Next action:

Effective stacks: $775

MP limps
Hero (BTN) raises QT to $25
V (SB) 3! to $70
BB folds
MP folds
Hero calls $70

Pot: $145

Flop: 3 2 3

V thinks for a few seconds and bets $75
* Hero relives the painful memory of Hand 2 in his head and vows not to spew *
Hero thinks for 10-15 seconds and calls $75

The gist of my thought process is outlined in the tree-path diagram, but by my estimate we have 10 diamonds, 11 clubs, and 3 Q's (24/47 or >50% of the deck) which will give us something to work with, either equity or bluff outs, and we are getting 3:1 on the call with $625 still behind to maneuver. I'm excluding the T's because I don't think it helps us much. We probably need to pair at least a Q to have some showdown value.

Pot: $295

Turn: 5

V thinks for 20 seconds and bets $200
Hero?

Now I think we can range V pretty accurately on big overpairs, though the sizing seems like he is afraid of flush draws and overcard draws, so I'm thinking he may be KK at best and more likely QQ-TT.

Best card in the deck still a terrible spot.

We made a mistake somewhere

Guess sighcall sucks some diamonds gonna give him a boat or kill action. Same goes for clubs

Put ourselves in a clusterfk of a spot against a good player. This is not how you make money playing poker. Suppose it's kinda interesting though

His range has to be wider than TT+. You called his 3! because you thought his range might be fairly wide. All he has done is c-bet and then double-barreled on a board that looks like it definately missed your range. You can't assume these two bets mean that he has shed all but the top of his range. And you can't fold after picking up the flush draw to go with your club bluffing outs and possible pair outs.

We've misplayed every decision since the initial raise to $25--that was the only thing we did right.

It sucks, because we called the flop hoping for this card, but he's playing his hand perfectly, he has priced us out, and we have to fold. Shipping is second best, calling is just dumb.

This is playing out as an object lesson in why we should have 4 bet or folded. It would have cost us $25 more than the hand has cost us thus far to 4 bet, and we would have made an aggro move that had FE while his range was at its widest.

If we ship he is never folding an overpair, right? So we're just burning money.
Fold, nit it up, and play a big pot against this guy with a real hand and the initiative (unless we have a monster)

Shipping gets him off most of the air that he is either bluffing with or thinly value betting. That's it. That's why I think shipping is worse than just folding (but better than calling).

I dunno guys. V has 3-bet oop BTN vs SB 3/3 times. And we've had a ton of blockers.

In Hand 1, with AQo, we blocked 20% of TT+, as well as strong Ax.

In Hand 2, we stuck around, and V built a huge pot and got all in. No showdown.

Now in Hand 3, with QTs, we again block 20% of TT+. And again, V is cramming chips in the middle.

Maybe it's just V's lucky day (and about to get luckier), but I shove.

I do think it's important to shove instead of call because we can max our fold equity against all kinds of hands. No, I don't think V will fold an overpair (though never say never here), but he will fold hands that beat us (Ax, Kx, some smaller non-premium pairs).

OP, I don't know how you're narrowing V's range to TT-QQ. I mean... we block QQ and TT.

You're saying you think that JJ is 50% of his range. That's quite the soul read.

If we fold more than 40% of our hands here then Villain shows an automatic profit by betting his entire range, about which we have zero information, unless we think he's just luckily drawn 3 TAG quality SB raising hands in such a short amount of time. That's why I much prefer calling or raising to folding.

If we are going to fold to this turn bet, we never should have called the flop, and moving backwards, this means we shouldn't have called the PF 3!. And if we were not prepared to raise-call with this hand PF we should just have limped, since this hand is too good to waste on a bet-fold.

Yes, but most of his air hands still have equity against us...and we also have very good chances of getting him off of a K or weak A

I mean, using Stove rankings, top 5% hands are 88+, AJs+, KQs, AKo.

I think a lot of posters think V could be even tighter than that pre-flop, but let's assume that range here.

The odds of getting a top 5% hand in a certain specific situation 3 times in a row are 0.05 * 0.05 * 0.05 = 1 out of 8,000. It's 20x easier to flop quads with a pocket pair. And we block QT, so "top 5%" actually occurs in nature a bit < 5%.

Is the 1 out of 8,000 stat super scientific? Definitely not.

Is poker a game of statistical improbabilities? No doubt.

Do we know villain is light pre-flop? We do not.

Am I ready to put V to the test by shoving the turn? Unquestionably yes.

I agree with all of this. Not sure why you framed it as a "yes, but."

You've let a bit of hindsight creep into your evaluation here. Preflop, there was only a chance, not a certainty, that he would 3 bet us again.

Otherwise, I agree with you. We've been throwing good money after bad since we called.

We completely failed to take into consideration all the evidence supporting evaluating this guy as a tough player who could put us in lousy spots just like this one.

In the hands of a typical player, 1/2 pot on the flop followed by a big bet on the turn is usually, "it's a dry flop, met me see if you have anything, ok you called, so you have something, and I think I have the best hand, so I'm going to start bombing for max value." It could just as easily be AA as TT-QQ; more easily, in fact.

In the hands of this player, who appears to be a good player, it doesn't necessarily mean any of that. What he is doing is setting up a reasonable river shove. That tends to weight him toward value hands, but it in no way eliminates air from his range. This guy seems quite capable of shipping the river here intending to fold you off most of your (capped at QQ) over pairs to the board.

So, again, his turn bet sizing is perfect, and I think you're reading it incorrectly.

All we know is that V has 3-bet us in 3 consecutive SB vs BTN opportunities and then crammed chips into the pot when we continued with our hand post-flop. V's sizing is fine, but sizing isn't that tough to learn or emulate. I see no reason to think V is or is not competent, and I don't understand how we can label him as a tough player. We know nothing. I don't think we can draw conclusions of any reasonable certainty, but I do feel it's quite a bit more likely that he's a spew box than some sort of wizard.

What? Do you need to see his graph? Everything we know about this player sounds solid. OP says he usually raises when he plays, he hasnt gone to showdown, he's sizing his 3 bets well, he has sized his c-bets perfectly and his turn double is well-sized. We have not seen him make a single mistake. There's no need to go straw man on those of us who have said he seems solid. There's plenty of room between solid and wizard.

I agree with most of what you said here, including the bolded.

However, I should point out that in my experience, you don't beat spew-boxes by out-spewing them. But that's exactly what Hero has been trying to do so far.

I agree with everyone who's saying we shouldn't have even seen a flop once we got 3bet. I would have limped, but I also understand why others want to raise/fold (or raise/4bet). Postflop looks pretty bad so far though.

What range should we be defending against his 3b in this spot?

Tightly until we know more about postflop. Probably something like kk+. 88-jj. Aqss/aqo Kqs and that's about as wide as I'd go without a postflop plan.

4betting a bunch of suited aces and suited broadways as a bluff maybe kqo and kjo sometimds. 4betting ak/qq for value.

So as you can see the call3b range is tilted towards value and hands that can call down. The 4b range is tilted toward bluffs. Adjusting from this very initial plan based on reads

Why is shipping > calling if we have no FE?

V's bet is laying us 2.5:1 pot odds meaning we need to extract another $300 from V if we hit our diamond (we will have $430 remaining if we call the $200).

Does it really matter if V thinks we are a fish that paid a bad price to call if he folds (most of the time) when we shove clubs and calls (most of the time) when we shove diamonds?

2.3:1 times (43%) we will hit a card on the river that should give us a +EV shove (assuming V doesn't lead/shove clubs) which is better odds than the direct pot odds (2.5:1).

Please let me know if I am butchering the concept of implied odds here, but based on how we can manipulate V based on the river, calling seems superior to shoving since we rep nothing but a full-house (or an A4/46 straight). And we would have no reason to shove the turn with a boat because we are a 96% favorite at that point and can just raise the river if V doesn't shove himself on bricks.

I'd rather save that "last bullet" of $425 when I can actually rep something (clubs) and get V off his A-high range all the same.

PS: For the guys saying Hand 2 was spew, ok I guess I get that. I thought I was making a thin value raise against the AK/AQ part of his range, but if raising Hand 2 J-high flop from $75 to $200 when I actually had a pair was spew then what would shoving this turn for $625 with 0 FE be?

PSS: Would he still be playing his hand perfectly if he was just barreling into us with AK and we meekly called him all the way to the river with our humble AA-KK?

Hans 2 raising allows him to play perfectly. He can fold air and continue with good pairs and draws. You also completely remove the option for him spew off with air. That's why it's bad. If we're being honest with ourselves TT can't take much heat and him barreling air puts you in a bad spot. That's no reason raise flop though due to "barrel anxiety"

One problem with thinking you exclusively get to rep clubs otr is he might be thinking the same especially if he has club blockers. And he gets the last bet in if he wants since he's setting up stacks perfectly to shove river

So basically you're saying just ignore the fact that we're the button because the guy to our left is reraisy?


ooohkay.

I agree with your point - let's not out-spew the guy. But I don't mind hero's line so far. I think 4-bet/folding pre would be a perfect example of out-spewing V. We'd be giving up our positional advantage and turning a very playable hand into a bluff. And I awknowlege we still don't know if V is light pre-flop or not. A 4-bet is an expensive way to find out. When we call pre and call flop, we don't expect V to bet turn 100%. He has, and now we have a decision, and it happens to be a pretty marginal spot with a meh run out. But just because V did bet turn this time doesn't make our line terrible or suggest a 4-bet was better.

Thanks for your valuable input. Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. First this isn't a regular Resteal situation it's a 3b of an iso which is usually a lot stronger.

Second I advocated flatting 4% of hands and 4betting around 4%. That's defending an 8% range which would allow hero to isolate 25% of the time on the button while remaining inexploitable to sb 3bs. That's a fine frequency with a good LAG in the blinds.

Be my guest try to defend wider that's playing into his game plan

is it at all possible that spewy mc3bettor was being spewy with his 1st 2 hands and is actually self aware and has a relatively descent hand here?

it's not impossible to think his worst hands here could be club/diamond FDs and everything else is value.