Hero (2600): LAG image
Villain (6000): Aggressive pro. The guy sitting on his right is a LAG and has been opening very wide, this villain has been taking advantage 3betting him with a large frequency. Ive also seen him squeeze some pots. Plays solid but has bluffs in his range. Usually very polar lines

OTH
Blinds 10-20
Three players limped, and villain in the small blind raises to 150. I'm in the big blind with KhQd and decide to make the call. Only I call.

Flop(360): AhKc6d. Villain bets 50, I call.

Turn(460): 2h. He bets 375, and I call.

River(1210): Js. He makes an overbet of 1.4

Hero?

At 1/2 this would be a clear fold on the turn against most players, but I don't play at these levels, so I'm not qualified to give advice here.

Also at 1/2, I would 3b against an SB LAG open.

What's interesting to me is a pro making such a small bet on the flop; is this common for pros at high stakes?

My two cents (I am not a pro).

Preflop seems a mix of 3b and call, I call more often than not.

Flop, making it so small, he can c-bet almost his entire range, imo. Nonetheless, I don't think you can do much but call.

Turn, we beat a FD and maybe some combos of QJ, QT, JT ? This assuming that a pro very rarely bluffs with close to 0 equity.
We are crushed by his value range, which includes all the sets, A6s, A2s, AJ+ (?). Can he value bet that big something like KJ or KQ?
All in all, I lean towards a fold here.

River, indeed it looks like he likes to take polar lines. Problem is, his only reasonable bluffs are busted FDs, and perhaps occasionally QJ and JT.
On the other hand, you should have neither JJ nor QT at this point, except for QThh, so he can basically continue with his entire turn value range.
Looks like a fold to me.

This flop bet on AK6 is very, very odd.


He should be betting very big or checking. And when we call, he should be almost pure checking 4h.



IMO, if he's a studied player, he's purposely taking this hand to a game tree node that most will be unfamiliar with. And bombing river......I'm just folding. He has a very big range advantage and AK6 and if he's any sort of good, he knows this. I'd be very, very suspicious when he bets small on flop and then bombs turn and river.

Fold.

i think pre is really bad, would either 3b or fold mostly leaning towards fold. id just fold turn although its likely mix and now id fold river. just because hes good doesnt mean you need to call down your entire range. flop size is weird though

Preflop is fine. KQo is mixed call or 3bet when facing a SB iso against limps. The ISO raise is a bit large, but we are 130bb. So not horrible.

Without looking at others' responses: I fold pre at this level and fold turn. A-K flop hits his range better than ours and I ask myself "what does it look like I have?" and the answer to that is some kind of Ace like AT or something. If he's polarizing against a mid-weak A then his value is 2p+ AK/KJ/AJ and his air-marginal is like TT-77, KQ, QJ. You got yourself in a jackpot by calling pre instead of 3-bet/folding. AP I fold river if my image is calling-station or anything similar. If I think I appear weak-tight I call river.

Why do you think an AK6r is a bomb spot from the RFI? 1/3 range sizing applies only to dry boards? Can you rationalize V's spot with having AK vs TT vs total air (T9s say)?

Well, he is repping 2p+. Honestly he can be pretty confident that AJ is the nuts here when you can't have AK. He could credibly have QT and his bluffs should probably be hands like QJ and JT that block you from having 2 pair.

I think if you make this call often vs good players you are going to be stationing way too wide and you're just going to get wrecked by value. Not sure what your range is like here, but I am guessing you can have AJ, KJ, KJ which are better calls. So unless you think villain is showing up with QJo and suited connectors and you are going to make a pure exploit here, I would lay this down.

I also think you should 3bet pre.

What sim are you looking at? This is a SB iso raise to 7.5x against 3 limpers vs a big blind cold call. It's not a standard spot with well defined ranges. But from sims I have seen with a cold caller in position to the PFR, an AK high board can be bet small on flop basically for range, and then it goes super polar on the turn with lots of checking and overbetting (it can also have smaller bets too).

This spot it played differently when the PFR is OOP than when they are IP and can start overbetting from the flop.

Also not sure what you mean by pure checking 4h? It is 2h, but that doesn't make much difference, it turn should still be a polar spot.

Also think this is weird

Seems reasonable for V to range bet flop small here, but 15% seems unnecessarily small and makes me wonder if he has some specific view abt how OP plays against v small bets (eg raises too much)

It’s also a little weird V didn’t go slightly larger on turn and then jam river, and instead left 600 behind after the river overbet

Agree on fold river

Results?

I folded and villain didnt show

ISO range for SB v 3 limpers is going to look very close to a UTG open raise, but noticeably tighter. A calling range for this is going to look extremely similar to the SB's ISO range.....but capped.

Hero isn't going to have AA, KK, AK here. Maybe not even AQ.


But the main reason V should be bombing this, is the middle part of his range. KQ, KJ, KT, and down to JJ and TT. Those hands want to check at a decent frequency.



AA, AK, KK....want to bet big. Because obviously, they are big hands. The reason we deviate from betting big with big hands is when we want to bet our medium strength hands a lot.


For example, UTG v BTN SRP......AK6 flop.........in UTG, we want to bet our entire range. Therefore we have to "dumb down" the big hands. If the middle of our range didn't want to bet, then it would be a large or overbet spot. The middle of our range is what really controls this. More so even than nut advantage.

For example, take BTN v BB on AK6. Run a sim normally. Then take away AA, KK, and AK from BTN's range. Run the sim again.....it's going to still overbet at a very high frequency even without those monster hands in their range. If it was all about nut advantage.....it would stop the over betting. But, it's about what the middle of our range wants to do that dictates how we size bets with our monster hands.





In this case, V is going to be checking a lot of his medium strength hands. So on AK6, he gets to bomb and should.

Generally speaking, AK6 is the model board for flop overbets even from OOP RFI. There are some exceptions like UTG v BTN SRP. For the first 3 early positions vs BTN you'll be range betting 33%.

Once you get to around LJ vs BTN, you start seeing overbets on AK6 at a significant frequency.

The main reason is because we want to cbet with our marginal hands. So that means we have to keep our monster hand sizing smaller to accommodate.



Once you get into spots like CO v BB or SB v BB, the OOP RFI no longer cbets with their marginal holdings. Therefore we have nothing weighing down the monster hands from bombing. Which in turns means we have to balance that bombing with non nut hands. That's what creates a polar range on these boards.



We need to look at the "why" some of the OOP positions want to cbet their marginal hands vs the positions that don't want to cbet. Once we know that, we aren't constricted to saying "well, I'm OOP on AK6 and I know a lot of spots here range bet for 33%."


We know that's because of the marginal hands.




So, what would a SB ISO against 3 limper range look like? It will likely be similar to a UTG open range, but noticeably tighter. What would the BB calling range in response to that range be? Probably will look like the SB ISO range, but without hands like AA, KK, and AK.


Once we know that, and we get an AK6 flop, we look at our marginal hands. Let's say, KQ for example.


What benefit would that get from betting 33% ? Probably not much. It doesn't need a lot of protection as it isn't going fold out hands we beat, and we are likely not in too much danger on turn.

Which is different from say an A 8 2 board when we have 8x. We get a ton of value betting 33% there with 8x. As we get some hands we beat to fold. And many others to fold that can turn a higher pair. So, when we are now betting those 8x hands.....we can't bomb with 8x, we have to stay small. So that handicaps our hands like AA. So we have to size down.



So, on this AK6 with two very likely small ranges........V isn't that incentivized to bet his KQ, KJ, JJ, TT etc hands.

When we don't want to bet those marginal hands, the handcuffs are off of our AA, KK, AK to bomb. And that means we polarize with bluffs.

Also, I worded my initial response incorrectly. And it reads as if I'm saying he should bet big on flop, then check on 2h. What I meant was:


V should be over betting this flop a lot. And sometimes he can bet small. Once he bets small, on the 2h......he should be checking mostly.


If V overbets flop and we call, on 2h, he should be betting a lot of the time for 75% or so.



His line is basically backwards. If he wants to bet big on 2h turn, he should have bet big on flop. If he wants to bet small on flop, he should check or bet small on 2h turn.




Him being described as solid pro, I'd expect him to be fairly well studied and know his line is a little cooky. Which would be a red flag to me to proceed with caution. Many times this kind of line is done on purpose to take us to game tree nodes in which we have no idea what to do.

Interesting. I ran a solve using those assumptions and basically saw what you described. The closest thing I have looked at in this spot is 6 max UTG vs button SRP where the flop is usually small bet with range and then super polar on the turn and river. That was what I was basing my experience on.

I think the really small flop bet is a curve ball that can throw players off guard. I could see using that size with a mix of weaker hands balanced by the strongest hands, specifically AA which blocks top pair.

Maybe getting into villain's head the thought process is, what to I bet on flop that keeps them most wide? What is the most they call on the turn with a K / pair + flush draw / combo draw? Then on river, it is not clear what he is targeting to call with value or targeting to fold with a bluff. Maybe he is targeting an ace or better to call? Or if he is bluffing, getting kings and worse, maybe weaker aces to fold?

I could see an argument for either. If had AK or better he wants a weaker ace, maybe weaker 2p to call. At the same time, he knows hero is somewhat capped, may be 3betting AQ, which is probably nor super comfortable facing the overbet anyways. AT would really not be comfortable, or any weaker ace. AJ is really where hero starts to get comfortable calling. So QJ is probably the best bluffing candidate followed by JT. And any 2p+ for value could take this line.

Flop and turn maybe recognize that hero is going to be strapped for aces to call with and targets a weaker range.

Another possibility is, soometimed aggressive players are okay getting called when they are bluffing on earlier streets if they think they can overfolds on later streets. It's rhe whole idea of, "bluffing is rhe new value betting." It is a risky rabbit hole to go down though because you end up risking a lot to win a little. If villain was setting up a multi-street bluff that worked out on the river, he put in $1,825 to win $785 (the pot preflop + hero's flop and turn bets).

But it's not clear thay is what was happening because villain's line seems reasonable with value too. Seems like a quintessential spot vs a difficult euro pro.

This lines of small bet flop and large bet turn its approved by the solver since it folds almost all hero range when villain bombs river. I would me much more comfortable calling him down with Ax. Ive recently been doing this line too against some weak villains of small bet flop and overbet (or big bet) turn in high static boards like this because people overfold a lot since their range is uncapped. But when someone does it to you its hard to make the call and I dont know if its profitable in the long run to hero this villains with this lines. Does anyone have a calling range with Ax here? Or we are only calling 2 pairs or better?

I think the problem with saying that if he bets small on flop he should check/bet small on 2h turn is that it assumes that V is in fact playing the flop strat you’ve described with a frequently used large bet size. If for whatever reason he played his whole flop range as a 15% pot bet, then when he is just called on the flop he would want to play very aggressively/ use large sizes frequently on turn and river. And the fact that he actually did bet large on both turn/river is some evidence that he didn’t play a flop strat where his small bets would not bet large on turn/river (ofc it’s not dispositive but it is a data point). We don’t have info on limpers but I would also be surprised if either V or hero were tighter than a utg open in this config, and V certainly could be formulating his strat based on different assumptions on pre flop ranges which might lead to a different flop strat. I agree that the 15% is weird in any case though.

If he’s going small on the flop with strong value then the main hand he’s representing is AA — it is reasonable to bet small with top set because it’s blocking top pair. When he bets large on turn and overbets river we want to call with hands that block top set, so Ax. Kx is an easy fold IMO.

I'd 3b or fold pre. You have three limpers behind with the worst relative position if any of them call and an easily dominated hand that's not even suited. The decision would come down to what villain's raising range from the SB over 3 limpers is.

As played, he could literally have ATC from AA/KK to QT/98/54. Flip a coin.

I ran this sim in PIO with custom ranges. OOP exclusively bets small with AA, and mixes small and large betting with KK (I gave options of 15% and 70% psb for flop).

Here's the OOP flop strat:



If OOP bets small flop he mixes between bombing turn (75%psb) and checking turn at about 50:50:



Here are the preflop ranges I used -- this is my personal idea for an aggro pros SB squeeze range over limps in a loose game (I have SB flatting 22-77 and some suited connectors, but he squeezes T9s and 65s for balance). BB flat is tighter around the edges but wider with pocket pairs 55-77 and misses the top of range (AK,AQs,QQ+) and some polar bluffs (wheel broadways). I don't have BB flatting many suited aces since I think these play fairly marginally from the middle in a multiway pot.

OOP range:



IP range:

By the way my findings seem to be pretty sensitive to the BB flat range. If I add all suited Ax for the IP player then OOP stops using the small 15%pot size (well, he bets small at like 5% frequency and the main value hand in that sliver is AA). He also barely uses the 33% pot size if given the option. Mainly just 70% or check.

But then if I remove AJo/KQo for IP flat (assuming hero 3bets/folds those hands), then OOP starts using both the larger and smaller flop sizes again. So yeah, the strat is very sensitive to the particular ranges.

Anyway, as to Hero’s line, I think Kx is pretty far down in range for Hero. Solver confirms that KQ in particular is indifferent on the turn and mostly folds there. Rest of the KQ folds river. We call two pair plus on river — both AQ and AT are indifferent on river and mix 50:50. Small slivers of worse suited aces also call but mainly fold.