1/3, 9 handed, $500 max buy-in, Parx Philly Friday night. Rake is 10% up to $5 with $2 promo drop.

PRE -

EP limps (UTG or UTG1). He's starting out around $645-ish.

This is the main V. He's white, maybe mid 20's, just sat down with around $300-$400 maybe 2-3 orbits ago. Never seen him before this, so most likely not a reg, or at least not in this room. He won a big pot not long after he sat down, either with a big bluff that got through or hero calling a big bluff that didn't. As I'm typing this, I can't remember for sure which it was.

Too soon to assign him a detailed read with any confidence, aside from saying he appears capable of either running a big bluff or hero-calling a big bluff, and isn't scared money, but otherwise probably isn't very good when he's open limping from EP.

Hero raises to $20 with A5dd in MP. Hero is MAWG running over the table with around $2k in front of him. Should have a winning image. Haven't shown any bluffs since V sat down. Have shown a lot of winning hands, even when opponents folded, so the rest of the table may think I'm on a heater and just always have it.

Two calls from loose-passive rec-fish in LP, folds back to V, who also calls. Four to the flop with ~$80 in the pot.

FLOP ($80) 843rb with one diamond, giving us one over, backdoor flush and inside straight draw.

V donks for $25. Hero calls. Other two fold. HU going to the turn.

TURN ($130) 843rb Ks, completing the rainbow of suits. No more BDFD, just the one over and an ISSD.

V bets again, for $45. Hero decides V is almost certainly FOS when he continues to barrel here, but for such a small size, and we can rep a lot of KX as the PFR, so we raise to $125 (not going too big, just in case he isn't actually FOS). V thinks for maybe 5 seconds, then calls.

Assuming V will check in flow on the river, hero is planning on jamming on any Q, J, T, 6, 4 or 3, sizing down for value on an ace or 2, and giving up / checking back on a K, 8, 9, or 7.

RIVER ($380) 843rb Ks 5c, giving hero 3rd pair.

Hero forgot to have a plan for what to do on a 5, but it doesn't matter. V doesn't think more than a few seconds before stacking up some chips and donking for $225, leaving himself about $250 behind.

I can't remember if I've ever seen this line, and in game, I was very surprised. He donked the river for half his remaining stack, but it's just under 60% pot. Like, what is this line repping?

As hero is tanking, he looks over and notices that V is staring intensely at him, apparently trying to look confident / strong, usually a fairly reliable tell indicating weakness.

I didn't think he'd have a flopped set or 2P when he bets small and then just flat calls my raise on the turn Ks. I wouldn't think 8x would continue to barrel on the Ks turn AND flat call my raise AND donk the river on a brick.

The 5 on the river doesn't change anything, if we discount either of us having some sort of inside-straight draw (76? A2?) that gets there, or somehow arrives on the river with 85 or 54 (just 1 combo each of 54s and 85s). Are 76, A2, 85 and 54 taking this line - donk flop, barrel-call turn, donk river?

Maybe he started a semi-bluff on the flop with 65. But does anyone in his spot river 3rd pair and suddenly decide to turn it into a bluff by donking for 60% pot (1/2 remaining stack)? Without thinking more than a few seconds?

I'm guessing most here will say this is a trivial fold. Maybe it is. But I was having a very hard time putting V on a hand that made sense for value. To be fair, I was also having a hard time figuring out what his bluffs would be.

We beat 65 and worse 5x, like 52 (both open-ended on the flop). We beat hands like A4 and A3 with BDFD's, if he's donking out with bottom or middle pair + BDFD on the flop. And we beat all his random air-balls that are just spazzing. I figure he's got 2 combos of 65s, 2 of 52s, 2 of A4s, and 2 of A3s, so 8 value-bluffs, and maybe some weird air.

We lose to 8x and better. I figure he's got 3 combos of 98s, 3 of 87s, and 3 of A8s - 9 total. If we want to give him 85s and 54s, that's another 2 combos, for 11 total. Do we want to give him 76 and A2?

We're being laid 2.7 to one on a call.

What should hero do?

I would strongly consider just folding the flop. You have the worst relative position with the two others behind you, in addition to your hand being weak. The single biggest factor in me wanting to fold is that if I call, and someone else calls behind me, 65 is very much in their range and I will probably go broke on a 2.

I would never raise the turn. I'd probably just fold here.This guy is not slowing down on an overcard. If he were getting nervous about his hand strength, he would check. Furthermore, what draw could this be a blocking bet for? This just looks like he wants to get raised.

I'm guessing this is FPS with a monster, like a flopped set. If he has 65 and I would have won, so be it. This is the price you pay for getting into this spot.

Damn bro that's madness. Especially to peel off on the river what is probably the nuts here I have to question this myself did he get there Oh brother that is such a gross hand. I'm not good enough to call this myself not for 225$ dude this spot sucks do you jam fold Call its all gross so gross.....

Actually I thought about this again. You were intending on jamming the river even without seeing the 5 and it wasn't in any of the spots that you orignally saw I know its gross, but I am leaning towards jam. Pretty much the outcome here is the same your already a leg out. I wouldn't have played the hand like this but I can certainly get the point to how you got there.

In villain's shoes, my issue with the turn flat->river big donk line is that it's too transparently value heavy, so hero definitely shouldn't hero-call it. It doesn't seem difficult at all to think of value combos for him.

Turn 1/3p raise and justification already seemed like a bit of a stretch, but once he follows up his call with a 2/3p donk (that completes the only frontdoor draws), I think it's time to give up the ghost.

Trivial fold. I'm fine with the rest of the hand, but I might prefer a raise on the flop, although it's so dry waiting until a good turn, which you got, is fine.

Depending on exactly where we are I might even just fold preflop. Otherwise my style is to overlimp in non-LP. In a shortstack game I actually think it is a mistake to put in a preflop raise here (as we don't want to go multiway to a low SPR pot with this hand). But deeper as we are then raising is probably fine.

With two still to react behind us, the flop call is pretty speculative. This is one of the reasons I lean to not building big pots OOP preflop as we're often just in spots where we're hoping for the best outcome behind us. ETA: Also +1 to Vernon's comment about avoiding massive trouble versus 65.

We think this dude is FOS when he donks into 3 opponents (including 2 fish) on the flop and then continues when our AK gets there on the turn? I fold.

I mean, sure his line is weird on the river, but he's still voluntarily put in 2+ stacks of reds against someone who is screaming he has a strong hand, and yet he doesn't care. I fold again. FWIW, I would check back the river if given the chance and just hope I beat some wonky 65/etc.

GcluelessspewtasticnoobG

i dont like the turn raise, you are repping one hand (KK). unlikely you peel AK OTF w/2 behind. i dont think people will buy it. id rather see what happens on the river and then maybe bluffraise then, or bet big when checked to. just giving up on river bricks is fine too.

pf/flop seem std. no way folding pre is correct when deep vs bad players.

id fold river as played, this looks like some draw that was setting its own price on flop/turn then got there, like 67 or A2. he might also be clicking buttons with some 8x, 4x, or 3x hand that rivered two pair.

I like some of the logic, but I think you’re way overcomplicating this multiway hand OOP at 1/3. The majority of 1/3 players are just not great and this V doesn’t sound any different. The reason it’s hard to read V is they probably have very little idea of what they are doing and why.

I don’t see how this play at this stake in this situation is winning long term. Fold on the flop and wait for a better spot.


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Fish over bluff merged in donk lines so you have to call river but I don’t think the other streets are optimal vs sticky players.

When you are playing vs fish you usually don’t want to big bet bluff until the river since they overcall flops and turns.

Interested in results.

By "over bluff merge" do you mean they over bluff but do so with weak made hands

If so, I would think A5 would be a poor bluff catcher because it loses to many of their "bluffs."

If not, please clarify.

Yeah they don’t distinguish between value bets and bluffs so you see a lot weak made hands. Its a bad spot to be in but the others streets are sub optimal imo.

A5s is a solver hand, that means you rfi in theory. But we don’t care about theory because we are playing fish that play too wide preflop. Fish are calling hands that dominate A5s like ATo/AJo but theory folds those hands.

I also don’t like raising turn because fish overcall and that King polarizes us too much. I’d rather just call flop/call turn then decide OTR (if I raised preflop) if this guy is going to fold to a river jam. You get more information this way off his bet sizing and you get more fold equity with higher SPRs.

Fish are less elastic than regs but they still fold more the bigger you bet. I want to keep the pot as small as possible and then if I bluff I do it OTR.

TBH, I put the villain on a set. Wanted to see if anyone was going to play.

I like the flop call and I actually really like the turn raise. His line is super FOS. Fish donks have a very high frequency of folding either flop or turn when raised. I might go even bigger though like 200, setting up a river jam.

I would fish for a live read on the river. See if he engages in conversation with you and seems comfortable. Ask him what he has, if the river made his hand, see what he says. Maybe count out chips and say we'll I guess I have to and act like you are going to call and look to see if he freezes up at all.

If I don't get a tell, I would probably fold. Occasionally I have seen people call turn, donk river with a busted open ender, but it is fairly rare.

I agree with DDP that this range is fairly mergey, but there is a good chance this is 8x, or better which is not folding.

Preflop you're raising straight to 20 without straddle? Seems kind of big. I wonder if we're not overshooting it here. I think 15 will fold out more than 10 while isolating us against very wrak players that cold call way too wide, but at 20, I think we cut down on the weak cold calling fish perhaps too much. It's not a great price for us to steal the blinds with A5s and if wr have AA, it cuts down on some of the calls we want. I think some of this is more about the dollar size of the raise and not the bb. I think 15 at 1/2 unstraddled can still be fine.

Feels weird to disagree so strongly with Mlark, but I would assume CMV is much closer to the truth.


Again, people love to limp/call 44/33/etc from EP. There must be a fish poker 101 course and it's one of the first things in the course, limp/call small pairs and bad suited Ax. The next part of the course is limp/calling small/tiny suited connectors.

Also very likely the read on hero is that he's raising bigger cards than hit this board most of the time, so they'll be a lot of check backs on 843 ... so fish donk 44/33/43 a lot. Yes, maybe random 98 or whatever sometimes HU ... but 4 ways?
Then the bigger sizing on a K? And like I understand they might keep firing 65 and ignore the K, or just ignore it anyway with 8x or JJ because they don't understand they shouldn't just keep betting ... but then they call a raise?
Are they really deciding that you are much more likely to raise As5s than AK?

River donk fits into the whole "lol, K didn't pair or flush didn't get there so I guess I'm still good and you might check back some Kx on this card"
Also depending on flop suits it could be 7s6s/5s4s/5s3s.

fold flop > fold turn > call turn > raise turn

The one saving grace of calling flop is that if V can't fold you can shovel money in on a 2 or maybe on running nut flush, but it's still not great.

Small donk flop, small donk turn really don't scream strength. I raises vs these lines often and get folds often. Large donk is a different story, especially if they bomb turn.

But every once in a while they actually do have, but even then the fish can't help themselves. Fairly often they either bet 3b the turn or donk river like they did here. They just absolutely won't let you bluff or understand that if you have a strong hand, you might call a check raise. Between the times that they just let you off the hook and don't let you bluff off your stack and the times they just fold when we raise turn, I think we have a fairly profitable turn raise.

I know I'm an online player but I think you have to go off data for this spot, you can't go off experience because of how selection bias works imo. You're also never going to get a statistically significant sample from your own play even if you are full time.

There is MDA for live poker now which is awesome and could help for this hand, now I haven't studied live MDA but online this is the folding discrepancy for each street after a fish donks flop.

Flop is 38% fold vs raise after flop donk

Turn is 43% fold vs raise after flop donk bet turn

River is 54% fold vs raise after flop donk bet turn bet river

A universal trend for fish is they want to see runouts to see if they can hit their hand so I'd always defer bluffs to the river for this reason.

Preflop is fine, but I would fold in mp. I wouldn't think of making the sort of play, but that doesn't make it bad.

Them main problem I see is that I know villain is a fish, but you were the preflop raiser, so raising the turn doesn't make any sense. As the other poster said you are representing exactly KK. Maybe you could have 88 or raised preflop with 44/33 and flat called the flop with a set. This flop hits the limp caller with small pps and small suited connectors. Particularly from a fish point of view, you raised preflop, so usually have 88+, AJ+, KQ, or suited broadway. Plus what would you flat call the flop with and raise the turn? The board didn't change that much. You assume the opponent is bad. However, the limp/caller may be able to hand read a little. Fish also don't like to fold, so if you take a line that looks BS, it might not work.

looking back at it if i had to guess villain's hand its K8.

Appreciate everyone's input so far. Glad to see some diversity of opinion. Not doing a reveal yet, but my thoughts from in-game, on each street:

PRE - No one at the table has proven capable of 3B'ing me light, and I haven't been getting punished for opening wide. I have a good table image, so opening A5s seems fine. My usual open in this game is $15, but over an EP limp, with lots of players left to act, I think $20 is defensible.

FLOP - When V donks flop for a small size, my immediate thought was that he had a weak 8x "seeing where he's at". My observation of fish is that if they flop 2P or a set here, they're not betting small on the flop. They bet big. They definitely don't bet small on flop and then small again on the turn when their flop bet gets called.

I have to think folding flop is wrong, when V donks on an 8-high rainbow board, even into multiple opponents. Not just because of the equity in our hand, but also because no matter what V has, he's not going to know what to do on most runouts.

The turn and river are either going to be A) two over cards to the board, B) four to a straight, C) three to a straight plus an over-card, or three to a flush and an over-card, or D) a paired board, counterfeiting all his flopped 2P, possibly also with 3 to a flush or straight on board. We'll have TONS of opportunities to steal this pot on later streets.

Even if one of the other opponents behind calls with 65, we can check-call on a 2 turn, and check-evaluate the river. If it's the 2d, we've got a re-draw to the flush. An ace on the turn will often give us a better hand than whatever V is betting.

TURN - I can see the argument for just flat calling turn, trying to make our hand, and raising river as a bluff if we don't.

The problem I see with that line in this scenario is that fish tend to get sticky when they go bet-bet-bet and then we suddenly wake up and raise the river, unless the river brings in some obvious draw, and there wasn't one here.

I didn't think I was repping KK exactly. Conceivably, I could have AA, KK, AK, or KQ. I would flat call the flop donk with all those hands, and raise turn when V takes a small size again. I've taken this sort of line before, and usually what happens is V either folds turn, or check-folds river.

RIVER - The fishy merge bet is probably something I discount too quickly. I tend to get stuck thinking about the lack of logic in calling the turn raise and then donking the river on a card that shouldn't change anything. I should remember that fish will sometimes take this sort of line when they're not sure if they're bluffing or value betting.

If I think V is going to continue merge-betting weak value on the turn, when he really shouldn't, I suppose I should be consistent with my own logic, and realize that he could do something like this on the river, with the same sort of hands.

This time, it actually did occur to me that V could be merge-betting, and I did consider jamming over his bet, to fold out hands like 8x. My observation has been that when opponents donk the river small, and we raise, they mostly fold. But if I jammed, he'd be getting over 4:1, and might decide that he has to see it, and flick in the call.

This was about the time that I looked at him, hoping to get a tell, and saw one - he was glaring at me.

I could see him taking this line with 65, 52, A4 and A3 - hands that had equity to improve on the flop, got stubborn on the turn, and then realized they couldn't win at showdown. It didn't seem as likely he'd take this line with 2nd pair - arguably a decent bluff-catcher, especially if his kicker blocks us from having hands like 76.

All that said, I could have over-limped pre, flat called flop and turn, and then raised river, and I don't think that line would be bad as an alternative. Over-limping pre and waiting until the river to raise obviously makes it easier for me to show up with more than just AA, KK, AK, and KQ for value.

Once I raise pre, I think flatting flop and raising turn are better than flatting flop and turn, and raising river.

I don't think the river is a trivial fold, even if we think he has merge bets that beat us. We're getting 2.7 to 1. If he's got 8 combos we beat, he has to have at least 21 combos that beat us. Realistically, I think he has 20 at most, and only if we give him all the flopped sets and 2P, which seems unlikely when he just flat calls turn.

It's only a trivial fold if he's never doing this with worse than 8x, and I don't see how we can give him all those 8x combos but NOT give him any worse 1P.

I would limp behind or fold preflop. Not sure what the raise accomplishes, except give you a wide raising range. There are advantages to keeping the money deep, as it is speculative trying to make a nut flush, wheel, aces up, etc. , and you have better implied odds in a limped pot.

An advantage of raising is you can represent better on certain flops. However, this is a flop where you could represent better if you had limped.

Fair points. I've started experimenting with over-limping in games where my MP raises are getting multiple calls. I'll need more experience doing it, but so far, I'd say results are mixed at best.

I'm not sure that we can't rep much connectivity with the flop when we raise pre. I wouldn't raise 43, but I'd raise 88, and raise 44/33 at some frequency, depending on our exact position and the table dynamics. We can also have all the over-pairs to the board, and some Kx that will float the flop and make top pair on the turn.

That said, if we did have 88, 44, or 33, we'd probably raise flop, so maybe it's a moot point when I flat call.

If we don't think V is limping in and donking flop with hands like K8, K4, and K3, then I think it's defensible to raise turn for a smaller size, and fold to a 3B, assuming V will 3B all his 2P and sets. Once he flat calls, he's capping his range, and likely won't be able to call a river jam.

Curious what the stats are when they donk flop, bet turn, get raised, just call, and the river goes check-jam. I would expect they fold river at a very high rate facing that line.

This sounds too good to be true. I don't see how any formula or solver is going to improve upon the standard strategy of knowing how to create your own GTO-based frequencies across scores of different board textures and pot/stack sizes, and then knowing how to shift away from this equilibrium to exploitation based on tells, individual player tendencies, population tendencies, etc.

In addition, while solver programmers presumably have reams of data from online play, these types of voluminous data sets don't exit for live play, suggesting that the modifications to MDF will be based more on feel than data.

OTOH, I could be wrong about all of this.

You can cbet this flop multiway as the preflop raiser, representing an overpair. It is hard to represent much raising the turn though.

If you limp this hand, you may have a difficult decision if it is raised. You also will usually throw it away on the flop, but then you don't lose much. There are advantages to keeping the money in and keeping people in with junky hands. You want suited junk in when you make a nut flush and random 2 pair in when you make aces up or a wheel.