2/2 € effective stacks 300 €

Hero Ad9s in the BB
Villain CO, tight aggressive. but does open too many hands from early position to 12. We have had some hands where I was preflop raising him a lot, he has visually shown he has grown tired of me. Not to say he hates my guts at the time the hand happened.

Preflop
HJ limps
CO raises to 8. Now this is odd, 12-14 is the standard openingat the table, and the first few hours (4 or so) he did not deviate from this at all. Funky stuff going on here.
BU and SB fold to me in the BB, I elect to call.
HJ calls
Pot (26)

Flop AQJ complete rainbow
I check
HJ checks
CO bets 16
I call
HJ folds
Pot (58)

Turn A, 2 to a flush, O yeah !
I check
CO bets 40
I call
Pot (138)

River 7, no flush possibilities
I check
CO bets 128
I ... ?

I'm just curious if the preflop tell or the player dynamic help me in any way to make a decision here.

I would just fold pf.

I basically always 3-bet these weirdly small preflop opens, as in my experience they mean exactly what it looks like they mean (a medium-strength hand that’s not good enough to raise the full amount).

As played, I actually think this is a fine call-call-fold hand. Ignore the “if you call the Turn you have to call the River!” haters—you don’t, you have a lot more information on the River than you did on the Turn (ie, Villain can fire a third pot-sized bet).

But a call doesn’t seem that much worse. It’s close.

Yeah, calling pre was really horrible. I could 3bet with it sometimes, but never against a tight CO player who hardly opens any hands.

As played you're in the poker definition of "no man's land", you're extremely likely crushed (which is why I don't flat pre but that's just me).

I think pre can go either way. If you have an edge post then maybe calling is okay. Depends on rake as well. Not really a good hand to 3bet out of position either. Your lighter 3bets from BB should be more suited broadways, suited connectors, A5s, A4s.

I think flop and turn are fine and I think folding river is fine.

Also, what is with these fish betting weird sizes like 128?

Fold pre. If it was A9s, maybe call or raise. A9o is just a fold, even with V's small open size and the HJ limp.

Flop and turn seem fine. If we think V might go broke with KK or worse AX, I could see occasionally putting in a check-raise on turn.

River - I dunno. Folding trip A's seems awfully nitty, the way this was played. When we just flat call from the BB, we could have some Qx / Jx here, that V is targeting for value with KK and worse Ax, like ace-wheel combos. I think I might call here.

Part of my reasoning goes back to V's small opening size. I'd wonder if he was taking that sizing to induce a light 3B from you, planning to 4B. He can't have AA, and that seems like a weird line with AT-AK, making me think he could have enough ace-wheel combos to make calling profitable.

People can accidentally grab one red instead of two, or one red and 3 whites instead of two of each. I would be very wary of reading too much into the sizing unless you see V do different sizings in the same spot multiple times.

Just fold pre. HJ is allowed to back raise, or even limp/call ATo. You basically never get to bet/raise postflop.

If you call pre. this is a pretty bad board to be calling random Ax hands on ... would lean towards a fold on the flop.


When turn pairs the A all options suck, and I doubt it matters much. I guess I would lean towards call turn, fold river, but again I'm not sure it matters a lot without reads ... we got here and have trips, folding sucks. All value should be better than our hand. Bluffs aren't that common, but we've literally only called and V can convince themselves we have JT or whatever. Raising can be fun sometimes but lots of people just aren't folding AK/KT here.

So, in the end I called just to hear those magic word : "It's yours".
I just wasn't happy with my own call even though in this situation I won.
Surprised to see so many people not defending A9o from a CO bet.

Thanks for your feedback.

Yeah, that's the problem with charts it's not just "CO vs BB" because he was described as tight, someone who doesn't open too many hands pre especially from EP so his range would be tighter than a standard CO open I would think, which is why I would fold pre. There would have to be a chart for every player type which would make it a lot easier to just play against the original raiser's range instead of following charts (I'm anti chart as you can see).

It's a good hand to 3bet especially since we block AA/AK/AQ but not vs a tight player. I also think "Defending" blinds by flatting imho is over rated in small stakes games but that's just me.

A few random thoughts, in no particular order:

1. Any time an opponent makes an aggressive action, and we consider how to respond, we should be including some portion of "random nonsense" when we think about what V is doing. His line here could fall under that heading, especially if he didn't have any ace at all. Mike Caro made the point that many players' in-game decisions are somewhat subject to whim. I think there's still a lot of truth to that.

2. The differing views on A9o are a reflection of an ongoing debate among players, about how GTO we're playing, vs how read-dependent / exploitative we're playing. Without knowing for sure, I'm guessing solvers would say A9o is a pure fold here, whereas others might make a defensible argument for defending the BB with that combo. My personal view is that regardless of what solvers say, that's exactly the sort of loose BB defense that causes a lot of problems for many players, and it can't be too bad to err on the side of being tighter pre-flop.

3. What I find interesting in the responses here is to note how many transition from fold pre (what I expect would be the GTO play) to fold river (the clearly exploitative play). I think folding pre is defensible from both perspectives, but folding river isn't. It only seems defensible from an exploitative viewpoint. If we somehow get to this river the way we did, I can't imagine a solver suggests folding trip aces here.

Nice hand.

I tried to look with my free solve of the day on gto wizard. Obvious considerations: Sizings are lol compared to here, so given A8o is 50% call for 2.5x who knows for 4x. No limping, just CO open and we defend BB (A9o basically a pure call there) which makes it a much easier call pre. and on flop.

From what I can see solver mixes roughly even call/fold on river with A9. Depends heavily on actual suits, Eg. If our A suit matches the 7 suit it leans fold heavily.


Another big problem though is that CO 75% pot river only happens 1% of the time, with 150% pot the only real bet and check the rest. Also to a lesser extent solver is mixing turn with 175%/125%/75% and check, in a very robotic way (although there's some discernible logic to using suits that interact with BDFD).

I'm getting the vibe I might have just as well flipped a coin twice pre and river.

My takeaway. Pre tend to fold more. River call more.

As an old-timer I'm still getting used to those gto overbets.
Makes me shiver to face those 1.5-3 x pot bets. Making em is even against my nature. 0-1.5 pot is about my comfort zone.

I appreciate you putting in the time to try to run it through a solver, and the effort trying to explain it to me, since I've never used a solver. Without fully understanding, the gist I'm getting is that this one doesn't really "fit" into solver world, so the best we can do is try to extrapolate as best we can from a reasonably similar scenario.

My point was that just reading the replies here, those suggesting fold seem to be entirely based on making an exploitative adjustment based on what we think most V's have here, when V takes this line, whereas GTO might be more likely to just look at the strength of our hand and what it blocks V from having, and demand a call.

I could be wrong about that. But even if so, I think my reasoning was...erm...reasonable. Based on OP's description of V and their past history, and how this was played, I don't think folding river is terrible. But on balance I think calling is better, when we get there with this hand, the way we got there.

Being too loose pre is a common leak, and an easy fix. If you fold more pre, you don't get to this river with this hand.

I don't think calling more on the river should necessarily be a big takeaway here, if it leads to you folding more pre AND over-folding strong hands on the river.

If you're folding more pre, as well as making more reasonably good folds on flop and turn, your river decisions should get easier, whether you fold or call, but that doesn't mean you'd be doing one more than the other.

I generally attack the guys who use multiple sizes pre with all my vpips. A9o is a cusp hand and I’d usually fold and sometimes 3b vs the weak sizing if I think they can fold pre.

On the river you chop with some value, he is probably discounted from most boats again due to preflop. You beat all bluffs and heavily block the best hands. I would just sigh call and expect to lose more often than win.