GG Poker $500 buy-in, we are late in day 1. You can re-enter if you go bust and play another day 1. Field has a big mix of very good and wild maniacs.

The villain is a high stakes pro. The pro plays $25K tournaments. Has a significant amount of cashes.


We are playing 6 handed late in day 1 with one of the bigger stacks.

Hero has 75BB
Villain has 55BB

Preflop: Hero has AT UTG
Hero raises to 2.5BB, 1 fold, Villain in CO calls, 3 folds

Flop: T73
Hero bets 2.5BB, Villain raises to 7BB, Hero calls

Turn: 8
Hero checks, Villain bets 11.2BB, Hero?

What are we doing here? Folding feels very weak, but I don't know what I'm going to do on the river. Anything you would do differently?

Never folding

Can't fold. You're too high in your range. I think there's a good chance V is going to check back river on value that beats you -- he can't be too happy with JJ, QQ after your turn call. And I think he'd do the same with value that you beat obviously all his Tx, 99, A7. So you're probably not going to have to call a shove on the river, unless he was J9, 77, 88, or 33 (or the last combo of TT) or air.

certanly call, you can have Aa and lots of rivers go ch ch

On other side bluff is quite dangerous suicial against utg raise....and is defenately out of line


BTW i would fold ato utg if tough table...

Agree that this is generally a fold preflop.

Flop sizing seems good, turn I call, and if he bombs the river I prob fold.

Flop sizing doesn't give him much incentive to fold basically anything which by itself doesn't necessarily make it bad sizing but what DOES make this less than ideal sizing is your combo is already a lot stronger than your sizing gives it credit for so size up flop.

As a result you're still doing quite well OTT and you benefit greatly from protection so mostly barrel turn, either small enough to string along basically all his underpairs or large enough to get more fat value immediately since 99 aren't folding, 9x isn't folding, A8 isn't folding, A7 isn't folding, spades aren't folding, and of course worse Tx aren't folding. You yourself rep a lot of overcard combos here--too much for IP to just give up pairs or SDs that easily. Maybe say 5-9bb will do.

His sizing is pretty silly considering you rep a lot of traps (AA, TT,88,77 all block continues and need much less protection so they're OK protecting the middle-of-range segment that needs to be checked at least sometimes), a lot of stuff that hates getting worse to fold but doesn't get much better to continue (think 44,55,66,AQ,AK--stuff that isn't really amenable to be valued against for chosen sizing), and a lot of giveups.

So his turn sizing is really crucially important. You can definitely start making folds OTT if he doesn't have like KQ, worse Tx here.


Honestly no matter what turn is prob either a jam or fold decision, almost surely never flatting, I want to believe he'll indeed have those worse Tx and if he does I doubt he's gonna fold them, especially not TsXs, but your guess is a good as mine.

It's obviously a ludicrous fold under normal circumstances (smaller float sizing) but his sizing changes everything.

Definitely wouldn't flame you for folding if you think he's really really set heavy which may be dubious but who knows. It's not like he has 99 here (which are otherwise a fine float for smaller sizing since you have 66,55,44,A7,A3,A8,98s,spades that'll continue and 99 needs protection against Q+ peeling) so he's almost surely way too polar, and if he, being a human, isn't taking this line with enough stuff like naked overs then you may not be in great shape. Depends entirely on what mix of sets vs Tx/FDs/air he's deploying and that's anyone's guess.

You may be expected to not barrel enough Tx which does not give IP a ton of incentive to take his Tx and heavily use this sizing. And you certainly aren't expected to fold those Tx which may be suboptimally frequent in your range. So taken together there would seem to be some real incentive for IP to take this sizing exploitatively with sets and maybe some FDs but in that case you really aren't doing well here.

I can't decide if you want to donk the turn into the flop raise or if you missed that villain raised the flop. Probably the latter since you used "barrel"... and since that makes more sense to me, but I've been surprised before.

Ah shoot yeah I didn't realize V raised flop

Heh. Interesting hand.

Seems to be a fairly even mix of V hands that beat AT, and hands with enough potential to leverage strong position and range advantages.

While this may not be standard, I often drop AT into my cc down range against a really tough opponent. It’s a legit value line and nice for a bit of balance, picking up a cpl streets value from persistent one pair hands and frequent bluffs - plus avoiding disaster on those rare occasions V has something. Sure we’re giving free cards to paint, but I think it’s worth it to disguise our range and screw with his head a little.

I suspect your 2.5bb blocker on the flop is a bit of a variation on that theme, keeping your AQ etc in range, but then he raises and you hate life - because he just found the perfect counter.

As played I question the bet call on the flop, because in practice we’re facing the same decisions on turn + AI river a huge percentage of the time and I doubt AT is strong enough to bc cc cc (ai).

Cliffs, put AT into cc down range, as played fold to the flop raise unless you can bc cc cc (ai) based on gameflow / history. This is a spot we can so easily lose control of the hand, and often the entire mtt.

c/c check river

Villain is super polar here and repping literally 33/77/J9s, TT/JJ occasionally, maybe Td7d if that's even in his range facing UTG open. I think we can mostly discount 98s or even 86s as that hand may elect to check turn. That 8 is pretty terrible it connects with villain's most likely bluffs (98/86/J9) and the fact he's continuing to bet (and not checking back once he gets showdown value) is pretty concerning.

So for me, it comes down to whether we think our opponent would continue to bluff 98/86 if he feels like he has to triple barrel in order to get us off of a range which is primarily going to be TP+ and good draws. Maybe a good pro takes that line enough of the time to the point where we can justify calling down. Against many players I'd strongly consider folding turn, or least calling turn and folding to river bet unimproved.

He almost surely doesn't have J9 or 86 due to pre, shouldn't even really have 98s. And he reps a lot less polar than that. Basically slivers of any of his 2-overs combos which naturally are broadways blocking big PPs AND having at least a BDSD (usually a BDFD, too), Tx, sets, even stuff like A8s-A9s.

What makes this problem really difficult is you almost surely are not 3betting flop enough if at all, you arrive at turn with way too much AT,JJ+ that by all accounts should still be printing when he raises, him being incentivized to raise JT+ and aforementioned air in order to get value from underpairs, and fold out your own air.

So your range is actually doing quite well OTT, filtered of air more than IP is, you have J9s he should have none, you have basically all 88 he has virtually none, 99 are doing pretty good and you have basically all 99 he has basically none, TT are NOT a good flop raise very often needing little protection and having terrible blockers vs your continue range so you have way way more TT than him, in practice you have overpairs he has none, you have more Tx because as much Tx as he can raise it's not like he can just willy-nilly raise a Ten OTF so he's gonna flat with the bulk of his Tx.

It's a pretty good idea to throw out a small-sized donk bet given how far ahead you likely are in practice, if you think about it everything in your range benefits:



66: folds out some KQs, continues from KJ, QJ, AJ, A9; parries IP from raising as wide as he can barrel by protecting 66 with 33,77,88,J9,TT,Tx

A9s: ditto--you realize A LOT more equity this way than you do without a donking range

AA: clear incentive to donk for value ahead much more often than not


AT: ditto


88: ditto


And so on.

AP it's a pretty clear blunder to fold. And you should be willing to snap basically all rivers that aren't big cards or spades.

Guess you could work in exploitative folds on dry rivers but it's a stretch.

On some rivers like a 6 or a 9 or a J that pin his Tx from being tripled for value, this combo is almost surely a better catcher than AA,KK,QQ. You have a whole lot more KT,QT worth blocking in your range because of that flop sizing (AT is so much stronger and worthy of larger cbet sizing) and his Ax will have a tiny bit of SDV so there's sort of a double whammy going on (blockers and distribution effects) in favor of him bluffing whiffed KJ,KQ,QJ over his whiffed Ace-highs.

And on really dry rivers like 2,3 et al you have enough 66,A7,99,T9,JT,QT he can target for value with his own AT, prob even KT so you may be getting "bluffed" by worse value if you start folding rivers very often which is pretty bad.

A couple of points:

1. If we start pulling a lot of 8x and J9 out of villain's range pre, villain's range becomes even more weak. But I can certainly see 98s/J9s calling CO vs. UTG as some frequency, probably not 86.

2. I think good players will certainly find the types of bluffs you mention, but I can see a lot of players not willing to multi-street bluff into one of the big stacks which probably weights their range more towards value.

3. For that reason, I still like a call down against players we think are good enough to find those types of bluffs, but a lot dicier against players we think could be underbluffing.

They might flat pre, but they're pretty spewy flats. Think you'd be surprised how tight he should flat here facing a 2.5x with the BTN looming behind and many people not even opening the lightest stuff they can open like ATo.

Agree that some players will not barrel wide enough but the null hypothesis almost surely has to be that he WILL barrel wide enough UNLESS some exceptional piece of information arises that lets us safely reject the null hypothesis. In this case we have a pro who plays $25k events and that's all we know. Don't think you can just wave your hands and say "he's underbluffing" especially in light of some these responses, surely someone of his ostensible caliber knows people are grossly overfolding facing barrels and triples (even Tx OTT ) and it's pretty exceptionally spewy to raise flop then just quit in light of that knowledge.

why wouldnt we just repop the flop with a hand as vulnarable as this ? usually people dont raise all the combos of 33 and 77 here , but hands like J9/QJ/Q9 etc with BD draws that are too weak call , he has the position over you , GTO wise this should be repop/get it in on the flop , I dont see much rather than JJ that he might raise more often than 33 and 77 so I would put him 1combo each 33,77 , JJ 2 combos (3 for slow play preflop , 2 for raise and 1 for call on flop ) and after that You beat all the garbage as Q high K high hands that by rising flop you get to the river , and what is ur play if it goes ch/ch and river is J/Q/K ? you check and he bombs it , dont find this to be any good.