Am at my third table. I've won maybe two hands all day (3 hours so far) none at this table but by now I am very tight pre. I've hit zero flops hard. Started day with 110,800 chips now down to about 70,000. Villain is BB and has raised many hands pre-flop. On my right is Ryan Reese who seems to be friends with villain though I think it is a Michigan thing (maybe they know each other from charity rooms). Lots of 3-betting pre at this table though villain is not one of the main guys doing it (neither is Reese).

Blinds are 500/1000 bb ante 1,000. Hero has 97 in LJ. Fold to Hero who raises to 2,200. Why I did this is questionable. Could have been slight tilt. Could have been my image at the table is tight old guy. So this hand is unusual. SB has been 3-betting a lot. Same with HJ. But I get a pass. It folds to BB with about 65,000 chips who calls.

Flop is 862. BB checks, Hero bets 2,000. I do this because we are HU and if BB has one or two overcards he might fold and even if he calls, might fold to a turn bet. BB c/r to 6,000. Hero calls. I think this is an easy call given it seems an underbet. Also lots of draws out there and I have an overcard.

Turn is 4. BB leads out with 7,000. Again an underbet, IMO. My gut tells me that he has one pair or a draw. Very possibly flush draw. Raising would likely require an all-in bet at this point as effective stacks are now 57,000 including villain's turn bet. I am thinking that if I call here I am representing an overpair. So I call knowing that river will require a bluff if I miss.

River is A. This is a good card in that villain checks. I pull out a 25,000 chip (because I have 2 and have to use one of them) and as I am moving it forward I say "12,000". And I realize that it is a small bet. But I want it to look like I either have a diamond draw and hit my A or I have a pair like 99-KK and am making a small value bet.

How did I do?

given image i'm snap folding anything worse than Ax and tank calling Ax+ just cause price even though i'd be sure i'm no good

I think the open is iffy. Think you can open this hand with your image but if the table
Is 3betting light and playing solid aggro poker, I’m folding bc we can’t really continue oop against a 3bet. As always- I think you should open to like 2500 here- 2200 too small IMO.

Flop- I would check this texture back. I think it’s a massive mistake to cbet this flop bc it favors the bb range. Maybe if a H is on the board or 2, we can bet flop. I’m going to bet turn if we bet a 1heart flop and the turn is a heart.

I don’t like betting this specific texture bc it’s really awkward when we get check raised. We almost have to call if they don’t size nice and big which villian didn’t bet raise big.


River sizing seems bad to me. 31.9k in pot. I like the idea to bluff this card but I’m fine if you just give up here also. If you think you can get villian to find a fold, I think I would bet like 70%-80% pot. I’m thinking 22-26k on river. 12k is a tad too small and will get crying calls. Make it difficult for villain if you are going to bluff here. Might as well leverage tournament life and go big here- there is a big difference calling 12k here vs 22-26k I feel. If villian calls 26k and loses, he just lost a massive portion of his stack.

The open is fine, especially playing off your image.

I don't agree that the flop smashes the BB calling range. Remember, we START the hand with a much stronger range. Sure, Villain has more 86 than we do, but we have more strong hands as a percentage of our range. Take a hand like 66. We both have it, sure. But we have it as part of a ~20% range, BB has it as part of a ~65% range.

We definitely want to bet parts of our range on this flop; I'd guess, with about 60% of our range. Our hand is very low in showdown value with a strongish draw. I'd much rather CBet this than AQo no draw, for example. Yes, it is awkward when we get check raised; if Villain had used a bigger sizing, he'd have put our hand 'in the cage'. As it is, it seems like a clear call, as hero did.

I think the turn is probably closer to a fold than you think. We need to get ~22% of the pot here. We have 13% draw to the nuts, another 4% to a dirty straight. But, we are starting to get to the point where the chips we lose damage our stack more than the chips we gain. I guess we do have some good implied odds, and might find some profitable bluffs on the river.

The river is an interesting spot. Our hero used a small size, which, I kind of like. That Ace is quite a bit better for our range. We can also fold out hands like Kx, Qx of diamonds that missed their draw. We won't fold the stronger hands like a decent combo draw here, say 67dd might look us up. I don't think going bigger is worth the price to get folds from that part of their range; but I could easily be wrong here.

Going to send this to PIO to see how well the hero did, and how our analysis is.

OK, PIO sim is in. This flop gives IP 54.7% equity and 61% of the pot in EV. This confirms that this flop is not one that smashes BB. IP bets 54%, 97hh bets 68% of the time. PIO actually prefers to use a bigger size than hero did.

PIO always calls the check raise. PIO also always calls the turn. On the river, PIO prefers to use Joker's sizing, of 80-90% pot. It does use hero's sizing about 10% of the time, though. The big bet does fold out Villain's worst 8x and 6x. The small bet does get folds from hands like Qxdd, but PIO gets sticky with some of its K highs versus the small sizing. Not sure you are getting heroed here by K5d in real life...

Preflop+ has 97 suited as a fold from the low jack. It’s probably the top portion of a fold range so I think it’s wrong to say this is strictly open. Going to fold based on table.

Meh 268 is a better flop for the big blind. I find it hard to say they don’t have a range advantage of this type of texture.

Very helpful responses.

I was wishing I had made it 16,000 when "12,000" came out of my mouth. I don't bluff at the 80% to 90% range (or value bet) and I will have to give both some more consideration at this point. Its clearly a way to get more folds and also to win bigger pots.

Mostly I am betting 60% for value and bluffs on the river. I like to keep my sizings consistent so it doesn't give away hand strength. So I should have bet around 19,000 in my world. Truth is it was the first river I had bet at the table so consistency wasn't an issue.

Villain folded so he must not have had a pair.

My ranges say that too. However, if we tighten the Hero's range, it will give an even greater range advantage. The ranges I used gave Hero top pair+ 24.2% of the time; Villain 18.7%. Villain has more strong draws, but also his total misses are much weaker, ie hands like Q3s; hero's misses are more weight towards Ax and good overcard combos like KQ.

The open preflop is fine, IMO. Especially with a tighter image. I think I would make it a bit larger as someone else suggested.

I think I like the way you played the hand. Villains hand looks mostly like a missed flush draw or pair and flush draw. If they happen to have Adxd then they will obviously call. But I think Adxd is a small portion of their range. The small bet is better in this spot IMO. Because it looks like you are trying to squeeze value out of the villain.

fellow rick, we're river bets that small common and were people regularly folding to small bets?

River bets were smaller than I've basically ever seen in tournaments anywhere.

I wouldn't say people were folding all the time. I didn't on a couple of occasions, but those times the river bets were even smaller than my `~40%.

I think my bet was saying that I at least had an overpair to the flop. And it could very well be AA. If villain had AX I doubt he would have folded. But I also think he would have bet the river at about 40% pot the same way he bet the turn.

The open is hood imo. We have plenty of chips and our image is good for an open with suited connectors.

I like betting bigger on these flops against the bb. It disincentivizes him to check raise since he’d have to put a lot of chips in, and it allows us to bet bigger on the turn to get him off his weaker holdings. Obv calling the check raise.

I’m also calling the turn bet. The river bet seems small to me, but it should get the job done against his airballs and bottom pair/straight or flush draw type hands.

if table meta is small river bets are getting through then i like the play, had outs to hit a monster and if not put the old man coffee fear of god into them with a bluff