1/3 NLHE, 9 handed.

V - young asian TAG grinder. Plays a solid game. Not a super nit but plays a tighter game than average and thinks/analyzes hands. Hero calls loose passives a bit when they always have it. Just had a bad hand where he lost a 450$ pot to a whale when whale had nut flush and he likely had 2nd nut flush. Defends to 3bets a lot. Covers. UTG.

H - has been card dead and should have tight image to V but has seen me semi bluff spaz. 450. CO.

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V opens 15 (he always uses big sizings, I usually dont get involved with him for this reason), folds to H, I raise to 50 with A Q, only he calls HU.

Flop 100 - K 5 3

He x, I bet 40, he calls.

Turn 180 - 9

check, check

River 180 - J

he leads 135, hero?

Fold

I should mention, he's smart enough to have AK, KK, AA here at some frequency and not 4-bet me. Although I would imagine he would 4-bet me more OOP. His range to the flop is like 99-QQ, AQ, AJ, ATs, KQ, KJs, KTs ~maybe. UTG he opens fairly tight.

Obviously you can't call. I presume you're wondering whether you can raise to represent QT? It's ambitious, and clearly you can just fold, but I don't completely hate the idea, although I am always somewhat wary of repping one single hand. Folding is probably best but the raise is definitely tempting. I suppose you also represent JJ

I feel like I end up in this line a lot, that's why I posted it. It goes....

I raise pre, I cbet flop that I whiffed/semi-whiffed, turn check check, river the guy leads and I'm stuck guessing.

Here it's easy to fold but I'm wondering what you guys think of the line up to this point? I was thinking maybe the flop is a chunkier bet (to torture his 88-QQ) or a check back (to pot control and realize equity if we hit our A).

Vs a tight utg open you can flat and invite the blinds in with dominated hands, though a 3b is somewhat standard. Flop is great for your range, I would bet very often.

Flop is a check without a diamond to go with backdoor draws. If the turn improved you then I'd be potting it for sure. Most peoples 3bet defend range is just PP's which should fold to that size on the turn. Be prepare to jam all rivers. Because you checked turn he could be value betting/bluffing anything, just a pure guess. I wouldnt be surprised to see 66-JJ. Just let it go.

Against a snug player opening from EP I think 3betting from the CO with AQs would be my least desired play. Since AQs plays ok postflop (HU or multiway) I think if we're continuing that flatting is fine (especially with no other real dead money in the pot to go after / callers to deny equity to). And I also don't think a fold is horrible either (as against a nitty range that would be my default with AQo).

I'm fine with the flop cbet.

And I think I'm just giving up after that. Huge amount of Kx in his range that is unlikely to fold, JJ just got there, and a snug player isn't going to have a lot of bluffing Axcc calling a 3bet OOP (AQcc, really? AJcc just got there. ATcc, OOP to a 3bet, really?). So I'm fine with the turn check back and I now fold the river (ETA: even moreo that I now know he's also capable of flatting 3bets with monsters).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Im betting $65 on the flop that should smack our range and what he thinks our range is

Does the difference between $40 versus $65 into $100 have any affect on FE on the flop against better? If not, then it's probably better to go with smaller, no?

GcluelessNLnoobG

I think it does. I think you fold out more middle pairs and also makes a turn barrel much more believeable if you go that route. Think the extra $25 gets you more than $25 in EV on a hand like this. I don’t have a solver so no idea what they are doing here, but for the most part king high flops we need to barrel I would think and when a flush draw is available for more than half pot. I dont want to be called down by pocket 6s. And want to make 9s think very hard about continuing. Players at this level have no idea about small bet sizes and what they mean. But they see large flop bet size and think AK.

His line looks strong here like AK/KJs/KQs.

I don't think he has a set since he only flatted the flop and I don't really like the down bet, If we had AK are we downbetting the flop with a FD? Even though it's only 10 bucks it might influence certain players to bluff us off a med. strength hand if he thinks "he raised 50 pre now he's only betting 40 hmmm he ain't got nothing or he woulda bet more" (in general, but I don't think this villains bluffing the river here).

That should happen a lot. As a rule of thumb, something like 2 bluffs for every value hand on flop, 1 bluff for every value hand on the turn, and 2 value for every 1 bluff on the river assuming a pot sized river bet (a little less if we go less than pot, a little more if we got more than pot). You can't win all the pots.

Keep in mind you have some equity vs his range and some showdown value on the turn here. You beat some flush draws. You have clubs you can barrel, also QJ, QT. Even AQ with Ac to bluff clubs.

Preflop I would pure 3bet this, I like it.

Flop I would probably go 1/3. You can range bet for 1/3.

Turn I think things get player dependent. Some players will call flop a lot but overfold to the turn barrel. Villain should still be calling turn barrel for 75% pot some with QQ and JJ type hands. But villain also should fold KQo to the 3bet pre and 4bet almost all of his AK. If villain has more Kx in his range than he should, that's not good for us. But there is still enough QQ, JJ, TT, 88 type hands that it might be worth it if he folds those hands pure on the turn. Depending on player tendencies, we might make an exploitative turn barrel here. I think checking is probably more standard, bit it would be closer the smaller we went on the flop

I think going 1/3 on a lot of flops and 75% on the turn in general tend to be good sizings in a lot of situations. Get a cheap bluff on the flop which potentially lets you see the the river, and also gives you the option to put on the heat on the turn.

Keep in mind we gave up this turn, but if turn was a T or J we could barrel our hand more often. When we bet the flop with range, different hands will often be used to barrel different turns. Unless we decided that villain is just overfolding and we can bluff any two.

i think on brick runouts where you have TPTK in your range, 1/3 pot flop and 2/3-3/4 pot turn 1/2 the time and 1/3 pot flop check/give up half the time turn is a good strat vs non-stationy types.

against stations you should not fire the turn UI.

You can flat pf especially if you have fish behind.

If your question is whether you should bluff jam the river, overbetting the turn and giving up is going to be waaaaaaaaay better then checking back and then jamming.

You essentially cap yourself when you check the turn on a board like this and most people would perceive it the same way.

I purposely do this with value sometimes because I know my line will look bluffy and confuse people but I'll never actually do it with the hand it looks like I have.

Overbet turns more so you get folds from a wider range of hands like middling pairs and some bdfd stuff that will bluff you on rivers.

In this hand diamonds is actually a great combo to overbet the turn on since you leave a ton of bdfd comobos for villain.

Keep in mind SPR is quite low at 4. Stacks will go in and this guy has a x/raising range.

This is a great analysis. Thanks!

How many BDFD hands can villain float though? Even AhQh should mostly fold to 33% on the flop. It's more like Ah3h, Ah4h, 7h6h, and we don't know if villain has those hands given the preflop action. On a low board where villain can float with a BDFD and two overs then maybe this makes sense.

I think what our hand has going for it is it blocks some AK and KQ (KQs more importantly), but it is really a matter of how light villain calls flop and how often the fold turn.

Also, I am not a fan of overbet sizing at this depth. Even if you pot it there will only be 33% pot left on the river. Overbets are usually more of a thing when you have to go like 1.5x pot on turn and 1.5x pot rivet to get the money in.

AhQh is for sure a call pure on this flop. If he's folding that then it makes your bet even better.

If you study turn spots a bit more you'll find pretty quickly that you are missing out on a ton of turn barrels.

Like when hands like 88 can just call once post flop OOP and get to see a showdown that's pretty good for villain and then they can just overfold to your double barrels.

I did look up this hand in solver, and there are a few things. Flop size is 40%, and stack depth is really shallow. At 33% pot I was seeing AhQh was a low frequency call, mainly fold. At 50% it is a pure fold. We are at 40% pot, so it isn't clear what the best option is.

The other ace high backdoor would be AcQx and there are other 2 combos if that, we block 1 of the 3 possible. Solver actually likes to barrel AJ and AT more, even blocking hearts. Even AhQh is more of a barrel when we set flop bet to 50%, even though it blocks the backdoor heart float.

The lower Ax are better because they have less show down value and villain has more hands to fold available.

My comment was more in general hero is not barreling enough turns and diamonds is decent if you were to pick, but AQ is lower on the list since it's the nut Ace high which you generally don't want to bluff with.

Played around a bit w/ this hand.

My take aways are that pf should be mostly a flat maybe even pure.

Flop vs a a variety of calling ranges pf it likes range betting 25%.

Vs a tight pf calling range and betting 40% on flop we are checking back AQ, but vs a wider range i.e. if he's calling a lot of PPs plus Suited Ax and broadways then the spade and diamond combos are barreling pure on the turn for pot.

I was wrong about AhQh calling the flop which surprised me.
It's bluffing w/ it at a small frequency vs the 25%, but pure folding vs larger sizings.

In general it's barreling this turn from anywhere between 55-68% of your range. Checking range is built around KJ/KT, AcQc, and QQ and below that aren't sets. Bet size it picks is pot and it remains pretty consistent changing around a lot of variables it always picks pot on the turn when it bets.

Bluffs are prioritized around spade and diamond combos so I was right about that.