$1/2 at local card room, 7 handed.

Villain is a friend who deals in this card room and so plays a lot there - he is an aware poker player. He plays a wide range of hands (like most people in the room) but not ridiculous. 68 suited is on the low end of his preflop calling range.

Hero has less money behind than most players, $145, and plays tight pre flop.

Folds around, Hero has AKo in the cutoff seat and raises to $12, small blind calls and villain calls in big blind.

Flop comes A (can't remember suit) 6 8

Hero bets $14, SB folds, villain calls

Turn 10 (offsuit) villain checks, hero checks

River 4 (offsuit)

Villain bets $45, Hero calls

I REALLY thought I was beat. I actually said out loud the exact hand that I thought villain had and then called anyway. I guess I am just programmed just to call with TPTK. Would have been a great fold bc villain showed his hand and I was right.

Poker programming put me on auto pilot. Should have trusted my intuition.

Would this be a good fold?

Once you check the turn, you leave yourself open for him to bet worse aces for value, or bluff, because you look afraid of the ace.

If you bet the turn, and he check calls, and then he leads the river, I can find a fold if he's never doing that with a weaker ace or worse hand.

As played, I'm calling the river most of the time. Although his sizing does look like he is going for max value with a strong hand, so reads do matter.

Bet the turn, and river decision is much simpler. And the board and action isn't scary for TPTK on the turn.

zero reason to fold river.

Why did hero bet that small on flop? I would bet 2/3 pot at least. Turn check is fine but a bet/fold should be better.

Getting married to TPTK has the potential to go really wrong. 'Win a small pot, lose a big one'. You've heard it before. Calling down when the information you've gathered (not solely some gut feeling) tells you in good certainty you're beat is a leak. Auto pilot too.

As for the hand, you make it clear V won with 68s. Rather that dissect everything to some ridiculous level, focus on the river. He called pf, flop, checked turn, led out on river. What could he be repping with a line like that? The only thing you beat is a weak ace or a bluff.

i think we never cant fold ak here,special when u check turn behind,he can,and probably is beting worse Ax 4value there..
on line i think it is never fold,but live as u said when u have that feling in u that something is wrong(i know the feling)
but it is +ev call most defenetly,so we have 2 call..

I think OP and everyone who has responded so far is aware of this. I don't see any responses that suggest V gets here and bets for value with J T, QQ, 99, or K 8.

The relevant questions at the moment are a) How many bluffing hands and weak aces does V have in his range at this point given his line as well as his perception of our line?, b) how many hands will he bet here that defeat TPTK?, and c) what is the ratio of group b to group a?

If I am correct to assume a $4 drop, we are being offered the opportunity to call $45 to win $105, so we get 2.3:1 on our money. At that rate we need to hold the better hand roughly 30% of the time in order to break even on our call.

So based on the 30% break-even point, for us to have a winning call we need the ratio mentioned to be at least one hand we beat for every two hands that beat us. Let's try and break down his range:
- Weaker aces: With us holding one ace and one ace on the board, there are 2 remaining aces * 4 unseen queens = 8 possible combos of AQ. CRUCIAL POINT TO CONSIDER: Does this villain 3bet AQ from BB when we open from CO and another player calls from SB? If he tends to just call in this circumstance, there are 8 combos of AQ in his range. If not, the math change. 8 combos of AJ, 8 combos of A9, 8 combos of A7, 8 combos of A5, 8 combos of A3, and 8 combos of A2. So a total of 56 combos of ALL weaker aces. Since you say 68 suited is on the low end of his pf calling range and we might not expect him to confidently bet a really weak ace on the river, we can discount the 56 combos to a smaller amount. If we include just AQ, AJ, and the two suited A9, we get 18 combos of weak aces that can probably take this line. It makes sense for a weaker ace to bet the river since our turn check back can make our hand look like KK/QQ/JJ.
- Bluffs: By the same logic that says he can bet AJ to get value from KK, we might see him bet a busted draw in order to represent AJ and make us fold the pocket pairs and king highs that beat his busted draws. With a flop of A86xcc we might see him call our flop bet with K Q, T 9 J T, etc. Don't have any information to determine how often he would decide to bluff with busted draws, nor do we know whether the AKo in OP includes the K. For the sake of argument, let's say we see just two combos in this category for now.
- Hands that beat us: Logical two pairs include 86s (3 combos), A8s (with an ace in our hand, just 2 combos), A6s (2 combos), AT (6 combos), A4s (2 combos), T8s (2 combos). Sets include 66 (3 combos), 88 (3 combos), TT that stubbornly think we whiffed the flop (discount to 2 combos). We also lose to 97s (4 combos); if he is likely to check raise the flop with 9 7 we could discount that to 3 combos. Since OP says 86s is the bottom of his calling range perhaps we discount 75s to 2 combos. So I see a total here of 30 combos.

So according to my breakdown, he can get here with a weaker ace/bluff for 20 combos, and has us beat with 30 combos. Since 30 is not 2.3 times larger than 20 I like a call. Not a fist pump call by any means, but in the long run it should be profitable based mainly on the fact that villain can bet for value with AQ/AJ/A9 based on actions taken on previous streets.*

* As mentioned before, it's crucial to know whether he 3bets preflop with AQ in these circumstances. If we take AQ out of his range and we hold his bluffs to just two combos, our ratio changes to 12 hands we beat vs 30 hands that beat us and then we have to seriously consider folding.

Think about why you want to check the turn first. The bad side of it is that you're giving a free card to a draw which is a good portion of his range. You lose value from a weaker Ax that is happy to see a river. The good side is that if you are beat, you're not putting more money in the pot. If the villain will hop on this sign of weakness and fire at the river, you collect a bet you wouldn't have ordinarily got.

Since the read is that he is "good," I prefer betting the turn. He's not going to bet his hands of some value on the river. At 1/2, he should also know that his bluffs are going to be called a lot. Sorry that he had a better hand, but he would have likely raised you on the turn. You would have lost the same amount of money either way, but won more from a weaker hand.

Thanks for the comments and the in depth analysis in that last post.

Yeah, on this one it was just a strong gut feeling that I did not have the best hand. I tried to imagine villain value betting a weaker ace or trying to steal the pot with a bluff and it really just did not feel like what was going on.

My range pre flop is tight. Villain definitely knows this. I am also conservative about continuation betting. So my line with a PF raise and continuing on an ace high board is strong. Villain definitely knows this, so I put him on a strong hand. Also, since I am the initial raiser I am not really afraid of 2 pair hands, thinking that a pocket pair is much more likely than 6 8. I know I said that 6 8 is the bottom of his range but I think it's much more likely that he has a set.

The analysis in the last post was very thorough. That was great.

All the same, no matter how much theoretical analysis, this was just a hand where I had a strong, strong feeling and could not follow it and ended up calling because of poker autopilot.

Villain shows the devil's hand and says 'great read'.

I bet the turn.

As played, I call the river.

How can we fold to most competent Vs with this line not having a god-read?

I'm not really one to go purely on feeling, but if you play enough poker against opponents who are regulars, at some point you should run into someone at these stakes who you can fold to on the river in a similar situation because he never bets on the end unless he has TPGK beat. I know a few players who would check AQ on the river in the villain's shoes.

Only by a fluke of nature would I have been beat. I knew in the depths of my soul.. but how do you fold because ace king on a high no straight barely flush board

no flush barely straight board *****

You only check the turn here if you are absolutey unable to fold to a check raise from given villain type. I can't see how there could be any other answer.

Would you still bet the turn against an opponent who will fold the turn with a weaker ace because he thinks you only bet twice if you have him beat, but will call a river bet if you check the turn because now he thinks you would bet hands like JJ-KK and busted flush draws?

Terrible check on turn. Trivial call on river. Horrible to call when you believe you are beat. That makes no logical sense.

not on this board, lot of river cards make a one liner to a str8 and there is also a front door flush draw to contend with. Not only do I think the turn bet is mandatory to charge possible draws, but checking with this many bluff outs possible otr is just going to put us in too many sticky spots.

If the board paired low on the turn or it was super dry and uncoordinated, then yeah I could see checking back to induce a bet or call from a worse ace. by the way, I call this my "hooker play", meaning that I am willing to do some dirty stuff to make sure I make a little cash.

Grunch...

Based on this post alone it seems like you need to make some adjustments to your "poker thinking" so to speak. Serious question:

Why, based on the action in the hand and the player described, would you think that AK would be no good on this board?

There is nothing really concrete in this hand that would suggest that you are beat. Even after he bet's the river you are still ahead of his range, which should contain several worse Ax hands and busted draws and other one pair hands that he is now turning into a bluff.

As for you guessing his exact hand... well I think you got lucky. As far as in concerned, you should be going for three streets of value with this hand. You will miss out on a lot of money if you are regularly checking the turn in this spot.

You play so passively, call river you underrepped your hand

True enough. Great reply with a lot of depth, AF. Against a decent laggy V, I feel 2p is somewhat likely here. Everything else has already been said.

Given how I was playing this night, my line was definitely strong. I was seeing a lot of limped flops, but very rarely was I raising pre flop. Several times I raised pre flop I didn't continuation bet. So my line was not as passive as it seems given context.

River is a trivial call. The big error of this hand imo was your weak c-bet. With TPTK, you're usually good on the flop, but betting only 1/3pot otf then checking the turn is just inviting any backdoor draw or weaker pair to draw out.