2/3/5, 600

KcKd HJ
LJ limps, I raise 25, folds to LJ who calls

Flop Ks Qh 4d
LJ check, I bet 15, LJ calls

Turn 9s
LJ check, I bet 45, LJ calls

River 8s
LJ check, I bet 115, LJ raises to 300

Call/fold/shove?

I think turn and river sizings are both too small. Would fold to the raise though. A lot of spade combos make sense as well as JT. Two pairs or worse value seems very unlikely and he can't really be bluffing.

15 on KQ4r when we raised, seems a little small. 35 into 50 sounds more apropos.

45 into 80 is w/e. Probably would go bigger, doubt it matters. Need some reads before I can decide on what to do with 115 into 170 getting 2.7Xd when the flush comes in.

Kind of tempted to give V credit for it, tbh.

Size up flop and turn no need to be cute. As played fold.

It would be helpful to have some reads on V.

Our hand is under-repped when we take this small bet sizing on earlier streets. This is going to be a worse value hand turned into a bluff at least some of the time, I think. Not sure I can fold top set, as played. Definitely not raising, but think we have to call. We've somewhat induced this.

I'd have preferred larger sizing on earlier streets. Might go 2/3 pot on flop and 1.3x pot on turn.

Hard to give V credit for very many straights or flushes when he limps pre and just check-calls our small bets. He's basically repping exactly JTss.



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idk whats up wit all these lil down bets lately, esp with big value hands I would jus cbet more.

Player reads are important here as not everyone even notices the BDF or straight so he could be slow playing 44, 88 or 99. I would fold to most players though since most ppl wouldn't do this w/o at least a straight.

Reads would help with this too, but bad players will limp-call a lot of suited Axss trash. Prob not AT+, but A7ss on down, sure. I don't think we can exclude those, and there are a few combos.

The tiny cbet didn't kick V out and when the backdoor draw comes shows up on the turn, many Vs will peel even a 1/2 pot turn pot when they still have 80-85% of their stack back after it.

Tl;DR, I think V has a lot more flushes here than JTss, so I want to fold. Depending on reads.

Though 185 to call a pot of 585. We have to be good here...a quarter of the time? Makes me want to call, even though I feel like V has it more than 75% of the time.

I had seen this player open some hands, so I'd be surprised if they weren't opening JTs or JT in general for that matter.

It's certainly the case that my sizing is too small esp given the hand.

Absolutely. I'm expecting to lose here sometimes. But I'm still not folding against the population, and definitely not folding depending depending on some decent reads, the way this was played.

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Thanks for discussion, here are the results if you're curious.

Thanks for posting the results, and imho the take away here is

Raises are really strong at low stakes, however i feel like players just never ever slowplay the river, which makes the river check raises more bluff heavy than almost any other bet. There is about a 0% chance he has JT or worse no matter who he is. If the flush had hit thr turn, or he had a FD otf, he wouldve bet out on river. My guess is he was in checking mode with a weak made hand and backdoored a flush and sorta forgot to bet.

This is player dependent. If you think hes capable of bluffing $300 (most lowstakes players are not), i call. If he isnt capable, im folding, he had a Q and hit a flush. QsJs or QsTs. So im probably folding vs 90%+ of villains.

Edit: also after reading comments, i think your sizing is good otf, you block their most likely calling made hands, the board is pretty dry, so youre hoping for a call from gutshots and Qx/4x. could maybe bet a bit more ott once any Jx Tx pick up a straight draw, but i think your sizing is fine on all streets and would be nitpicking minor suggestions to suggest a different sizing.

This is why you bet small. Im happy to let 5 high call my flop bet with bdsd bdfd. Just insane to suggest otherwise. The goal of poker isnt to never get sucked out on.

Yea I think there's something to be said for starting small for this reason. Playing in a way that avoids suckouts is bad, that being said, playing in a way that misses value on hands isn't great either. It's an interesting subject.

It's not insane to suggest betting bigger for value such as cbetting 25 or 30 instead of 15. It also makes it easier to narrow down their ranges on later streets, whether we have a monster or air and if you bet small when you have a good hand and big when you don't you'll get exploited by the players who will easily pick up on that.

In general I would bet bigger on KQ4, but obv. fine to bet smaller with top set if fish is going to call no pair no draw.
One thing is that we mostly want to follow up with an overbet on the turn (unless we have flushes/straights drawing dead). On a 9 I'm fine going smaller, although if you think V never has JT I'm fine going for it anyway.

Call for honor and lose

The two-Broadway flop just favors our range so much, I don't think it's good to bet small, especially when everyone loves playin JT pre. I can forgive the small flop bet, but we have to bet bigger on turn, even thought JT got there.

Wonder if he folds river to a raise. Feels insane to turn top set into a bluff, but if we think he has more flushes than JT, I would assume most of them are weak flushes, not nut flushes, and he'll fold the worst of them, like 52, at least some of the time. I don't know that I'd call a river jam with 52.

That said, if we think he gets to the river with flush draws, and straights, we should just be checking back, or betting super small, and folding to his raise, or coming over the top, but not calling.

I would assume not. People don't fold flushes, and people really don't fold backdoor flushes.

Not only that but the Ks was on the board. We can't just bluff everything.

I don't know that you'd get to the river 5s2s.

You don't know me!!!

But, seriously, no, I don't know how I'd arrive on the river with 52, and I'm a guy who delights in showing down pre-flop trash that was spun into some post-flop gold.

52 used to be in my wheelhouse at 1/2, but recently, not so much.

This is the paradox of stupid opponents.

Is someone who played 52s smart enough to realize we could be raising with a hand like AQs, or dumb enough to fold for less than $300 more?

We could rep a lot of AXss as the PFR. HU, I'd play AQss, AJss, ATss and al lot of my suited wheel aces the same way hero played KK here, at least with some frequency. I'd take larger bet sizing on flop and turn, but I'd be betting every street.

Don't know if a guy who calls a $25 raise pre (and raises river!) with 52 is able to work all that out. Maybe not, so...yeah, probably not my best poker advice to come back over the top with KK here.

Sounds like a challenge.

Hold my beer...

1) You want to “narrow their range” aka “get fewer calls” when you flopped the nuts on a reasonably dry static board. Thats scared poker.

2) there are two ways of thinking about this.

The first option, from a GTO perspective, you can look at your range and nut advantage and see you have a range and nut advantage on this board. I dont have access to gto anymore, but im pretry sure that it bets its entire range at 1/3 pot. This unexploitable strategy allows for it to value bet hands as weak as 66, and Qx, and bluff with its entire range without being vulnerable to check raises

The second option is to look from an exploitative standpoint. You could exploitatively bet bigger here if you think V is going to call larger bets, but larger bets are targeting Kx and youre blocking Kx. Not that I think betting large is smart with any hand, but if i were to bet large it would be with 44, which unblocks villians strong hands.

So either way you look at it, this isnt a flop to bet large with your range viewed holistically and unexploitably, and it isnt hand you want to bet large viewedd on its own in a vacuum.