1/3 Live NL

Villain: mid-30s REG. Slightly loose, definitely aggressive. Villain appears to be well-known and well-liked by other REGs at the casino and I have the impression that he is generally a fairly skilled player.

Hero: 40. (Newer player, fairly tight, not as aggressive as Villain, but not a NIT either)

Villain has lost 2 medium-sized pots in the last 3 orbits or so and was visibly annoyed. Hero has not played many pots recently (or since Villain sat down 45 min ago).

Villain (BUT): $450 (This is $300 NL. Villain came from another table and sat down with approx. $600.)
Hero (CO): $290

2 limpers before Hero opens in the CO with AK for $15.
Villain calls, limpers, SB, BB all fold.

Flop: ($40) J 8 5

Hero: bet $20
Villain: call

Turn: ($80) 7

Hero: check/call
Villain: bet $65

River: ($210) 2

Hero: bet $100
Villain: tanks for 3 minutes before deciding to fold. (He later says he had the flush on the turn.)

I make the call on the turn because I think there are some implied odds - i.e., I can extract more value if I make the nut flush. The problem is whether I can really do this when the river puts 4 to a flush on board. So, maybe the turn call was wrong for this reason (i.e., if I can't get more value, then I'm not getting good enough odds to call). Or, maybe there is a better play on the river. Would check-raising be better? (Of course, my worry with that is that he'll simply check it through to showdown.) Or, would a more polarized bet size (e.g. jamming for my remaining $190) be better to make him think I could just be stabbing? Given Villain's aggressive play style, I'm leaning toward thinking I should have checked the river and allowed him to bet. Any suggestions are much appreciated. BTW, this is my first HH post.

Just a fold. Naked FDs are terrible hands to have in calling ranges particularly when oop exactly for the reasons you’ve experienced here. You wouldn’t elect to ckr here bc his turn sizing and betting range are massively strong.

Flop is probably a ckf

You have to consider how sticky, aggressive and bluffy villain is. How much money is there to win left in stacks? Being OOP makes it harder to get paid. Is there any chance that an A or K is an out, any straight draw and can you win with just A high?

But the biggest single thing people don't consider enough is how big was the turn bet. It makes a huge difference in this sort of hand. You need to win roughly 5 times what you are calling on the turn total. If villain bets half the pot on the turn that is 3 of those 5 right there. A bet around half the pot on the river will be break even. If villain under bets the turn your direct odds will look better and even a small river bet will at least break even. If villain bets more then half the pot your direct odds get worse and you have to make bets on the river that are a bigger percent of the pot.

This leverage factor makes calling good sized bets on the turn with draws bad quickly. In this case you can't practically win enough to pay for it. Even if villain called your $100 on the river every time you are not breaking even unless you can win a good portion of the hands when you miss your flush also.

Fold the turn. At best you're finishing with TPTK in a bloated pot OOP.

Turn call is just burning money. Even a $40 bet we should probably fold to. Drawing to a 4-flush OOP to any serious bet on the turn is nearly always a losing proposition. Couple that with the read on your opponent (definitely aggressive), it's quite likely for him to have many weak hands he's betting OTT that won't pay you a dime when you improve to a flush or top pair on the river.

Welcome to the forums. I'm not sure if you're new to poker or not, but from your post, I'll maybe make the assumption that you are.

First off, I'm not sure where your read came from that he is a solid player. That evidence needs to come from hands you observe. The fact that he has a $600 stack, and is a well known reg mean little to nothing.

Your first decision point in the hand was preflop. You only made it $15. This tends to be more of a standard open raise size at 1/3, but there were already 2 limpers, so I would have looked to go more like $20. The goal is to get 1 or 2 callers, which is what happened in the end, but often these raise sizes get 3 or 4 callers, and AK's relative equity goes way down when this happens.

On the flop this seems like a good spot for a half pot bet, so I like your sizing. You could maybe go a bit bigger because you want folds, but overall this is OK.

The turn you can either keep up the pressure if you think he's weak, or check and let him make the play. When he bets this big, you have to fold. Drawing to a 1-card nut flush is usually terrible because you're just rarely getting paid with it. In fact, when I do end up holding the naked Ace I've found betting a laughably small amount like 1/4 pot or less to work best, but that's not going to make you back enough money to justify this call. You can only call very small bets with this hand, and he made a big one.

We're likely sitting in the worst seat at the table, so I would move as soon as I get a chance.

With an aggressive player on the Button, I sometimes overlimp to attempt a limp/reraise here. It's definitely risky (less risky if the blinds can be active). But so is raising. You and I play in different games if the limpers fold after a call behind us.

I'm ok with our cbet.

Against the majority of players you'll play against, you have very poor IO on 4-to-a-flush boards. We also don't know if our A/K outs are any good (and could have poor RIO on those when hitting them and then sometimes calling a bet and losing). On the turn, you're only getting a little over 2:1, which means you'll need to make up about a $120 bet on the river 100% of the time just to breakeven on a flush draw (assuming he doesn't already have a flush and is sucking up some of our outs where we're doing even worse). Course, this guy is aggro and might just be trying to run us over (but most people aren't). And maybe our A/K is good (but probably not). So yeah, probably just a turn check/fold, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

You have 11.364% equity vs a made flush ott, so you're a 7.8:1 dog to make a flush otr when you V has a flush. 7.8*$65 = $507 is what you need to win to break even long-term when V has a flush. Say 98s

Bottom line : The most you can win on your turn call is your stack size behind after calling (190) + the bet (65) + the pot (80) = 335. Meanwhile, you risk 65$ to have a chance at it, so your maximum potential pot+implied odds are just a hair over 5 to 1. Against a hand like KTcc we are just under 16% which would still be a fold, even if we knew he held that and would pay us off on the river.

That's how bad the turn call is, it loses money even in the most ideal situation. In this spot, Villain is going to have hands that don't have the Kc or Qc quite often, so turn is just an utter disaster.

This. However his range is wider than flushes on the turn and he could be outright bluffing that card after a float on the flop. His sizing makes it extremely difficult for you to continue as most players are not going to call enough OTR to make it a 0 EV call (he needed to call at least $115 from you OTR to make your call of $65 OTT 0 EV).

Turn is a std check/fold because of this.

I just want to say thank you for all the replies to my first HH post. There seems to be some pretty substantial agreement that the turn call was a poor decision and I can now see pretty clearly why this is so. I posted this hand because, although I won the pot, I suspected that I played the hand poorly. I look forward to posting more HHs and continuing to get such good feedback. Thanks!