$1/$2 9-Handed

This is not actually in US dollars. The poker room is in the Philippines so they use the Philippine peso. I have done an approximate currency conversion to dollars to make it easier for you to follow the hand.

I open UTG for $5 with J♦️ J♣. Effective stack is $200.

I know what you’re thinking. This is very small for a live game but the players here are actually folding limps to $6 or $8 raises.

Also, I want to practice with the GTO preflop strategy from the book, The Poker Brain (by Matt Matros), which advocates for a wide UTG open raising range with small sizing like 2.5x.

For example, I’m opening with 87s and J9s UTG. Since I am opening wider than the typical TAG, the small sizing fits better.

UTG+1 calls.

HJ 3-bets to $13. He just sat down so no reads. The 3-bet is small but I think it’s still pretty strong. The players here including the good ones tend to have small preflop raising sizes compared to US players.

It folds back to me. I call because I’m following the GTO preflop strategy from the above book, which advocates for not having a 4-bet range UTG.

UTG+1 folds (yep, this is actually not uncommon here).

I go to the flop heads-up.

Flop ($31): Q♠ J♠ 8♠

Check or donk bet?

Excluding a 4b range oop in a live poker game sounds like a sin even from utg. This is 100bb poker and you have those top 2-3% hands that wanna get the money in now vs playing 3 streets OOP. It's quite common for live players to squeeze all kinds of offsuit broadway then just pure GU if they miss the flop. If you 4bet your top end hands you will put live players in a position to make an even bigger mistake by calling this 4b and going to the flop with all kinds of garbage.

That being said I do think JJ is a good preflop flat in this dynamic utg vs utg1 call vs hj sqz... we can 4b KK+ AKs pure and mix in some AKo QQ AQo KQs A5s. Then you can flat 88-JJ Ako QQ ATs-AQs KQs KJs maybe a few other suited broadway or PP if against a weaker opponent.

As for the flop I usually dont donk on mono boards and I don't really see too much benefit of doing it here (the board Q and J blocks us from having a flush advantage range v range). Just xcall the flop with bottom and middle set and all straights/2p and strong 1p. If you wanna have a xr range use top set and vulnerable flush.. if you wanna balance w bluff use AKo with nut flush blocker.

burn that book

SPR is less then 10 and you have middle set. Even on a board this ugly Hero should be willing to get some money in. I would go ahead and lead for $20. If villain folds fine, I'm not trying to nurse some money out of a weak hand on this board. All of the AsX and KsX are going to call at least once anyways and hands weaker then that are never putting any significant money in. If villain calls then evaluate the situation on the turn and if villain raises then flat call.

If someone made it 13 that is not a 3B. That is your $5 pefLop raise is meaningless, lets find out where im at with the smallest raise i can find. Pump it upto $50 OOP

Also easy check. Your entire range should be a check

Given the premises about the two ranges involved I think in theory you should have a donk range, mainly because you seem to have the nut advantage (since he has discounted JJ and QQ and T9s and other suited connectors), and he has a high concentration of medium strength hands (namely AA-KK and some AQ) that will be checking back some. That same high concentration of made hands means you don't really have to worry about getting bluffed too much by checking only weak hands.

IOW if he knew you had your whole UTG open range here he should probably check back quite a bit, I think, therefore you should be donking some to reduce the value of that option.

IDK it's an interesting problem. If you really want a theory based answer just plug ranges into a solver.

I wasn't sure what to do so I stared at the flop for 15 seconds before checking. I could see donking here but I think it would be hard to balance the donk and checking ranges. I'm relatively new to NLHE deep stack (100bbs or more) so I think I'll be checking my whole range here. When I have more experience, maybe I will create a donking range.

He bets $18. I call.

Turn ($67): Q♠ J♠ 8♠ 6♥️

What's the plan for the turn?

No donking, wtf, it's not even a question. Preflop is fine.

Check call turn. If he checks, you can probe no 4 flush river.

Obvious check call turn

After check/calling flop you need to check/call turn. Turn is a total brick. A donk would only make him fold bluffs and get raised by flushes.
Probably check/evaluate river with an eye towards calling.

Hands we are behind. QQ 3 combos. AsKs. 1 combo (but do correct me if ATs and worse is in his 3-bet range).
Hands where he is never folding if we bet:

AsAx AsKx KsKx AsQx. That's a ton more combos.

Hands where is probably not folding but may:

AxAx KxKx AxQx

I am looking to play for stacks on a non AK or spade. To do that we need the pot to be bigger. I would have donked out $30 on pot. $50 on safe turn. Jam river.

If you let him 1/3rd pot it every street you are giving him the price he wants every street and either get killed by a spade or kill your action.

He has tons of value that are not bluffs which would call.

I would take J9s out of your UTG pf raising range. There's so many ways to lose a lot of money with this hand OOP. My dream spot at the table is a guy raising J9 UTG and having multiple people call because they know he's not that strong...... and it's my button. I might add J9s to my large-size 3-betting range at such a table Easy, rake-free $$$. "$60?? Oh, I guess he's got aces or kings."

Then, I exploit you by shoving 99+, AJs+, AQo +, and KQs. I have a lot of those

Based on the comments here and thinking about this hand more, this does seem like a check-call spot for flop and turn.

I think I have a decent equity advantage on the flop and a large one on the turn because it’s hard for him to flop a flush or top set. However, he has the nut advantage because he has QQ, A♠K♠, and possibly A♠T♠.

Therefore, this is just going to be a tough spot for me because he can bet a polarized range especially if he has the A♠. For example, A♠K♦️ can barrel big on the turn and brick rivers. This is a common solver play.

Now most people are not this aggressive or they don’t know this is the GTO play so that makes check-calling better. I can fold to big river bets as an exploit based on population tendencies if the river is a brick.

I decided to go with a more spewy line because of my equity advantage on the turn.

I donk overbet for $80 lol.

He tanks for a minute and then folds while saying, "Ok I believe you."

As a pure strategy, this big donk bet is way too aggressive. He gets to fold hands like AQo and KQs that I can get value from. And I get crushed by the nut hands.

However, maybe donking big 10%-25% of the time might be okay because there are so many tough scare cards on the river. I know the poker bot Pluribus used mixed strategies a lot to crush the pros in 6max. Also, the bot had a much higher donk frequency than the pros.

That said, it’s obviously harder to implement mixed strategies so I’m probably going to stick with the standard check-call line to keep things simple.

Also, large button squeezes are such a common exploit that you're going to see me jam QQ+, AKo, and half my JJ even without a read.

With J9s, my UTG open raise percentage is 11.46%. The above jamming range is 2.79%.

2.79% / 11.46% is 24.3%.

Therefore, without a read, 24.3% of the time you're going to see a jam.

This percentage goes way up once I get a read that you are exploiting.

Be careful not to overextend yourself too much with your exploits. If you go too far, you will be easy to exploit back.

I agree with curdanol, J9s is a fold from utg in a FR game, I don't care what your book says or how weird they play in the Philippines, and you already said you don't have a 4 bet range so you are never going to apply that exploit.

When we have a good, but possibly 2nd best hand, like a no-spade set on a spade-spade-spade flop, this is exactly a situation where we should NOT want to "play for stacks." Check-call flop and check-call again is fine. We have a redraw to a boat. if the board pairs then we hope villain has a flush and THEN we try to play for stacks. Until then, we should just be trying to show it down. That is how I would play it anyway.

You're turning a good hand into a bluff. He can really only continue with flushes, top set and AQx, I guess QJs and 88 might be in his range but seems less likely with preflop action. So you lose the most possible when behind but extract very little value when ahead.

Also, I want to add that it seems really odd to me that a book would claim to have a GTO strategy with NO 4 betting. I don't see how this can be since I thought GTO was based on equilibrium paired ranges and:
--in order to determine an appropriate open raise range you have to know how often the villain might 3 bet you,
--and in order for the villain to determine how often to 3 bet he has to know how often you might 4 bet,
--and in order to figure out how often to 4 bet, you need to know how often the 3 bettor might 5 bet.

So #1, it doesn't sound like true game theory optimal strategy. And #2, more importantly, if you know that an opponent has a wide open range (as your book recs) and that the opponent has ZERO 4 betting range and so will always either fold or flat your 3 bet out of position, shouldn't we INCREASE our 3 betting versus this opponent? Aren't we encouraging opponents to take shots at us and 3 bet us constantly by playing like this?

I am all for being tricky and trappy, but when we flat premiums out of position we lose value immediately, we make the hand more difficult for us to play, post-flop, and 9 times out of 10 we check to the 3 bettor so we lose a ton of fold-equity post-flop. And it is even worse for non-premium-premiums, like a hand like JJ for instance.

Pure GTO, the one with exact percentages (for example, 4-bet JJ 72% of the time and A5s 14% of the time), actually calls much more often than 4-betting so the author just removed the 4-bet range to simplify the strategy while still being close to GTO.

That said, the author is not against having a 4-betting range.

Here’s the relevant passage from book:

Also, after reading more closely in the preflop multiway section of the book, the author seems to imply that not having a 4-betting range only applies to heads up.

This makes sense. For example, I open 2.5x the pot UTG with KK, LJ 3-bets, and then there are 2 cold-calls, there is too much dead money in the pot. I should 4-bet to narrow the field and collect the dead money.

In the hand example from the first post, the hand is multiway so I think the author has the 4-bet option as a GTO play. That said, I’m still just calling as an exploit because I thought there was very good chance that UTG+1 would fold. This is based on a strong read.

If someone realizes that I open wide UTG and have no 4-betting range, they could increase their 3-bet frequency. However, I will exploit them by having a 4-betting range against them.

I would check raise turn as played. It’s so damn hard to flop a flush, he has plenty of other hands that have a pair with a spade.

I’m ok with him folding if I 4 bet. He knows not to *** around and 3 bet me light and I also get overcards to my jacks to fold. You can maybe flat here with aces when you’re pretty confident it’s going heads up AND your in position. I do that very occasionally as well (maybe 15% of the time when I know it’ll be heads up). It’s sucks being OOP though with a hand that’s so vulnerable to so many flops, with a high SPR. Him folding is +EV for you, free money and no rake on that money

It won’t matter because the biggest way to make money at this stakes is maximizing value with good hands. This applies to pre and post. I understand where you’re coming from but the value you get from being tricky is nowhere near the value you would get from playing with an appropriate 3 and 4 bet range. I don’t doubt you’re a winning player with this strategy, but I think you could win more without that strat if that makes sense? Cheers either way and best of luck. Run it up!