Full Tilt Poker $11 + $0.50 Heads Up No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t15/t30 Blinds - 2 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

BTN/SB: t1560 52 BBs
Hero (BB): t1440 48 BBs

Pre Flop: (t45) Hero is BB with J J
BTN/SB raises to t90, Hero raises to t300, BTN/SB calls t210

Flop: (t600) 8 Q Q (2 players)
Hero bets t200, BTN/SB calls t200

Turn: (t1000) 5 (2 players)
Hero bets t300, BTN/SB calls t300

River: (t1600) 8 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets t760 all in, Hero calls t640 all in

This is only the 4th hand in, so no strong reads. However, the first hand made me think the villain might be aggro:


Full Tilt Poker $11 + $0.50 Heads Up No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t15/t30 Blinds - 2 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

BB: t1500 50 BBs
Hero (BTN/SB): t1500 50 BBs

Pre Flop: (t45) Hero is BTN/SB with T 4
Hero calls t15, BB checks

Flop: (t60) 6 A A (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t30, BB raises to t90, Hero folds

2 questions: what should I be doing on the river and how's my bet sizing? Should I bet just betting more on the flop and shoving the turn?

wtf betsizing in hand 1, just jam turn

Hand 1: c/r or jam and get called by A8 on the turn. The turn bet doesn't make sense with the given stack sizes.

even with your ******ed betsizing, c/c river in hand 1 doesn't make a lot of sense since you have 2 important blockers for J9/JT
i'd just bet bigger on flop and jam turn and puke if he has Qx but it will happen a reasonable amount of time

Can someone elaborate a bit on why the bet sizing is so bad?

Don't limp T4o imo, 3bet JJ is on the biggy side but is okay on 11$ level

As said before w/JJ: bet like 280/300 on flop and shove turn

I still 3bet smaller and hope to get villain to stack off to my overpair. The stack sizes makes it hard to play on AKQ unpaired boards.

I think your flop bet sizing is okay as a ploy to induce a bluff raise, but relatively readless, I'd bet a bit bigger because most people are generally calling or folding on that flop, and the floating part of their calling range pretty much stays the same whether you bet 200 into 600 or 280-325 into 600.

On the turn, trying to induce a raise again after villain declined to raise your flop bet is misguided imo, especially readless. Just bet for value assuming neither you nor villain has a Q -- which is essentially how you should play this 3bet pot and board with these stack sizes -- and assuming also that villain can look you up with any pair/draw/maybe Ax given the SPR and pot odds he'll get. So looking at stack sizes, that basically means shoving.

Thanks a lot for this explanation.

Here's what I was thinking: villain is never folding Qx, probably never folding 8x and is not particularly likely to fold a decent PP. So, the part of his range I want to target to get extra value form is A high, smaller PPs and other marginal showdown hands. It seems to me that shoving the turn is just going to get those hands to fold whereas betting small might make them more likely to call. So, I wasn't trying to induce as much as I was trying to get hands not to fold.

If someone can explain where I went wrong with this thinking, I would really appreciate it.

Also, is "induce" restrictive to trying to get our opponents to raise or does induce also include getting our opponents to call?

Yeah this makes a lot of sense to me, and it's making me think that what you did was far from being clearly a mistake or wrong.

My main concern is squeezing max value on the flop and turn, where opponents are likeliest to continue in order to see the river and try to make their hand or go to showdown. So that would cause me to start off with a bigger flop bet. Then on the turn I'd notice that I have less than a pot-sized bet left. And I'd still be thinking that villain is likeliest to put chips in on this street with hands looking to improve than on the river when he knows he can no longer improve and conclusively has nothing. He can't call a river bet with nothing, and if we check the river, he basically has to bluff his stack (when he has non-showdown air) into a huge pot and pray you find a fold, or check behind and hope his Kx or Ax or ?? has showdown value. Meaning it's typically hard to get chips out of the weakest parts of his flop and turn continuing range on the river.

So stacks being what they are, I think a turn shove simply has more value and is more callable by still-hopeful overs/draws than a turn underbet + river check (or bet) combo.

But still, looking at the situation again, I don't personally see a problem with what you were going for, except that I'd jam on the river for value whereas you checked, which lets villain get away with checking behind way too often.

I think it's fine to use it for both; context can make your meaning clear.