Blinds at 500-1k and I have 50k in BB.
Small blind has about same and got his stack when he cbet reraised all in vs 2/callers with a flush draw on A88 flop for his whole stack. A pretty unnecessary spewy play IMO.

Small blind limps and in look down at Ac3c I raise to 3500 SB calls.
Flop 2c5hJc I bet 3500 SB calls...
Turn 7h I bet 10k SB calls...
River Ah..board is 2c5hJc7hAh..

SB pretty quickly bets pot essentially putting me all in....

This is a strange line from SB; repping back door hearts or 34? My experience is that this line, especially with the timing tell is over bluffed, and we do block 34, so I guess this is a sigh call.

How do you range this particular live V on each street before the river action OP?

For starters, does he fold any part of his range to the 3.5x pre?

I think because we have the A I am folding. It blocks a lot of his flush draw combos.

The other crazy thing about the shove is that it is into the teeth of our pre-flop raise which should have some Ax. So it looks very strong to me like a set, a flush, or 43s.

Firstly I think this may be a fold against a rec player live, secondly do we always need to lead the turn? Would of thought pot control and them implied odds when we do hit our flush would make it more profitable to check turn.

Turn is a must be in this spot. You have A high and a draw. You want to put pressure on the weak sb and fold out a 2, 5, or maybe a weak J.

River is an interesting spot. I am bit torn here. In live poker, I don't see this being a bluff that often. You are much more likely to have an Ace than he is. I would imagine his hand is more likely to be A2/A5 (not sure if this guy limps with AJ) and is afraid that you will check behind. As someone else mentioned, you also block a lot of club draws with the Ac.

I don't see V having many bluffs on the river with that line. I expect to see 34 a lot (maybe hearts), although the line really looks like precisely 34.

Agree with most other posters you need to c-bet, and continue on turn.

Ac only blocks AcXc

Yes, villain limp/called from the SB, so he should not have a high percentage of aces. There are other situations in which a high percentage of suited hands would have aces, so that blocker would be really significant.

I feel river is a sigh fold against a rec. If he has a pure bluff, you can just say nh and well played sir. I almost like checking back turn to realize our equity. If we check turn, we look fairly week and can call rivers like the river that developed (I know a stupid thing to say but don’t think we get into great spots if villian x jams turn here and we have to fold).

As played, I almost think you can go a little bigger pre. In position against this limp range, I might make it 4x or 4.5x to punish a weak sb limp. You can then just muck to a 3bet if villian is completing to look weak and then 3bets against a weak hand like A3cc.

Why do you assume it is a 'weak limp'?

Yeh, open limping a lot from the SB is pretty standard now, and I would not view it as particularly weak.

However, raising large and folding to a 3! is a reasonable approach with this hand. I don't mind getting some folds and folding some. If you raise large and get 3!, A3o is likely dominated and it is fine to fold it.

A lot of live players will limp so much trash from the small blind. It’s an easy fold to action like this- sb completes, we make it 4k and then he raises to say 12-16k. Think you can just easily sigh fold against a trap complete range.

Me personally- I will sometimes complete strong hands against someone I perceive to have the ability to raise trash from the bb. I personally will raise bb with some trashy hands that play better if I raise and make it look like I have a stronger hand then I do. When you raise bb with say 56cc or a trashy hand maybe like 56o (which is very high variance), you can rep a lot of flops that are like kxx qxx or Axx. If I think the small blind is going to play straightforward non sticky poker which is common with live poker, we can find a way to make some BBs if we get fairly aggro with some bottom portions of our hand ranges. It’s kinda spewy but picking up 5-8 bbs with say a bottom 30% hand is a great way to pick up chips when we aren’t starting with great hands.

Another big mistake from sb play is this which I learned from my former coach- you should be making it 3.5x to 4x to tax bb. Bb can easily call a 3x raise from the small blind and play hand in position and make sbs life hell. I find completing small blind very good strategy if you can do it with strong and weak hands obv. I’m not great at sb vs bb play honestly bc it is so nuanced. I used to love making it 3.5-4x with Kx and Ax from the small blind bc we most likely have better hand than bb. However if bb is going to peel very wide, we get i trouble if we just check all flops we miss which makes it very difficult in sb vs bb play spots

I agree about limping in the SB and that Kx and Ax can be difficult to play if your raise is called. However, why would you ever just check all flops that you missed?

Check fold flops when you miss with say Kx an Ax im talking about. Say you raise A3o from small blind. Idk about what other people think but say you raise and villian calls and the flop is J75 or something similar. It’s extremely difficult to play postflop if you ask me. It’s hard to tell where you are at. Maybe call one on flop in certain situations but will need to bluff river at points if you get a villian check on turn. I just think it’s tough to play oop when you whiff certain boards. I know this isn’t some insanely insightful thought.


If you are going to raise with these hands. At points you will need to find ways to win hands when you whiff and have to call a flop bet. I think it can be really smart to sometimes throw in a Kx and Ax complete from the small blind to be tricky and not so obvious.

With a complete from the sb type strategy, I have no idea how you would formulate a range where you limp some hands and raise others. Solvers can probably help with that like someone else posted in another thread on 2+2.

If you are going to mix raises and limps from the SB, you probably should not be raising Ax and Kx. You do not want to raise all your aces and kings. Then your opponent can assume you miss mid card flops when you raise and that you miss ace or king high flops when you limp.

My impression is that he is not trying to bluff you off when the ace hits. It's possible, if you've seen him pull moves like that, but without that info I wouldn't be confident in it. Any other reads besides the one hand you mentioned? Seems like from that hand he might play his draws faster than this.

I probably check the turn for pot control and so we don't get check/pushed off our hand. If I bet it's probably smaller.

No one mentioned Jhxh as a possibility? I also don't think you can discount aces up here; this is a $200 live event, expecting optimal blinds play from the people in it unless you've seen them do it in action is probably a mistake.

This is more or less what I'm thinking, it seems.

I disagree with checking back the turn. Against the sb and on this board I think you should be betting. You want to put pressure on all the 2s and 5s. Also if you do make your hand then you want to win a larger pot. The only things that I think should prevent us from betting the turn, is
1. If our image is very loose. And we have an image that we have been caught bluffing.
2. If the villain is very loose/sticky. You aren't going to get them to fold the turn with whatever they called the flop with.

Personally at this stack size I don't like setting myself up to put in 1/3 of my chips in a pot I'm not going to at least show down, or to put myself in a big pot with a firmly mediocre holding. There are times I will bet the turn here, of course, if I feel it's the right play, but it's not a default play given the situation and what we stand to risk. If we were 100BB+ deep, sure. I also think betting smaller on the turn is fine. The river bet could be everything I mentioned in my last post or it could be a spewy bluff from a guy who we already have some idea doesn't like to give up flush draws.

I do not offer my advice as definitive, just what I think about in tournaments, and at this stack size I don't like putting in that much in the pot in a marginal spot.