15 left itm
Relevant info: villain looks like a possible circuit grinder. Youngish. Seems like he is probably a decent to good reg. Haven’t seen him really fold his bb yet so he’s defending pretty wide here
2/4K 35bb eff
I open red aj o from hj to 9k
He peels very fast
Heads up
875 spades he checks fast I check back (think it’s standard)
Turn red a
He leads 7k I call
River pairs the 7
He bets 28k into like 30ish
Also. Like 2 hands ago he saw me tank forever vs a pot sized bet and I ended up trying to bluffcatch and was wrong. So that plays into it possibly. He probably views me as a solid reg who’s slightly titled and maybe a station

This one’s been annoying me as he has plenty of bluffs here - the small turn lead is suspicious like he could be betting small to realize equity then bricks out and pots it knowing I’m pretty capped at ax and this board is really good for him since his bb defend range has tons of suited stuff and he also can have some sets 2p straights for this line.
I’m concerned about folding a hand this high in my range as well. If I’m raising all my flushes otr / betting most of my sets and other strong stuff otf bc I need protection...I’m not really left with much of a calling range otr.
This aj combo seems like one of the better bluffcatchers since I don’t block any fds. Adqs or whatever is a much easier fold
But lastly I think people underbluff in live mtts overall so I could exploit and fold a hand like this
Thoughts?

If you believe he sees us as a station, I'd lean towards a fold especially that we call turn on an A.

He has all the flushes in his range, all the fulls and the straights. Also he bet twice into us original raiser after an A has come. Most certainly, we do not have a spade as we would've bet most of the time OTF. Which means our hands are mostly hands with an A. So he must think we would fold an A at least half the time in this spot to make it a good bluff. A good reg won't do that into a station. I think he's going for value in this spot ==> I'd fold.

Bet flop, bet turn. Re-evaluate river. I think we should be cbetting a lot here from a wide defender. You have position and put hands like 2nd or 3rd pair in tough spots if you bet flop and turn.

Nice run bro,

You mentioned effective stacks at 35 but this is not the same as saying what stack you have and wether v has its covered or not.. If we 15 left then pre ICM has to come into play here and if the call is for tourny life its different to call and we still have 50bb left

Without knowing the stacks at first glance it looks like a fold, because it doesn't look like a great bluffing spot for him otr, he should know hes getting looked up often when we hold an ace on a brick river, so doubt he has all his bluffs here, but he def has all his value, also icm is a thing, I wouldn't be punting in marginal spots now as chips lost are more valuable then chips gained

This is clear bb range advantage spot, his range has much more 8,7,6 than ours and we don't block spades, we do get x/r x% of the time here. Seems like a std check / evaluate turn

hey man, definitely an awkward spot on river on a card that improves Hero's range a good bit (and seems we expect V to understand that this card is good for us).
You do block JT/J9 here if you want one possible reason to justify your fold , but yeah we probably supposed to call AJ+ that don't block a fd.

Seems really close with all the factors in consideration and idk what I'd do...

What would you do with your overpairs on this board then?

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We bet all our overpairs obv.. ofcourse our range is going to cb at some frequency here but on this specific texture its proly best to condense that cb% somewhat because as mentioned this is a bb range advantage texture and we dont hold spades. We do get x/r at a higher frequency here then say A82r. Usually in these spots I try to look for a delay bet / cheap SD.

You’re supposed to do a bunch of mixing with over pairs and even checking hands as strong as like kk with a spade with some frequency. Hands like red kk go for the 1/3 size otf and look to show down after that

What was the actual stacks if you remembered

Seems barely a balanced line from opp.
Random guy could overbluff this situation but doubt common reg would.
Ok he reps some VR well assuming he perceives you to play this texture well (which is unknown) but his bluffs should go for big river spazz testing your good Ax praying you would actually believe he can have some 7x and hoping you come to the river quite capped. => all nit regs (at least) badly underbluff this line.

I would raise turn vs smallish sizing often w/ specific hand.

Weird spot. We are going to have lots of worse hands to fold if we're checking back overpairs at some frequency on the flop and we don't block spade draws. So I can't see folding...unless we're really confident villain is going to underbluff in this spot.

yup

Make sure you aren`t biased focussing too hard on overpairs which is a small part of our range by the river.


You noticed its monotone texture right? ))
Besides with his VR becoming wider spades blockers become less relevant in our bluffcatch strategy.

No one comes with some numbers?

Given the flop is monotone, I prefer a bet than a check on this flop. It puts pressure on the villain. If he has a one pair hand with no spade, it puts him in a tougher spot. Would you bet As in this spot? If it wasn't monotone, I would check this flop against a competent player most of the time.

Given that it's a good player on the river, I lean towards a fold. Your hand looks exactly like it is.

depending on stack sizes I might consider shoving lol is that too cray/fps?? IDK

This is not a hand to shove the river with.

I don't think that the villain will ever fold a better hand. They aren't going to fold a fullhouse, flush, and probably not a straight. They will fold stuff that you beat though. I think by shoving you are letting them play perfectly. Plus, your hand is pretty face-up.

Yeah you might be right. I just wanted to consider the option, not really saying it's the best play. But against the right opponent who can evaluate our range and potentially fold a "strong" hand like a flush. It might be worth considering. Against the vast majority of villains it's burning money I agree.

But from a purely theoretical standpoint, I don't think this hand is a bad candidate to do it with. Though in practice it's likely terrible.

I think solvers generally like betting flop spots like this, it's really tough to realize your equity when you check behind. Not saying I'd for sure bet, just saying it's not ridiculous.

As for river... *shrug*. Near top of our range but villain has a massive range advantage. I'm still learning how to play such spots.

Guess I'd default to making a decision based on how good I thought villain was. I think most WSOP circuit grinders are good enough to realize you're capped, fewer are good enough to realize you know this too and bet their range advantage. Judgment call.

One clarification-- when you say "I'd check hands as strong as KK with a spade", we'd rather check KK with spade than TT no spade, right? I'd rather check overpairs that are bigger and that have a spade in them. If you're not doing this, could you explain why?

no, they don't

what do you mean? checking behind is itself a way of realizing equity. We're IP and have outs to make strong top pairs.

I know solvers cbet like >85% button vs bb, maybe it's different from the HJ. Which solver do you use by the way? I need to buy one so I can stop getting my info secondhand.

The biggest problem with checking behind-- and I'm not even 100% sure it's a bad play-- is that when the flop checks and the turn bricks (far more common than the turn making us top pair) there are a ton of scenarios that end in us folding the best hand.

The frequencies all depend on board texture and sizings.
Many boards BTN-BB will be 100% cbet for 33%. 875mono will likely be <50% cbet.
From HJ, IP will have clear disadvantage in flushes, straights, and two pairs on this board compared to BB's range, thus higher X freq.

I use PioSolver.

In terms of HJ's overall range on this flop, AJo is probably bottom 25% strength of our range so I fail to see what's problematic about having to fold this combo at some point over the course of the hand.

Thanks a lot, I appreciate the thoughtful response. Obviously I did not realize our cbet % could go so low on a bad texture. This is why I need to get pio!

And of course if we're checking back that many hands, some of them will be pretty good and we don't have to worry about getting bluffed when we happen to have AJ high. Think I get it now.

I ran this in PIO. I gave V a very wide but pretty standard BB defense range. The range I assigned to hero is probably wider than it actually is but hero seems like a sicko so I'm assuming he opens hands like {86s} here. That seems plausible because we're still plenty deep enough to withstand folding to a reraise, and we're still deep enough to make whatever moves we want postflop, so presumably hero is trying to maximize the number of times he takes advantage of RFI spots like this one*

V x's this board to the raiser literally almost 100% of the time so no surprise there.

Flop hero x's the red {AJo} combos 75% of the time, mixing in small (2bb) cbets. Overall cbetting pretty much exactly 50% of his range.

It's a weird and presumably very exploitative turn bet by V bc he's still supposed to be mostly checking this turn (75% freq) and when he does bet it's mostly for big (6bb) sizing. Hero pure call vs the small sizing.


River mostly calling (75% frequency). He's supposed to be doing this with mostly trips or air.

So if you're folding this hand I guess you're being exploitative and that seems fine to me. It's a live event, you obviously have an ace, in villains shoes, it's just so damn hard to convince yourself to bluff someone off an ace, add in the perception for you being tilted with a broken fold button fold seems OK. If he shows a bluff w/e, I'd be more tilted to call and lose that I'd be exuberant to call and win.

*Range I assigned hero:
{AA,KK,QQ,JJ,TT,99,88,77,66,55,44,33,22,AK,AQ,AJ,A T,A9,A8,A7s,A6s,A5s,A4s,A3s,A2s,KQ,KJ,KT,K9s,K8s,Q J,QT,Q9s,Q8s,JT,J9s,J8s,T9,T8s,98s,97s,87s,86s,76s ,65s}

^^

add to that icm, usually it serves to tighten your overall vpip ranges somewhat.