Setting:
Orleans Casino
1-3 game

Players:
Most of the table is loose-passive.
HJ is a 60 year old white man who is very straightforward. $500 stack
CO is a 50 year old asian man who just sat down. $335 stack
Hero is seen as tight-aggressive. $500 stack

MP limps - HJ raises to $15 - CO calls
Hero is on the button with A K
Hero raises to $60 - CO calls ($275 behind)
2 Players
Pot = $142

Flop: K 3 3
CO checks - Hero bets $45 - CO calls ($230 behind)
2 Players
Pot = $232

Turn: T
CO checks - Hero ???

I often have trouble sizing things right in these spots.
Shall I check in hopes of getting one more value bet on the river?
Shall I bet half pot now with plans of shoving the river?

Please advise.

--CM

I'd probably go smaller ($80-85), though a solver may advocate for a 2/3 PSB more times than not.

If called, we can get it in on a non-club river.

Size to stack off on the river. $85 works. Checking makes it harder to get all the money in.

There's just a PSB left. Your options are to bet or shove. This is the wrong board texture to be thinking about checking with TPTK.

If you are beat, betting small is better if you plan to x/f the river getting nearly 4:1. If there is a FD, you want to bet more than 85. You give the FD direct odds to draw. I don't think an unknown FD is going to call 85 but fold to 125. Grab as much money as possible because if it is a non-club, you're getting nothing else. If he has TP, I think the same argument applies. If has worse, he's folding no matter what you do.

Solvers aren't emotional, but people are. The villain just got to the table. Breaking the last redbird stack is a tactile and visual signal that he needs to be more cautious or he's likely to have rebuy or leave. I don't want him to start thinking about it. At the same time, he's given no sign that he's ahead. I think betting as much as he'll call makes sense and 125 is a nice even amount in chips.

As others have said 80-90 works perfect. We're not scared of any river we just want all the money in before the hand is over. Bet a size that makes it impossible to fold a king to

I'm not so sure I 3bet someone who is "very straightforward". Although the fact that he folds to our 3bet makes me question exactly how accurate our read is / whether I'm misunderstanding what "very straightforward" means.

Awesome preflop result though; HU in position with initiative in a very small SPR pot against the smaller stack where we can comfortably commit with TP, nice.

SPR is a very small 2 on the flop. If the board was rainbow, I would aim for 3 small bets to play for stacks. However, with the flush draw out there I would aim to get this done in 2 streets (he's never folding a flush draw to one bet, he might still call one bet with a pear so lets get more value ASAP, and let's do this before the scare card comes). I'd probably go $90ish to leave about a 1/2 PSB shove for the turn. I also don't like any sizing that pretty much gives immediate odds to chase a draw when we're committed and it is unlikely we'll be able to fold if it gets there.

As played, kinda left ourselves in an awkward spot with a chunky PSB left for the turn (which I'd be fine with on a drawless board but not nearly as much on a board that contains one). I'd still probably shove, but I just think we should ease into this better with a bigger flop bet.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Checking turn is the worst option and shouldn’t be a consideration here.

A lot of opponent’s flush draws have picked up a gutter or a pair on this turn. So I don’t like the idea of a 1/3 PSB that generates no fold equity. Additionally we would never take this sizing with a flush draw, so we might be perceived to have no bluffs.

I prefer to jam turn. We still might get looked up by KQ, and folding opponents 20-25% equity draws is a big win in a pot of this size.

We are not interested in generating fold equity; we are interested in getting as much money as we can into the middle of the table.

The villain called our small flop c-bet on a chicken board. This narrows their range; it leaves in their pairs, their KX, their flush draws, and possibly their A-highs (if they do not care that this is a 3-bet pot).

Villain is going to have relatively few KX but they can have lots of pocket pairs. They can also have AcTc, JcTc, and Tc9c.

How much would you call in this spot with JJ? With 99? I would actually discount (but not eliminate) the larger pairs, because this villain flatted HJ's original preflop open. Thinking it out this way, I think we make more money by targeting the villain's fewer KX and TcXc combos than their pairs, so I would lean towards a larger bet size.

I think a shove gets all of these. Let's just jam and see what happens.

wibbly wobbly math stuff suggests the max range of hands he calls requires turn and river bet sizes to be exact in terms of ratio to the pot. 85/232 = 36.6%, 145/402=36.0%

so idk go with that

I checked PIO with input of our range = {AK,AQs,AJs,TT+,KQs, QJs,JTs} and a few different settings for opponent range, e.g., in the first sim opponent range = {77-JJ,AQo,KQo,AJo, suited broadways (except AK)}. I also adjusted the opponent range by removing and adding some additional suited combos (removing KTs/QTs or adding J9s/Q9s) and adding KJo. Didn’t affect the outcome of the sim in the slightest.

Locked the 33% sizing for the flop bet. Gave two bet options for turn: jam and 1/3 PSB..

PIO jams turn with AK pure. OTOH PIO bets turn for 1/3 PSB with AA almost pure (~80% of the time).

The EV difference for jamming turn with AK versus 1/3 PSB is only $3, so super minor difference.

So the moral of the story is that probably either bet size is fine from theory perspective.

Here’s another tidbit:
If you want PIO to start mixing bet sizing options with AK then you need to give opponent more Kx relative to flush draws. In particular, if you add KJo to the above baseline range then PIO is indifferent to the two bet sizes with AK.
So:
Baseline: If opponent has 6 FD combos and 10 worse Kx combos then PIO pure jams AK (EV difference relative to 1/3 PSB is $3/$225).
Baseline+KJo: If opponent has 6 FD combos and 16 worse Kx combos then PIO is indifferent to bet sizes with AK (and mixes with slight preference for jam).

The hands that really prefer the smaller size in the baseline scenario are just TT/KK, which makes sense.

80 flop. Shove most turns.

Trying to decide optimal line vs villain for max value in this spot is indeed interesting to me and I'm still not 100% whats "best". In-game I think I'd have opted for the ~$80 turn, call all shoves from villain and plan to shove river our self on most rivers. I like the advice/logic on just shove too. I hate giving too cheap a price to the FD but also hate losing my value-targets to a big bet. The solver exercise that demonstrates that the EV difference probably isn't significant anyway seems sensible, and how ChaosInEquilibirum broke it down by showing how solver changes as you add more value target combos vs flush draw combos makes perfect sense.

Knowing the clientele at the Orleans and the likely hands this villain can have, they are probably folding all the PP's under the K to any size, probably coming along with any of their top pairs as long as the bet isn't TOO big. Maybe they'll even call one more street with JJ-99? But I feel to any real pressure you lose near-100% of your value targets with this demographic. Plus with this demographic, in a 3-bet pot they may already have hapily folded everything but top pair or a flush draw to our flop bet... so they show up with even less possible value-targets on the turn.

What they do with the flush draw on the turn is likely call what they feel is "reasonable" and fold to a big bet, but you do get just occasional turn-shoves here over your bet when they don't wanna fold their FD or their improved FD to also have a pair or a SD also. Shoving on a 50+ year old Orleans shorter-stack player just seems like I'm losing all the value I should be getting with them when they show up with KQ or KJ here and they fold to the pressure. Maybe size to give just barely incorrect odds to call for the FD (does this make sense even though we are essentially committed to this hand so they will realize all their implied odds when a club comes in and they have it?)

Thinking about it now the advice I'd give myself is in-game maybe just use whatever sliver of info you can gain from the opponent via physical tells, how quickly they called, how they called, etc., to just guess as to if this is a value-hand they are holding on to, or a flush draw. With absolutely no info whatsoever, I'd probably think that any hand that would have called flop bet and will call the turn bet too weighs more towards a flush draw with this demographic. Thus either shoving or at least sizing up enough to make sure you're giving incorrect odds to the villain for his draw (including the implied odds since we are committed). So maybe bet a little higher like 120 (awkward but maybe still gets calls) or just push as a couple others suggest.

I'm practicing my solver-savy-ness so plugged into GTO+ as well. Used same hero range and similar villain range. Usually how I setup the solver for unknown/random villains in a spot like this where they flat call a raise then flat call the 3bet while now OOP is heavily weighted to hands like TT-77, AQs, AJs, AQ, AJ, some JJ and a sliver of QQ and AK... then some KQs and ATs... and then a sliver of a bunch of other hands this presumably not-so-good-player can show up with. (So like 10%-50% weighting on 44,55,66, 10% weighting to suited connectors, weaker suited broadways, and even the other unsuited broadways. Not perfect but I want the solver to consider the small-chance of all the "weird" hands a bad player can possibly show up with. Honestly I should probably be adding a sliver of other stuff as well.

Exact range matrix used:


I gave more flop-bet-size options for hero, but solver was betting 1/3psb for 100% of range so didn't need to node lock that. I had to node-lock the villain's responses to this bet, because when left to the solver it either folded or raised with villains range - it never called this flop bet. I just made assumptions about the villain and node-locked it to fold all whiffs, call all top-pairs except AK where I presumed villain would check raise some percentage. Then just call all non-nut FD's but mix in check raises half the time when villain had nut flush draw, and do a mix of fold/call on PP's under the K.

On the turn for hero the solver had options of check, 1/3psb, 2/3psb, and shove. For AK The solver bet small near-100%; it did mix in a very small percentage of checks when hero held the Ac in their hand. It never shoved or picked the 2/3psb. (Albeit as ChaosInEquilibrium pointed out when he ran this in PIO with slightly different ranges and bet options, the EV was also very close. It was about a $1.20 difference between betting small and shoving)

The range I input would have had more top-pairs for villain even if I only have them a sliver of a weighting, but I am surprised this range and options I put in my solve mostly imply betting small vs a jam.

I'm always up for practicing/learning more with the solver so if you want to tweak what we are running & compare further just PM me.