PokerStars, $40 + $4 - Hold'em No Limit - 30/60 (8 ante) - 8 players

only 20 hands on villain

UTG: 5,206 (87 bb)
UTG+1: 15,734 (262 bb)
MP: 5,551 (93 bb)
MP+1: 4,244 (71 bb)
CO: 1,454 (24 bb)
BU: 4,211 (70 bb)
SB (Hero): 3,991 (67 bb)
BB: 5,755 (96 bb)

Pre-Flop: (154) Hero is SB with Q♣ A♥
5 players fold, BTN raises to 129, Hero 3-bets to 400, 1 fold, BTN calls 271

Flop: (924) 6♣ 4♠ J♦ (2 players)
Hero bets 277, BTN calls 277

Turn: (1,478) K♣ (2 players)
Hero bets 443, BTN calls 443

River: (2,364) 3♠ (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets 1,135, SB (Hero) folds

Total pot: 2,364
BU wins 2,364

My aftertoughts:

Preflop:
looks pretty standard

Flop:
Cb on small side, but don't think it needs to be much bigger if barreling turn

Turn:
I chose for a small bet because a Jack won't fold anyway, pocket pairs might fold to the small bet and there's the advantage of seeing a cheap river. Looking back, I think I like a bet of 600ish better to fold out medium pairs.

River:
I chose to check because I didn't see a Jack fold, maybe I could fold medium pairs...
3th barrel or not?

Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance

I'd 3bet closer to 4x pre since you are oop, and size turn a bit bigger. Otherwise seems standard.

You have a good hand to Cbet and fire a 2rd barrel and a bad one for a 3st...

The sizings seem suboptimal pre and ott...I like ~4-4.5x pre with 70bbs and def bigger ~65-70% ott. When u 2barrel, your saying that you have a range adv/that the K helps you > btn, so it makes no sense not to bet big. You also have the Qc which makes it a little less likely that btn can continue.

Otr the Qc then becomes a bad blocker and you're too high in your range to bruff. You will have 87ss; 87dd; 87hh and ATs combos to use as bluffs, so I like b/b/checkfold.

Imo, dont worry about what villain will call with or fold. We only have a limited time to consider variables, so it's important to prioritize them. If you're playing perfectly then you'll make him indifferent (to call/fold), so who cares?

Basically everything they ^^ say is right.

Turn you're saying "I have AA, a king, a FD, or a broadway draw or a really weak pocket pair I'm turning into a bluff" and all of those hands want to go bigger than your chosen sizing so your sizing is really suboptimal.

It really doesn't make sense to start barreling KK, QQ, or 88-TT (though 66-77 potentially make great barrels since V is supposed to fold better or equal and also fold hands that have 6-10 outs like Th9h) so by extension of the above paragraph when you check you basically say "I have sets (these want to mostly check because they need so much less protection and also heavily block V's continue-with-worse range) or I have the middle of my SDV range (those KK, QQ, TT-88) or I have some Kx or FDs"

Anyway I digress--

Turn sizing absolutely has to be bigger and I think it's just intuitive when you consider the range of hands that truly desire to bet (so ignoring sets here) and the range of hands that' being targeted either for value or for folds. The low to mid PPs in V's range? Surely we want to go bigger if targeting those with a FD because we need the fold equity. V's Kx or Jx if we have AA or AK? Surely we want to go bigger for fat value. So the push-pull dynamic that sets an equilibrium sweeps the frequency into the larger sizing node

This sizing is especially bad when you're actually at the bottom of the range that desires to barrel, which you are now--it's easy to exploitatively read as transparent weakness. This is a sweet exploit on your part if you think V's will attack your sizing with ranges and you have like AK or something, but when you have what's essentially air in this spot it's bad.

However, your sizing choice still doesn't change river being a x/f. Assuming you're uniformly suboptimal here (meaning you also go suboptimally small with AA, Kx, XcYc, etc) this is like the 30th percentile of your range and even though you have virtually no SDV against V's filtered range you still have worse hand strength combos in your range that makes for a better bluff (like some worse AcXc combos or the ones ERC points out) and furthermore this combo is particularly bad to bluff with because of its blocker effects (blocking both better that'll fold like QJ, AQ, A6 and A4 and also just worse hands in his range like QT, Q9, and AT, so you also block his potential bluffs vs your checking range)

In fact, I'm not even sure if hand strength plays a part whether or not AQ is a bluff here because, again, we really have no SDV--I think it's purely a blocker consideration.

Agree with above posts.. 3b needs to be 4 -5x pre.. we are so deep that anything less he has to r/c pretty much his entire range. We offer him heaps of implied odds ip so lets charge him.

flop is std, turn is a great card for our range and it could be a scare card for him so id size up 66% or sometimes maybe more to polarise and increase FE a bit to get him to fold all his weak to mid SDV holdings that can't stand a 2 barrel at that sizing. River is a x/f for the reasons mentioned above.

Thank you for the thorough analysis guys. The explanation of the blockers is very interesting.

I'd like to go into further detail on the turn sizing.

You are proposing 60-70% , why so big (and thus, that expensive)?
Isn't firing between 40-50% (600-740) into the 1478 more than enough to fold out small and medium pairs on such a dangerous board? Especially given my 3 bet preflop?

In the equilibrium you can't split your range into "smaller=bluff" and "bigger=value" for obvious reasons so something has to give--either the value needs to go smaller (not ideal) or the bluffs need to go bigger (closer to ideal).

Remember you have air AND value stuffed into one neat little package at every point in the hand and the two need to work in tandem to set an equilibrium strategy.

But what youve described might be a valid exploit against the pop

I dont mind having all our good SC here as bluffs so also include some T9,T8,98 and maybe some Q9s and suited wheel aces or do you think we bluff too much if we fire this entire range?

If we use a 10% 3Bet range:


We have 26* Value Combos:
KK-3
JJ-3
KJs-2
AA-6
AK-12

*I use the 3 combos of KQo as b/b/check-call otr on this runout.

If we're using a 30-67-[Shove for 70% Pot] line with an SPR of 4, then we need ~70% value to be balanced, which gives us about 11 Bruffs:

87s-3 (exclude clubs)
QTs-3 (exclude clubs)
ATs-3 (exclude clubs)

So (with my 10% 3bet Range) we need to add 2 AQ combos: AQhh and AxQh might work best?

If you 3Bet a little wider then you could (some) use T9s,T8s,98s and Q9s (in place of QTs-ATs) b/c they are lower in your range but you can't use all of them or you'll be overbluffing. I also think you're barreling way too wide if you get to the river with all of them.