Very early in megastack $60k guarantee on ACR. I have been active and aggressive at the table and am second in chips at table (134 bbs). V is third and has essentially the same stack, but has not been involved in many pots (133 bbs).

OTTH

I open from BU with AhQs to 2.2 bbs. V 3!s to 6.65 bbs. I call. 4 bet this deep?

Flop (14.8 bbs): 4s2sQc. V c-bets 7.4 bbs. I call. I think I'm pretty under-repped here.

Turn (29.6 bbs): Kd. V fires 22.2 bbs. Me???

Probably fold considering BB has a King often enough and the size of the pot on the river is big in relation to your stack

Would he really blast that big a bet with a K there OOP after I've shown considerable strength? He appears really, really polarized here.

Yeah maybe not but is it worth the risk

That's why I folded, but don't feel great about it. He either had a monster or air, I just don't see him playing Kx like that ... possibly AK, definitely KQ, but XsXs a real possibility.

Was V in SB or BB? That’s relevant information missing. Just from the description of V I would assume he is not 3 betting super wide. Not an easy spot. I like the call, call line. Turn is tricky. The way V played the hand it feels like a monster, I don’t think he will take this line with smaller pairs on a board with 2 overs. Maybe a A high flush draw could take that line. If he is really good it could be a bluff. Very though lay down since he should not have that many hands in his rang that beat us.

Huh, I think if you're folding here you're bleeding money. We are just too high in our range to fold and we have decent blockers to his valuerange as well. Seems like a std call

Assuming he is polarized lets look at the combos. I think the Q makes this a very unbalanced polarization.

What XX combos can he have that don't include the K and would 3bet OOP pre-flop? AJ/AT/JT?/A9?/A8?/T9? Maybe 4 or 5 combos?

Here are the hands that villain has, that got there:
AA(6), KK(3), AK(9), KQ(6), KJ(1),KT(?), QQ(1),44(3?) Maybe 28 combos?

So best case, assuming his bet is polarized, you need to be getting about 5:1 pot odds. You are getting about 2.5:1. But what is worse is that if he is 3 barreling you will be facing a 50 bb bet on the river. And your call now on the turn is really a commitment to call down on the river.

I think it is a good fold.

Even if he is not potting AA and AK you still have KQ and KK to worry about.

For defending I think you have non-spade AQ combos, KQ and 22/44 at some frequency?

I think I missed something here.

Villain can have total air and may have been 3-betting with hands like AJ (11 combos) and AT(11). But then I think we have to consider KJ(11) and KT(11).

And we should consider that Villain would be checking the turn at least some of the time with total misses.

So I think it is still about 3:1 pot odds that you need to be getting. But considering the potential river bet I think its an easy fold.

Yeah, sorry about that. BB.

I think not having the As here is relevant, and having AQ is relevant as well as we block AK/KQ that would absolutely play this way. I think a significant amount of Kx isn't 3-betting BB pre and some % of Kx either checks flop or checks turn. I think calling turn is close but probably correct.

He can have As Ks here too. Given that you're both deep stacked and assuming villain is a fairly aware player, he is unlikely to get too out of line against us here - especially being OOP. FWIW I think you play this hand fine.

This is a clear call. Think where AQ is in your range relative to all the hands you are going to have here. You are folding an absurd amount of hands to this turn barrel by folding AQ. The few better hands you have like KQ, Kxss for some amount of combos and maybe like KJcc/KTcc. That's about 15 combos assuming you raise your sets on the flop. In the mean time you are folding 55-JJ at 42 combos before you get on to Qx. This is one of your best Q's and you have very favourable removal vs bluffs and value range.

That's all correct, in my mind, which is why the situation and fold felt gross. But he's repping very strong here, and my thinking was I didn't want to make a high variance play here this deep and this early (which is my general strategy deepstacked). For what it's worth, I finished 8th, so the fold certainly didn't doom me (which is not saying the fold was correct).

This is a better turn for him, I agree. He will have more of the very strong hands on this board. Is it impossible for him to have bluffs in this spot, no? It's just about combinations. AJ is 12 and ATs is 3 before we even consider hands like 65s. His value is clear:1 QQ, 3 KK, 6 AA, 6 KQ, 9 AK.

One concept that is overlooked by a lot of players is that it is OK to call one street without having to be obliged to call the next. Logic dictates that if we never folded river after calling turn, our opponent would have no incentive to bluff us. In this instance we want our opponent to have some bluffs and therefor should be willing to have some % of our hands that go call/call/fold.

Practically, that can be expensive though. I personally think the turn is the street to nit out on because it is costly to take lines that go call/call/fold. That being said, you have to still do this in a reasonable way. Picture where AQ is relative to all your holdings on the flop. It's easily one of your strongest. The turn K sees AQ move down through your overall range, but it is still relatively strong compared to a lot of your other combinations.

The real question is, what range of hands continues vs this turn bet? And in order to answer that you need to be aware of all the possible hands you could have in a spot.

Maybe the size of the turn bet is the key, if it was half pot or less then calling AQ is okay but against a large bet your getting only 2.5/1 with equity around 35% and the other thing is that your hand can't really improve.

The large bet also makes villains range much stronger considering the BTN has a few Kings because he would call flop with King FDs, BDFDs and GSs

PIO thinks calling turn is clear here; folding would be a ~4BB mistake.

It does find the fold button on blank rivers with most combinations of AQo, though it does still call with AxQs as a mix.

So, folding here is an exploit vs Villains who will be triple, and that we will fold to.

All that being said, this CeV only, and although this is early in the tournament, there is still some incentive to lower variance.

As mentioned upthread, it is a theoretical mistake to have no call/call/fold range. It enables Villain to bluff too much on turn, then shut down on rivers. I think that is a good real life exploit for many Villains to take; Too many heroes have the idea that the turn is the inflection point of the hand and will make the decision to call turn based solely on whether they can call river...

These are tough spots...being deep and in a 3bet pot with no info on villain. Absent a good read that BB is an aggtard, I wouldn't 4bet since we have better combos to bluff with pre (if deep I like to use the sooted wheel Ax combos 1st then add some AQo if necessary.)

I think that gregz (as usual) does a great job of breaking it down. His points RE: needing to know your entire continuing range before we can identify the turn calling combos and making tighter turn folds (shout-out to DP who stresses this as well) are very good.

For me, a visual representation really is helpful. This worksheet calculates Minimum Defense, so we can see the threshold that we have to reach in order to prevent non-equity bluffs from profiting.

Flop Range: 171 Starting Combos, 155 (after removal for flop cards.)

Orange numbers in upper right corner represent 4bet %.

Flop Response:

Blue=Call; Orange=Value Raise; Gold=Bruff Raise. Light Blue are Folds. 2-colored are split strat.

Turn Range:


Turn Response:


Vs. this villain, who has some betsizing tells that may indicate he's not a very tough player, I think we can fold some AQo and AJo combos. Vs. tougher opponents you're prob going to have to call all of your AQo combos.

Can post Pio sim results if anyone is interested.

Everyone analyzed this one extremely thoroughly, I don’t have anything to add other than we can not fold this turn, and we could maybe get away from brick rivers where he 3 barrels but if this is a reg or a competent player, I’m not folding.