1/3 NLHE, 9 handed

V - 800$ BB, Russian woman who I've never seen before. Seems loose passive. Losing player for sure. Ran up a stack.

H - 800ish, barely covers, BTN.

Table is loose passive.

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Two limps to hero in LP, open to 20, V and both limpers call. 4-ways. Hero has K Q

Flop 80 - A A K

V leads 40, fold fold, Hero calls. HU.

Turn 160 - Q

V checks, Hero checks.

River 160 - 4

V bets 100, Hero?

I look at her and she seems nervous.

And you’re wondering what the right size to raise it to is.

I think $450 is better than a jam, but can see the merit in both.

I can't see how she doesn't have a king or ace given flop lead. Raising is a bluff at this point, and we shouldn't be bluffing loose passives, so it feels closer to food than raise.

I think I make a crying call here.

She's nervous because she's bluffing, or she's nervous because she has a weak Ace, or she's nervous because she has a straight or a boat and doesn't want you to fold?

Your hand is as good as K2o. Let the loose passive player get her bluff through.

I don't think we want to get into fancy okay syndrome vs this opponent. Loose, passive, losing players donking flop? If we had a boat here I might jam for value expecting to get paid off by any ace:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...95/?highlight=

Probably a sigh call.

Lately at my typically far more smaller stack size I've been leaning to overlimping KQo in LP, especially the more limpers in the pot (more happy with raising against maybe 1 limper), as seeing a multiway flop will setup a commitment spot postflop with TP (which is kinda marginal with this hand, imo). However, at these deep stacks even a multiway flop will still create a very playable SPR, so whatever.

I would nit fold this flop a lot. She's betting into 3 opponents OOP. Really depends on her postflop tendencies, but most people don't lead into the world with Kx here and there's no draws.

Also checking back the turn. One of the only aggro draws got there (JT) and we're now just chopping with Kx.

AQ is a real possibility here by the river (checking the turn with her ~nuttish hand). What is she turning into a bluff? We could easily be slow playing the ~nuts on the turn. This is how people play Kx? I fold.

I also put pretty much ~zero stock into her perhaps looking nervous. Maybe she's nervous about whether she's going to get paid off or not. Or maybe scared that her AQ has run into AK. Or whatever.

ETA: I've got a rule against unknowns: I pretty much never attempt to bluff them, because (a) they likely have no idea of how nitty I typically play and (b) I have zero clue whether they are the loosest calling station versus the biggest MUBSy nit. Until both of those are well defined, I'm not attempting to get anyone off a straight or two pear (and of course trips).

GcluelessNLnoobG

I'm curious, why are you raising here? She's very unlikely to fold an Ace, so do you think you can get a rando loose passive off a split pot?

Even readless I'm pretty confident we could get a rando off a Kx here. Thing is, most people rarely have Kx here given the way the hand was played. This is *way* more Ax that it is Kx, so good luck with the jams.

GimoG

Is she UTG? A l/c from there or early position from a weak passive player could easily be AK/AQ, especially when she donks out into 4 players. As played I would fold the river (it even looks like AQ after she checked the turn). I would even consider folding the flop.

We need to have some bluffs when we raise the River on this board, and our “three-pair” is one of our best, as we block all the full houses (except exactly Ah4h).

I guess that's where we differ. I just don't think we need big river bluffs against random little history loose passives at low stakes.

I’ve actually been running this one through my head, and I think we only have one size when we raise this River, and it’s not $400-$459, it’s a pure jam. We want the most fold equity possible on boards where V *can’t* have the nuts. I think it’s the same rationale for why we over-bet jam in spots where, like, we call a 3-bet and get a 457K8r runout.

Could well be wrong, but I think we want to put V’s AT here in a No-Win situation.

Hitchens97 is right. If we're playing against another pro for 30 hours a week, then yes we can mix in this and that x percent of the time but when we're playing with someone we're probalby never playing with again, I always do what's best at this particular time and in this particular hand btjm. I would think this villain has an ace the majority of the time and it's not really too easy to bluff a recreational passive player off of trip aces.

@davomalvolio
yeah idk most of that isn't right.

i dont think you need to worry about balance or finding bluffs in a multiway pot vs limp callers at 1/3 when she takes a 0% node. if you want to go down that road you should take a look at what balance actually looks like in comparable spots because if you run this every time with KQ you're going to be massively over bluffing. also paired boards in general are tricky because you rarely see massive raises bc blocker effects.

i think looking at a sim for this situation is beyond stupid but if you want take a look anyways, open up 2.5x open nl 500 rake with like mp open bb call. give bb 1/3 lead (which its never supposed to do) and look at how the hand plays out when the turn goes xx and bb leads the river. KQ is never getting used as a bluff which makes sense as the K is an irrelevant blocker (you aren't really trying to block AK because opponent shouldn't have it).

also re what you're saying, you aren't supposed to be orienting your ranges about maximum fold equity, you orient your ranges around how much value your hand is worth and then balance with bluffs appropriately. there's a massive difference in the two. the idea is you want maximum value for your nut hands, not you want to put AT in a tough spot lol. its like 2010 logic of im going to rep the nuts with my entire range and they can't ever call. there's times it works brilliantly but that isn't theory based

as for the hand i think it's whatever. i think trying to make someone fold an ace on this board is kind of meh because they're going to realize their kicker doesn't matter too much and villain doesn't seem like a great candidate to make fold three of a kind readless. i get the sentiment of she's capped pre and we're really deep and her line is dumb and in theory you have good blockers to full houses but i think there's alot of players at low stakes this is going to be an absolute torch vs. there's others its fantastic and they're b/f 100% of the time on the river but im not sure there's enough evidence to go for it. i do see the appeal to jamming but i think its a spot they absolutely call more than you expect them to. like you just don't want to be trying to bluff fish off of strong absolute hands.

i think river is fairly close between call and fold. her line is probably overbluffed on the flop if i had to guess as an aggregate (i dont think theres a ton of multiway mda and then live pools are a good bit different than online), but it being multiway and her being loose passive likely swings the pendulum back the other way a bit. the issue for you with pure folding Kx otr here, is based on what i know of you, you're probably always betting Ax+ ott, and villain is clicking so im not sure we just want to fold entire range when she may not understand what she's doing / hand thresholds. like if you called and chopped with kx that wouldn't totally surprise me here. maybe randomize and call half of the time ends up working out best

i regret not making this two posts lol

fold, why call here vs a passive player when you chop at best?

flop is close. im a sexist when i play poker so unk woman donk into pfr = the nuts in my mind.

If we shove this River with our boats, trips, straights, and the 15 KQ’s, what is Villain supposed to do with Ace-Ten? AAKQ is a really tough board for them when we can also be shoving our trips to get them off a chop.

I don’t think we are unbalanced. I actually think we should be shoving this river so often that we don’t have *enough* bluffs even if we do shove every KQ combo.

at 1/3 unks will snap you here with A2.

I guess the related question is whether we do indeed raise with every Ax on this River (to get her off a chop). I again think it is clearly correct.

i told you how to find a balanced sim of a similar spot and you can see how the solver approaches it. based on the range you're jamming AT is a good bluff catcher removal wise so he will call it at whatever frequency makes u indifferent to bluffing based on pot odds (unless boats are enough of range frequency wise that he doesn't need to do that). bb can also have AQ / a4 so you can't really just jam 5x pot with JT.

the king isnt a relevant blocker here unless you think she has AK, idk what to tell you beyond that.

you're not really counting combos right (you have 12 combos of KQ otr not 15) and you're not discounting that JT / boats / trips will do something different pre river at some (potentially high) frequency whereas ip will nearly always end up here with KQ like this.

open the sim i told you so u can get to the river with a similar spr to whats in the op and look at how it approaches things. notice how it basically never uses a jam size as IP. if you want you can go down that 0% node and see what oop's counter is and get a feel for why it doesn't use that on this texture.

in practice, if you are over bluffing because you think your opponent is capped at three of a kind and non nut boats you're probably misapplying capped ranges, particularly vs a described losing player at 1/3 live. you want to bluff when people dont have much, not when your bluff relies on them folding trips (on aakq4r) at a high frequency

Im folding this flop all day long and not thinking twice about it. Also folding river

Interesting. Never thought about jamming, would probably be good against a more thinking player.

Result: