2nd game with villain, I know he grinds 10-12 tables of low stakes 6max and full ring games mostly. It seems he plays HUSNG's for fun.

Winning Poker Network - 25/50 NL (2 max) - Holdem - 2 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BB): 1,625
SB: 1,375

SB posts SB 25, Hero posts BB 50

Pre Flop: (pot: 75) Hero has A 8

SB raises to 100, Hero calls 50

Flop: (200, 2 players) 8 4 8
Hero checks, SB bets 100, Hero raises to 250, SB calls 150

Turn: (700, 2 players) A
Hero checks, SB checks

River: (700, 2 players) J
Hero bets 1,275 and is all-in, SB calls 1,025 and is all-in

bet turn for value, jam river

3bet jam pre flop:

as played I think checking the turn is probably the best play, one thing is u have the board crushed but the main thing is the A is a good card for his range and a bad one for your. if he is the type to cbet Ax hands then a lot of people will float a chk raise with them, your probably not going to get 3 streets out of 4x on most runouts and if he has 8x you will get his stack anyway. also a huge amount of his calling range to a chk raise is going to be str8 draws and gutshots.

checking the turn alows two things, it alows him to bet his gutshots and darws trying to rep a floated ace and also even if he chks back it allows him to make a str8 or flush whch is ideal for you.

the river is a tough one as a lot of players might chk back alot of the draws and take a free card and bet for protection o0n the turn with ax hands so when he gets to the river he is likley air heavy and if he isnt he likely has 4x which is in a tough spot if you bet either way, so im leaning towards chk raising the river. thsi way you get bets from his gutshots and missed draws and sometimes they will thin value hands like kk qq etc

Changen my mind, still betting turn but should c/jam this river, let him bluff missed draws and he prob anyway folds 4x and bets 8x

yup i x/c turn, x/shove river. almost never betting turn, blocking almost everything and a card thats terrible for our range

checking turn is redic, wthout a solid reason, as in he will bet really thin or he floats everything even then betting is almost always better. dont check the river he is not going to bet when he checks back this turn

Horrible advice

Lol agreed.

Turn is definitely a check, but do you like the over bet jam on river? I guess in game I was putting villains range on lots of 4x and sometimes KQ/KJ/QJ with a diamond that floated the flop. I think 76 is definitely in our range to over bet after villain checks the A turn to put his 4x in a tough spot, and A8 would be a value hand to keep our range polarized. Or do you think betting something like 280 on river is a better play?

Why don't you try to give some good advice instead then?

Whilst I think checking the turn has its merits, I actually prefer betting really small, like 210 or so. Yes, we block lots of his value hands but he can have all FD and gutters, which he might not fold to this small inducing turn bet. Heck, sometimes he might even spazz out with w/e hand, which he might not when we check or bet large. It also sets up the stack size better for a river jam.

Like I think versus a more fishy type opponent then yeh I can see an argument for the small turn bet as i think its less likely in general thta a fish bluffs and is more likely he will make a bad call with a gutshot.

vs a reg even from other formats i prefer checking because i think the vast majority of the time they wont make a terrible call with a naked gutshot on the turn even vs a small bet infact i think the amount of times you get called by a gutshot from a reg will probably be less than the times they actually hit there gutshot on the river when you give them a free card and your going to get a much bigger bet/ there stack when they do.

+even if they dont hit when you check to them they will likely bluff a much higher % of the time on the turn or river and for a bigger bet usually than they will call the turn.


also a lot has to be said for how your going to play the rest of your range on the turn and on this A turn im not likely to have a wide betting range and would prefer to have some value in my checking range which allows me to get some free cards when i chk raise some gutshot combos OTF and check the turn

This is a board where I would go ahead and make an exploitative play of x/r bluffing quite often. As a consequence I will have more air than value hands (well, most airs have some equity though) on this turn, and despite this card being not the best one for our range, I would like to have a betting range in this spot. That is, range wise I'm more concerned about how I'm gonna play my air here, rather than value hands, just because they usually outweigh the latter.

Put in another way, there aren't many hands that we can x/c with on this turn. Our value hands are limited, and with our "air" we can't call any decent sized bet. So if we are checking here with A8 to protect those air, we can't protect that many air combos. However, if we bet small on the turn, we now have some FE on our side and that will allow us to have, or protect, more air in our range. Because of that, I'd opt to bet wider with my range here and quite possibly jamming on the river (with a narrower range), although they both are solid ways of constructing our turn range. This is also due to the fact that most of his range should be weak to medium bluff catchers, which enables us to leverage his stack in case by a small turn bet. We don't really mind him calling with Kx or Qx when we do this with 8x or air, as this is quite likely gonna be the last chips he is putting into the pot anyway.

And simply speaking, we're sitting at the top top of our range and that usually warrants a bet. Given that we don't have many Ax that we play this way, if we don't bet A8 (or 8x) here we just can't have many value hands in our betting range at all, and that doesn't seem like the best way to construct our range.

I understand what your saying, but i think your main point about having a lot of air combos vs value makes my point of checking the turn even stronger,

i dont think strategically wise in a spot where your air hands way outnumber your value combos and a turn card that is the nut worst for our range and actually helps there range some % is just a spot where you want to be giving up with the majority of your air combos, if you bet them vs a decent player your going to get abused.

when you check raise the flop you do it because you have the fold equity required on the flop and you have some good turn cards to improve your equity or give you the best hand, just because the A came on the turn doesnt mean we still have to bet to make the flop play +ev, you do it in mind that some turns are good for us to conitinue and others are bad, when you get a bad turn card theres nothing wrong with just chk folding a large % of your air.

now when you get those bad turn cards and your always betting your value hands that means when you chk your opponent auto wins the pot without much consequence. yet if you notice this is a card your giving up on with a large% of your range and you start to add in value hands into your checking range it means your opponents cant auto bet when checked too especially with hands like drawing hands that dont wont to face a check raise on the turn. this means they are much more likely to be checking back on the turn a lot more often which means you actually get to see the river for free with a lot of you gutshot combos which is pretty huge.

I just think in a spot where our range is bluff heavy and the turn card is a complete brick for our range and even improves villains range sometimes is a bad spot to have a wide betting strategy.


also think having a fullhouse and having the board so crushed combo wise is also a good hand to have in your checking range


i think a lot of regs when they get to a turn with a lot of air feel weak for just chk folding, but you should be check raising with a plan on future streets of what are good cards to barrel and what are bad cards and theres nothing wrong with chk giving up, but if you run into spots where your check giving up a lot you need to add value hands into your range too.


like i said im saying the above in regards to playing more competent opponents and from a balance POV too, I think versus passive fish betting is going to be the best play by far with a lot of your range and changing betsize based on the hands u have.

also vs a more reg ish type opponent like above i think in a vacuum that checking this hand is probably better regardless of balance etc and the wall of text above is in terms of splitting your ranges vs a very good opponent your playing for lots of games etc

Yeah, I agree with most of what you said. When we x/r this flop we obv need to have plans for different turn cards. However, if anything, I don't think A on turn is that good of a card for him, although it certainly is a bad card for us. If he bet/calls Ax on the flop he will do so with at least some Kx and Qx, let aside draws and 4x, and these hands can't really do much but calling a small bet and folding river or just folding ott out right. I won't expect an avg $55 reg to "sense the weakness" and jam over our small bet on this turn, for example.

Earlier on you mentioned you would prefer checking because they won't make light calls with weak draws or floats. If we indeed have a decent FE upon betting this turn, shouldn't it act in our favour when we have way more air than value hands, and hence want him to fold? Especially when we bet really small. In theory we can't bluff often when betting this small, but here it's a little bit different imo because a) his range is weak anyway, and b) he has to worry about facing another bet on the river. And in case he wants to punish our weak-looking bet, we will have some value hands to go along with anyway if we play most 8x this way, so we don't really have to worry about that.

We seem to be talking about two different ways of constructing ranges, and I think the overall EV of them might as well be close. I'm happy to be convinced otherwise, but to me this board (flop/turn) more or less seems like a spot where the one with initiative will take down the pot the vast majority of time by the river, if not right away on turn. Yes, we have more air than value, but his range is full of weak draws and floats anyway, against which we are better off betting small with our whole range. Also, this might be the best way to play vs his 4x that he didn't jam on flop. If we were facing a stronger range, I agree that we just have to mostly x/f and move on, but here we both have lots of weak hands in our range.

To be clear, I think the most likely scenario would be him flatting our small turn bet and folding to our river jam. Hence, with my value hand I want to extract some value when we can, and don't really expect to get called on the river if he doesn't have much anyway.. but it's even less likely that he will bluff off his whole stack when we check to him on turn/river imo. With my air, I want to set up the stack size by a small turn bet and jam river for maximising FE and whatnot.

Our turn bluff has to work only 25% of the time or something, so if he folds more than that we can just bet with all our air and now check some value hands. However, if we can expect him to call often (because he doesn't know what else to do) and fold a lot on the river, we can now bet with both value and air. So yeah, back to the original question, I actually think checking this on turn is a good play too, although I still prefer betting small.

Cliff:
- If our range is weak and his is strong, we just have to x/f often
- If our range is weak and his is weak as well, we can get away with a small bluff

This is why i think your a very good poster in strat threads because you actually provide very good arguments for your strategy advice.

I agree what i said in the post above contradicts what i said earlier but that's because i was speaking in terms of in a vacuum, and in a vacuum i think you should be betting air on the turn as i think they are folding enough gutshots to warrant a smallish bet.

but my main point above was in terms of splitting your ranges long term vs a good opponent as in your going to be in this spot and similar multiple times and vs an opponent who isnt going to let you get away with being too heavily unbalanced here.

like lets say you bet the turn small and it leaves exactly a pot sized bet behind, now villain can jam on your turn bet and if your range consists of draws and gutshots that cant call more than 50% of the time then they have an any 2 card profitable jam spot as they are risking a pot size bet to win pot so must work 50% unless im being a ****** with my math which isnt unlikely lol.

but as i said i was thinking more in long term play vs a good opponent, and its a habbit ive been trying to think about when constructing ranges and strategies, if im playing a new opponent or a fish then i play much more exploitive to start off with but then have a default gameplan i revert too after some hands have showndown.

if im wrong on the maths of the jamming pot to win pot needing to work 50% then someone correct me with the right answer, i deffo have my spaz moments when it comes to math

Thanks for your words and the thoughtful comments.

First thing first, you're right, when we bet on turn our bluff needs to work ~25% of the time, and if he pots over it that needs to work ~50% of the time. I think both I and he can be profitable in this spot, and that's of course because of the dead money already in the pot.

I def. agree with the range splitting part vs observant/competent regs. If I am playing vs these guys, first of all I will x/r bluff less often (and x/c more often) and take it from there, so that my turn range isn't too unbalanced, i.e. he can't blindly jam over my small turn bet and be +ev. Of course this is almost impossible if I am x/r bluffing on flop way too often, hence I'd need to x/r less often. Another adjustment would be build a turn x/r range, because I think this is a board where most regs will double barrel quite often even with very little equity, which means we can "float" very wide on flop with the intention of stealing it later, mostly by turn x/r.

yeh i completely agree with what you said, and i think those adjustments are very decent adjustments to make too.

also shows there are multiple strategies you can implement vs the same player. Also another thing to keep in mind is if we are to be chk raising the flop and barrelling the turn and we decide to play all our strong value and strong flush draws the same that this greatly effects our flop check calling range, so in order to balance our weaker check calls we need to have some 8x in our chk call range which means its going to be hard to balance a betting range on brick turns even more.

but basically shows u can almost justify splitting your ranges in anyway, like exploitably you could chk raise all your 8x and bet wider for bluffs on the turn if your opponent doesnt double barrel often etc

keep up the good work mela because you post in 100x more strat threads than me because i find it so much effort lol,

Wow, some really interesting posts itt thanks Mela/lovehatepoker!

My question for Mela- What are you doing with your 4x you were x/r to gii on flop when villain flats and the A turn comes? And if we want to have an x/r bluffing range on turn, couldn't we just add some Axdd combos for value instead of A8?

Oh yeah, I agree that splitting 8x into x/r and x/c range is a good way to start with, and is most likely what GTO strategy will look like too.

I don't play NL anymore, but I will try to post some strat every now and then! Thanks for kind words again.

I don't think I will have tons of 4x in my pre flatting range, but in this spot I might bet small/fold to jam with my 4x. Check/calling shouldn't be all that bad but that kind of turns our hand face up and villain can play very well on the river.

As for Axdd - first off, I'll jam those preflop a good amount of time, and if I flatted I quite often x/r on the flop for value because we often have a very good equity. That said, good candidates for flop x/c + turn x/r would be gutters, Q/J high, etc., off the top of my head.

c/c flop