Villain: Definitely the fish at the table. He has called down with bottom pair, gutshots, etc. The only reason he has chips is he tripled up with 27o against KK and QQ.

Hero: Had been playing tight and was up considerably. Hero has beaten V in almost every heads up pot. Two nits on left.


5/5 1500 effective

Hero (CO) opens to 25 with KT
V calls in the BB

Pot (55): T65
V Checks
H bets 35
V calls

Pot (120): 9
V Checks
Hero bets 80
V Calls

Pot (280): J
V Checks
H ???

Why not?

Just make sure you understand that sizing would determine his calling range.

Naturally if you're betting pot, his range would weigh heavily toward hands that make your river bet look bad.

But it still doesn't change the fact that this is a good spot to bet.

Sizing? I went with 85.

Looks good to me.

I don't think you follow.

Why yes (to betting)?

We have a decent value hand and V has not shown any indication that we could value own ourselves. All we need to do is beat 50% of his calling range and it is easily over that.

Why not? You haven't established that.

I am lost here, are you asking for bet sizing (not enough information) or are you asking whether this is a good spot to bet, or are you just being result oriented?

What has he done in the past with made hands? Does he bet out or c/r when he hits? Can he bluff-raise rivers? Does he hero-call with A high? There are fish and there are fish...

I think b/f $150 is good here. V should only be raising straights, slow-played sets and maybe a binked pair OTR.

With made hands, I've seen him both lead out and CR, but he's fairly balanced in this respect as he's done it with bluffs also (and he bluffs frequently).

I haven't seen him hero call with A-high, but I have seen him call 3 streets with 74 on a board like AK498.

RP,
I'm asking both about whether we should bet (which I think it is, which is why I bet) and what our sizing should be (I went with 85).

Also,
If you're looking for reasons to not bet, there are some (his penchant for bluffing, the fact that we don't beat a whole lot, etc.). That said, I don't think this overrides the fact that his calling range is so wide that we should be beating 50%+ of his hands, and aren't getting bluffed enough, so we should still bet.

After reflecting, while I might have overshot the mark with $150 I think you can definitely go bigger than $85, maybe in the middle like $120. With the understanding I have of value betting from reading this forum, against any halfway-decent players this would be razor-thin at best but I think V in this hand is someone who is quite likely to call with worse so we need to bet.

A lot of 5$ blind bluffcatch donks (the kind of guys who call 3 streets with bottom pair) like to call large polarizing river bets with marginal hands. They don't know what the word polarizing means, but they have a sense that you would never do that with anything less than the nuts (or you have AK). They also don't like to check/raise large river bets as a bluff because it puts a huge portion of their stack in and the pot isn't that big. If i'm against a station otr who has hands like 67, A5, 98 in his range, I like a polarizing bet that can get hero called.

85 is fine because he calls with everything worse. However, if you bet 240, some fish are calling with only slightly less of a range as they would for 85.

For me, the choice between 85 and 240 would heavily be based on the dynamics at the table so I couldn't tell you what's best here, but in the future think about spots to polarize yourself with middling value hands where your range crushes theirs. I've built a healthy portion of my banrkoll by making big polarizing value bets with marginal hands in the right spots where most people would go with a smaller standard size.