$2/$5 NL

Villain opens in MP to $15. In my opinion hes one of the top 1-2% players in my room. I call in position with AhTh

Flop ($35) KsJh4h. He bets $15. I raise to $45 . He thinks for a longer than normal time than what you would expect in what is still a small pot....and folds.

We started talking he said he had a J and if he had the Ah he wouldve called. This makes no sense to me. Surely he cant be willing to continue just based on a backdoor flush possibility can he?

If he has the Ah, that means its more likely that I have a made hand and not a draw and he should be more willing to fold, right?

He's doing it backwards IMO. If he held the Ah, that removes it from your semi-bluffing range, skewing it more towards value. Since he did not have the Ah in his hand, it's out there somewhere and it's in a lot of combos that are going to raise that flop.

That being said, no matter what you have, hero calling second pair OOP with two streets left make it pretty tough to continue. He knows he's either crushed, or somewhere close to flipping against combo draws.

That's what I thought.

The downside of having the Ah is what you said.

The upside of having the Ah is it adds something like 6-8% equity to his hand. That's pretty significant and is why if you've seen some of my threads where I post my range I'll bluff or float if I have a backdoor flush draw but fold the same hand with no chance of a flush.

Another upside is if a heart comes on the turn, it will make his hand an excellent one to put in the bluff check/raise or donk bluff turn range since it he knows you can't have the nut flush.

Some thoughts on the hand though you didnt ask for it:

Pre is fine, flop is okay as is the raise, but it might be better to raise flush draws with less showdown value. I.E. if you raise 76 and he folds, he'll always be folding the best hand but when you raised here he might have folded the losing hand (he could have lied, he might not have had AJ).

Also what do you even rep with your raise? You can't have KK and AA while he can. You might not even have AK or JJ if you'd 3-bet them pre.

And if he had AJ, I don't get why he'd bet flop. He only gets better to call/raise and worse to fold (except for QJ, J10, J9s). Note I'm including draws in the "better" group since we would be able to bluff him off the hand with our draws (now or later).

Not all that many 2/5 players try to bluff people off their hands with draws. A large amount of them just call and try to hit the draw. I'm sure that if he really had AJ, he was trying to make me pay to hit a draw.

Backdoor flush draws are absolutely huge. For two important reasons.

First, the turn. If you catch a fourth flush card after having floated the flop, you can bet, raise, or checkraise the turn and your line looks very strong. You look like you were slowplaying a monster are are now scared of the flush draw.

Second, the river. If you hit your runner runner flush, no one believe you and you will get paid off.

I was just saying that if he bets AJ, if you have a draw, he's not even in a good situation still because he'll have a very tough time calling later in the hand. Example: If he bets AJ and we call flop with our Ah10h, he's in a bad situation while we are in a good situation though he's ahead now. We can bet a balanced range on the turn and/or river with Ah10h, sometimes with the nuts and sometimes as a bluff.

OK, but when the villain who raised preflop, bets the flop and he gets raised by hero (not me...any random player), hero normally has a pretty big hand. So when villain calls with the Ah and tried to check raise the turn if he picks up a heart, how much FE do you think he has normally? My guess is not very much at all. So hes calling the flop raise with a 5:1 shot to pick up another heart on the turn. 4 out of 5 times hes probably going to have to fold the turn. The one time he hits the heart, he may have very little FE and is going to spew money if he check raises.

This is only talking about the backdoor flush possibility, not talking about picking up a second pair or trips.

I just dont think the Ah adds enough equity to his hand when OOP. Certainly not against a good player.

Grunch.

My first thought in this kind of a spot is that tons of the hands that go into typical flop bluff raising ranges contain the A. AQ, AT, for example are great hands to put in a flop bluff raising range, but AQ/AT no heart are generally folded. On the other hand, none of your value raises have the A.

The backdoor flush draw doesn't add a ton of equity. Only like 4%.

The upside is that if hearts do come in he knows you can't have the NF and he'll have a profitable bluffing opportunity, but he's only getting this opportunity about 20% of the time. NF draw often won't be raised on the flop anyway as it is a highly profitable call. Players that have bluffing ranges in these spots would often prefer to use weaker hands than the NFD to put into a bluffing range. Most players don't bluff much in this spot anyway. AT type hands are often raised, but that can hardly be called a bluff.

I would prefer to not have the A if I am considering a call with AJ. FWIW, I am never calling with any AJ combos against most players, including you, Mike, based on what I know about you.

Which obviously is not the case here, ergo moot.

Joking Mike. I really respect your game and posts. Appreciate all your contribution to llsnl.

Despite my joke, does he know you? I assume since you know him/his game then he knows you. If he knows you, he knows you are "good enough to lay down a big hand". Can you decipher if his comment was generic to most players or specific to you being his villain?


In regard to your question: my first thought was with the Ah he is thinking he would have in his arsenal bluffing any heart as well as the backdoor equity BenT talks about.

We've played together a smallish amount and have never really mixed it up much and have never talked at all before so I really dont know what he thinks about my game or my image. I dont know if he pays as close attention or not to everyone around him like I do.

If he is in the 1-2% of top players in the room, how can he 1)not know you 2)not pay attention to players around?

If his play makes no sense generically as you suggest, might it make sense vs you specifically? Is this a case of how good players play against other good players like yourself.

3)actually tell you the truth about what he had.

If he's that good, he'd likely tell you something like that to see how you'd react to it. Might even be smart enough to scan 2+2 to see if you posted it here to identify you if he didn't know your name here. Happens fairly frequently.

I wasnt necessarily saying it didnt make sense.,,but it didnt make sense to me. I was just trying to figure out if other people knew what he meant.

Yeah, he could obviously be lying about what he had. It just didnt feel that way. Its not like I asked him what he had.

He could be a 2+2er. I have no idea. I did think of that though and purposely made the title of the thread generic. I know I dont read every thread so he probably doesnt either if he reads 2+2 at all.

Great point(s) Venice.

I was thinking AQo makes a lot of sense as his hand. Especially since a few posters here say if he had AJo, why bet the flop. AhQx - bluff any h and a 10 is an out.

Wait. Is Venice, Venice, FL?

Mike,

I really respect your posts/game. (Before I proceed I should put myself in context. I'm a student of the game, but not yet a winning player.)

I really think the answer to your post can't be answered without knowing what he thinks of your game. I'm also really surprised that you haven't put him on knowing you/your game. Seems to matter here a lot.

Also stack sizes. If deep it really matters. I'm assuming 100bb effective though

We were about $700 effective.

Let's assume he knows you. And as you say you have a made hand - set, top two - if he has the Ah. He knows if he hits an h, you might not fold to a turn bet. But this deep, absent a pairing board are you calling the river when he puts pressure on two streets?

If he doesn't know you, then this doesn't make as much sense.

then he´s probably not that good but just paranoid.

If he has the Ah with the J it blocks your 2 pair combos and nfd combos. He can peel and evaluate based on turn card and your action, planning on bluffing heart runouts and getting to see if what you do on the turn with a hand that is mid-strength. If he is always folding non-top pair hands+, you can just raise everything and win over half the time making him exploitable. AhJ is prob the the bottom of his calling range here.