5/5, effective stacks 260bb, 9 players

Main villain is a TAG, strong player
Hero and villain have long history but no hands tonight, villain knows hero sometimes plays LAG style and can mix it up with speculative holdings.

Action folds to MP, (covers everyone, above average player who is conservative postflop, his range here will include speculative connectors and 1 gappers) who opens to 25. CO (player described above) raises to 75. Hero raises to 275 with AA from BB. CO calls. Hero started hand with roughly 1300.

I suspect villain's range for calling is jj+, ak, maybe aq and aqs. We can maybe add kq, qj,jts and a few other medium strength speculative hands at a discounted rate.

Flop is 998 rainbow. (580)
Hero cbets 225. Villain calls.

Turn is 2, adds a red flush draw (hero does not have this suit).
Hero is first to act, what should he do?



Hand is intended as a review, I'm looking to check.
A. Recommend flop cbet sizing.
B. Recommended flop checking frequency (if any)
C. Recommended line for turn, including again, checkback frequency.

Thanks in advance.

Not sure what to say. Lets see what others have to add, since I usually don't play deeper than 140bb.

A. I really hate down betting in a live poker setting, but if villain is a strong TAG reg, this is probably the spot to do it.

B. I don't mind working in a check here once in a while - AA and KK are the best because they need the least protection. I'm betting here an overwhelming majority of the time, but especially in spots like these where we have an spr that can gii otr if flop goes x-x I wouldn't mind checking every once in a while.

C. I'm jamming the turn almost every time as it changes nothing and we have a .78 SPR. With that being said, I refer back to my comments in B in that I don't mind checking here every once in a while because we can easily gii otr if turn goes x-x, and we aren't very vulnerable to being drawn out on.

Trying to get value. Getting stacked should we not be ahead.

Like the size of flop bet
but going to continue on turn. 250-300.

eval river, mostly just leading

flop bigger, shove turn easy game

V should have QQ or KK here, size up flop bet to target an unfoldable range. I like $395. Ship the turn, V should be committed.

We risk nothing with smaller bet sizes. Make his decisions a lot harder. We cold 4 bet. No reason to give opponents any chance to fold. Flop is bone dry. We could even go smaller and still easily play for stacks.

I think smaller sizing is fine but I believe more value can be extracted early on. We heavily block AK and Ax broadways, V should have big pairs that are very tough to fold.

I suppose V could have TT+, so maybe a larger sizing might make TT & JJ fold (which would suck)..

quite frankly. Folding to flop bet is fairly easy vs large bet. But folding to smaller bets is really hard. Allow them to level themselves into thinking we have AK. Best part is if we do go to show down. We have now set ourselves up to bluff for better price in future.

We have no fold equity at that price, and evaluate river? How can we evaluate river when we have less than a 1/3 psb behind?

I'd go a bit higher on the flop but not a big deal. Turn I'd go all in. V's hand looks very much like an overpair we beat or a flush draw with Ax or Kx where x is a broadway card (or J 10 suited). We need to charge draws max price in my view (to deny equity) and also to get value from KK and QQ hands. KK or QQ, e.g., would be tough to fold in this spot for most Vs.

We have no plans to fold. Said that from start. But there will be times checking river is still an option. As I said plan is to mostly lead rivers though.

I really don't care about SPR in these spots. I know I am not folding given these ranges and this board. I have no draws to deny equity too. Goal is to get stacks in vs largest range possible. I believe small bets accomplish that better.

not worried about getting more money in pot early. If it allows them to fold. Once he calls the flop bet regardless of size he is likely committed to pot. He is just a lot more likely to call smaller bet than a larger one.

Don't ever check or shove turn, just bet another small size (I think 275 ott is good, flop size is acceptable) and just hope to capture a 2nd postflop street from QQ. If you leave yourself too deep for a shove on the river that's just fine, as you'd like him to arrive there as often as possible w QQ+. A solid reg is not lol committed - there are no aw shucks stack offs. QQ folds turn often here if you bet too much. I'm giving V a lot of respect here, which was the tone of your post.

What hands do you want to create fold equity for? I agree we have no fold equity at smaller bet size. Which is the exact point.

Truth is. A lot of guys are still just going to fold everything anyways. Depending on our image.

So we have covered cbet size.

I do not recommend a flop checking range. Unless you actually cold 4 bet a lot. Which is like a unicorn in live poker. Rarely are stack sizes appropriate and chance evolve enough to have a balanced range cold 4 bet range. Which for me (qualify as super Lag) is AA, AKs...KK vs the right players. An occasional suicide bluff (cant remember last time I 4bet bluffed though without AKs)


Since our range is super strong. and board is dry (given presumed ranges). I would not have turn checking range here either.

i'd like to bet flop bigger so we could jam the turn. If you think v like to pick up weakness and raise ya when you downbet i wouldn't mind going small otf either.

Bunch of guys in here want to bet large and jam turn.

Why?

Because they hate money.

1/4 pot, 1/4 pot, AI for 1/6ish pot

You seem to be putting V squarely on QQ (or nearly doing so) - Vs range should include KK and various suited broadways (particularly J10 and AK/AQ). V easily could be drawing with J10 otf or with Ax suited by the turn, so shouldn't part of the analysis consider charging draws?

There’s no reason to size up flop. We have a hand and a board texture where 3 streets are appropriate. Smaller bets work just as well for our value range as big bets: smaller bets work better if we happen to have AK or A5s or something and are just trying to steamroll the pot.

Heck I might even go like 190 on flop, 320 on turn, then jam river. Like, we don’t always have aces and Kings here, so playing the hand out like we always do and that our opponent is a pure drooler who will never get away from jacks anyway isn’t a great idea.


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If he’s three betting and calling big 4 bets preflop with hands that constitute a draw on this board, then

1) he’s gonna have a lot more marginal made hands on this texture, like 77, TT, 87s

2) he’s going to have a lot more 9x hands

If he has draws here, he also has all the nutted combos that we don’t have.

The reason he cites QQ is simple: we want a strategy that maximizes the mistakes he makes with the middle of his range. If he has AKo on the turn, he’s folding to any reasonable bet. If he has slowplayed KK+, he’s getting his stack in no matter what we do. How he plays TT-QQ when we 4 bet bb here (versus how we play TT-QQ v his strategy) is where all the money gets made in this scenario. And OP has said nothing significant here on whether or not he makes exploitative calls or folds in this spot.

Also, when we have QQ, we don’t want to be picking a strategy where we can’t put the $ in ourselves on this board. By going small small small, we increase our value range to 18 combos, which is a hell of a lot easier to balance.


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QQ+ makes up the majority of his range ott

375 flop.

Jam mostly all turns. A turns you can bet small or check or whatever.

I mean, can V have 88 or 9x in his 3! range MP v. CO? That's all you need to know to answer this hand. You said he's a solid player, and I don't see many of those 3! 98s or 88 and then call a huge cold 4! out of the BB. So if he can't have those combos, pretty easy b/b/jam for me. I like $200/$350/jam river. He's gonna have way more OPs than 9x or 88 given the action. I don't think a solid player calls a massive 3! with anything that has a draw on this flop either. Just get it in.

If you wanna confuse him you could check one street and jam river, if you're more likely to get a call out of his QQ or KK that way. If he's decent he'll automatically include AA in your range but might discount it when you check one street. Merits to b/b/b: get as much money in as possible before any scare cards (A, K) kill your action against smaller OPs.