So he correctly folds his 6 outer, and you prevent him from him bluffing you on the next street. Wouldn't it be more profitable to not do this and simply call his bluff?

I doubt a small bet folds 2 overs such as AQ AK; hell if i have 2 overs in his spot im lol calling a small turn bet.

I don't think this helps prevent a bluff otr at all, if anything we are asking to get bluffed on the turn!

Why do we need to "buy" a cheap SD? We are in position and he checked to us; the SD is free

The problem with your pre logic is that there are perfectly reasonable hands for doing all the things you want that aren't 66. 66 just happens to make a ****load of money overcalling 20 and keeping the SPR as large as possible for when it flops a set. It does very little for your 3-betting range postflop.

As played I probably fold flop unless you had a diamond and I would bet like 275 now. It isn't a size that sets up for river shove, but your range is very rarely nutted here. Generally small bets are a good idea whenever you have the stronger range but fewer nutted hands. He's pretty likely to bet turn with AQ KK+ so I think there's a decent amount of value in getting protection from his range, while setting up a bluff for the diamond rivers.

Pow= pay off wizard. These guys are the reason why there are so many bad/mediocre nits who are not losing money playing poker.

Thank you for eloquently conveying what I was trying to say

I don't think you have any bluff value to a turn bet, in that he will probably call 77-JJ-type hands. The values to betting, in relative order of importance, are that you (1) prevent showdown and (2) prevent him from drawing cheaply to overcard-pairs with 6 outs.

Mathematically, you are indifferent to him calling with overcards (plus whatever no-showdown value) at a $100 bet, a size which has the additional values of making your play weird and perhaps inducing more credibility to your 3-bets PF. I doubt most would c/r bluff the turn under the circumstances, no matter the sizing, but if he can that is also a concern.

You can balance your range here by betting $100 with Qx, which really isn't the worst play with that hand, because it controls the pot nicely to potentially value bet the river.

Check is fine, but $100 is a cool bet.

does anyone seem to see an issue with the turn check through?

Can you show the math please? I need to get better at math

Also am i missing something: if $100 makes us indifferent vs ~6 outs why are we betting vs the rest of EP 4b range? Line vs line its a wa/wb spot and we cant eliminate any portion of his flop value range from checking the turn vs a described trappy opponent, esp 400bb deep. I agree with your point to having small bet in our value range, but putting 66 into that same range is problematic anyway i think about it.

The bigger issue stems from 3b 66 to begin with

Should straddle buddy 😳

This may be just Parx-related, but the game does play somewhat interesting with a lot of regulars and a ton of 'wannabe' players who are just awful...and given it's a deep game, it presents interesting spots.

OP, I think you played this hand poorly from beginning to the end...again, Parx-specific.

yep, this

and this.

I actually agree with the OP in 3b 66 preflop. There are a couple of reasons.

1) We are playing super deep. The object when we flop a set is to try and win as mush as possible, ideally doubling up ourselves or stacking our opponent. If we just flat preflop and hit our hand it is going to be very difficult to get stacks in by the river.

2) If we do not include small pairs and suited connectors into our preflop 3 betting range we become very exploitable on low flops like 256 or 278. Villains can attack us on flops like these if we are only 3 betting the top of our range.

3) 3b in this spot lets us play a big pot (most likely IP) with an uncapped range. Especially if we are better than villain, this is always an ideal situation.

4) Because we leave our range uncapped and liable to hit almost any flop texture, this makes us extremely hard to play against oop and gives us added fold equity to our 66 when we miss the flop a majority of the time.

*This being said we can't always 3 bet these sort of hands but it's def worth adding these hands to our occasional 3b range for these reasons.


On the turn, I think it's really player dependent. If he's the type of tricky player who will occasionally ch/r the turn after leading the flop then obv check back. But most players here I think will either continue turn or ch/c turn with premium pockets or AQ. They will either continue betting to get value from worse queens and FD, or check to exercise pot control in a deep stacked situation. Therefore a lot of times I will bet this street to protect my hand against A high type hands, and put pressure on under pairs to the Q that have us beat.
It helps as well that we have picked up 4 extra outs with a gutshot.
Another reason to bet here, is that against a lot of players they will fire almost any river regardless of what they hold after you check back turn. By betting the turn we take initiative and can most likely assume villain will check river, and then either check back or fire the river depending on the card and our read.

As an aside, I really hate villain's decision preflop with 22. He has an opportunity to set mine against a deep stacked opponent representing a strong hand, and he elects to 4b oop in a spot where he's most likely going to get either flatted or 5b. If he ranges you light on your 3b he should be 4b much bigger than 185.


Also, on the river you can make an argument for making a small bet for value. It's going to be extremely thin, but when villain checks again on the river he either has a hand like JJ, TT, or a missed AK. Villain will prob call with JJ or TT, but there are more combos of AK and he may get a little sticky thinking you missed a FD. Not sure if you should bet ever, but it's something to think about imo.

Although I understand the benefits of 3betting 66, personally I disagree with them, But I think that in some circumstances it can be ok. But I think that your logic is faulty. You state that the goal is to double up when we hit a set and it's going to be hard to get stacks in. I think in general it's going to be difficult to get stacks in either way 400bbs deep unless villian is a fish or we cooler him.

You also say villian can attack us on low flops if we don't 3bet low PP's, I think if you are really worried about being exploited you can 3b SC's. Although unless you're playing with the same regs, I wouldn't worry too much about being exploited. And there are other ways to avoid being ran over on low flops, that I frankly don't want to get into.

Pre is fine/ but close to spewy. 3b some small pairs pre for deception is ok but probably fps in soft 2/5 games.
The flop peel is pretty ambitious/probably or almost certainly -ev
Turn is a very easy check and try to showdown

Cliffs

66 has like no board coverage and static equity which are two things we do not want deep. we are also lost on tons of runouts. well, we aren't lost, we know we have like no equity and we just have to barrel villain off whatever with no blockers in our hands.

like you're lost postflop cause you made a weird decision pre. also you will get felted in an 800bb pot if you're oversetted when it's something you can avoid by not 3b.

I feel like there is some confusion ITT as to why keeping the spr larger is ideal per above? Is it fundamentally correct/V dependent? Would you mind clarifying?


Also wondering, though maybe too complex to answer, if we're ok calling 3! With 22-77 IP assuming deep - granted that's another discussion, but if we can see flops with high spr does a single raised pot vs 3! Pot make a huge difference?

cause there are streets after the flop.

There's a difference between being "okay" calling a 3-bet with a hand, and being happy to be 3-bet. Remarkably few hands are happy facing a 3-bet in NLH, even with position. By happy I mean you expect your EV to be higher than if he had called or folded. Against a solid player 3-betting a decent range from the blinds, I'm not even sure with infinite stacks that 66 would have an increased EV than if he'd instead flatted our raise.

There are several simple reasons why 3-betting 66 as a default play is bad here. For one, it's risky reopening the betting against an already strong EP opening range with a hand that is anti-blockers to QQ+ AK (making him significantly more likely to have those hands and not to have folding hands). To use your language, we're "okay" flatting a small 4-bet if it comes to that, but it is an EV disaster. We only call because we will be compensated by the sunk cost of our squeeze which is now dead money.

Second, which should be obvious, 66 is a hand that flops very low value 88% of the time and very high value 12% of the time. This is to say that it has a very polarized flop equity distribution. You really want to maximize the number of players and the stack to pot ratio with a hand that flops strong infrequently and weak very frequently. When you flop an underpair, you would like to have invested as little as possible, and when you flop a set, you would like to maximize the chances that someone else hit the flop in some way also.

In truth, there's probably an optimal pot size you should try to create with a small pocket pair such that it achieves a combination of max EV when flopping a set with minimum cost to see the flop, and with deep stacks it's perfectly fine to raise 66 in position over limps at a table where being 3-bet or limp-reraised isn't likely. But in the majority of cases you really want to see the flop for minimum cost.

note: this whole posts assumes no 4b pre and he just flatted.

being the 3bettor pre changes our game plan for postflop a ton too. we'll probably have to barrel at least once if checked to on flop (though without the 6d i would prob just check back).

turn's cool. we've picked up equity and our draw is kinda disguised...but we don't know what to do with that equity and our draw actually kinda sucks and isn't that hidden (if we have 66 in 3b range we have A2s/A5s/A6s and/or suited connectors) so we may not get paid if we hit. villain can have FDs as well which kills outs. we may even be drawing dead lol as there's 5 combos of 65s and QQ which are probably in his preflop flatting range this deep.

on turn all the better pocket pairs will fold and like every draw he can have against us has 30%...and he will have a draw a lot when he doesn't 4b pre. so turn is also a pretty tough spot decision wise as to whether or not to bet cause we wanna fold out his equity/better hands but if he does call we may need to think about triple barreling.

on river we're in another awkward spot regardless of what we did on the turn. 21% of the deck creates a 4 card straight and 18% of the time the flush gets there. so it'll be super hard to get paid by worse if we make hand (which may not have improved enough), it's really hard to know how much of his range we can vbet against if we don't improve, and the ~70% of time everything bricks we won't know if we have enough SD value that we need to turn our hand into a bluff.

by deciding we wanna 3bet we just made the hand super complex guessing game and put ourselves in spot where we can lose a ton and not win that much.

also against against a 15% utg open range we will get 4b like 25% of the time when we 3b here assuming he 4b QQ+/AQo+. maybe in reality it's more like 10-15% 4b v btn 3b. but point is we don't want to be playing 4b pots with 66 at a soft 2/5 game as it's just really awkward when we don't flop set.

you said a reason you 3b this hand is to put villain in tough spot...but reality is just making stuff hard for ourselves.

anyway, spending time in the lab is important. sorry for the rambling hope one person appreciates it at least

3! 66 folds out smaller PPs and prevents us from over setting them

i don't think anyone's folding a PP that deep. it does create a higher chance of being overset for whole stack though.

if called by a higher pair, and we flop a set, they're 8% to also flop a set. by the river they're 16% to have us oversetted. and on a decent number the 12.5% of flops that we make our 3 of a kind they'll have other random backdoors that give them more equity. just so much bad stuff can happen with having this hand in our 3b range.