I think you played the hand well. I would call on the end. Not a snap by any means, but you unblock bluffs and you block AJ. Not sure if you’re check-raising flop with any AJ yourself, but it would be reasonable to check AJ on the river as well to protect your checking range.

Your hand looks kinda like a missed nut flush draw or a flush draw containing a 9.

Vil can have some combo draws that connect with the J9 or the 43 like KTs/QTs/Q8s/KQs/T8s/65s/87s/etc. These hands may all try to bluff river to get you off a better draw or 9x.

Good to see you back in the forum jdr, hope everything is well.

Regarding this hand the main takeaway for me is that 90 out of a 100 liveplayers vastly underbluffs rivers. The question is if your friend is in this category or not. You are the one that can answer that properly. Like what kind of playing dynamic do you two have against eachother? Do you mostly keep pots small? Do you go hard against eachother with preflop wars, raises and bluffs?

Besides that i dont mind the check/raise line on the flop on this texture with described dynamics. Button/in position players is often gonna overstab these kind of boards when its checked to them, betting too wide of a range.Many players almost autobet when its checked to them in these spots,trying to take it down with a flopbet. I kind of like the idea of punishing that leak with a check/raise range, and AA fits into that pretty well at some frequenzy.

Edit: also your hand very much looks like a flushdraw or some sort of combodraw when you take this check/raise flop line. Its pretty likely villain has tons of Jx combos arriving at the river as played putting you on the flushdraw and just calling down in position. So yeah, i am leaning fold on the river unless you guys have a very aggro dynamic between you.

Depends on depth. Here, more bets instead of ckr ... plenty of checks like you did too ofc.

The dynamics between you two would be very helpful…what is your image in his eyes and vice versa?

Also a general question here otf how often do we wanna check raise with range and with AA all combos?

If we assume you are both solid players then this looks more like a call but it’s close. We unblock flush draws and we assume V understands we have overpairs a good amount.

In this situation, I would prefer to raise preflop with AA higher than 15 (3BB) and bump it up to $20-25. OOP, I would prefer to play this with few people in the hand and want to isolate, especially with a fish.

Flop is a pretty dry board so likely you still have a strong hand here. Checking or betting I think is fine, checking is an interesting idea to disguise your overpair and also get a sense from the other player behind what you what they might have. When your friend bets, I’m thinking that they might have a J pair of some kind, and potentially a flush draw (e.g., K10s), especially since you block none of the spades. A 4 or 3 pair I would assume would check back a good part of the time.

On the turn, the 9 now introduces some straight draws introduced like Q10s, etc., which is why I would opt to bet bigger on preflop to narrow down the range of hands a bit more, since you’re ahead of a lot of hands that would call UTG sizeable raises (e.g., QQ, KK). I think betting here makes sense to charge for the draws but you might want to bet a little bit bigger here. When your friend calls, I still think they might have top pair, flush + combo draws.

The pairing of the board with J is not great at the river, and the jam is also quite polarizing. On one hand, two J on the board makes it less likely that they have a jack, and can be bluffing a bunch of their missed draws on the river. Sometimes in lower stakes games I mostly think aggressive river players are rarely bluffs, but given your friend is a good player, they might balance the river with a few more bluffs than the average player. It’s a bit of a lineball decision here, and without a great read, I would probably sigh fold. You’re probably losing to QJo, KJo, J10, J8s, J7s, and just ahead of 54s, 65s, 87s, 98s, 109s, 108s, Q10.

I think you can/should overbet turn. Call river without As seems pretty std.

Lots of people posting about how to play vs. random terrible 2-5 players, which is fine I guess but not going to be helpful here.

So what do you think his flop betting range is and what % of it is folding to the check raise?

I’m absolutely range checking river AP. I might have some AJ, in particular ones containing BDFD, but even those mostly just bet flop since check raise and bet turn is wicked strong. So this card is pretty bad (not like Ts level bad, but bad).

The question is how often does villain pull trigger with like As5s, since it blocks folds and he knows it. But he also can freely use this size with any value hand.

For the record, I 3x as a default and don’t vary my sizes based on hand strength. I’d even be open to minraising EP, but that probably misses too much value from call happy live players.

I think his range is a little more narrow than the one you ascribe, but that goes for value and bluffs. So I’m with you on it being quite the “meh” decision.

Overbet seems kind of big on turn, no? I guess turn is fairly blank and we can bet big as a result, but i would already assume 2/3rds is pretty chunky for OOP.

I’d say our dynamic is absolute steroids against one another. Moreso in limit hold em, but we’ve done ridiculous stuff like a hand where I called him down with rivered 4th pair in a spot where he raise / 4 bet turn on like K63-9 with two clubs and I binked a 4 on the end, called, and won against JcTc. Or the time he bluff raised river in a 25 bet Pot and I called with a worse hand. He’s not shy to pull the trigger and I’m not shy to show it down.

I think it’s mandatory to have a check raise range on flop, and aces no club makes a lot of sense. And it can’t just be top set or a flush draw, else we become way too easy to play and can get called down comfortably by a Jack. After that, I think the game theory solution on river is probably close to 100% call, but even strong players aren’t robots and may instinctively not bluff hands that they don’t feel comfortable bluffing (like missed high spade draws).

It’s been awhile since we’ve played together, but the general dynamic has always been that I’m tight and tend to play big pots with big hands, and he’s much more speculative. Though in hand reviews we’ve had recently, I’ve actually argued that he’s been playing too tight in zoom games (not by much, but missing what I’d consider snap opens like K6s HJ), but I know he’s far more willing to take “creative liberties” against fishy live players than I am (I’d rather play solid ranges and just be aggressive with confidence).

The fact that villain will know I’ve a lot of marginal showdown in my range definitely
Informs that he will go for all you can eat with a Jack. Question is if he will often enough with bricked spades or 65s (if 65s is even in range).

Fair, though I’d argue with SPR and relative dryness of flop, we can have a x/r range that gets all of the money in by the river. We realistically only lose to sets on the flop, so he will have to do a lot of defending on flop, which should keep a decently wide range for him on future streets.

I dont think he will go for it often enough in a livesetting like this. Of course i dont know this guy, i just know your description off him. But its something to be said about the vast population underbluffing by a big margin in livegames, and especially with a river shove like this. Its just a pattern ive seen in all my years playing live cash, and its pretty consistent in every location- casino or homegame. Even players that bluff appropiately in online games behind their computer, have alot different frequenzies in most livegames. Its just harder by nature to put all your money in as a bluff in a livegame sitting face to face with your opponents- compared to clicking buttons in your boxershorts alone at home.

90% bet is pretty terrible IMO. This is GTO Wizard’s solution for LJ raise to 2 and BTN call on 100 bb. We check around 77%.

I’m hard pressed to believe we reduce our checks to 10% 3 ways for roughly the same SPR by adjusting myself to UTG 9 handed.

I’m not sure where this idea that “good players” fold out Jx by the turn is. What percentage of the time are they folding, and isn’t this quite easily exploited by check raising flush draws with reckless abandon? How is it a “good” play to fold way beyond MDF against opponents who are equipped to exploit this?

Yeah I can buy that. Also, solid players have been having blockers pounded into their head for years. If they hold a big spade, that makes it less likely that I’m going to fold. Which makes them reluctant to run it.

One can argue that we should be over folding here. OTOH I’m near top of range.

Idk if he’s finding enough bluffs here, and I’m not even sure what bluffs GTO finds in this spot. I guess it uses a mix of flush draws, 65s, and A5/A2 type hands? I guess GTO would prefer to use the 65s/A5/A2 hands without a flush draw, but I’m not sure if that’s enough combos.

Even if he’s underbluffing you can still have a profitable call with AA because you block a ton of value. I assume he’s flatting AJo on the BTN, with the fish in the hand. While he should be folding KJo. Blocking the offsuit Jx is great for you. If he’s not VPIPing offsuit AJ, your blockers aren’t as good.

The main bluffs are 65s without a spade, for obvious reasons. From there, the baby flush draws, so 65ss, 76ss, 87ss, T8ss, QTss. It doesn’t like bluffing AsXs or KsXs too much, but obviously the less of the above we have, the more it just runs it with those guys.

I’d rather block both AJs combos of course. But blocking one is still nice. One combo of removal in narrow range situations is important.

x/r flop and then 2/3 turn is less than pot, pot. And this is a major blank, the only cards that don't make a straight or two pair with a J are 8 and 9. J9s more likely than J8s, but still it doesn't get much better.

Pretty sure we want to imply stacks are in play on river, even if we don't shove all of them.

On the same token, if I’m raising too big on flop, then he starts getting to fold more often, which means I’m forced to value bet less. Also stacks are in play as played, as evidenced by the fact that villain had a pot sized bet behind to jam when the river card came bad for me.

Theory wise I think this is a call, just because of potentially blocking a few extra combos of AJo. I don’t think V needs to bluff Axss on the river to have enough bluffs so I don’t think it’s that important not to have the As. On the other hand, the main way that V would be overbluffing here is by bluffing all Axss (and worse), so it’s probably less likely he’s overbluffing if we have the As and therefore a little worse of a call. Also where this ranks mdf wise depends how much Jx you get to the river with, but I’m assuming it’s not so much that you can defend enough with just Jx.

Turn sizing seems fine, I guess you could go a bit bigger. Spr seems kinda weird to over bet the turn but I haven’t given it much thought and it does put a bunch of his range in a weird spot.

Thank you for the feedback. You discuss the issue well, my range is mostly consisting of bluffcatchers in this situation.

Thanks, reading the last handful of posts a bit more carefully I think I basically agree with how you are thinking about the spot. I think it will be obvious to a good player on this river that 1) Axss is going to be one of the worst bluff candidates (not to say it can’t be bluffed) and 2) everything else Ahi or worse is a ~mandatory jam, so whether V is overbluffing will come down to how OOL he got on earlier streets + Axss bluffs. My rough estimate of Vs value here is 99, 44, 33, AJ, KJs/QJs/JTs/J9s, so like 25 unweighted combos (ignoring removal from your AA), and then there are like 12-14 combos of non Axss/non 9x flush draws and oesds ott, which works out pretty well ratio wise. If you drop AJo bc of pre you probably need to drop a couple of the worst flush draws too, so it doesn’t move the needle that much. If you start assuming he peels turn with pure gutters (A2dd, etc) or bluffs river with any pairs, then it very quickly becomes a +ev call with ~any pair. Having typed this all out I’m convincing myself it’s a decent spot to call pretty wide bc it’s pretty hard for him to underbluff (and it wouldn’t be by much), whereas it’s much easier for him to over bluff (and by more than he would underbluff) so the payoff is skewed in our favor even if he is playing reasonably most of the time.

He also might be folding his weakest jacks on the turn, so dropping two combos of JTs is not trivial for this calculation.

its hard for me to find a bluff he could be using here. I dont think many call a flop c/r with QTss and bdsd potential and then call turn thinking I'll bluff all in if I miss river. On the flop once he calls he no longer has trash in his range and calling the turn vs raising you is standard because you bet big. I think he would check behind with TT, 99 is a boat, he probably folds 55,66 on the turn. He might bet a missed fd or a hand like 34 that is counterfeit and 45 but its pretty advanced and aggressive to bluff the river thinking people are going to overfold rivers. I think he has a J or he flopped a set, there are a lot of them in his pre flop calling range.

I read some other posts, it sounds like you two have history so in that case I have no clue. If it were my buddy I don't think he's bluffing a lot here especially if he thinks I will find a call. What I first posted is what I'd do against the 1/3 guys down at the Cardhouse.