Careful what you wish for, all 12 of the posts are people saying fold pre and people trolling OP for not including reads in the HH.

Interesting, I simmed it and it said T9 pretty much pure calls (except for some suit combinations that seem irrelevant to my measly human mind), but J9 pure folds.

I’ll be honest no matter whose sims you take as gospel, they’re all closer than I would have estimated in game. I think if you showed me either of our outputs in game I’d just be like “oh great, I’ll just fold then!”

I do side with the people ITT who are saying large flop and turn donks followed by a river shove raise does kinda scream “hey, everyone, come look, I’ve got the nuts!!” That’s really true for regs and (non-insane) recs alike. Small donks are one thing. Donking once and then running out of steam is yet another. This is line is pretty nutted ime.

The reads just kinda scrambled my brain for a while there (as they often do in practice, tbh).

Okay so here's my take on the MDF on the river in this hand. I may have butchered it along the way (and I'm certain submersible will be quick to point out how inexact this process is when done manually, especially when some hands are mixing at all steps, which I fully accept - this is very much an approximation). But I'm sure you'll all delight in pointing out any errors, so not to worry. Also n.b. I get that my button range is a lot wider than it should be; I know I can get away with that in this game. Here's my button RFI range:



Facing the donk on the flop, I'm raising with some 9x, combo draws and OESDs etc and calling with most pairs, some 9x and other super nutted hands, and most flush draws. I would usually call with some overcards plus backdoors too but omitted them here for the sake of simplicity as they're going to be folded on the turn anyway. So my range looks something like this:



The turn donk was for almost a pot size, which folds out a lot of my weaker pairs/flush draws and 7x, and I'm going to raise my straights, which leaves:



When he checks to me on the river I'm going to value bet:

AA (6 combos), KK (3 combos), Kx (3 combos), 9x (28 combos), 99 (1 combo), 77 (3 combos), 66 (3 combos) - 47 total value combos.

I bet 125 into 190 on the river, so I should be bluffing 28% of the time.

If I have 47 value combos then I should have 18 bluff combos. What are the best bluff combos of the range I get to the river with? There are pretty much only busted flush draws to use as bluffs, and 8x and 6x of clubs for a small pair (as a blocker) to use. Of the flush draws I like to use some 8x as they're blocking 98s. So the following hands make sense for the bluffs:

8 combos of 6x of clubs.
6 combos of 8x of clubs.
The 54cc, and J7, J6 and J5 of clubs, (which is basically bottom of range).

All other hands are checking back river and taking their showdown value/not bluffing. So here's the range I bet when checked to on the river:



After I bet the river, there is 315 in the pot, and villain jams for 400. Therefore the MDF is 315/715 = 0.44 or 44%. So I need to call with 44% of the range with which I bet the river, or 29 combos. All the bluffs are folding, which leaves the 11 worst value combos that should also be folded in order to arrive at the MDF. Those combos are Kx, AA, and the worst combos of 9x, which is 95s. Leaving the following hands:



As expected, it includes all combos of T9o - it even includes all combos of 98o.

Let's continue with your point about you having to fold your Kings up now because he jammed. Isn't most/all of his value range on the turn beating Kings up anyway? The only part of his range that isn't, are hands like QQ-TT, 88, (And aren't those 3b your open?), and whiffed draws like Clubs, JT, 87, etc...

I guess I'm wondering why V, if they had a big hand all along, would risk you X-back this river. You were probably opening and calling with something, but you didn't raise the flop, didn't raise when the straight came in, and if you were waiting on Clubs yourself, you're not betting at all unless you're bluffing. I can't see trips+ expecting that *now's* the street you'll finally bet (unless you were giving some read you were betting this river).

Accordingly, I don't expect V value to x-raise to this street, I would expect instead a bet H can call, and therefore this is a bluff (or weaker than trips) by V. At least more than the <30% H needs. Though submersible's point is a good one that this is a weird situation, and so weird, we might not find it to have much broader application, whatever happened.

I'm very sad to report that, after a cursory glance, I can't hate on it. The most questionable part of the analysis is that it seems like you're assuming all hands that continue to his donks are continuing as a flat, which certainly isn't true, but if anything that puts less nuts in our range which makes our river calling range even lighter. Other than that, maybe 1 or 2 of the Kx combos are too light for river value, but that obviously doesn't change the analysis much.

Nice work, OP, I'm sorry I liked that guy's post who said you're this forum's most confused poster.

I don't think it's all that unlikely to be a bluff or worse value hand (river check raise bluffs tend to be weak value hands). Doubtful he's donking out on the flop with 77 or 97, and not likely to go for a check raise on the river with better 9x, a boat or a straight, when you could be checking back a lot.

He should be 3B'ing pre at some frequency with A9s and K9s. He can't have Kd9d. So we're losing to a few combos of A9, Qd9d, Jd9d,Td8d, and maybe 9d6d.

He could have 9d8d, busted club draws, occasionally some front door straight / backdoor heart draws, K7, counterfeited 76, 8h7h, maybe something stupid like 9d5d, 86s, 65s, etc.

I could see him going for a check raise rather than block betting on this run-out. Say he's got 9d8d. If he barrels for a chunky size, we might fold AK. If he block bets, we might raise with KK or better 9x. But when he checks and we bet $125 into $190, it looks like we're going for thin value with a hand that will fold to a raise.

When you call big bets on flop and turn, it looks like you have value or you're drawing to the nuts. If you bet $250, it's harder for him to make this play, because his jam will have so little fold equity.

glad someone else took time to see solutions. without going into the lack of robust metrics communicating hero's "read" of villain, the river is pretty much a fold. "recreational player bets huge on river" is enough for me to find a fold faster than I can formulate arguments against it.

and I think putting an opponent on one hand is absurd but i gotta say 77 really does make a lot of sense here. if i take recrational reg they do a lot of "i put you on AK" so when your King hits their monster holding now pushes hard on the river for value. obviously this is an oversimplifcation and not proper theoretical strat, it does however meet the criteria of sensible narrative and since we're left with little in the way of actionable intel on villain - i'm in firmly in the "fold" camp.

until you see sufficient* concrete examples of villain "exploring aggression in weird and wild ways", i'd probably not hold that statement too high in your head as evidence to sway your decisions.

*and by sufficient i meant more than a few hours of live play. I'm saying this because there was a comment by OP later on in the post about how this recreational reg is a winner by all appearances and feel the need to walk that line back a bit: i sincerely doubt you've witnessed enough hours of them playing to draw that conclusion. live poker is slow. i've played over a decade (and i'm not a sick high roller by now! bummer) of live and i've logged years of online play in the past - i've seen folks literally TEAR A ROOM UP consistently sitting with giant chip stacks in big games for a year+ only to have the math catch up with their prolonged run good and put 'em to bed or disappear 'em all together. i've sat with some of 'em for that year and while I would say some of them are decent players, a lot of it was just benefitting from the fun side of variance where it showers you in disposable income to then reinsert into the global economy via prostitutes and cocaine.

OP - i dont mind your line at all. if i take recreational reg at face value, i'm gonna let them value cut themselves unless i think my image is gambly enough to entice them to ignite action on the turn but given that same description, they wont have enough holdings in their range that lack sufficient equity with which they may repop or attempt to rebluff you which means dialing back a little sometimes and letting them just value own themself.

Also I honestly dont gaf about preflop especially if opponents arent raising out the blinds with anything close to a frequency that ****s you, which in my experience from 1/2 to 5/10 or 10/10 is 90%+ of teh gen pop.

That said that same 90% wont show up with a sick bluff here often enough to make folding here in any way exploitive of your overall strategy.

tl;dr rec reg's dont bomb rivers often enough to warrant finding a call here even if they were to show you a bluff i would still find more folds in the future vs the same class opponent taking the same line.

God i skimmed thru 2 pages…hero folded right? Tough hand.

Yes, most of his value range on the turn is ahead of kings up.

This villain may or may not 3bet QQ-TT and 88, I would say he is more inclined to flat most of these hands.

Certainly it's true that if he has a big hand and checks the river there is certainly a real risk that I check back a large range of hands, and he misses value as a result. But on the other hand if he has K9 or KK, he may feel he "has too much of the board to get a call" and instead decide to trap once this specific river comes out.

When he checks to me on the river I'm going to value bet: AA, KK, Kx, 9x, 99, 77, and 66, and bluff with 6x of clubs, 8x of clubs, and some other missed flush draws - in order to balance my value hands (see above for further information). In my opinion these are safe value bets once he checks the river, and the 9x that arrived at the river for sure want to go for value.

During the hand his raise stank of value. Population in general is not check-raising as a bluff and it would be a very creative attempt by him if indeed it was a bluff.

Yes I think it's such a rare line that it's not going to have much broader application, but it's still interesting in its own right.

Lol, thanks.

I did say on the flop "Facing the donk...I'm raising with some 9x, combo draws and OESDs etc and calling with most pairs, some 9x and other super nutted hands, and most flush draws". I'm going to mix with these hands quite a bit though, and some will call. Some will also raise/call on the turn.

Yes perhaps KT is too thin for river value. But I really can't resist betting the best kings in my range on that river when he checks to me.

I think a bluff/worse value hand is unlikely here, but each to their own. I was looking at a similar hand recently and Pio turned some of the worst flopped trips into bluffs on the river (presumably due to blocker effects). I like that a lot, but I don't think this villain thinks that way.

But yes it's definitely a fair point that checking the river with big value runs the risk of my checking back. On the other hand, if he's going to bluff this river, surely he should be more inclined to lead with those bluffs, due to the same danger of my checking back weak showdown hands that beat his bluffs? I think this is especially the case when the obvious front door flush misses.

This villain is 3betting A9s/K9s at a very low frequency, but he can't have K9s on this river anyway as all combos are accounted for between my hand and the flop.

I would never use a blocker size as villain here once I arrive at the river. He's fully polarized his range by donking and barreling turn, therefore if he is going to bet the river a large size is warranted.

Sure, a bigger size on the river would have made it a much easier decision for me when faced with a raise. I wanted to get value from my trips and wasn't expecting to get raised! So I went a little smaller to make his calling range wider.

Agreed that low stakes river check raises reek of shameless value and overfolding is the correct adjustment.

Also agreed that one needs to see clear and consistent evidence of villains making plays like these as a bluff before adjusting accordingly.

I've played more than enough poker to be able to determine who is a long time winner/loser. I imagine I have 1000 hours at the bare minimum vs this villain. He's a smart, thinking player but not a theory hound. It's very difficult for someone to simply "run good" for two years, and he does not have a high variance style of play.

For sure I can and do get away with opening the button very wide in this game.

I agree that folding here may be exploitable at equilibrium but it's certainly not exploitable by the general low stakes player pool.

I will reveal later

It's also interesting to compare how Pio defends to the donk/donk/check-raise line compared to how I estimate I would defend against it:

Here's my continuing range on the left and Pio's on the right, facing the donk bet on the flop:



N.b. I said I would call with the overpair and backdoor combos, but removed them for simplicity. Also note that the squares look different in Pio's range, but that's because it's showing proportional format. Worth noting that Pio is only raising with 4% of hands facing the donk, and mostly continuing with calls.

Here's my continuing range on the left and Pio's on the right, facing the potsize bet on the turn:



Pio again continues mostly by calling and is only raising about 4% of hands (including T8 for the turned straight).

Here's my betting range on the left and Pio's on the right, facing the check on the river:



I arrive at this point with about three times as many combos as Pio - presumably because the latter is raising more earlier in the hand. Note that it prefers to show down the 6x of clubs hands that I turned into a bluff, and instead bluffs with the Ax and Qx missed flush draws. It likes using the 8x missed flushed draws as bluffs as well, which I was glad to see - and it makes sense because they block 98s and also the T8 straight combos.

Here's my calling range on the left and Pio's on the right, facing the check raise on the river:



They are fairly similar, although the proportioned squares kind of mess with it a bit. Pio calls at 42%, which is just below the 44% I calculated for the MDF. Notably it folds about half the combos of trips and two thirds of the straights:



This is presumably because it has balanced better than I did on the earlier streets.

Yeah this looks sensible. Maybe I'd fold the combos blocking front door flush draw but I'd call this one. Yes sometimes you call and lose that's poker

Obviously it's not a fold pre FFS

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Btn raise bb call 997 two tone has a 3.5% donk range on gtow. Its all hands that its mostly checking, but no, its not a pure check.

you say “why trust your reads?” But then when faced with what gto does, you say that, well, actually, uh…trust my own reads. Youre relying on reads just as much as OP. Its just youre relying on human memory and collective wisdom for adjusting Vs donking range to be wider instead of Vs river check raising range to be narrower.

Im not out here preaching gto wizard as gospel, but i think if you want to argue its a call, you need to do the legwork, because gesturing vaguely at gto would run contrary to your conclusion.. Put V on a range on the flop, turn, and river. If you want to nodelock the flop and sim it fine, or if you want to just guess with human memory and collective wisdom on turn and river as well, thats fine too, because human memory and collective wisdom is kind of good actually

Good rule of thumb for bluffs OTR is that you BET based on SDV; you RAISE based on blockers. For raising decisions, their continuing range gets to be narrow enough that blocking 3 combos here and there starts to matter a lot more. For checking vs betting decisions, taking a free showdown is just such an attractive option that we take it with anything

Notice that it's not even bluffing AT+. It'd be even lower than that if your range weren't condensed by two calls on previous streets...

FWIW, I did not advocate open folding T9o from the button, I said it seems marginal to me in many live contexts.
By marginal I mean that it will improve our hourly EV very little (if at all), while increasing variance quite a bit.

No doubt it is an open in theory but, to my understanding, the lowest quarter of our opening range from the button theoretically relies on a few factors, like:
- position;
- fold equity, both pre and post flop;
- board coverage / not to be exploitable.
In most of live settings, only the first of these really holds.
The average low and mid stakes live player calls way too much, both pre and post flop. Then ok, the average player will also 3bet way to little, which may incentivize us to open wider.
I do not know how many hundreds, possibly thousands, hours of live play it will take before even an observant opponent realizes that we are not opening T9o from btn, and adjust accordingly.

I am wondering how the opening range from btn would change, if we somehow discounted the two factors above, at least partially.

Thanks for the reply, Telemakus. You were there & have exp with this V. We weren't and don't, so if you think V's range is that nutted, fold. I think V would be bluff-catching here to a H river bet with their 2p hands, and even some 9x, not shoving. Better value, they would be 1x-1.5x ing pot. H hasn't betted yet, why think that changes on the river? So they're polarizing with a x-shove, and I don't think they've >70% beats T9 combos vs bluffs with that polarized range.

Aside, the possibility of calling KK OOP to a single $15 open, with $485 behind was mentioned for V. Even closing the action, that seems suboptimal. I'm certainly not smooth-calling in the BB with KK-JJ here. If V has that much FPS in them, who can tell what they're thinking? Which goes back to what sub was saying a page or two ago.

Given Tomark and sub's discussion, solvers basically never donk this flop as BB. So I'm not sure of the utility of a solver output showing that we should fold 40% of our T9 combos to that flop donk. The solver and V are donking drastically different ranges, if I'm understanding the SS correctly, and the solver's is much more nutted, I'm guessing.

Did you instruct the solver to donk flop with your estimation of V's range here? Or is the solver using it's own ranging for a donk flop as BB action?

Deleted several posts ITT. As a reminder, no trolling strat threads or insulting other posters. Also, no responding to what you see as such. Instead, just report the post. If you are unclear please read the posting rules.

I just can't understand why V would check the river and expect H to bet after H has been so passive (if V has a better hand). Why possibly lose value? Does V hope H has AK and V does have a 9 or better -- and he just prays H bets now? Does V have a read on H that he will bet river if checked to?

Well, V has compressed Hero's range to AQs+ on flop and turn, especially with the double FD on the turn. It's not unreasonable for the V to think that H has a lot of AK here or AA and will bet for value on river.

That said, H also has a ton of TT-QQ, and 88 that would take a similar line to the river, thereby arriving at the river with SDV and likely to check behind on a K, even though it is H's range card. I think H has probably more SDV combos than thin value combos on the river.

For that reason, I agree with Java here. V should bet his value after compressing H's range. This is yet another reason I cannot find a fold here, beyond the basic MDF math of having T9 here getting 2-1.

Their logic could be "hero probably hit the king otr, so I'm gonna check bc I know he's gonna bet, and even if he doesn't have one he'll still probably bet trying to represent it".

Also, these river jams on paired boards in llsnl games are usually filled up hands, not just a higher 9.

1 certainly holds true.

2 is only half the equation. T9o is a profitable open if our opponents are folding too much due to fold equity, AND IF THEY'RE NOT FOLDING TOO MUCH then T9o becomes a profitable open because it has good enough equity against the range of hands they would have to VPIP with in order to not make it a profitable fold off fold equity alone. So we're really indifferent to their fold frequency.

The assumption, though, is that we actually realize our equity, which would not be true if (for example) the blinds 3b a lot. Like A LOT a lot. Blinds are 3bing like 15% each at equilibrium, so it'd have to be well above that to cause problems for us. Since the opposite is the case, T9o becomes an even more profitable raise, and we should make the opposite adjustment: raising more hands that rely on realizing their full equity in order to nudge above 0 EV.

3 isn't really correct. T9o isn't much of a board coverage hand. There's plenty of Ts and 9s in our range and the boards where they hit straights and strong draws tend to be broadway heavy boards we also already have covered.

And the goal of raising isn't to be unexploitable. I mean, we CAN raise it because that strategy is unexploitable, but we're not doing it with the intent of patching up an otherwise exploitable strategy. It's more for the "optimal" part of GTO than the "game theory" part. (That O is a really underrated part of that acronym.) GTO is already an optimal strategy, and you're not improving upon it by missing out on EV that is there even against a bot who knows your strategy.

From a reciprocality standpoint you can think of it like it's "exploitable" to open fold T9o OTB (you're not making money unless you're better at stealing the blinds than your opponents), though that's not really the same thing (so I don't know why I'm even typing it).

But if he thinks H hit the K, isn't that more reason to bet for value? I get the second part -- maybe he thinks the only way to get paid is to check and hope H stabs at it. Maybe he has some read on H that he will stab.