I'll add a few thoughts. (Great conversation so far, I'm glad I posted this one.)

-Villain would definitely limp-call all medium suited connectors, up to and including QJ.

-The min-raise matters a lot in my analysis, since my general read of the guy is that he takes smart betting lines. Min-raising with a non-nut flush just seems like an insane RIO mistake to me. If he raises to $45/50, I'd weight his hand towards sets and made flushes -- hands that want to get money in now and want to set up to bomb safe turn cards. Raising to $30 seems a lot more like top pair/two pair/pair+flush draw/air -- hands that think I'll just fold to any pressure and don't want to commit to a big pot.

I could be totally wrong about that read. I don't think it's entirely player-specific though, so I'm curious what everyone else thinks. Some 1/2NL fish will only raise with a nutted hand, and will only min raise. This guy doesn't fit that description. So what should we think about the bet-sizing, knowing that he can't have the nuts already?

I don't mind cbetting this board, as the villain does not have to have an Ace. Checking here isn't bad, but when he min raises, we have to range him a lot towards Aces. We are definitely behind in the hand.

What Aces are going to raise in this spot? I think Ax Qd, Ax Jd. He can have flushes like QJdd and do the same. If we raise, do we really think we are going to get this player to fold his A? What is our bet size, and how big are we firing the turn, because we will have to follow through at least one subsequent street especially when a non diamond, non-K bricks?

We have immediate odds to call and we have some SDV. Flat the min bet, evaluate the turn. If the diamond hits, check raise the turn value bet the river.

I agree the min-raise is "interesting", meaning that it probably has some thinking behind it more complex than "I haz good hand1!!1". I think figuring out that you don't slow play small flushes is something that happens reasonably early in one's poker education so this guy has likely figured that out.

Possibilities, roughly in order of my estimated likelihood.

1. let's raise to find out where we're at
2. let's raise to get a free card
3. I haz good hand!11!
4. let's raise to keep the final pot smaller by freezing the turn ('cause I know otherwise you're going to double bang this, like, always )
5. dagnabbit, I clicked the wrong button
6. dude, I am so out-leveling you by making this obviously not-a-flush raise with a flush and I'm going to drop my hugelargebig hammer on you when you reraise. (mwahahaha.)

I think 1, 2, 4, and 5 merit the reraise. 3 screws us if we reraise. 6 should result in getting a seat change. To a different table. Perhaps casino.

Part of my line and thinking, as can be seen from my original post, is putting him squarely on AX or AxD type of hand, that I would probably be ok stacking off against because I just don't think he ever plays flushes or two pair this way, raising us to give us absurdly good pot odds, I think he's charging us to draw to a diamond/2 pair or raising to find out where he is.

Our strong aces here should be ahead of him, and those are in our range, I honestly don't know why everyone is so sure he doesn't fold to raises, it puts him in an incredibly awful spot with those hands to call or raise, as there are almost no cards he can be all that happy to see with any ace.

Of course that's knowing we are already at cbet minraise, there is definitely some merit to check calling flop to reduce variance and control the pot more. I am always cbetting here, and as a bonus I do think we also get some action from pair hands with diamonds that are in his range and are huge dogs to us.

e: I'm really not worried about a bunch of next level bets at small stakes. If the goal of a minraise without the nuts was to get us to spazz out and 3 bet so he could 4 bet and make us fold/call with worse, whatever I'm ok with that.

Dave, one issue I'm having is how to react to a c-bet I wouldn't have made.

Help me understand why we would c-bet?

It's not really for value... it's not really as a bluff - we don't expect him to fold better to a flop bet. It's weird that we got raised here, but a lot of the time, he's just folding (we had the best hand by far) or calling (we are likely behind). If he raises bigger, we might be in big trouble. Sometimes he calls and he's losing (e.g. QdXx), but that's more rare and like I said in my first post, I don't see the need to start targeting those hands on the flop.

So I'm not seeing the purpose of a c-bet, and without a reason for a c-bet, I don't know how to think about responding to the raise other than calling and kind of putting us in a very similar spot (now just with more narrow stacks and facing a stronger villain range) than if we had just c/c.

If you can explain the purpose of a c-bet, you might be better able to explain how you respond to a raise.

Good question, Will. I've been going back-and-forth on it, actually. The short answer (which everyone is going to scold me for... possibly for good reason) is "balance." I think that's a little less absurd than it sounds, though.

The table dynamics, generally, were

(1) I was nearly the only person raising preflop. I raised to iso limpers, I raised in position, I raised with most pocket pairs, I raised any two broadway cards, I raised most suited connectors.
(2) I generally was getting between 0 and 2 callers. I then cbet most semi-favorable boards for 1/2-to-2/3rds pot. If they call and I have no hand, no draw, I just shut it down. If they call and I have top pair or better, I'll usually bet the turn (I use physical tells to make that decision). If they call on a drawy board, I'll sometimes fire a second barrel on the turn.
(3) What that means is, generally speaking, my meaningful bets don't occur until the turn. Thoughtful opponents ought to pick up that I actually play a tag style by the time we arrive at the turn card. Less thoughtful opponents will just get frustrated that their brilliant slowplay of TPTK against the jerk-who's-always-betting didn't get paid off. It means that I'm rarely playing for stacks, but when I'm betting the turn, it's usually against an annoyed villain who is stuck calling $45-65 on the turn and $80-120 on the river with little idea where they're at in the hand.

(I'll note that this is a hugely exploitable strategy on my part. If they start 3-betting me preflop, raising the flop, or donking the turn, then the wheels come off the wagon pretty quickly. But it's a fantastic strategy if your opponents choose not to exploit it.)

I find this style works well, particularly for weekday daytime games. I can steal a ridiculous amount of pots against fit-or-fold opponents who like to see a flop, but are gunshy without TPGK or better. (being results-oriented for a moment, I've had tables like this during my last two sessions, and both resulted in 500bb wins without many big pots, coinflips, or coolers. If my villains refuse to adjust, I'm just printing money with this strategy.)*

So in the context of that strategy, I c-bet a flop like this for two reasons:
(a) I'm cbetting most heads-up flops anyway, whether I have top pair, two pair, a flush, or air. If I had 97 clubs, I would also bet this flop at least 50% of the time. Villains are almost never raising me without nutted hands anyway, so this is hugely profitable.
(b) If he calls, I've built a bigger pot for the turn and river. If I check this flop and he checks behind, and a diamond comes on the turn, it's going to be difficult to get much action from him. Betting the flop can get calls from lower diamonds (particularly pocket pairs with a lower diamond draw) that are putting me on an ace. I won't necessarily be able to play for stacks, but I should be to get at least one more street of value if he calls and the diamond comes in.

Regarding (b), I think the key point is that this is a table of villains who are almost never bluffing. Several of them are serial slowplayers as well. So if I want money to go into the pot, I have to handle that myself.

At a table with smarter/trickier opponents, I think check/calling the flop is clearly superior.




*Incidentally, this is also why I rarely end up posting hand histories in the forum. Most of my profit is coming from completely standard plays, and most of the time I get raised, the obvious answer is to fold. If the table is good, I don't generally play many complicated or noteworthy hands...

On a related note: *if* I reraise here, it'll be with the intention of folding to a jam.

That might seem like a terrible waste -- I'd be folding the nut flush draw after giving up profitable drawing odds. But I think he's only ever jamming with made flushes and sets (possibly not even sets). Against a made flush, I have 7 outs. Against a set, I have 9 outs but have to fade a board pair. He's never jamming as a semi-bluff without the king of diamonds, so my three-bet would be a bet-fold.

take with salt, haven't played in a while. I usually have a normal raise size of 15-25 usually 20-25(optimal?idk). Say if I open or steal to 5x people will could be like, " i have jj but im folding to this a hih flop." So an even better reason for using the steal* size is that there is already such variance in your sizing already so mixing it up seems to play to your strengths. If you didnt it may be pretty exploitable imo. Also id make sure that you are balancing your steal and open sizes if you've decided to play this way. It is very possible to be transparent in our steal sizes but not in our opens. Also as a side note and off topic I think the rec players liked to play follow the leader when playing vs my open raise sizes. Like a reccy will put in my bet plus 100 togo

I understand balance otf, but in a nutshell its just a terrible board. we loose more w kk and aa than w unpaired hands even if we pair to the board. Not much is calling our cbet that doesnt beat us. You say in op he could have qjdd, which we are drawing dead to. If we hit ott is the money going in? likely.. Is he the type that just has to outplay you on this flop? why(pride/impulsive? possibly values table image)? Does he want to increase his winrate in the future by practicing taking down these kind of perfect? flops? Or is he neither.

As a competent tag he's going to have to call the lag all the way down.. And he may not even have to put in too many chips because are we really betting this board 3 streets? What does he think?

Also I can see reason for outplaying our v and 3! the guy, you mention his 2bet size. I just see him raising here w his made hands(amongst others) because he may have the thought that he's not getting much $ from you anyway in the hand and on the turn forget about it. idk what the math is, but I say we can call the 2bet, bink turn and hope to get some money in. I mean I like the 3! idea, we are playing lag and there are many hands that can call bs on this board. but also think about what he chooses to flat on this board vs us. How many barrels are we really firing off on this board? If he's getting any money out of this hand it needs to happen now.. sorry to get away from the math, hope one of these stanzas made sense

Edit: also if youve found something that works for you playing lag i say stick with it. We know how hard it is to journy into the abyss

universal, it looks to me like you're missing that I have the K of diamonds in this hand.

Without the Kd, I'd agree with you. I'll bet 15 sometimes just as an outright c-bet steal, but if he calls I'm 100% done with the hand.

With the Kd, it's much more complicated. I have the nut flush draw, so I'm not drawing dead to anything. I also know that he can't be raising on the come with the nut flush draw, since it's in my hand.

You know I wouldn't c-bet the OP hand. That said, without the Kd, c-betting is actually even worse. Then you're truly in a classic WA/WB situation where a c-bet won't get value from worse, it won't get better to fold, and if you're behind, you generally have 2 outs, etc. A84r with KK is just textbook WA/WB, and c-betting really won't make any sense. KdKx on A84ddd isn't as literally WA/WB because you have the nut draw, but it has similar issues.

Results:

I decided to 3-bet to $80. That's a small enough 3! to let me fold the hand if he jams. But it also ought to fold all of his AXnodiamond hands. I'm trying to AxKd with this semibluff reraise. He hasn't seen me show down any bluffs, and he hasn't seen me 3-bet postflop, so I think he might even decide to protect his stack and fold a hand like AxJd here.

Villain doesn't seem to like this reraise. But he nonetheless calls. It doesn't feel like he's calling to trap, so I think I might barrel non-diamond, non-board-pairing turn cards.

The rest of the hand turned uneventful from there, though. Turn card was one of the worst in the deck: the 8 of spades. This is bad for my actual hand, and bad for the hand that I'm repping. I check the turn, and he checks behind. River is the 7 of clubs. I check, he bets $100, I tank for a bit and fold.

A rec player at the table then started loudly complaining that he folded a flush preflop. Villain nonchalantly replied that he boated on the turn. I 100% believe him. So he either had 44 for the flopped set or he had a8 for the flopped two pair.

...Thinking through the replies, I like Will's check/call the flop line IF my table includes players who will bet at weakness/look me up light. Against a table that is this passive though, I still feel like my metagame needs to feature a ton of preflop raises and a ton of flop bets whether I have a hand or not.

I would check with KK on an A84r board. A84ddd with no nut redraw is different, I think, because I'd like them to give up their equity with small diamonds and with middle pair/bottom pair no diamonds.

I wouldn't cbet that board if I thought my opponent would float me -- that would just be building a pot that I have no chance of winning. But if my opponent is playing fit-or-fold, then betting $15 to win $20 shows an immediate, small profit.

I think if you're bluffing on this flop, then you're bluffing far too much. You're basically bluffing with a 100% frequency at LLSNL where people don't tend to fold.

The turn is a blank, so if you're committed to bluffing, on every hand, that was your chance to win this pot. You were pretending you had a flush. Why is a blank a bad card for made flushes?

In general, I think you should be able to justify your betting as bluff or value. You should be able to do it in a sentence or two.

In this forum, TAG is almost a synonym for pointless betting.

Um... What?

-The table was full of people who fold WAY too much postflop. That's not extraordinary in a weekday daytime game, either.

-the turn paired the board. How is that a blank???

-I wasn't playing a Tag style, so I have no idea what you mean by that last sentence.

-my one-sentence explanation for everything I do at the card table is "I try to create difficult decisions for my opponents while avoiding difficult decisions for myself." Applying that explanation in-game is usually more complicated than a sentence.

I like the way the hand was played, unfortunate turn card, as there's really no hand we can rep that makes us happy to see that other than AA. Diamonds, Kings, and I think a reasonable ability to bluff on Q and maybe J turns, but once the board pairs after our 3 bet was called on flop, we have to shut it down. Had we hit the flush on the river, you can call off 100-150 on the river if the turn checked through.

The goal with a 3 bet wasn't to get two pair, especially top two, to fold, it was to fold aces with marginal flush draws or stronger aces without them.

I fail to see how the 8 is a bad card for us - A4 gets counterfeited and A2-A7 have kicker issues. Betting the turn will get a majority of his aces to fold.

Unfortunately you ran into (possibly) the top of his range - he has two combos of suited A8 in his range (more obv if he limp/calls unsuited A's) and three sets of 4's. He's way more skewed towards weaker aces we can barrel him off of.

FWIW, I'm not normally bluffing people off top pair of aces in most spots. However, in this spot I think it's +EV if we do. When we check the turn, we leave ourselves in a spot where we have to bink and we don't know if our outs are clean.

I think we can eliminate virtually all weak aces once he's called the 3-bet. It isn't an aggressive postflop table, so if he raised with a6 and got reraised, I think he'd instamuck.

So the 8 is a good card against his a4 combos, but i think the rest of his range is 44, a8, and Axjd, Axqd, maybe Ax10d. It's also possible he has a small flush. I'd be very surprised by that line, but it's not impossible.

I think I'd have to barrel HARD to get him to fold those bigger aces.

You're right, I didn't think it all the way through. Once he calls the 3-bet, we need to shut it down unless we have a strong read a turn barrel will get through.