200/300/300 level

Villain is young Euro with glasses and a hearing aid. Seems pretty solid. Has been flatting me a lot and making life difficult. (last 2 hands we played, i flat an utg (A6cc) raise in utg+1, he flats next to me. Flop As4d7d, we check to him, he bets, utg folds, I call. Turn Kd, I check call, river 5s, I check and tank fold to big bet-- not long after, I open on btn with A2o, he 3bets sb, bb folds, I 4bet, he folds) Now....

Hero (31k)raise to 800 with JTss UTG
Villain(38k) raises to 2600 +1
Hero calls (the way his chips fell it looked like 1600 not 2600, so I called then dealer spread out the other 1k chip.. Could be noteworthy that when I put my chips in, i put in only 800 more)

Flop T98 rb one spade

Check check

Turn Ah

I check, he bets 3200. I call.

River 6s

I check. He bets 5500

(yes I'm considering raising.. Should I and what size if so?). His sizing seems like what he might do with one Ace...although his pre flop 3b was large

Hero??

raising the river is just spew imo. i would lead the turn and flop instead of checking it.

Hearing aid is a big tell IMO.

Fold the A6cc from UTG+1 vs UTG raise.

I think you played the hand fine. I would fold river, and call with KT, maybe QT.

(I added note about hearing aid because it's a differentiator that might allow someone to know who I'm talking about)

I hear ya, but we were like 150bbdeep with the A6s hand.

Does villain ever have a 7 in this hand? I suppose AAA is possible. But his hand screams Ax (tho that doesn't mean my raise would work. A shove might...)

Was turn actually a spade? Is there any relevance to flop having one spade?

Preflop pretty thin vs this sizing but it's OK.

Weird spot OTF because it's one of the rare spots where the OOP 3b caller should have a range advantage.

It's a spot where you can pretty much mix at will between betting and checking and at least for smaller sizings you can be merged no matter what you do. So checking our leading here for a small (10%-33%) sizing are both fine.

V should be considered equally merged when he checks back flop.

Thus turn can go one of two ways: since Tx has plenty of SDV you can definitely check again (and still be merged since, V also still being merged and uncapped, means you have no pure turn leads in your range) OR you can turn your hand into a bluff since V, being merged, still has JJ-KK,that basically need to fold if you bomb (100% pot) the turn. You certainly have enough nutted combos to balance it.

AP V's sizing seems suboptimally large since his bluffs are getting ample folds for smaller sizing from 22-66, and Kx which is close to 60% of your range, and it's not like you aren't still merged here at equilibrium so he can't just bomb it willy nilly even with a hand like AK. Thus I would've expected him to go smaller.

Do you think V's tend to be exploitably strong when they take this sizing? This is a really key piece of information--OP what do you think of the turn sizing?

This hand is a marginal continue at equilbrium against the large turn sizing given you're still merged and have lots of better combos. If anything I think this plays better as a x/r than a x/c since AX is in a really ****ty spot vs your x/r. But exploitatively pure folding this hand isn't unattractive.

AP V's river sizing is suboptimally small. We should basically never get here with this combo so I think we just fold, shot in the dark I'm guessing he wants a call badly (too big OTT-->too small OTR has to be fat value praying for a call?). But your instincts to raise are decent and I'd rather x/r river than call, some V's will exploitatively fold TT, 99, etc in which case river is a slamdunk x/j but you better have a solid read.

Yep and 4betting A2o doesn't seem great either, even from the button

I just mentioned the spade on the flop in case people wanted to comment on whether or not I should be leading flop (or planning to x/r it if bet to). Turn was NOT a spade. I would've but him to the test if so.

As played, when he checks flop and bets turn, it's clear he understands range advantages. Sizing seemed big on turn but I figure to win on Q,J,T,7 and figured I might get some check backs on a 6.

I usually attack thin value bet river sizings on scary boards and have a ton of success with it..but the pre and turn sizings were big enough to give me 2nd thoughts about pulling the trigger.

I'll mix in some 3bets with A6s 150bbs deep, but I am not folding a nut-making hand that deep in a live donkament for 2.5bb.

The A2 is something you can't do all the time, but need to mix some of your Ace-blockers into your 4bet range for balance. I thought this is a good spot to do it.

Ya I was thinking you can probably find enough 4bets from your suited aces, but maybe someone will correct me. I wonder if pio has A2o as a pure fold or a low freq 4bet

Yes and of course some of this read-dependent, and needs to be pulled out vs villains with wider sb r/f ranges

Depends a lot on sizings.

For a 2x open and an 8bb 3b It's a pure fold but it's closer than you think. It beats the hell out of flatting.

Problem is, most people don't 3b too much or at least anywhere close to equilibrium.

You want him to overfold when you do this, but in practice you actually also want him to overcall with hands like KQo, T8s, 76s because at equilibrium he isn't supposed to be doing much if any folding of the hands you think you want folds from (44-88, A3s+, all either pure continues or at least mixed call/5b) but he's supposed to pure fold the hands that are actually nice to get called by.


It also makes no sense to do it in a mixed fashion if you're that confident in your reads, if you're going the pure exploitative route then own it and just turn every ace blocker into a pure 4b. If V does indeed overfold to that extent then it's an OK exploit.

If balance is your concern then there are lots of combos in your BTN range that work better for that purpose. This is pure exploitation, no balance necessary.

But if he's actually 3b tighter than you give him credit for, it rapidly becomes really, really bad. In fact if any of your exploitative assumptions are wrong, this thing goes to hell really quickly.


Hand is tough to analyze without the sizings though, but it's not the purpose of this thread so I'll just leave it there.

Depending on how ranges look, you actually can have the range advantage OTF. In fact, I think it's likely you do.

I'd need to go back and check about the turn but I think you actually have more AX than he does since you likely open all AXs and pure call most if not all vs his 3b whereas he isn't necessarily reraising all AX.

So still think you have the range advantage OTT and you do not relinquish that when you check because you should be checking merged.

So I honestly think your conclusion should be the opposite--think it's possible he doesn't understand range advantage at all.

Well I know I have the range advantage OTF and so did he, which is why he checked back. I could've led flop but his pre 3b size was pretty big (vs an UTG open), so I had to respect it.

I think when he does checks back flop after 3b pre, we have to up the weighting of Ax hands to his range

Seems ok, he does have 24 combos of AK,AQ in 3b range which we don't block

Thanks a lot, i didn't know this and it's pretty eye-opening

id rather x/r turn and bomb river than x/r river.

Agree to disagree.

I think he's merged and can have basically anything--so can you, hence why he should be merged when he checks, not exploitably weak (A-high dense).

Are AA an auto cbet? Maybe suboptimally by the population, but in theory absolutely not. 88 even? Same thing: I guess exploitatively it's OK to read the population as overbetting 88 OTF when checked to (caveat: I don't play live) but *in theory* V has no pure cbets in his range.

Right. I don't think we are disagreeing here. I agree there is nothing he loves cbetting (in his likely 3bet range) here except maybe TT, but even that rarely gets 3bet pre in practice. All I'm saying is we both recognize that I likely have all the 88-TT and QJs so this flop texture is better for me than him. But I also recognize given preflop action I could still be a big underdog with TP and OESD even after he checks back. I'm not saying he loves to C-bet anything on that texture.

AA is not an auto C-bet for any strong player. But I'd say ~70% of live players would cbet it here and check back any scary turns

I think this a good spot for a move. But I think if you raise you should jam it. If he has something like AT or two pair, he may sigh call if you make it 12K.

You get to do a lot of donk betting as the caller in 3bp on t98

I hate to do it too, but should we be folding JTs UTG when we have a strong, capable player on our left giving us problems? Or just too deep for that?

You have a good combo to bluff with but you really have to be careful in these spots (where you have a very small amount of value combos.)

(If) you don't lead or c/r QJs ott then you potentially have 16 value combos:

QJs-4*
87s-3
76s-3
77-6

With the price you would be laying on a check-shove, you need ~28% bluffs to be balanced. If you have Q9s and J9s, then there are 18 potential bruff combos:

QTs-3
Q9s-3**
JTs-3
J9s-3**
T9s-2
T8s-2
98s-2

So if we remove QJs* (from the value range) and Q9s; J9s** (from the bruff range) we have 12 combos for value and we can have 4-5 bluffs.

76s is also a marginal open utg, 87s is prob close to b/e FR with antes, so may have to reduce value even more.

The bottom line is that it's very difficult to use the correct frequency/very esy to get carried away on overbruff in game when you're presented with a decent bruff spot.

The point being, leading flop for like 30-70% pot on this hi ev board for oop w j10 is usually a higher ev option than check when ip will be doing a significant amount of checking with his 3b range

Yup

Not necessarily, he 3bet utg, he can peel AQ, we could r/c AK.

Yup

Eggs its not large turn sizing, barely larger than half pot.

I dont like river c/r, you probe turn w/ 7x a lot, your c/r turn, you lead rivers so as Erc saying you wont have much of VR left when you check river thus I think you should restrict your bluff c/r range to 9x,8x hands (which blocks higher freq 3bets - 97s,87s).

I think the way most live random players are viewed (i.e. as he views me), the river c/r is far more scary than the turn c/r for someone holding AK. He could feel I'm just overplaying my own Ace if I check raise turn..but if I check shove river, my value hands crush all of his, and he only beats my bluffs.. and live check raise river shove bluffs are insanely rare.