This is from the Sunday million. On the surface, this seems like a trivial fold. But the more I look at it, the more suspicious I get of villain's line. The only hands in his range that make sense to have been played this way are Ad3d and Ad7d. Do you think that people raise a naked flush draw? Some will, but I don't think it's the majority.

I have no reads on villain, but according to Hud he was pretty laggy running 37/20 with 3bet being at 18. SSS yes and doesn't say everything about postflop.

Jd is far from the top of my range which contains 12 combos of AdXd and all AdAx.

All in all, this should be a trivial fold. But it seems to me that this in a spot where villain's representing such a narrow value range they have gotten out of line. On occasion, I have seen people turn their sets into a bluff.

What say you?

PokerStars - 50/100 Ante 10 NL - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

UTG: 91.48 BB
UTG+1: 93.02 BB
Hero (MP): 112.66 BB
MP+1: 109.15 BB
CO: 116.11 BB
BTN: 88.6 BB
SB: 68.81 BB
BB: 99.7 BB

8 players post ante of 0.1 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.3 BB) Hero has J J

fold, fold, Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, fold, SB calls 2.5 BB, BB calls 2 BB

Flop: (9.8 BB, 3 players) 4 6 5
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets 3.33 BB, fold, BB raises to 12 BB, Hero calls 8.67 BB

Turn: (33.8 BB, 2 players) K
BB bets 21.32 BB, Hero calls 21.32 BB

River: (76.44 BB, 2 players) 9
BB bets 63.28 BB and is all-in,

Hero?

PS. What do you do with QdJd, QdTd and QdQx?

Check flop, fold turn. You're up against 2 players on the absolute worst board in the deck for your range. Building up the pot with a medium strength hand that has no nut redraw is a disaster.

Do you not want to protect your equity against hands that have at least one over?

I disagree with checking flop. you have to protect against overs, not to mention if you check, you are now guessing with opponent bet on the turn when you might well still be winning. you have to keep control of the action. that said, I play it the way you do thru the turn. at first, I thought trivial fold, but now i look again, and you have the jack of diamonds to a flush. I was figuring when I saw "trivial fold" you did not back into a flush or anything like that. his betting up thru the turn does not suggest he has a diamond, and if you want to look at it randomly (what suit(s) he was dealt prior to any info) chances are more likely than not he does not have a diamond. he might well be to trying to push you off say, a pair of eights that includes a diamond. his river push might even be out of frustration (he might have slow played aces, and is hoping you look at most hands (as you did) as a trivial fold). I am not saying I call this. but I think it is a tougher decision than 'trivial fold' suggests. one error I found many players making when assessing players is that (Harrington basically says this) at least 10% of the time the play is going to make no sense. whether it is a sunday million or any other tourny, there are a lot of bad players who do not think like the majority of people on this forum. you are getting almost 2 to 1. I dont know...he might well have turned his set into a bluff as you say. 18% three bets is very high. he might be a maniac. I think you posed a good one that has an interesting dynamic with that fourth diamond. I actually lean to calling.

Just check back the flop. You usually have the best hand, but you could get x/red like this etc.

We bet our JJ because odds are it's good and it needs protection. The diamond in our hand gives us some extra equity if we get called or reraised. We bet small, because ldo, we don't have a range or a nut advantage. Our goal is to get into a cheap showdown. We definitely do not want to play for stacks, unless we get a very favorable runout that gives us a full house.

Using protection as an argument for betting in this spot is like saying you should donk an A high flop as the BB to protect your 55 from overcards.

I actually came across a video yesterday showing some solver work and a very similar spot came up. It was 452hh flop or something and the solver had us checking JJ without hearts and betting JJ with a heart a good portion of the time.

452hh is not quite similar enough. Also if real world players are under-donking we gain by increasing check back.

I think you're underestimating his value range. After sb sacrifices his equity and expecting your cbet on this texture to be mindless and worthy of punishment, it can seem attractive to take any 2 overs with a A or Q and x/r. So lets say he gets to the river with QT and PSB, some players would rather jam and not have to deal with this pain in the arse bluffcatch spot.

However he also has many bluffs options, eg hands and once the K turns he expects he is perceived flush heavy so bets big hoping to end the hand, but by river he actually has the dream scenario of a 4 flush board while holding air which is difficult the way many construct bluff ranges so he may feel it's a mandatory jam.

So call down or not who knows, but I'd rather not tempt a 37/20/18 player to mess with me by cbetting a blatantly disfavourable board with this hand class, three way, this deep.

I don't see many overcard combos in either of their ranges here. They're both going to 3b some of the best combos, and hero blocks a lot of KJ/QJ. Plus BB is getting good odds to defend so will have a fairly wide range there.

Lol


No it's not


Good odds doesn't necessarily correlate with playing a wider range since the equity is so heavily reduced compared to an srp

Would be the perfect board for the BB to donk entire range at a split frequency in an SRP for obvious range advantage reasons (though not necessarily nut advantage) with the more nutted combos preferring to bet at a higher frequency than check, which would allow us to do more betting in general when checked to. Our betting range wants to use a large sizing including our combo at a high frequency (Jd combos want to do more betting than non d JJ owing to the added bd equity) for protection and value. Of course mw spots are going to play differently from the BB with less donking if any and so we can't take away the same implications when the BB checks, and of course there is the very good argument that humans in general don't presently seem to understand how to include donking in their range construction (if they're even constructing ranges at all). But assuming that the BB checks this spot 100%, we still get to have a betting range and it still wants to be with a larger sizing, just at a far lesser frequency. Generally we want to bet smaller in mw spots, but here I'd be inclined to stick with the larger sizing to put all of the draws under pressure, but personally I'd want to be betting at a really low frequency since the board is rife with made hands in both villian ranges. If you are going to bet a JJ combo in this spot then it has to be JJ with a diamond because of reasons previously mentioned, plus to balance frequencies and calling range blocking effects.

Villian action makes the hand interesting but we're simply never folding on any street - we're just ahead of so much of his x/r'ing range and also ahead of a ton of value that may be inclined to bluff when the flush completes. That being said it is an awkward and bizarre line from V after the flop and that makes it difficult to range him, but I think we're too high up in our range to think about folding

Agreed ^

proly fine to bet range otf wen we hold a diamond as we get x/r less blocking fds and x bac wen not, our range does need to have some x bacs on say the top 5% worse boards when we are 3 ways w the blinds in, id say this is up there w like 7d8d6x etc

Low paired boards are the worst boards for IP and generally check at a super high frequency, particularly when the non paired card is also low and I would assume mw it becomes a 100% check back

678 two-tone isnt actually unfavourable for IP since range should contain all overpairs, all sets, most two pair, nutted fds and the nut straight

If it's a couple of positions earlier, PFR is missing most of the sets and straights and it's a really bad board for us. As is, it's not so bad, because we also have sets and straights, yes.

To me the most interesting question is less whether we bet the Jd on the flop and more whether we should bet 2/3s or 1/3. Bet size depending on who has range advantage and who doesn't compared to the more traditional way of betting based on the dryness, wetness and dynamism of the board is something I 've been struggling with a lot recently. There are so many conflicting factors in play in particular in this hand, some suggesting a small bet, some a large bet. It's important to recognize that the hand is played against rec players though.

The river is massively underbluffed IMO; moreover, I have a ton Ad that the BB doesn't have, it's not a spot he should be betting so big. I do suspect he got out of line on this one,that's why I posted the hand, but then again, I am not losing that much sleep over the flop, because I don't think I lose a ton of EV. If he bluffed me, nh.

No, equally or more interesting is whether or not we bet at all and trying to understand how to construct our betting/checking ranges in this spot. I don't have the software to study multiway and I can only make assumptions based on deductions from my HU work.

As far as I can tell regarding sizings, it's a complex process of breaking down how the ranges interact. On your board, the IP player has a ton of combos that don't interact particularly well with the flop and a handful that interact really well, without really much of a middle ground. Consider this along with the fact that the OOP range (let's imagine for a moment that we're HU w/ the BB) has a good amount of combos that interact really well and a good amount that interact partially well - and so has a ton of room to x/r and particularly vs a smaller sizing (which actually would imply HU that we don't understand the spot and a good player would probably find even more x/r's than usual). So what are we going to want to do with our straights, sets and best flush draws? We're going to want to pump money into the pot with a big sizing to get value from weaker value and draws. What do we want to do with the rest of our range? Basically check. But of course if we played the game this black and white then we're never getting called when we bet, and we're always getting bluffed when we check. So we need to mix the ranges together and include hands that want to bet in our checking range and hands that want to check in our betting range. Some combos are of course by nature better than others to include in a betting range, ie 88 heavily blocks the nuts and has overcard/gutshot equity, so it's probably going to be betting at a very high frequency, whereas JJ with a d has the overcard equity and bd flushdraw as well as a blocker to the flushdraw, but isn't anywhere near as good a blocker as 88 and especially 88 with a d, and so we'd use this JJd in our betting range at a far lower frequency. But the bet has to be big regardless because we don't have any hands in our range that want to pump money into this pot without being nutted or heavily blocking the nuts, because we can't get value or bluff with them effectively on later streets when facing heavy villain action, and because OOP has so many marginal continues that we want to put under pressure.

Of course your comment re villains being recs is a very valid one and bad recs are unlikely to find x/r bluffs at a frequency even close to optimal if at all, so we can probably overfold. Even so, I'd struggle to fold on this river when the flush completes given the SPR and given the range of hands even a rec would likely be doing this with. He shouldn't really have a betting range at all ott or otr which shows he doesn't really know wtf he's doing and I think it's actually pretty difficult to make assumptions about his range given action

I find that hard to believe.

Anyway seems like he's trying to get the other guy to fold/call. It may or may not align with a solver output but seems like a plan to me. A plan that could well be more lucrative against players who also "don't know wtf theyre doing". Like I'm not checking all my nuts on the river and letting these stations and underbluffers/undervalue-bettors get away idgaf what Pio's talking about.

Of course I'm talking about equilibrium Mr Bearer and extrapolate/adjust as you see to be correct.

Think about the IP range ott after it calls a flop x/r. About 25% of it just hit a flush whilst straights/sets also still exist in a big way. The Oop range that x/r's at equilibrium (let's start here and adjust according to our villian assumptions) contains less than half the amount of made flushes on that turn since the best flush draws pure call otf (they block hands that a raise would be targeting and prefer to realise equity before pumping the pot). Hence an Oop check ott is a pretty damn good idea. Please, run the sim if you don't believe me or even just think about it logically. Oop just shouldn't have good flushes on this runout whereas IP has them often, and so a passive line works better than an aggressive one overall.

If Oop is raising their best flush draws otf (which imo is terrible and shows that they don't know wtf they're doing, plan or not) then yeah, the whole thing changes. The IP nut advantage ott would cease to be a factor and I'm sure Oop would get to do a ton of betting. In which case we have a really tricky decision to make otr. Flip a coin

The case for raising nut or second nut combo draws on the flop this deep is that real world cbettor is not putting money in thinly enough especially via value betting when 3 to a flush or 4 to a straight hits turn or river.

If not mimicking solver equals not knowing wtf they're doing then nobody does, because the high stakes hands thread in NVG is full of non-solver lines.

I can understand sizing down turn as ranges are locked. Did you put small sizes in your sim?

Both ranges get 1/3, 2/3, pot and 150% pot on every street and an additional 1/4 block sizing for Oop otr.

I don't advocate mimicking solver lines at all, but I definitely advocate not including best fd's in a BB x/r'ing range against an early-mid position open basically ever, nor to c-bet turns that smash an IP flop x/r calling range. I'd be very surprised to see good high stakes players making these mistakes

Main point is there's a difference between a sub-optimal play and an irrational play. Many GTO lines are counterintuative. So just because our opponent does something sub-optimal it doesn't mean they're are just smashing buttons or are stupid and we should just give up trying to range them as they are just too unpredictable.

An intelligent player can rationally get to the river with nut flushes whether Pio approves or not and our ranging should make allowances for that. Dudes will be like "he can never have sets here because he would have needed to flat button with 22 or 33 at 30bb and that's not a thing", err yes he can, all he had to do was click one button and making sets is fun.

I think you guys are overreading this. A 37/20 isn't going to play GTO, if anything else because all those extra hands make it impossible to balance his ranges.

His more likely thought process is "I have a strong draw/I have the nut flush, I should be shoveling money into the pot" the vast majority of time and like 10-20% "I have a set, low flush, they are strong hands, if you have those beat,**** you, take my money".

Last but not least, even recreationals intuitively understand that PFR has a ton of flushes in that spot and slow down to realize their showdown equity Add to that there are not any natural bluffs in that spot, let alone bluffs that you 3 barrel with and it's hard for him to balance his bets properly. That's why nut flush or not, he needs to bet smaller, as he doesn't have many bluffs.

Those stats over a small sample size mean nothing