which is a habit I have been trying to break. Took it too far here.

Thanks for taking the time to go over the prior streets. I think betting smaller on the flop makes sense. When I calculate pot size in my head I don't often consider rake, so I was thinking I was betting $15 into about $40, which is much closer to 1/3 pot than what I ended up with. If you were to check this flop, would you check-raise a bet from Villain after SB folds? Or just trap knowing that you have the Ad and can call down on basically any run-out?

I like betting bigger on river too. This is a very good river, where KT has to call off any size bet and KQ is going to have a hard time folding with the bricked flush draw. I think at the time I wanted to bet a size where I knew I would get called by Kx and where I could get away if villain jammed. Don't think that is the right way to be thinking about this spot though in hindsight. Betting $150 makes a lot of sense and then I can just snap call if villain does jam, since it will be less than a minraise.

Good explanations, I can relate to your thought process very well as someone who grinds up from low stakes. Not quite sure if Villain is allowed to jam KT here for value, however, I can image him doing it anyway. One thing I want to add is that you just mentioned the suited KT combos so far. I think that you could add some offsuited combos as well, probably a huge punt to coldcall this in these positions, but I am always amazed how wide even "better" players at my stake are coldcalling. Given more KT combos and nice pot odds I would call this off also, but preferably with an AA combo w/o d.

Yes, bet folding rivers is good advice in general at low stakes, but you have to put things into perspective when faced with a raise that is relatively small compared to the pot. If your opponent would have just called you, the pot would have been $366, and he raised $150 on top of that. That is less than 1/2 pot. I am just not folding an overpair here when he could have KT.

If I was checking flop, probably checking to check call, but if villain bets and SB Folds, we can consider check raising.

Betting river larger is a out getting max value. Yeah it is an easier call his jam when we bet bigger because then his bet ad a % of pot is even smaller, but that shouldn't really factor into our decision.

I agree on calling river with this particular hand and runout and with a lot of what has already been said. Villain could be valuing a worse hand, esp because I also think he will have the KTo's in his range (even though we would not in his place).

But I also certainly agree with the general advice/heuristic you mentioned. I would not sweat this fold for one minute, even when villain tells me he had KT. I have made similar folds to villains who overvalued their hands. This is just part of the tradeoff. It's going to happen when we use this exploitative strategy, just like we are going to get bluffed sometimes. But not nearly enough. We're still going to print by folding in this situation.

Also, he probably "put you on AK."