1/3 NLHE 9 handed.

V - Winning TAG grinder who gets bored and clicks buttons occaisionally. Sometimes he tilts and gets a bit steamed and borders on spew but he's a good overall winning player with a well rounded game. He's no wizard though. 450$ BTN.

H - Not sure what V thinks of me. I think he thinks I'm a bit tight especially when deeper. I've been a bit card dead at this table and people have said stuff out loud when I open like "wow the nit opens I'm out!" etc etc. Covers. BB.

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Folds to V who opens to 12, SB folds, H to 50 with K T, V calls and makes a little speech about how he has to call this time despite my tight image.

Flop 100 - 8 7 6

H checks, V bets 40, H calls

Turn 180 - Q

Check, Check

River 180 - A

Hero?

Mandatory bluff (This is the second worst hand we can ever arrive at the River with), but I think the right size is small here--our bluff is targeting (trying to get him to fold) only his pocket 5s, 65s, 97s etc type of hands (which should comprise a large portion of his range).. Even with the Ten in our hand this is not the type of board where we can over-bet. So I think the best size is about 40% of the pot, around $70.

Bluff and watch the looks on all their little faces if you get called.

Bluff river

Id rather just call pre out of BB vs BTN open here. Then go for XR on flop.

Id go for 100 on the river

Agree with this. KTo just isn't going to play well OOP in a 3B pot. Flat call pre, so we can rep super wide on a lot of flops. We can flat call flop, but I don't mind the x/r with so little equity, so long as we're planning to give up if we get called and don't improve on the turn.

Think we prefer a T on turn, over a K. Rather have TP2K than an easily dominated top pair.

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mandatory river bluff if you can get him to fold all pairs <Q.

if not just give up.

i dont really like preflop. why bother fighting with tags OOP thats not how you make money in this game. tbh assuming a high rake game i just fold this hand. i might fold face up too if i really wanted to look nitty. looking nitty is a great image live you get away with so much sht

Fold preflop. Bluff river.

Obviously he needs to bluff the River, the question is sizing.

The thing I don't like about bluffing the river is that hero is supposed to have a nitty table image, and yet V called his 3B, while giving his little "I shouldn't call, but I will" speech.

That speech is meant to convey weakness, which usually means he's actually got a reasonably strong hand. He should have a strong hand, if he's calling a 3B from an opponent in the BB, who could have just flat called, closing the action.

Then we check-called flop, and checked turn. What would we be repping for value on the river? Wouldn't we have c-bet or check-raised the flop, or donked turn with some of the value combos we'd be trying to rep? It seems like our river bet would only be repping a very narrow range of value - AK, AQ, and T9s.

V took the betting lead rather than checking back on this 3-straight rainbow flop after he called hero's pre-flop 3B. Then he checks back the Q. What hands are we putting into his range? I'd think his range is going to be 99+, and a fair bit of AX.

Maybe he'll fold 99-JJ if we bet river, but that's a pretty narrow range of hands we'd be trying to fold out with a bluff, and TT/99 block our combos of T9. Not to mention - we block TT.

Yeah, we block AK and AT, and it's less likely he has AQ when he checks back turn, but he could have all the combos of AJ, A9s, A5s, and still have all the remaining combos of AK, AQ, and AT. A lot of those hands could call.

There's also the possibility that he decided to slow down on the turn because he had some strong value hand he didn't think could get three streets of value, and wanted to induce hero to bluff river. He could have QQ, or maybe T9s, though T9s seems less likely to inspire his "I'm not all that strong speech".

If we flat called pre, we could have almost any two cards, so we could have all the 2P, sets, and straights on the flop. A flop check-raise would be more credible than trying to rep something big to bluff V off of TP+ on the river, when we didn't c-bet or check-raise the flop, or donk the turn.

It was a bad flop for your range. You represent an ace for value. You could have played AK/AQ etc. that way.

Result:

Thoughts?

He's an idiot. Of course you want to block T9, since T9 is the nuts.

You got lucky to run a bluff into the bottom of his range.

Your bluff is way too big. You could accomplish the same result betting 1/2 pot, and risk a lot less. If he's folding a blocker to the nuts, because he's putting you on an ace, he's folding it to any reasonable size bet.

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V’s comment is obviously stupid. You made the right decision to bluff, of course, but your sizing is wrong—we can’t overbet on this board as a 3-better, even holding a Ten in our hand. Your sizing on the River needs to be smaller—we can’t use polar sizing on a board where we won’t have the nuts.

I think the right size with both your AK and your KT here is 40% pot. We want him in a bad spot with (eg) 98. I just don’t think you’re possibly balanced in a way that you’re using an overbet on this board with a value hand—it’s kinda insane.

(On the other hand, if you HAD led for 40% pot, if V were thinking HE would raise—turn 99 into a bluff. So. It worked for you this time!)

I would disagree with a couple points dav and doc.

1. 99 is not the bottom of his btn opening range, its close to the top, not on this runout clearly, but he has as wide as K5s, J8s and A2o pre.

2. I have T9s pre in my 3betting range vs his btn open. So I do have the nuts sometimes. I can have AA and QQ too. But I get what you're saying, I have a lot more middling AX and KQ and so on that would go thin.

Overbet seems bad here. People watch videos with these fancy plays and misuse them. You want to represent AK/AQ/AJ, Axs etc. You shouldn't have more than one pair much. The slight overbet is also sometimes a tell of a bluff. I would have bet somewhere between 80 and 140.

He's mouthing off technical terms that make no sense.

Why wouldn't you want to be blocking the stone cold nuts when you 're bluffing?

Meanwhile, not only was he blocking the stone cold nuts and his 99 is one the best hands to call with (potentially better than an actual set), but that board was so favorable to his range that he should have been putting you to the blender throughout the hand.

Having said that, the danger in your spot is that you could be overbluffing, because if you are 3betting KTo, you have a ton of ATs, KTs, QTs, JTs, A9s, K9s etc while your value range is probably smallish. Like that overbet represents a set of As and 9Ts essentially. But if you bluff all those hands above, your bluffing range is out of whack.

1. 99 is the bottom of his range on the river, regardless of what his BTN opening range looks like. We can assume that A2o and other trash hands fold before the river.

2. You may have T9s in your 3B'ing range pre, but you won't have T9 very often when you check-call a small flop bet and check turn after 3B'ing pre.

To be fair he probably has JTs and 98s, and there's some chance he's loose enough pre. to have K9s/J9s.

Sorry, I should have said 99 is close to the bottom of his value range, meaning the part of his range that isn't just an instant fold - the part of his range that might call.

My point wasn't about what his pre flop range looks like, but rather that on the river, he can have many better hands to call down with. He can have TP, 2nd pair, 2P, sets, and straights. He doesn't need to bluff catch with 3rd pair.

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