Local Casino in Germany, 1-2 €; 200 max buy-in

Table is pretty limpy and most players are fit/fold on the flop. Saw one all in situation where both players flopped trips. Typical preflop raise to 8, even over multiple limpers.

Villain is about 30 y/o and probably a regular. One dealer who was off duty came along and talked to him for a minute. Pretty active player but nothing crazy. Looks confident and quite smart. Raises pre a decent amount. Have seen him open-limping and calling limps from EP though. Effective stack with 200. HJ.

Hero, around 40, quiet. Sat down three orbits ago, has played about 3 hands so far. Nothing out of the ordinary. Since I asked a few questions in the beginning, it's clear to anyone who cares it's my first time here. Bought in for 200 and have around 250 now. CO.

Folds to V who raises to 8. Hero 3bets to 26. Button and Blinds fold.

Flop (55) A T 8 r

V is about to bet but checks. H checks behind.

Turn is a low card and completing the rainbow.

V bets 30
H folds

Bet flop

Bet flop - in order to achieve what?

You cant check fold on the turn with JJ QQ and KK in this spot. It makes your game way too exploitable.

Call turn

Betting flop can end the hand now or get you to the river without calling a bet. There aren't many worse hands that call when you have JJ outside of maybe KQs or a rarer Tx, but your range would usually benefit from a cbet here and getting him to ck-f whatever equity he has here is a nice result.

Pay no attention to the pump fake bet, and no, don't call turn against a fit-fold player, he isn't exploiting you, just betting his hand. If he is capable of betting turn with worse hands than JJ then you have a number of +EV ways to play your range and will have little trouble showing down the best hand.

Zionized, I can't check fold turn with any hand here because I have position.

Amanaplan, thanks for elaborating. I can see that a cbet can give me a free river card but what is the plan if he bets into us then? Do you fold to any reasonable river bet? And honestly I do not understand how my range benefits from c-betting flop here. What I do by betting is effectively widening my c-betting range.

You c-bet this flop because it is consistent with your pre-flop 3-bet. It's a crappy flop for JJ but how do you play AK on this flop?

Sometimes capitalizing on dead money and folding out equity is good enough when we don't really have merit in value betting or bluffing.

Folding out an inferior hand like 99 or KQ is not always bad. Once you check flop you are more likely to be bluffed by these holdings than get later street value from them anyway on this board.

If your c-bet is called or raised you lose a bet and shut down.

can we back up for a minuute

how does he usually respond to 3bets? Does he usually flat? does he fold usually?

This is a 3bet pot and he flatted us pre. Your range should be strong here, and his range should consist of med to large PP's, and "maybe" AK/AQs.

if he calls a cbet we can pretty much assume (especially if this is one of the fit or fold players) that he has an ace.

Well if a guy ck-c flop on Axx in a 3b pot and then leads a brick riv, and you have JJ, then it's pretty safe to assume youre beat and can comfortably fold unimp and he makes the stone minimum. As far as benefits go, frequently cbetting your entire 3b range is printing money against a fit fold player - the strongest hands can immediately start getting value, the middling hands can realize equity more often/play well later in the hand, the air/low equity hands can capitalize on FE/realize equity sometimes/play well later in the hand.

When you check, you're generally only going to be able to continue with the strongest hands now facing a bet.

@Amanaplan how do you approach it for OOP then? x/f? x/c? still checking?

Hero sat down 3 orbits ago. How is he supposed to know how villain responds to 3 bets?

Sometimes check the flop sometimes bet it. Always call the turn though and evaluate the river. If you always just Check fold JJ QQ KK when an overcard hits the board you're playing scared and getting exploited.

I probably would have to have 3b ftb if oop, so Axx Kxx flops would usually be a one and done affair against fit folders/stations/passives in this game considering the amped up FE I should have from this spot. You're just not being exploited here vs these types so it's pretty routine.

Against different player types, bet-barreling or checking flop or some mix might be more beneficial, but keeping it super simple at 1-2 is the way to go.

I agree that I cannot check the flop behind always. I would have bet a K-high or Q-high flop anyways and betting here makes use of the momentum of our 3-bet.

Playbig, I guess your range for V is spot on but would definitely add a few Axs since the pot was unopened and maybe he was just not in the right mood to fold Axs hands. Could add some suited broadways too, same argument. But as Redskins pointed out correctly, I don't have enough info. In general people tend to call to many 3-bets and that is why we can 3bet JJ in the first place.

Amanaplan, thanks again for clarification.

Raise/fold turn to $75-$90.

Print money.

I'm telling you this:
If you're worried of over-cards on the flop when you have JJ then play for set-value and don't raise preflop. Why 3bet pre and cut your implied odds?

Just call a reasonable 2bet and see the flop.

Odds you'll see an over-card on the flop when you hold a pair
KK 23%
QQ 43%
JJ 59%
TT 71%
99 81%
88 88%
77 93%

1) Wat?

see below

2) Wat?

You say the only hands that are calling are the combos with good equity, yet you want to bet and make him fold his equity? You can't have it both ways. Those combos are calling a bet. V's c/f range has almost no equity against JJ on this flop. DUCY?

3) Where did H call V fit or fold? I may have missed this. Obv KK and QQ are better candidates for a call, but I see nothing wrong with peeling a river with JJ and folding to a river bet.

4) Like wat?

Only said there are fewer worse hands that can call (less J9s+,QJs,KJs available to V) with JJ specifically, but that doesn't mean EV improves by checking back.

OP said the table/gameflow was very fit/fold so I extended that to the player., but it's more about the fact he isn't described as aggro that matters most.

If Vs range is trash then cbetting, d-cbetting, ck/stationing down JJ, will all have varying degrees of profitability.

Check flop, peel turn. Probably fold river. Definitely fold on a K or Q. Because V shouldn't have many bluffs that'll r/c preflop and bet two streets. I rarely see low stakes players turn hands into bluffs even when they are probably never good so I would expect the only worse hands to take that line would be complete airballs (v probably checks river with tx/8x)

I do not like betting flop. You cannot fold a better hand, and you probably aren't getting value from worse. You can check some Ax here to protect your checking range instead (and you should have far more Ax combos than the 18 kk-jj)

I would go a tad large pre to prevent set mining odds and to ensure we get the hand heads up and don't get callers from the blinds. Anywhere from 30-35. It's not a disaster if the hand goes 3 ways in position, but it will make JJ even that much more difficult to play if you don't flop a set.

As played, I think the hand is played fine.

This is 1-2, a lead from a V is much more weighted to the top of their range than what would be considered GTO.

What hands could V have here that call a 3bet OOP and are behind after leading the turn? 99 and KQ are the only two. We don't have a read that V will raise his lowly pocket pairs of 77 and below at this table, and our population read against random 1-2 regs is that we can heavily discount those holdings.

We also don't have a read that V is even capable of stabbing at pots, so we can probably discount combos like 99 and KQ by 50%.

Additionally, lets list all of the combos that are ahead of us right now. I would say all Ax suited, TT, 88, KK, QQ, and the one combo of AA.

I think we're wayyy behind our opponents range in these kind of spots at 1-2. Calling the turn only to fold the river is a leak.

Only way I'm calling here is against a known aggro where I plan to station him down. That, or if I'm in a very deep game and I find that calling with second pair (for a reasonable price) will be helpful for meta-game purposes where I will prevent any aggressive V's from attempting turn and river bluffs against me for the remainder of the session or in future sessions.

I meant checking the flop behind and then folding to 1 bet on the turn.

If you check behind here you HAVE to call on the turn against unknown because bad players will tend to spew money with a 10.

If you lead and you get called you can safely assume that the person has an ace if they lead turn as said previously

There's two ways you can play JJ. You can either play it as a big pair or a small pair. In this case, you played it as a big pair. The mistake a lot of people make is once they decide to play JJ one way, they change their mind. Given that anyone paying attention has labelled you as a nit, I think the 3bet is fine. You should get a lot of folds pf. In this case, you didn't.

The problem on the flop is that he should have your range pretty narrow, something like QQ+, AK. A check is going to be read as QQ+. He might be worried about a set of aces, but there's only one combo of that if he has AK. A bet is going to be read as AK (the hand every LLSNL player puts you on pf if you raise). You can get his QQ and KK to fold, which is a big win. Therefore, betting is better.

Once you check, the hand is basically over. Now you're playing JJ as a small pair and you missed your set. Time to fold.

In the future, play JJ either big or small. Just stay consistent in the hand.

Flop check is fine, but call the 1/2 PSB on the turn. An active V may go for a steal assuming you'll c/f KK- after checking back the flop.

Bluff cbet is fine too, but you're done when villain c/c.

Sounds like you made a read on him. Villan looking down at his chips and then checking is one of the most common tells in poker, it is certainly likely he has Ax.

There is a lot of bad advice in this thread.

-People want you to represent AK, when Villan likely wont fold Ax with this SPR, so by representing AK, youre getting called by everything that beats you and getting folds by everything that doesnt.

-folding to a single bet is exploitable, but exploitable doenst matter at low stakes, especially when you dont necessarily fold every time. As such, if you have a read that he is likely to have Ax, a fold is ok.

-people are saying being afraid of overs with JJ is poor play is ignoring the fact that V has wayyyy more Ax in his range than Kx or Qx. The three overs should not be viewed equally, and the math provided is just silly misunderstanding of board texture differences.

JJ on an A high flop is a marginal situation at best, and adding the read in I think the fold is fine. I think its very unlikely V is completely biuffing given the read, but he could have KQ, QJ, Tx, 8x, and may well shut down or bet small on the river, so I marginally like calling down better, but I think folding is fine.