Hi all,

Not a lot of history with V, seems like bad rec, got it in with me on 889ss with open ender sf draw when I had trips once for $900 in a single-raised pot.

He opens utg $20, we are sb with KQhh $75, he thinks and calls. $1,200 eff.

Flop ($155): Ad-5h-4s. We bet $50, he calls.

Turn ($225): 6h bringing in our bdfd. We bet $325, he tanks and jams for $1,100.

Thanks,
DT

Flop bet is too small. These undersized bets are a GTO phenomenon, and although I do like them in some spots, the issue is GTO also uses overbets and most people just started downsizing their bets and never learned the spots to upsize.

But even more importantly, GTO tends to prefer half pot bets in 3b pots.

Whether you call ott is just a math question. Im not sure if bet or check/jam is better, I guess the question is how would you play AK/A5/A4? Id probably check jam.

Flop is an easy give up

No this isn't right. It's board dependent/SPR dependent. That's how bet sizing works.

Ace high boards in 3bp pots are always c-bet small (actually smaller than 1/3 in a lot of instances) since the board is so polarizing. Our very small cbet is designed to put pocket pairs underneath the Ace but over 55 (66-KK) in tough spots OTF.

Pre seems fine, though I might just flat call when we're facing a raise from EP. I try to play 3B or fold pre, especially from OOP, but there are some times to take a lower variance line, and this seems like one.

After we 3B pre, on the flop, I'd start with a check when we're OOP, and go for a delayed c-bet on turn if the flop checks through.

AP, just check turn, call a small bet, or fold to a big bet.

When we're the PFR and OOP, we need to think about how we'd play our entire range. Like, would we bet 1/3 pot with top set here? What about TT? Remember that V opened UTG, which is supposed to mean he has a strong hand.

If we're going to c-bet every flop that seems like it would favor our range, we should go smaller. If we're betting a strong but vulnerable hand, we should go bigger. Here, the ace-high board isn't bad for V when he opened UTG, and our hand isn't strong, so it doesn't make sense to bloat the pot by bluffing with so little equity.

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What stakes is this? Did he open 7x pre or 4x? (kinda important, I would be less inclined to 3bet if this was 1/3).

An unknown UTG's range should be very strong, yes he went broke with a SFD but that's not really enough to say he's a bad reg who's gonna be wide enough for us to 3bet. What's his UTG range? Most random regs are very tight and narrow so if he is I would either flat pre if deep enough to justify it or just fold, I generally don't like getting into wars with strong UTG raisers with KQs when their range should be a lot stronger than ours (but that's just me, of course).

Once he flats pre as played on a dry ace high flop I would still make a cbet which folds out med to big PP's then plan on giving up if he calls. When we turn a FD, I would rather c/c since he's not likely folding at this point.

Is this 2/5 or 5/10 ?

Preflop, you might want to deviate from GTO and just call, unless BB is particularly good/aggressive.
If you raise, you should probably go a tad bigger, like 80-90.

As played, I like the flop c-bet.

I'm onboard also with a 2nd barrel ott, but definitely not that big. A bad rec is hardly ever folding TP or better ott; on the other hand, a 2/3 pot bet is most likely enough to make him fold a middle pair.
As played, we have to fold. Actually, we should fold even to a non shove raise, in case we had bet smaller, imo.

I will never understand why so many people say this “3bet or fold” nonsense. You wouldn’t call $20 to try to outplay or stack a fish for $1200 because why? The book says “3bet or fold” because anyone who smooth calls oop is a weak passive fish so you’re better off folding than calling?

If you'll never understand then no point trying to explain it.

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That’s a good cop out if you can’t answer my question. Just seems like too many people blindly follow what the book says to do without any logic behind it. They wouldn’t be able to explain why they’re doing what they’re doing such as folding a strong hand like KQs to a deep fish’s preflop raise because they didn’t want to 3bet

i wouldnt 3b an UTG raise. given how deep you are i probably call and play postflop. it sounds like hes the type to make large errors when deep anyway so you should play the hand as deep as possible. if you 3b in this position im guessing you end up OOP with a dominated hand in situations like this. i dont think initiative helps when you are OOP against strong ranges. at best its neutral and often hurts.

the best case scenario is that he calls pre with something like AQ/AK (which you block anyway) and folds to a double barrel on a rag board. the question you have to ask yourself is that how often are you wiling to double barrel this hand on a rag board? im usually not willing to because i worry about never getting a pair to fold.

I agree with the others here about flatting preflop being deep vs UTG. I would do more 3betting vs a later open.

Small bet is good on flop. On turn i like check call because I really dont want to get raised off once we turn the flush draw. If I did bet I would not use such a large sizing. We only need to get smaller pocket pairs to fold. His strong Ax isnt folding and something like 88 will probably fold to a smaller bet like 150. But again i prefer check call.

It’s 2/5 he opened $20 which was standard.

The 3bet or fold crowd is just parroting solver outputs because they want to play some pseudo-GTO strategy: They don't realize that

1. Solver solutions still have flatting ranges in the SB

2. Your opponent's aren't good enough to exploit your "capped ranges."

3. Flatting will be higher EV if you suck in 3bet pots (most live players do).

Another thing I noticed is that when people don't understand something they make insanely long posts about a topic when it can be explained in a few sentences.

You said you'll never understand. Have you tried? Like, have you watched any videos or read anything related to the strategy?

It's not nonsense. There's a lot of theory behind it, and it's a strat a lot of pros employ. Even if you wanted ME to explain it, I may not be the best person to try.

First off, I didn't say I'd fold KQs here. I said I usually play raise-or-fold pre, especially OOP, but there are times to flat call, and this seems like one of them. The reasoning is this hand is too strong to fold, but may not be strong enough to 3B a UTG raise.

Rather than try to explain all the theory and logic behind the raise-or-fold strat, let me try to simplify as much as I can. There are three basic ways to play pre-flop:

1. Pure passive - open-limp, over-limp, or cold-call every hand we aren't folding, from every position.

2. Pure aggressive - raise or fold every hand, from every position.

3. Mixed - raise some hands, call some hands, depending on position.

The advantage of the first two is that we're playing our entire range the same way, meaning we can have any hand when we always call, or always raise. The disadvantage of the mixed strategy is that when we raise some hands, and flat call others, we're splitting our range, which effectively caps our range when we flat call.

If we're always raising AA, then our opponents know we never have AA when we flat call. Pure passive players and pure aggressive players are more difficult to play against than players using a mixed strategy, because pure passive and pure aggressive lines are both uncapped.

Our pre-flop strategy dovetails with our post-flop strategy. If we're passive pre, we're probably checking a ton post. If we're aggressive pre, we're probably betting a ton post. When we're mixed pre, we have to play a mixed strategy post, which can be harder to implement.

For example, hero c-bets flop with just two back-door draws, and barrels turn when he picks up the 2nd nut flush draw. He could have check-called or check-raised on either street, and it would have been harder for V to know what to do.

If we're playing pure passive, we can have all the sets, 2P, or a straight here. If we're playing pure aggressive, we can have some sets, some 2P, or a straight here. Either way, it's harder for V to 3B over our barrel when we can show up here with the nuts or 2nd nuts.

But when we're mixed, we'll never have AA here if we just flat call pre, and we probably won't have a straight if we 3B pre. Since we 3B pre, AA is likely to be the best hand we can have here (i.e, the 4th nuts, at best). If V has an A in his hand, we're repping 1 combo of AA for thick value, or maybe two combos of A5s.

The rest of our range is weighted towards bluffs, because the rest of our AX combos aren't as likely to be check-raising here, and we're not going to have many, if any sets or 2P combos without an A when we 3B pre, unless we're 3B'ing pre with 44-66, 65, 64, and 54, which is 3B'ing pretty wide from the SB. We're repping too narrow a range for value when we take this line.

He can put us in the blender with a 3B jam, either for value or as a bluff. He can rep AA or even 87s here, with just one A in his hand. He can't do that if we're folding or flat calling with everything pre, or folding or raising with everything pre. He can only come over the top when we narrow our range with a mixed strategy pre.

This board is better for us than villain, even though we re OOP. Ergo, we can cbet it close to 100%.

Why is it better? Because villain is UTG (though OP didn't specify how many at the table) and he shouldn't have any 55-44 - he should neither be raising them, nor calling 3bs with them- while he should have 4bet his AA-AKs, which we do have. Really, the only Aces Villain should have are AKo, AQs, AJs and some ATs, A5s.

On the turn, we should be overbetting AA-AK, since we still have range and nut advantage. Since we are overbetting we can liberally pair our value with a ton of bluffs. Our second nut flush draw qualifies.

Now, LDO, this is live poker, so villain may very well have 55-44. But if he plays properly, he's only value is really AA. What scares me however is that while he could be shoving a flush draw, it could be the nut flush draw that dominates us or a flush draw with an A top pair. If my math is correct, we need 31% equity to call. Not sure Villain has enough low draws that shove there to make this profitable.

All in all, since this is live, I am inclined to fold.

Calling some hands from SB is OK vs an EP raise. 3bet is fine as well - I very rarely 3bet from the SB as I find the spots a little awkward to play postflop but that's probably just laziness and oversimplification.

Hand is played fine IMO. Whether you call is now player dependent. I'm not expecting UTG to have many sets or two pair (apart from A5/A4, also AA) after preflop, or straights (albeit gutshot + BDFD may call small flop size), but there can be a lot of nut flush draws against which you're drawing dead, and an awful lot of AK. The flop bet probably got rid of the backdoor flush draws. Whether to call depends partly on whether you expect medium pairs to be turned in to bluffs; absent any other info it's probably a fold.

I dont know of any good live players who always or never does something (always 3 bet, never 3bet, etc). I suppose they are playing a “mixed strategy” and are all unpredictable regardless. Their actions are based on the situation and they don’t play off a script of always or never doing something. I also dont know of any good live players who assume another player “always” or “never” does something.

If you always “3bet or fold” your sb, wouldn’t your 3bet range consist of a lot of weaker hands due to card distribution and can be exploited by someone 4betting you more often? Or they can float your 3bet wider and have you play a bloated pot oop.

That’s why live poker sucks donkey balls nowadays cause every GTO nerd thinks there is a correct scripted way to play instead of being creative

It is very possible to play a mixed strategy where you do not always raise specific hands but raise certain hands a higher percentage of the time.

Unless you have a full house the open end sf draw has 9 flush out and 6 straight outs. If you have an 8 has 13 outs as pairs are bad, if you have 9 and sf draw is J10 has 20 outs. Unless V thinks you are an OMC or is very variance adverse this is a call even if we believe you have no bluffs in your range. If we accept your analysis of opponent(bad rec) we do not get to assume his unwillingness to 4bet caps his range and we have already seen V will call with a draw for big bets so we have likely have less fold equity against has weak made hands. As it seems likely you will get paid/stacked(if V has the A high fd) if the flush hits I'd check turn hoping to see my equity cheap or bet $80 to try to set the price. Unless V bluffs too often fold to jam.

V is described as a bad rec. He can have all the sets and 2P here, as well as a straight, and almost any AX combo.

I'm not in the business of trying to bluff a bad rec off TP+ on the turn with just a BDFD at low stakes.

You're over-simplifying. Very few players always or never do anything.

I'm not playing every hand as raise or fold. It's just a baseline strategy. I start from the default choices of raise or fold, then consider reasons why I might deviate from that strategy, and just flat call. Like, I'll flat call more IP, and raise or fold more OOP. I'll flat call more against worse players, and raise more against better players. I'll take stack depths into consideration.

But a mixed strategy requires more thought put into which hands get raised from which positions, in which situations, etc. Your baseline requires having an RFI range for each position, a 3B range for each position, a flat calling range for each position, etc. Assuming you have multiple ranges memorized for each position for your baseline strat, you then have to decide when you'll deviate from those ranges, and why.

If we're playing the SB as raise or fold, there's a range of hands we raise for value, and a range of hands we raise as a bluff. If we raise for value and get re-raised, we can raise again, call, or fold. If we're raising as a bluff and get re-raised, we'll mostly fold, but occasionally we might continue. Playing the SB as raise or fold is actually less exploitable than having a mixed strategy, because we're not splitting our range, which caps us when we flat call.

Against a V described as a bad rec, I'll lean more towards flat calling with KQs in the SB pre, especially when we're this deep, because I don't want to bloat the pot OOP with a speculative hand, against a V who's likely to call too wide pre, and also likely to make mistakes post.

If you're playing live low stakes, having a simplified baseline strat can be advantageous. But the baseline is just what we're MOSTLY doing, not ALWAYS doing.

I really don't like any of it. Preflop, flat is a little better versus the UTG raise, but you could sometimes 3!. Flop bet is too small.

Turn, I don't like the overbet bluff. Then you have to fold to the shove. Just bet normally, 1/2 to 3/4 pot.

Can 3bet or call pf. Depends on the player.

Fold turn.