I think that he either thinks we are capable of bluffing there or he doesnt. I dont think his calling range and frequency will be all that price sensitive. So Id want to maximize value on those times that he actually has something strong enough to call with.

Most times he will fold either bluffs or thin value hands, then at some other frequency he will call with worse, then some small frequency he will jam river mostly with the nuts and possibly with a bluff very seldom.

So I wouldnt want to size my raise such that I can fold to a jam. Specifically what I mean is that if I was concerned with running into a better hand so often I wouldnt raise at all, because our requirement for raising isnt that we have the best hand, its that we get called with the best hand enough.

Summary, Id raise bigger probably to 2100. Now if you get jammed on yes you might have to call. ** although consider now that his bluff range is non existent if you get jammed on for about 600 more. Yes youll be getting like 10to1, but if you are good approx 0% then you can still fold.
Alternative is to just shove, its not outlandish sizing but I dont think it looks that bluffy given you prob wouldnt use that size as a bluff.
Basically just size your raise for max value, getting jammed on shouldnt be a primary concern.

Agree with most of this. Though I def think 800 more is getting looked up in this spot a lot more than 1500 more, and way more than a shove. I think top pair trying to own me pays off 800 more every time because "who the **** is this guy who just sat in my game and start taking all these non-standard lines?"

But he has worse 2 pair a lot given his line and sizing IMO, and that is paying off 1000-1200 more for sure. So good post.

The problem with c/r/ folding the river is that he has very few value hands that he is going to bluff catch with. I'm pretty sure you are playing turn differently with a straight/2pr., or at least he would think so. Your hand looks like a poorly played flush draw or a weak K. He is going to shove most of his 2 pair hands and some of his air, although I'd expect him to have a value hand more often- limped pot, people terrified going broke in them etc.

Villain is almost never jamming any 2pair. And our hand doesnt look like a weak K at all once we c/r river.

I'm pretty confused by this entire post (no offense, I know you are a reputable poster). You say people are terrified of going broke in a limped pot (I agree with you on this), but that he is 3-bet shipping the river for like 1/3 pot with less than a straight for value or as a bluff, after I c/r?

You also say he has very few value hands that can pay me off, but since he was the straddler in a limped pot and he never faced a bet or a raise until the river, he actually has all 2 pair and 1 pair combos possible in his range (and i think he's paying me off with a ton of them given gameflow and my weird line and the good price he's getting). He also has all straight combos in his range, but few sets as he'd raise his pp's pre a decent amount of the time I'd imagine. So I think raise/folding top 2 for value makes a lot of sense given all this, no?

Lastly, you say my hand looks like a poorly played missed fd (I agree with this, and this is what I was going for), but why would he reraise? And I can't really get behind my hand looking like a weak K. Why would I ever c/r a bluff-catcher on the river?

I really am fine with learning I played this hand poorly. I posted it to either find that out or to get confirmation that I just ran bad (aka a line check). I guess when you haven't turned over a winner in like a month you start questioning everything lol.

Thanks for the feedback.

With your lag/creative image you don't think villian notices this and is attempting to vown himself? You are getting a real nice price, I understand 3bet river unraised pot etc is super strong, but villian views you as creative and I think you are good here enough to call. I think in general value raising and then folding is pretty bad. There are times to do it, I just don't think this is one of them. Also matters if you think villian is amateur or pro, as pros are MUCH more likely to have it here imo and with some history I could find a fold but not to someone I've barely played with and don't think is that good.
I think we could also make an argument for folding the turn. Folding when your hand improves just doesn't compute to me.

Raise pre always.

river is just a call when he mashes pot. I actually might consider lead/calling river too now that I play live and see that 100 times a session.

I just wrote out a detailed analysis of evaluating a river raise to call. Thats the closest part to me. I will just give the gist of it since I dont have the energy to go through it all.

Combo wise he has 50 2-pair hands,
**I assumed that he checks turn with 47, 4Q, and 5Q half the time.

He has 32 combos of straights. 36 and 68

We assume he will fold all one-pair hands on river espec given strong KX would raise pf.

This means that he will fold most often but when he doesnt fold, he will call 61% of the time (50/(32+50)).

Caveat:
1) If villain folds 2-pair and/or bluff jams river over 11% of the time, our river raise is no longer +ev.

2) If villain doesnt raise pf with 44 or 55 pf which is reasonable, then he will now have 6 more combos of hands that beat us. That would push the frequency that he calls with worse down to 57% of the time.

The river raise is much thinner than originally anticipated and if he is bluffing or folding 2-pair even a tiny amount then I would just c/c river as nitty as it feels.

So I stand by my original posts on sizing and folding to jam if you do raise, but upon deeper review I think I might prefer a river c/c. Alternative line is to b/c river. Now plenty of 1-pair hands may look you up and all 2-pair will, and you can induce bluffs.

*** Aside, To all those who think c/r'ing river and folding to a 3bet is sin. Consider this, when you raise PF with KTo from the CO and you get 3bet you dont think folding is a mistake, right? We got a hand that had value enough to raise PF, we were hoping for a call or fold, but we were presented with new information that dictated us to fold. Same deal here, we were hoping for a call, were okay with a fold, but now we are presented with information that tells us that we need to fold. In both cases KTo pf, and this one, we could be being bluffed, but not enough to make call +ev.

I was going to type up a reply, but this guy basically said everything I would say.

It seems like you might be suffering from fancy play syndrome. You might be losing at 10/20 because you're playing hands like this, in unconventional ways, out of position, under repping your hands, etc and then finding yourself in tricky spots.

I mean, with the way you played the hand, if he's a good hand reader, he probably has no idea that you're as strong as you are here, and that you really shouldn't have many value hands in your river check raising range. It really looks like you missed a FD. But, it's a limped pot, and you check raised the river, and he JAMMED. It's a fold.

raise pre, bet flop, bet turn, bet river. sheesh live pokers.

as played i dont think you have any choice but to make a crying call, but look man you did it to yourself with your donktacular line.

Is this a player that mainly calls or mainly raises pf. If he mainly calls pf, you know his 3bet range in this situation is narrow. You have to pay attention to the player that has the god seat on you. You're going to be oop to him most of the session. For you, understanding how he plays is the most important thing you can do at the table.

If he is aggressive, then he's going to know that your range is wide in the SB in this situation. He may raise light. If he's passive, he's only raising with a monster, which you can easy fold to.

For me KQ is a raising or folding hand. I rarely want to call with this hand. And by rarely, I need a good reason that I'm calling.

You don't like raising for value/folding to a reraise. You also don't like folding on the street where your hand improved...

Value raise/folding feels like kissing your sister when you first start doing it, but I think it's actually a very important concept and very profitable. When someone has a wide value betting range and a wide raise calling range but a VERY narrow re-raising range, isn't it just simple math and range analysis? Aren't you leaving a bunch of money on the table by not raising, and then also giving a lot of money away by always calling the re-raise (when you do decide to raise)?

I'm also not sure how folding on the street your hand improved is relevant. If you get new info that tells you to fold, you do it. I isolated a super straight forward atc fish's limp with J8 the other day and the flop came J22r. He check/called my flop bet. Turn was an 8 and he check/raised. I folded and he showed me A2o. Every hand is like this lately for me, and I keep losing the max, but that doesn't mean my play wasn't optimal, right?

Those 2 spots really shouldnt even be compared, almost 2 different games. Yes, there are some spots when I will make a lsightly thinner than usual c/r and have to fold to a jam, but this is usually I have history with. Against fish, who I seem you are playing against I can't possibly see this move being profitable. Villian needs to be doing something dumb, or just be wrong such a small % of the time. When I call and he shows me a straight I feel kinda dumb, but with our images I have seen smaller 2pair here since a lot of times they will think we are bad/spewyer than we really are.

In live play, against an unknown, I would classify this as "lighting money on fire." Live players have ridiculously tight 3-betting ranges that dominate KQ. If villain min-3bets and you guys are really deep, I think you can MAYBE call profitably, assuming you're disciplined enough to check-fold almost all Kxx and Qxx flops.

Live, I think KQ is by far the most over-rated preflop hand that exists. I sometimes (rarely) open-fold it from the SB if there is a very good aggressive player in the BB or straddle, and I feel fine with this.

Imo, one-pair hands are hugely over-rated live. They are ok for bluff catching and you can occasionally get one or two streets of value with them using small bets if you're lucky. Live players are just so tight/passive that if you try to get more value than that, you're turning your hand into a bluff.

In OPs situation, on the flop, I am content to just check three times, hope that no one bets, and hope to win the pot uncontested at showdown. Top pair just isn't anything to be excited about when OOP and against live players who hardly ever call with worse than top pair anyway. Keeping your ranges wide and uncapped is what really matters when it comes to 300BB decisions on later streets. Turning your hand face up on the flop in order to pick up the blinds and maybe a small bet in what is likely a way-ahead-way-behind situation is a really bad trade-off, imo.

I agree that this is a very important and subtle question. Unfortunately, I doubt you'll get anyone here to take the question seriously. The majority of "serious" poker players in the world today are extremely aggressive internet kids who have been playing that way for years with good results. Vaguely implying that their out-of-position aggression might somehow be "wrong" in some way is not going to go over very well.

For any given decision in which a player has the option of betting, players will bet more frequently when they're in position. You might argue that this doesn't have to be true, but it IS true in real poker games that we can observe, and players expect it to be true when they're trying to figure out what you have, which is all that matters.

WHEN AN OUT-OF-POSITION PLAYER BETS, HE IS GIVING AWAY MORE INFORMATION ABOUT HIS HAND THAN AN IN-POSITION PLAYER GIVES AWAY WHEN HE MAKES THE SAME BET! And in poker, information is worth money.

(Edit: Another way of saying the same thing is that the more surprising or unexpected an action is, the more information it gives away. And donk-bets and check/raises are much more surprising than check/calls, which is why check/call "costs less" than bets and raises cost, in terms of information)

As a heavy-handed but very real example: Vegas 5/10 game, UTG makes it $40 and six people see the flop, which is 954. SB donk-leads $160. What does he have? Two-pair or better, most of the time. Sometimes he'll have an over-pair. Very rarely he'll have 9x or an open-ender. And that's it. A very narrow range. But what if instead, everyone had checked and the button had bet $160? Then he could have pretty much anything. By betting, the SB has given away a lot of information about his hand, whereas the button has given away almost nothing with the same bet.

(Edit: Actually, I think QJ8 is an even better example of a flop where SB screams two-pair-plus when he donk-leads into 5 people)

OOP aggression "costs more" than IP aggression, in terms of information. The question of how much it costs, and whether this cost is worth the pay-off, is unfortunately subtle. Here's a big list of the pros and cons to consider:

* Favoring OOP /AGGRESSION/: Being very aggressive when OOP can earn you a "maniac" image, and most players make very poor adjustments to "maniacs." When we see someone spew in small pots, our natural inclination is to believe that they also spew in large pots, even if there is no evidence to support this. I think there are a LOT of professional poker players who base their entire careers around exploiting this tendency. They make the "mistake" of putting in too much money on early streets, which causes them to lose a small amount of money to savvy players. But since this "mistake" makes the fish go wild and commit far worse mistakes (like stacking off with one pair), it's worth it.

* Favoring OOP /AGGRESSION/: Many players consistently raise the flop with their two-pair-plus hands. This tendency allows you to just bet/fold the flop when you're behind, and to three-barrel for value when you're ahead, which is immensely profitable regardless of position.

* Favoring OOP /AGGRESSION/: It's very common among the most celebrated players. How can OOP aggression be "wrong" when all the nosebleed internet regs are doing it? Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey don't slowplay nothin' when I watch them on TV.

* Favoring OOP /AGGRESSION/: Heads-up pots. The more people in a hand, the more important position becomes. Fewer players makes position less important.

* Favoring OOP /AGGRESSION/: You extract the maximum from level-one fish. If your local villains are too stupid to notice and/or make adjustments when they see that you never (or always) play strong hands passively on the flop, then it makes no sense to ever play a strong hand passively. Giving away information only costs you money when you're against players who are smart enough to use that information. Against level-one fish, you just want to play your value hands really hard and spew just enough give yourself the "maniac" label, and no more.

Which leads to the often under-appreciated virtues of OOP passivity:

- Favoring OOP \PASSIVITY\: It's embarrassing to say this, but I think live 5/10 and 10/20 players are actually pretty decent poker players, on average, and they're getting better. They DO notice your flop and preflop tendencies, and they quickly make many good adjustments. They slow-play. They hand-read. They've played a lot of live poker. The whole I-am-pretending-to-be-a-maniac thing doesn't work as well as it used to. The information that you give away really is costing you a lot of money in most games.

- Favoring OOP \PASSIVITY\: Whenever you make the passive "default play" when OOP, you indirectly make money by not giving away information about your current hand. But you ALSO indirectly make money for EVERY OTHER HAND IN YOUR RANGE AT THE SAME TIME, by making all those OTHER hands harder to read. If you flop quads OOP and check three times, people will remember that, and most of them will adjust by becoming much more passive and predictable when they have position on you. This indirectly saves you money all the times that you DON'T have quads (which is pretty often, so that's a lot of money).

- Favoring OOP \PASSIVITY\: Multi-way pots. Position becomes ridiculously important when lots of people see the flop, and the range of hands you can continue with shrinks exponentially fast as more players see the flop. I actually think this is the number one reason for why so few internet players were able to survive the transition to live play after black friday - they have a poor understanding of multi-way pots because multi-way pots barely even exist online. The adjustments required are pretty severe. In a six-handed pot, first to act on the flop, I don't even think it's profitable to bet an over-pair. I'm not really sure it's profitable to bet anything at all, even in a vacuum.

- Favoring OOP \PASSIVITY\: In deep stack NLHE, the size of the pot increases exponentially with the number of actions taken. Therefore, later actions and streets are exponentially more important than earlier actions. Whenever you give away information about your hand by making an aggressive, unexpected play on the flop, you are costing yourself exponentially more money by making rivers more difficult to play. And again, this affects not just your current hand, but every single hand that was in your range prior to making that aggressive flop action.

- Favoring OOP \PASSIVITY\: You really only get paid off on good hands when someone else has a good second-best hand. And if they have a good second-best hand, they'll bet it for you, so you aren't really losing anything. Especially given how weak people tend to think you are when you check, in modern games, because slow-playing is such a rarely seen strategy. Checking down quads might be really embarrassing, but if that happens, you weren't going to make any money by betting either. You probably make even more money by playing your monsters passively, by giving free cards and inducing bluffs and incorrect value bets.

- Favoring OOP \PASSIVITY\: "Charging draws" is an antiquated notion that doesn't really apply to modern 5/10 games, as far as I can tell. Only droolers significantly misplay their draws nowadays. You might even make more money from draws through passive play, by inducing turn and river bluffs in cases where the guy would've just folded his crappy draw on the turn if you'd double-barreled him.

- Favoring OOP \PASSIVITY\: No one ever bluffs live, OOP, right? It's just so hard to do. If you don't have a bluffing range to protect, then that's one less reason to bet at all, even with your value hands.

- Favoring OOP \PASSIVITY\: Internet kids are jerks. Seriously, screw those guys. They should just be nice. Bet bet bet raise raise raise, jesus, why can't they just give us a break.

Wow, I am tweaking so hard right now. I can't believe I wrote all that. god i have no life. no friends. haha. poker sucks.

tl;dr

Basically I think that villain won't be able to put you on a value hand that beats anything other than bottom two. So while it's obv. player dependent, I'd be suprised if he didn't shove a pretty merged range here. I don't think he's bluffing a lot, but some small %. Now some guys will just call in his spot cause 'no worse' hands can call etc., but a good aggro lag will be shoving most worse 2prs. Imo. Btw, i think the river is least important, pre and flop are the issue as far as optimal/ +ev play.
Edit: as far as the weak k comment, it's just any pair you now realize has no c/c value otr and turn into a bluff. Maybe it's not relevant but villain might consider it.

Pretty thought-provoking discussion. I don't think I've completely digested it yet but. . .

Pre complete seems perfectly viable. You probably expect Villain to pop it up a good percentage of the time and you can call and still have a manageable pot size.

When you take the pre complete line (as opposed to the pre raise line) it seems to just follow naturally that when you hit a pretty good hand (as opposed to a huge hand), you're going to let Villain do his thing--he'll barrel away and you'll c/call down.

I prefer the check/call on the river; but if you go for the c/r, despite the thread discussion, I really can't see folding given the aggro dynamic and how unlikely your hand is in Villain's eyes. He can have lots of worse hands than you in this limped pot (that he would think are good) and really would be likely to think you are fos once you c/r--Btw, I have noticed that the c/r river bluff is becoming much more common in my game; I think because people think that others think it is so likely to be a value hand. I also think the weak lead/call is a nice idea in this particular situation.

10/20 live is sure an interesting animal sometimes. GL.

Edit--I think you are seeing monsters under the bed a little bit on the river:-)

Pre is whatever, I would raise personally, but your plan seems reasonable. Flop and turn seem fine, river is a call when he bets this big. Vs a smaller bet the raise would be good, but I think he's bladed here a reasonable amount with this sizing. As played, hate life and fold.....he's obviously not bluffing unless he's bat**** crazy.

+1 except to add, I prefer a B/C with a lead of around $375. The size is meant to look like a thin value, blocking bet, or bluff so I'm picking off a lot of thin value 2 bets, and bluffs and picking up value on a lot of bluff catchers.

This post sounds like live-player logic from like 1998. If you can't get any value when you flop top pair good kicker, then you prob should work on having a looser image.

I don't understand how you can take a situation where you dominate 90% of starting hands (KQ), or a situation where u are ahead 90% of the time (flopping a pair with KQ), and say that those aren't very profitable situations vs almost any player. Open folding KQ in the sb is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. A massive loser in the game could open bvb vs the biggest winner in the game with KQ and it would almost certainly show a large profit.

best post in thread

Agreed AAesmiamigo won the thread... I thought villain's river sizing screamed bladed as well, I just thought his bladed range included (and was heavily weighted towards) all 2 pair combos. In hindsight, that might be a bit optimistic when he pots it.

Last thing on pre, unless you are a tournament player or play in 3 blind games, you probably don't have a lot of experience opening oop. It's a rare spot in normal cash games, especially live. I tried to convey that with neutral game flow my default would be to come in for a raise from the SB with KQo, even though I hate playing bloated pots with initiative oop- as Renton pointed out, KQ is just a very good hand 3-handed (once everyone else folds).

When you are playing live though, you often "just know" based on game flow when someone is going to 3-bet you in position. I "knew" here, and KQo is not a hand I want to have when this goes down (and open folding just seems ridiculous). Note: I think it was actually more likely I got 3-bet than it was he raised if I just completed (if that makes any sense lol). I prob didn't do a great job portraying the exact table dynamics in my op (my bad) and that may or may not have led to people not seeing eye to eye on pre.

I will say though that I think there is a significant chance people (even really good players), who are unwilling to even consider completing as an option, might not be adjusting properly when they have an aggro player with a vendetta on their left. Again though, this is a pretty rare spot, so it's prob neither solved nor all that important.

BA, it's too bad you've cried wolf so many times. I think you actually put a lot of thought into your post and made some valid points...

Thanks for all the replies.

I cam agree with calling the river, I wasn't paying attn to the size, and honestly I don't play enough live to know how much we actually should be paying attn to the size.

if u know he will 3b then adjust by 4b or flatting/cr on alot of flops not by limp/calling

PF sounds good given your plan, the only thing missing is more info about the BB. If he's bad, you want him to call with hands you dominate, and it's good to keep him around in general rather than get the pot heads up vs the tougher villain. If BB is tough too, that makes the case for raising PF stronger.