Live 2/5 NLHE. Effective stacks ~ $800. 9 handed. Villain in question is a late thirties/early forties Eastern European.

I open 99 to $15 in UTG+1

UTG+2 3 bets me to $55. Folded to me, I call.

Flop: Q25 Pot is ~ $115. I check, villain bets $55, I call.

Is this a fold? If villain's range is TT+ and AQ+, this call has got to be bad, correct?

Turn: A $225 in pot. Check, check.

River: 3 Check, villain bets $75, I check-raise all-in for $685 total. Total spew?

Pre: Open is fine. Calling 3! is fine. We are deep enough to set mine.

Flop: Missed our set. Ranging V on hands that almost all beat us (AK). One of our outs is dirty. I'm folding. We don't have the odds to set mine, and it's hard to see V stacking off if we do hit.

Turn: We've ranged V on hands that beat us. Does V 3! with KJ? 33,44,66,77,88? Checking and thankful.

River: I suspect that it's spew. Are you repping the 4, and how many hands are you opening UTG+1 that have a 4? Are you repping a set, unafraid of the 4? Do you read him for a weak Ace or busted flush draw?


A description of V, prior hands, how you are viewed would be helpful. The story doesn't make sense. I'm sure some Vs will fold, but I don't think you get enough to make it +EV.

What were you trying to get with the river overshove? Did you think you were good? Did you think V would fold?

Maybe I'm off? Maybe V doesn't stack off here without the 4?

Interested to hear some other opinions, as well as additional HH from you at this table (yours and V).

Spew.

I think calling the 3bet pre is ok since we're 175BB deep, but I wouldn't say a fold is terrible. But AP, I'm folding on the flop.

What was your reasoning on your river play? What are you repping? How are you trying to rep a 4 exactly?

Also, any reads on your V are helpful. If this is your first hand and he is a complete unknown, then that's one thing. But with the info provided, we're dealing with a complete unknown. Give/tell us something.

It's definitely a spew if he knows my range, which basically should have no fours in this spot, EVER.

I absolutely never thought I was good in this spot. Thought that he may have been value betting either KK or AK in this spot.

Basically, I thought that there was no way that he can ever call here with only one pair even though I am not really repping anything besides the straight, which is very hard for me to have. I didn't expect AA or QQ to ever fold here, however. Pretty much, saw only 6 combos that could call me here.

I think this was a situation where I was frustrated with the extremely ****ty run-out for my beyond marginal flop call OOP and wanted to salvage the hand any way I could.

FWIW, while I still don't think check-raising the river is ever really a good play here, I think raising to $300 gets the same job done.

Why open to only 3BB UTG?

I think the river shove is too expensive. $685 to win $300. He probably has an ace when he bets the river. Do we really think he lays down AK here? I doubt it. AQ made two pair and is not folding.

My standard play is to open to $15 from all positions with any hands that I'm playing. I don't open limp or utilize different raise sizes, however am not opposed to such a strategy at all, if one could provide a few pointers.

The only hand that makes sense for you is QQ.

You almost never have a 4 or AA-55 based on your preflop line.

You can only pray this is spew vs spew.

I don't like river. Fold flop

K river is all bad everyone can agree. Let's discuss raising the flop though. We get folds from AK, JJ, TT. If the guy has AA AQ or QQ then they can only call and we can shut down from there hoping to catch a set.

There are more combos that miss than those that hit the flop. Make it 200 imo. I highly doubt villain sized his flop bet to induce a raise.

^^^ This is excellent constructive feedback.

The range he continues with is AA, KK and QQ, of which he has 15 combos. We can also say that of the 12 possible AQ combos he can have, he has 3 of them since we can largely discount AQ from his PF RR range. That means 18 combos he continues with.

AK has 16 combos, JJ and TT have 6 each. I think we can also discount 1 or 2 combos of JJ and at least half the TT combos from his PF RR range. Let's say he has 4 JJ and 2 TT here. We can also probably discount at least a quarter of the AK from his range, as he seemed like the type who might just call here.

That's 18 combos that he folds.

Agree with your analysis that a C/R in this spot is by far the best play. We can risk a pot sized bet on the flop and since we'll be winning more than half the time we do this, it makes sense. OBV if he calls our play is to shut down.

It feels a little dirty check-raising OOP in this spot, but I agree that this play should probably show an immediate profit enough to make it worthwhile even if we do have to shut down and forfeit the pot if called.

Better to lose $150 - $200 here than to stick my whole stack in a desperate attempt to salvage a pot.

Calling OOP here on the flop was atrocious. In position, a call is definitely understandable, but OOP it was the worst option and led me to get stubborn later on in a pot that I had no business winning.

PF looks fine given stack sizes. I'm probably c/f this flop as we're only ahead of AK. Once we get to the river, I don't mind leading large ourselves as V's hand looks a lot like JJ/TT or KK.

Once V makes the smallish river bet, his hand looks like exactly KK or AK that checked back turn, but the problem with raising here is that you're not repping very much at all. You have pretty much no 4x in your range, so you're really just repping a set, with which you probably would have led river. If V is the type to just look at the absolute strength of his hand and fold vs. a river c/r, then I don't mind raising but would make it smaller as something like $375 accomplishes the same thing as a shove. If V can hand-read at all though, raising river is massive spew.

This is the heart of it. Unless you are a total drooler you are never playing a set like this. This would go down as the worst way to play a set possible. Since you never have a set here, villain can only conclude that your 44 just hit a miracle card and you were so excited you spazzed out or that you are bluffing. Personally Id be more than happy to stack off here with any Q, any A, KK. Might draw the line at JJ but not sure I'd be betting that on the river.

I'd only ever shove if I had some reads he was weak and that shoving would always get him to fold. Otherwise like you said ~$300 does the same thing in this spot. You aren't really repping the straight though. You are hoping he has MUBs and folds. Hopefully you had a read that he was a nittier player. GL finding that in a Euro though. Lol