Mohegan Sun starting with 35,000 chips. Blinds are 500/1000 BB ante 1000.

Villain is a woman I have played with a lot at Foxwoods though not since Covid. She is a very good player. Her action varies and she is very unpredictable. She raises a lot more than most women and her range can be widish. She also 3-bets a lot more than most women.

Villain has about 46,000 chips and I have about 75,000. I had been as low as 18,000 and as high as 85,000. I basically doubled up against a guy in a 3-way hand at this level when there was a UTG raise a call and I called with T8s OTB. Flop was T82 flush draw possible, UTG bet 2500 UTG+2 called and I raised to 10,000 fold call. Turn was a 3, check I shoved (UTG+2 had a little more than pot and I thought he was possibly on a draw) UTG+2 tanked and called with JTo and I held.

I have AJs and am in the CO, Villain is UTG and raises pre-flop to 3000. She had previously raised to 2x at this level. Earlier she had raised pre-flop to 2.5x. It could be a little bit about her hand so I thought she could have hands like TT/QQ/JJ here. Folds to me and I call. I rarely would raise here vs a UTG open unless its a Solver type guy. In this case I thought Villain had a big hand and might very well 4 bet which I did not want. I wanted to play AJs.

Flop is J33 with a possible flush draw. Villain checks and I bet 5,000. Villain snap shoves. The sizing is actually right on. If she raises 4x it would be 20,000 which would be almost half her stack. Even 3x would be over 33% of her stack. My immediate thought was she doesn't have QQ/KK because why would she let that check through if I had an overcard like an A? I blocked AA. If she had a J she would cbet 100% of the time. So I pushed out my call before I could really think about it.

Any thoughts are welcome.

Her check jam doesn’t make much sense imo. Still I don’t see why she wouldn’t check KK and AA. Paired boards with two low cards like this are ideal for checking those hands.

I might find a call depending on my reads of player and body language/timing but something reeks here. If she’s a good and aggro player post flop (not just pre) I would also be more inclined to call.

Your flop bet seems large to me on this board. A smaller bet is fine and will make it difficult for her to check/shove. (That said, I certainly don't think putting in 1/3 of your stack on a check-raise means you're obligated to shove the rest, so her decision is odd.)

I also might check here considering the preflop raise size. The 3x UTG tends to be a pretty tight range, and you're way ahead of TT (or any lower pairs) and AK/AQ, and way behind QQ+. You don't have much to worry about in terms of losing the pot, and hitting an ace could win you a big pot against AK/AQ.

I think as played, the decision depends a lot on what she thinks of you. If she thinks you're only betting Jx here, then she might just put in with an overpair thinking you probably call since it looks so strange. If she thinks you're betting wider than that, then she might be trying to push you off something, and I'd be more inclined to call.

Pre is good, I'd guess suited AT-AQ almost exclusively calls, your offsuit varieties will 3-bet more often.

On J33, I assume villain doesn't pure bet here in theory OOP, but overpairs will bet quite often (perhaps less with a diamond as they're less worried about protection). Sizing is ok, when villain checks we want to bet somewhat bigger than you'd think to target the pairs between the J and 3 that do a lot of checking.

As played her shove obviously doesn't exist in theory, but if her strategy on this board was purely flat or shove, I'd assume her value would be primarily a little bit of KK, a lot of QQ and AJ. Her bluffs would primarily be hands that contain at least the Ad or Kd and might be weighted towards flush draws. (If she has something like KdQd or Ad5d, doesn't want to risk going check/check on the turn, she might feel justified to play for stacks now.)

Unless you think this is heavily weighted towards value I don't see any reason not to call here.

I would fold this- seems like u have history with an aggressive rec who probably doesn't like folding or losing hands- i think, at best, you're up against nfd and more likely queens to aces. The correct decision is to call it off but in this particular spot given what's known about villain I think it's value heavy and wants to fold your draws out. As to why not a cbet? Prob has history w/you and thinks you bet this board with a high enough frequency- just planning out immediately she's gonna check jam

I wouldn't try to assign much logic here- live tournaments are meant to defy logic

honestly maybe she thinks you'd call it off with j10 qj kj which r all things you have feasibly

especially considering she's established a loose spaz image against you historically

here comes the loose spaz doing weird spazzy **** getting paid to the max by top pair

The thing I hadn't mentioned was that Villain had just lost like 12,000 chips a few hands earlier on a bad beat suckout. My red was that she was furious. Still I thought her oversized pre-flop raise was because she was mad and had a very good hand.

I wanted Villain to fold an overcard or two to this board. If Villain has KQ especially I wanted to just take it down.

But if I bet smaller then hands like 77-TT would more likely call. So my bad.

My thoughts were I thought it could be a bluff. But I did think my call was likely to lose. However, in fairness to the craziness of this tournament I had lost about 3 huge pots and won about 4 already. So I didn't know where I was on the roller coaster.

Definitely possible. I really didn't think she would be bluffing much. I thought she could have a flush draw though. But I also thought she wouldn't be doing this with an overpair though in retrospect with an overpair and 33 on the board maybe she wanted me to hit two pair and then get it in. Still I think she would just call the flop and shove my turn bet.

Seems like an easy call. She can jam worse for value.

Her using a larger than normal sizing preflop is a bit of a red flag, because when people vary their sizing, usually big sizing = big hand and small sizing = small hand. So I would definitely not be shocked, if you ran into an overpair here. But with that being said, AJ is very high in your range, since you likely 3-bet QQ+ preflop, and you dont call with any 3X in this configuration. So folding AJ here is pretty exploitable. You are also not drawing dead against QQ or KK, so depending on live reads I probably stick it in and hope for the best.

I think bet on flop should be smaller. 5k into 8.5k idk. I would probably fold here as women tend to be underbluffing here. Also live population normally isn’t doing this with air.

Idk A3s could easily be an open and she check jams her value hands such as A3, QQ, KK, AA. Think this is an easy exploit fold in live game. Probably an easy call if stacks are much shallower though.

I would personally make a different assumption abou her cbet frequency with a jack and Id assign less than 100% cbet frequency.

Id also assume greater than 0% check ship frequency with a jack.

I think you beat a small part of her range.

But I think youd need her range to be a solid 30% or more Jx and air for this to be profitable. Its 43bb total with 13.5bb including your float right? so 38bb to win 56.5bb?

At a minimum you very likely need a backdoor flush draw to have enough juice here. Make the analysis really simple: youre probably no better than 22%+/- vs top of her range (when you got a backdoor) and 80%+/- vs the bottom so 70/30 nuts vs spew ratio seems about right in order for you to even be just break even here.

I fold and its probably very exploitable. I can see myself in the future against some people having some temerity/stupidity to try and hero push them off their range exploitatively here.

If you fold this you probably fold 90% of the time.

I would consider doing it with IDK I guess AK,AQ with a backdoor flushy. Winning 12.5bb immediately in expectation with air vs like negative ev in theory is pretty huge if almost no one in the field is doing it and I think without any heavy icm it might very well be worth staking so many chips in what will probably be a high volatility and highly differentiated exploit.

I doubt id consider that unless theres asymmetric info namely ive never played against the person im trying to exploit.

But I dont think that line of thinking is a reasonable consideration for you as the defender against like 99.9999% of people who take her line.

Feel like it’s a pretty easy eye roll fold. If she’s Swedish I might call.

I think with the flush draw it might be close. I lean towards a fold. I would expect to face a bet if she had an overpair on this board, but people do take strange lines sometimes. The shove is so big that it's either a close flip or you are crushed. Does she really crai with a naked AK? I would think with something like AT (flush draw) that she just bets the flop herself.

The best case scenario is an A high flush draw and worst case is you are facing QQ+

What happened was she turned over AQo and said "Why the F*** would you call with AJ?" Which kind of supports the responses here. At the time I thought she was referring to why I called her pre-flop bet with AJs which I didn't really get, but now I see she was putting me down for calling her shove on the flop.

When I look at this mathematically (which I didn't in the moment) it is a strange spot. She has 15 combos of overpairs, 1 combo of JJ, 1 combo of A3s. So 17 big hands. Would she always c/r jam all 17 of those strong hands? I doubt it. Especially because I need a J to bet the flop and could have an overcard that would benefit from the check. I would say probably half the time or less with those hands. With JJ there is no way she would c/r all in pre flop. So maybe 8 combos of hands I am likely to lose against. How many flush draws are there? A lot really. AXs, KQs, KTs, QTs, even possible SC's. I would need her to be semi-bluffing about 4 combos to come out slightly ahead. If she was c/r jamming all of her overpairs I would still need her to be bluffing only 7 combos of hands to come out slightly ahead.

What changes everything is that there are apparently some AK/AQ hands she is completely buffing with, basically overcards and a BDSD/BDFD.

I do think my subconscious read played a factor as well. It was such a strange move, she was very wily and clever, she was upset about what had happened before, and she believed men like me would think she rarely bluffs. Still I wouldn't have been surprised if I was behind an overpair.

nh Rick

I didn't catch when I skimmed that there was a flush draw on the flop. You didn't block it right?

based on responses seems like if this is a representative sample of people (I think it probably is) then people are only really folding here like 50-60% of the time on average

V is a sicko and I like her computations but at the end of the day there seem to be some dubious assumptions she's made and as tempting as it is to try what she attempted people just can't fold tptk too often it seems...

in theory I really like her efforts here but I guess the universes where it works is quite a narrow subset of all universes

would you have been more likely to fold, less likely to fold, or equally likely to fold if you'd bet 2k on the flop instead of 5k?

or if in total you' only had say 4bb invested (2bb pre and 2bb on the flop) instead the 8bb as played?

I did not block the flush draw.

One of the odd reasons that I make this type of crying call now is that what I saw the super aggro players in Prague do is take like 33% chances in huge pots early on so they could accumulate monster stacks. If they bounced early they just bought back in. Here I knew this would be a turning point in this tournament if I won the hand.

Also, I did not realize that people would c/r on this flop OOP with overpairs aside from AA. I wouldn't...

Yeah, in theory this is a spot where villain shouldn't be checking every often, except with traps and marginal hands. It's probably like a 65-70% bet spot, because she has a range advantage - we have a small number of 3x, but she would have all the overpairs that you wouldn't and all of the good Jx in full. (some of your best Jx may 3-bet)

In this spot, her big issue is that if she's taking every AQo/AKo with a single diamond and bluffing it, she's going to be dramatically overbluffing. If you find players like this, your best approach is going to be to just call them down with hands that are going to feel kind of unintuitive and gross, like middling Jx.

The bigger question would be what we'd do if she'd raised a more normal size. In that case, your AJ still probably wants to mostly get it in, especially if we think the smaller raise size has some KJ/QJ that will call off, but I'm sure there are some range constructions where we can justify just calling - especially if her range will contain a lot of bluffs that we can just call down against.

Nh. Imo trying to analyze and explain her action/logic (after the reveal) is pointless. There was no logic. She tilt spewed it off to try and win a pot right away to “right the ship” (the ship of tilt lol). Note for future that this player is a tilt box. Idc how much history you have or if shes perceived as a winning/good player. This was an awful punt. Good players don’t go on tilt like this and check jam 45bbs with no pair, no draw, making no sense etc.

My guess though is that she has done this before vs guys like me. And they always folded.

Also for future reference I would fold against her if she did it again because the next time against me she will always have it. This will have burned in her memory until the end of time...

w/the context she was on monster tilt after just losing a bigger pot ya i'd call seems like she's detonating

Yeah I would speculate that this isn't her first rodeo trying this, and I would also speculate that she'll have times where she does this with the nuts as well.

BTW Rick--any plans to play anything in Philly any time soon?

I don't have any plans.

But then I am fairly unaware of Philly tournaments since Parx stopped their Big Staxx.

When I have looked online I haven't seen more than one and it was for $350. But I just looked and saw the $2200 Main event at River's Casino. However I won't be in town then. My wife is flying to Mexico for a HSCT treatment at a clinic on 5/26 and I am going with her...

Are there decent stakes tournaments on weekends in Philly?

not really afaik, what you see on the schedule is what you get.

GL to your family Rick. Hope to see you around!