1-2 NL holdem. I think I screwed up on every street.

Villain is a young white tight aggressive player. He is not afraid to gamble but he's definitely not crazy. He just won a monster pot with K-J on a board of A-K-j-9-4 vs a maniac. He is in middle position. He has about 1000 in front.

Hero is a middle aged player also perceived as tight. Hero has made a little money getting lucky with a flush vs a set. He is on the button and has 700 in front.

OTTH

Villain bets $15. Hero looks down to see Ks-Kc on the button and raises to $50.00. Villain hesitates and thinks for a moment and then calls. Blinds and everyone else have folded.

($103)

Flop comes A-A-K rainbow.

I flopped basically the nuts.

Villain checks to me.

I bet out 55. A half pot sized bet. My reason is...if villain had a small to med size pair he might decide to call a smaller bet. If he is slow placing an Ace, he's going to check raise and I probably am on the way to a big night.

Villain hesitates and calls.

($213)
Turn card is the Queen.

Ok I'm a little nervous now.

Check to hero.

What should hero do?

Fire again.

You should be mostly betting pot or bigger on the flop.

As played bet pot on the turn.

You have the third nuts against a maximum of 3 combos that beat you. The queen doesn't change anything. Pot/pot. If the villain has one of those 3 combos, it is a real cooler and "Nice hand".

Hero should consider pot size ($213) and remaining stack (~$600) and decide how to size in order to get it all in vs. trips. I'd go $150 making pot $500 and then jam river.

He loses to 6 combos of AQ and not much else as played. Villain could also have 4 combos of AK at most.
He needs to call all AJ and some AT combos for us to be value betting. So I think it best to go for one more st and not stacks.
I don't mind checking turn with this combo and sizing up on the river if it checks through.

I'm not clear on how many weak suited Ax take the 7.5x sizing pre and call your 25x 3bet. Probably enough that you want to get one more big bet in and not get stacks in.

We have a monster here for sure but I think hero is right to be cautious.

What hands is a competent villain calling a 3bet oops and then calling this flop with? Perhaps AJs is about the only thing here that we beat.

I don't hate a check with the plan to call river bets or bet if checked to. Yes it feels hecka mubsy.

^^^

You guys make a decent argument, I'm used to players who will call way too many hands to a 3bet and then can't fold trips under any circumstance. So I'm giving AJ/AT and suited aces to villain but that may be too optimistic.

Fourth nuts which unless the K comes on river will become fifth nuts. Similarly 11 combos beat us which will become 17 on most rivers.

What range could V have that gets here that we are ahead of? Even with two K blockers unless V is very loose we are behind most of Vs range in this spot.

My head hurts reading this thread lol. There are two AK combos left, 6 AQ combos (less if he's folding offsuit combos) and one heavily discounted AA combo

Bet flop smaller third or quarter pot is super standard and the best play here. Betting large is seriously terrible. Betting half is also pretty bad since he's never calling less than JJ or QQ.

Bet turn 175 and fold to a jam.

If he calls turn and checks river shove everything besides an ace or a queen

It's 1/2 bet fold should be your standard in almost all value betting situations. If we were playing a very good high stakes reg then yeah we can start checking the turn like half the time

Op please post suits of all cards. It matters a lot

pre cool. $25 flop, force his gutters/underpairs into annoying spots. b/f turn shove river.

edit: what drowski said lmao

Also seeing this one more like Drowski.

I realize we are deep and stacking V would be noice. But I'm going to bet the flop small, even smaller than Drowski. Let's squeeze a little something out of pocket pairs. Maybe give them a chance to fill up. I bet like $25. Maybe an ace will raise this bet as well. Just set the table for the villain to find disaster in a lot of different ways, rather than strictly trying to stack AQ or AJ, which could easily happen anyway.

Turn, oof. Worst card? Unless he had QQ. Harder for him to have KQ now too.

So what can we accomplish now? The ship has probably sailed on getting much value from pocket pairs. We can still get value from aces. I would not rule out hands like A5s from him.

At the same time, we are not thrilled to play for stacks this deep. And V would have to be pretty clueless to want to get stacks in here with anything we beat. So now, I'd say we are really targetting aces and the odd QQ to play a big pot, but not all in.

With a smaller flop bet, I'd now bet close to pot on the turn and then maybe 60% pot on river.

As played, I'd bet a little less than pot and also try to keep it under $200. $175 would be good.

This and if there is a time to 3bet bigger pre, it's this hand 350BB deep. I would go for 70 pre.

What is your 3-bet range here. And what would you guess his calling range is, I imagine this deep he won’t have many 4-bets and can call a bit wider?. I am interested to put this into solver and see what it tells you here.

Solver bets 99% of your range on flop and favors 1/2 pot at 70% of range using that size. KK prefers that size more so at 84% if the time , full pot 8% of time, 1/4 pot 7%, check back 1%.

On the turn this becomes

Bet 1/2 pot 50%
Bet 1/4 pot 40%
Check 10%

Folds to a turn jam 87%
65% if you share the suits with the Aces (don’t ask why)

Also, if called on the turn u are to check back 100% of rivers with KK

This can’t be right

That’s what it says, I also gave villain a generous amount of suited Ax we are ahead of, more surprising to me is the amount of check back with AQ, which checks back the majority of the time. But I could have overestimated the amount of AKx villain just calls a 3-bet with. Most likely I did. But I guess we are really narrowing V’s range when they call both barrels.

It is jammingr river with all AK, small amount of AQ, and small amounts of JJ and TT as bluffs and the sliver of KQ that made it here as a bluff.

Brick rivers my bad

I ran it with a brick 4 river. I’m sure it says to jam if we river quads

It is jams with KK 65% on Q river
And smaller amounts on J or T rivers.

Likely as a bluff when a Q comes?? I don’t understand

Sorry for the delay posting a reply.

Anyways, I decided it was time to take the pot down and fired a bet of 175 (coincidence someone mentioned this amount)

Villain hesitates but calls

($563)

River is a Jack.

Without a moment's hesitation, villain shoves all in.

Hero has 280 invested (50 preflop, 55, flop, 175 turn) and is on the line for 420 remaining.

Hero?

I'm fairly certain I play it like you did up to this point (I might have bet a little smaller on the turn, like $125, but meh). Also, I'm fairly certain I'd fold to this jam, pick up my chips and call it a session cuz I'd be tilting either way.

Without the timing tell I hate my life. Like, he could be overvaluing AT but he should only have the suited variety (2 combos). He can have QQ as well (3 combos) — I think he does call flop with QQ almost always. Sometimes he check-raises turn, so have to discount QQ a bit. We lose to 10+ combos of boats with AK/AQ/AJs that almost all take this line. We need to be good >30% to justify a call. It’s pretty close.

With the timing tell I think it’s an easier fold. If he made a straight with AT he would at least consider his action before he jams. We can also discount AJ for the same reason. So he has QQ or a better boat with AK/AQ and the odds are it’s a better boat (with more than 70% certainty).

It’s a tough fold but it’s a neutral EV spot at best. If you folded and he flips over ATo with this line I would be tilted since it means all our reads were off. If you folded and he showed QQ I wouldn’t feel bad about it though. If you called and he had AQ I also wouldn’t feel bad about your play. Just seems like a really marginal spot IMO, and a very tough fold in game.