1/3 NLHE 9 handed.

Table - Monday night, a few reg grinders and a few loose passive fish. Most of the fish are unknown to me. Stacks are all about 400-600 with a few short stackers in there trying to double up and leave.

V - Fishy, sunglasses, bought in for 300, lost it, hit the ATM, back in for 300, bled down then ran a heater up to 900 and now has bled down a bit again. He's VPIPing about 50-60%. Passive and calling a lot. I doubled him up (luckily he was bled out a bit and only had 220$ in front at this point) when he had AA and I had KK - he RFI'd 80$ cold over the BB from LJ, folds to me in the SB, I see KK and make it 210, folds to him AI for six bucks more and he shows the AA before I call - he flops top set. 400$ HJ.


H - Was stuck a BI for awhile and is now clawing his way back to even. Hasn't been too tight or too loose. Opened 45s earlier IP over a limp and flopped a straight which saw showdown. Covers SB.

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I think I played this hand really badly but want to get opinions.

Folds to V in HJ who cold opens to 25 (big for the table), folds to H who sees A Q and remembers when V made it 80 with AA so I just call OOP with AK on my brain.

Flop 50 - (375 back) - K T 7

I check, he bets 45, I just call (eek?)

Turn 140 - (330 back) - 3

I check, he bets 90, I just call

River 320 - (240 back) - 6

I lead AI.

..also there's a high hand promotion for a royal flush so I'd get 3-4000$ for hitting the J if that matters

Why do you think you played it bad? Im good with it. When he bets big i dont see the point in raising when i figure there is 0 fold equity. And once we get there i like lead bc hes basically always going to check back unless he has a flush too, in which case he will call our bet anyway.

I just felt like I read him for AK or AA or maybe KK even and I'm not getting the odds to call, especially OOP.

You can make a case for raising flop if you want to commit to the hand then. Otherwise it looks fine, villain is betting big and your drawing. You probably can't push them out so there is not much to gain by raising.

On the river it's a judgement call about what villain will call. The shove is less then pot and could get called but it's also big enough to sometimes push villain off AA/AK. If villain is likely to fold to any substantial bet then giving up to villain's big turn bet would have been better.

It's fine. I probably 3bet pre, but sometime you need to follow your gut.

I also don't mind a check/raise on the flop, but I'm a bit of a gambler with hands like this.

I don't really see how he can call you on the river, though. I hope he thinks you have the naked Ac.

This isn’t a call vs. raise question; given the big bets we have to justify why we’re not folding at any point in the hand, particularly preflop and flop. (I think turn is probably OK, and I do like the river lead.)

How do you differentiate about when to lead river vs x/r AI or x/call AI here? I was debating in my mind what to do and thought the guy was too passive to reliably have a x/induce line but that's just V dependent. Is there any other reason to prefer a lead?

Result:

I mainly don't like to lead rivers when the flush completes and I was not the bettor on the previous street. Against most players that do this we have an easy snap fold with most hands. I have saved a ton of money because of this. Get them to bluff or value own themselves. Sometimes we can check raise all in and win a bigger pot. Sometimes they will check back, but not always. Just because they check back doesn't mean they would have called a bet, and just because they check back doesn't mean you wouldn't win the max by check raising when they do bet.

I had a hand today, 4.6k effective. 5/5/25 7 handed. UTG+1 rec limps 25, button rec limps 25, rec in SB limps, hero checks Ac7c in 25 UTG straddle.

Flop 105 KcQs5c, X, X, utg+1 bets 300 (!), button tank calls (thankfully this gave me a good price, although calling without the cold caller is defensible given the implied odds), SB folds, hero calls.

Turn 1,005 KcQs5cAd, X, UTG+1 bets 1k, button folds, hero calls

River 3,005 KcQs5cAdTc, X, villain jams 3.3k effective, hero calls and quickly tables the nuts, villain tables Qc4c.

To be fair, this villain would have called if I donk jammed river with this particular hand. I can tell you there are a lot of situations where I have gotten paid without donking river.

Okay but doesn't it seem like such a fishy line? Check-calling OOP? I can be 25%-36% equity here depending on what he has. Turns out he had A-high so I guess I can be ahead a sliver of the time too. But mainly, against his range, I'd give myself 33%ish. That's if I see two cards. He's betting pot OTF and chonk OTT. I feel like its hard to calculate over two streets but flop to turn I only have what - 20% equity? Idk. I always find this to be a gray area with implied odds. Here I also had a GSSD to go with but what if I had had a non-nut flush? Or the board was Kc-7h-3c? for the naked FD.

I had a hand with a good LAG the other day, one of the best players in our room. I was fairly short stacked and opened KJss and he called IP, a station called OOP from blinds. Flop Jh-Xs-Ys and I gii. He has A2ss and said it was perfectly reasonable for him to call but I thought it was way too loose for 100 BBs effective (but he was IP so its a little different).

Also what if river bricked 2? What am I doing here with <PSB back? x/folding? lead jamming?

What flushes does V have here that raise pre and go bet-bet on this board? J9? 87?

With Mlark on this one.

Even though V is going to be checking back here a lot, there's always a chance he'll barrel off with a bluff or a worse value hand. If we lead out here, it's kind of obvious we have the flush. But when we check, a lot of V's will think we'd never check a nutted hand.

lol. Fold flop with nut flush draw, nut starigt draw, and over card????????????

Look again at the description of Villain. What range do you want to assign this guy who raises preflop when he is usually passive, and then basically pots the flop? Are we ever ahead? Is our overcard ever good? Against the described Villain, I expect to almost always be behind and have no fold equity on the flop, and to face a bet on any blank turn. If we give ourselves 12 outs, we aren't getting immediate odds. So we need to be able to count on implied odds to make the call here, or we might consider folding. Or possibly our read is off, in which case now I want to raise flop.

By the way, the reason I like the river lead is that I fully expect the described Villain to check back if we check. I think we give away our hand strength by jamming, but at the same time I think this Villain is more likely to make a "I need to see this" call than he is to bet our hand for us. Again, totally different if the read is wrong.

I would check raise flop, if there wasn’t a huge royal flush bounty. Our EV from hitting the royal is significant relative to pot size. Plus, there’s nothing wrong with check calling big draws.

What to do on river is tough, it’s so villain dependent. Will he shove a set, maybe AK or aces? Will he bluff jam AQ or QJ? I usually default to checking in flow here but that might not be optimal when exploiting fish.

Maybe I overlooked some part of the discussion, but I took Mlark's comment to be about our river action OOP, not our action on previous streets, which seems to be what you're talking about here.

A lot of low-stakes players will over-fold to river aggression on a scary run-out, when the OOP opponent goes check-call, check-call, donk-lead huge. But those same players will over-bluff when action checks to them. Some of those players may even make the mistake of turning their thin value hands into a bluff, rather than checking back.

So, in this hand, if we give V AK, he may check back river, or he may bet, but he's not very likely to call a donk-jam on this run-out with just TPTK. And if he had top 2 or a set, he'd have over-bet turn, so we can pretty reliably put him on a 1P hand at best here.

As for the rest of the hand:

PRE - Generally I hate flatting out of the SB, but here, against this V, when he takes this huge sizing, it's fine.

FLOP - Check-calling is fine. I also wouldn't hate a check-raise here, with some frequency.

TURN - Check-calling is okay, but I would definitely prefer a check-raise-jam now. This is the answer to your question about what we do on brick rivers - we semi-bluff jam the turn with equity so we don't have to jam river as a pure bluff.

RIVER - So, yeah, we don't want to just donk-jam, but I also don't like just checking with the hope that he'll bet. Instead, I think I'd prefer a really small block bet, hoping to induce a spaz-raise from a semi-clueless V. $30-$35 ought to do it.

I am confused about what you are saying and how this relates to my post.

Ate you saying your line looks fishy so maybe he calls you? It only looks fishy in that it looks extremely strong and fish do this all the time with an actual flush. It is saying maybe you know you don't have direct odds to call but that's okay because you're planning to lead if you bink river and hopefully get paid off.

How do you know he has only ace high? And if he did, what if he would have bluffed all in and you win his stack?

fold pf and re-read the section in supersystem where doyle talks about AQ pre

A don't think he meant fold AQs to a single raise.

Yes I'm saying my line looks fishy check calling OOP with a FD.. Would you play it the same with a naked FD for instance A 2 ? He's basically potting it both streets and I just luck sucked and got there. What am I doing if I whiff?

Most players just give up if they whiff and it is pretty standard to call a nut flush draw even without getting direct odds. Especially with A high where you may be good vs AJ, QJ, and every once in a while maybe your A or even Q is a good out. Imagine if villain is spazzing with JcJx and bluff jams river. Or even AxJc, or AQ/AJ no club? Or if he is drawing to a weaker flush, you could win a big pot.

If by asking, does your line look fishy, you are asking, does your line look like a bluff that will get called light? No, not really. It looks like you were drawing to a flush and you rivered a flush.

Also, here's another problem in your logic. If you think V thinks you don't call turn with a FD, then can't he value bet worse than a flush on the river? Can't he bluff, especially if he doesn't put you on a flush draw and figures that caps your range?

Another thing about your line is that it is hard to put you on bluffs. You're not getting to the river with AQo with a club. Your range is like combo draws, Kx, and maybe some traps by the time you get to the river, so it's either nutted or too strong to bluff. Unless you are telling the story that you called turn with QJs to donk bluff clubs, but that is a bit far fetched.

You shouldn't be in the SB pre with Ac2c so that's kind of irrelevant. The only NFDs you would call from the SB facing this open size would be AQs and AJs which are both combo draws.

Do we think hero ever has any other flushes here, like A5 that didn't raise pre, or A9, that has the backdoor SD on the flop?



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I wouldn't call those hands pre from the SB facing a 25 raise. Honestly I don't know that I would call AJs or even AQs to a 25 raise. I guess if he RFI'd AA to 80 his range is a bit capped at 25.

I take your meaning as you wouldn't call with those hands, because of the raise size. I guess I'm wondering if we can rationalize calling wider because V is fishy, and thus we're somewhat inferring good IO from getting involved in more pots with him.

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You shouldn't even call many hands from the small blind to a normal raise size in a raked game. Arguably you should not call any. A9s isn't really a good call from SB facing a 3x open, let alone an 8.3x open. Not even vs a fish as you are going to be so dominated when he opens that large.

I don't mind a flat with AQs, but it's a super narrow range we should flat with.