I'm not convinced I played this hand well, but I'm not convinced I played it very poorly, either. I have been thinking about it a lot, so it may be valuable to other posters.

Live 1/3
Hero has a tight image and a $450 stack
Villain is an aggressive player who seems to attack weakness but understands the value of position and is aware of hero's image. He will try to punish limpers but will respect raises from tight players preflop. He has hero massively covered.

Hero opens to $15 UTG +1. Folded to villain in SB, who 3-bets to 65. Hero calls.

At this point, hero suspects villain might flat hero with JJ and AK OOP instead of 3-betting and would fold QQ to a 4-bet. He definitely would have a tighter 3bet range OOP vs in position and against me vs against any other player at the table. The size of the bet also seems to point to a strong hand that wants to deny set-mining odds.

Villain checks dark. Warning bells go off in hero's head. 3bet followed by a dark check is often AA.

Flop is Q86r. Hero thinks and checks behind.

Turn is an off-suit 9. Villain bets 40. Hero thinks and calls. I don't feel good about this hand at all and my goal is to make villain think I am polarized between weak hands and slowplays. If I am ahead, I think he calls any raise with hands that beat me and folds hands that I beat. He is probably drawing slim with hands I beat.

River is a 7. Board is Q8697. Villain checks. Hero thinks and checks behind.

I was fairly certain that any bet here would be a bluff because a worse hand isn't calling. I considered bluffing, but I ruled against it for these reasons:
-I felt that this villain would be sticky with AA or a set because he was up by a ton and could afford to make a loose call and still have over $1000 behind. A bluff would be better if it threatened to wipe away his profits.
-I didn't think my body language on previous streets was conducive to telling the story that I had rivered a straight. I feel like my main mistake was not doing enough to make him think I might have TT on the turn because I was fixated on my read that he probably had AA.

Your description makes V sound like a very solid player. Still, this should be a standard 4-bet pre flop. Sure, AA is in his range, but so are AK, QQ, JJ, and a handful of other hands if he's trying to get tricky by 3-betting light with something like 78s.

Bottom line is that over pairs are quite difficult to play post flop when both players are deep.

4-bet to ~170 and the hand will
Be much more profitable in the long-term and much less difficult to play.

Pre is good. I hate 4b HU against V's who can and will 3b/f light.

Flop... ($125). V's check-dark doesn't scare me at all. I probably b/c this flop, representing Qx. If V raises, I'd take it as AK trying to turn my head.

Turn (AP)... ($125). Just raise against the small bet. You can r/f if your read is strong enough that he only does this with [AA,QQ]. But IMO, you're very unlikely to be b/3b with AA since he has to worry about QQ. So if he raises, its mostly [QQ, "stuff you beat"], so go ahead and move in.

River (AP)... ($205). I put in a bet for value OTR here. He obviously hates his hand. Make him fold AK and then don't show your hand.

~~~~~

I don't mind how you played it. I can play this way against V's who give me fits. V as described is straight-forward enough that I'm happy to take a more value oriented line.

Played fine against described V imo. Betting river only seems to fold out AA and only some % of the time. You'd likely have to risk a large portion of your stack to get fold equity up there. I also don't completely discount TT and JJ and AK from his range as you did unless you have hours upon hours of playtime with V its hard to nail him to exactly QQ+ here. That said obv the runout isnt ideal for KK but its so hard to have JT or something here. I'd say his range by the river is exactly AA, KK, JJ, and you're smack in the middle of that range but maybe you can weight it to AA because of your reads. Turn bet makes me feel like its more likely JJ though. Too thin to find value/better folds.

I disagree with all of this. If we assign V the range you suggest, why would we want to turn our hand face-up with a 4bet? It lets V play perfectly against us instead of letting us use our position.

Not sure I understand your reasoning throughout. Given action pre, this flop is almost certainly WA/WB for us. We're WB {QQ/AA} and WA {AK/AQ; 99-JJ; suited connectors}. What does a flop bet get value from? Why would you put V on AK if he c/r us?

Likewise, from what are we getting value from a turn raise or a river bet? We're basically only getting value from the air portion of V's range in this hand, and value-owning ourselves otherwise. So the plan should be to call him down.

I think the hand is well played.

Reading this made me think ak.

+1. Well said. V is inelastic, only worse hand I can see calling any bet is JJ and it would have to be a small bet opening us up to a sizeable raise. Way to make money here is to call down given this runout.

Played fine, imo.

I would bet the flop. The board is really dry. I'd want to start getting value from AQ and maybe sticky JJ or AK. The check dark is suspicious after a 3bet. I think villain checking after the dry flop is even more suspicious, and I would then check back.

As played, calling the turn is fine. I'd plan to call every non-A river. The runout is pretty bad and I'm not sure you can get thin value here. I'd also check the river because given the size of the pot, any c/r will put my stack at risk.

Honestly think V has small PP in his range with the flop check in the dark. The resulting action also leads to this possibility.

Honestly not that upset with the way you played it. You really don't have any 2 pair and only a few sets in your range OTF and OTT, so you could raise but you look like your FOS if you do. Probably just trying to get to a cheap showdown against a guy who probably isn't 3betting tight players too light and kick myself when he flips over AK that I could have gotten flop value from

Why would you check behind a dark check? Seriously?

Your errors in this hand come from the fact that you assumed a 3 bet and check dark is often AA, which is likely not the case. I'm betting that flop against a dark check almost always, and same with the turn. River would be close, especially if V is capable of having an uncapped river checking range. But definitely missed out on value on flop and turn, since Vs turn bet was very small, which I assumed you perceived as strength. Your biggest issue is assuming people have stronger ranges than they do.

My experience has been that a flop dark check after a 3bet OOP is usually AK in LHE and AA/KK in NLHE. This is nowhere near the first time I have seen this betting pattern.

My point is that you are not giving yourself an opportunity to acquire additional information. Checking behind a dark check? Really? Do whatever it takes to get more information or just fold pre.

If you are fairly confident villain usually has KK, AA, then you're something like a 12:1 dog on the turn. I derived that from 6 AA combos to 1 KK, which is a chop (so ~6:0.5).

I don't really agree with that ranging, but let's work with your read.

Why call the turn getting > 3:1 if you're fairly confident you're a 12:1 dog?

And when you do call the turn, you must bluff this river.

I'm pretty sure your body language on other streets is totally consistent with TT. I mean, I'm not really sure what kind of wizard you think villain is anyway that he's going to be able to make such minor distinctions based on some general body language read.

Further, what is the difference between KK and TT when you're worried villain has AA? I think you might be leveling yourself on this point. I'm not sure how your body language could possibly be any different when you hold TT, a hand that has the same exact relative value as KK against the hand (AA) that you think comprises so much of villain's range.

Any good sized river bet from you is polarizing, and I prefer to embrace the polarization by overbetting small. I find that can be effective in a spot like this, where a) even a villain who has a lot of profit will often give up, and b) with AA, villain will sometimes be in auto c/c mode; the overbet will get him to abandon that plan and think about it. And it's incredibly difficult for you to have any hand except for TT. You bet/called pre, checked back the fairly dry flop, called a turn bet, and bet the river huge. It's not like you're turning KK into a bluff, right? You have TT *at least* as often as he has AA.

River pot is 145.

Bet 175.

What do you think are my implied odds for hitting a king on the river if QQ is in his range?

Overbetting is not something that comes naturally to me and I treat it more as an inherent personality flaw to accept and work around rather than a leak to fix. I've kind of gone the other way and trained a lot of regs to fear a bluff that looks like a value bet on the river, but this guy wasn't one of those regs.

I'm honestly not sure if he thinks I would fold TT either preflop or on the turn.

flop check is just so bad. bet 55. something like 1/3 pot. make the pot bigger, you gotta get some money in there.

as played, bet 80 on the river for value.

it looks as if V whiffed on AK, but still, aces only come around 1:221 hands. get every last nickle you can for them

Well he's betting 40 into 130 on the turn. That's a really weird sizing.

I honestly have no particular read on what it means. Generally, of course, it's weaker, but that may not be reliable or accurate here.

In terms of the implied odds vs a QQ set, I think they're high. It's so unlikely you called pre with JT, so I don't think he'll fear the straight. But more important, people really don't like to fold sets, regardless of their relative value. And when this run-out ends with a river K, I think he snaps you off so often.

On the turn, you're getting a touch more than 4:1 (not the 3:1 I cited above).

You're of course ~24:1 to hit your set.

So you actually need to win like (24-4) * 40 = 800 more to justify a call against QQ.

So I mean, you might well stack him when you bink a K vs his QQ, and position will help you build the biggest pot possible. But in terms of the relevance to the hand, you're going to fall well short of what you need to win to justify the pursuit of the 24:1 long shot.

How much money do you think I am getting out of AK?

That aces only come around 1:221 hands is not important. Using Bayes theorem, the probability that he has AA, given that he 3bet is equal to the probability that a random hand is aces times the percentage of his 3betting range that consists of ace divided by the percentage of hands that he 3bets with.

Pre- I don't mind the preflop flat, especially if he understands that you are tight.

Flop- I don't mind the check, it is good for balance vs villains that you play with enough to have meta game with. It put's a player with a pocket pair to be put at ease a bit on further streets

Turn- I prefer raising-folding here. As played, you flat which is OK for balance reasons, NOT because we think we are beat by AA.

River- BET, you have severely underrepped and slow played your hand. Making a big bet on the river of 140-200 is SUPER polarizing. He has to think you either have a TT/Tx or a bluff(AK/ATC). Especially with your image of being tight, the only hand he likely thinks you would bet the river with would be a straight, and that you would be too scared to value bet worse than a straight, afraid that HE has Tx. Give him an opportunity to run into KK

His situation on the river vs this type bet from hero's tight image does a lot of things.

1. He Hero folds better hands some of the time "How can I call vs this tight player"
2. He Hero calls with worse hands some of the time "He has to be bluffing"

Give him a chance to make a mistake and not realize his showdown equity

Wow, my head is spinning after reading responses. Will Re-read in a.m.

Why are we betting on river? Get value from exactly JJ?

Is a river bet here ever for value? Seems to me it would have to be a bluff.

If we are going to check behind on this flop. We should just 4 bet pre and take it down pre. Since we are getting almost no value postflop

Curious what you think he calls with?

Him folding AK is of no value for us. Having him see our hand, doesn't hurt us at all. Since we probably can only get value from a few combos of AQ, KQ. I would much rather see his hand. Get idea of what he 3 bets, checks dark.

Checking "for information" on how he played is worth less than betting and seeing how he reacts and what hands he is capable of calling with on the river.
With the exception of the TT's part of his range, he does not have a clear answer for what to do versus our river bet. Our bet allows him to make a mistake. By checking behind he has to realize whatever equity he has. That's the difference between playing poker, and playing cards!

-We can get value from AQ/KQ/JJ on the river
"Wow, does he really have Tx here? I just don't believe it"

-We can get a fold from AA/Sets
"Wow, did I just slow play myself into letting him get there, I really screwed up this hand, I'll find a better spot"

We value town ourselves vs TT
"Hooray"


The real value of the play is for meta game.

The times we get called by worse, players will be afraid of our river bets because the range isn't so polarized "Wow I would have never value bet KK, it is so scary"

The times we get called by better, players will be like "wow that player doesn't know what he is doing, I'll never be able to fold two pair+ vs him"

ok

You realley think merging here is good?

Who folds sets at this level? AA likely finds hero call.

I don't think he has AQ very often given his line. His line looks very polarized to gin or crap on turn.

So, given his line. I think he rarely calls with worse. Almost never folding better.

How is him seeing us bet light with KK going to be more valuable than seeing his 3bet range out of blinds?

Sure if we bet super small we can get looked up by worse. But it is unlikely, given he doesn't have much worse in his range.

Bet $125-$150 OTR.

Based on the action, he doesn't have 1010 or a set. It's either a small pair, JJ or AK. Your bet will make V suspicious, and I get the feeling you're going to get called down light.