First I don't think we're really getting the right odds to call. If we're against an overpair we're 20% and with our current odds we need to be at like 29%. If we consider gross river cards (ie 6/7s) as "outs" that we can bluff on, then calling becomes a little bit more appealing.


However I think the real issue in the moment I was having is that while I think I can still win this hand by just flatting the turn, I really don't want V2 to come along as well. If I flat V2 might not get crazy, but I don't think he's ever folding the turn after he called the flop. He's still getting priced in to come along. Given that I think it becomes much more difficult for us to win the hand on the river when we're 3 ways without binking.

6s/7s are good cards to bluff with on the river for sure, but after flatting the turn and having V2 come along for the ride as well, those river cards become less appealing to us becomes they hit V2's range (whereas just vs V1 those cards could only theoretically improve our hand). There's almost no unimproved river cards I want to see with V2 still sticking around. I can't win the pot all that often on true brick rivers multiway (given we think we're behind V1), and the juicy river cards that don't help us (IE not Tx/Jx) probably help V2.

Another consideration is that if I do flat the turn, regardless if V2 comes along or not, V1 is probably prone to c/c'ing on most rivers. I'm actually expecting a check OTR from V1 almost always but unless it's a really bad card I think we get hero c/c'ed often enough to make bombing the river marginal. On the other hand if we raise the turn now, we might get more credit than if we just bet the river when checked to, and we have the added bonus of making V1 expect a v large river bet if they do make a marginal turn call, which should tip the scale towards a fold from V1's pov (imo). I think raising the turn gets more folds than just flatting/betting river.

Against the bad loose/aggro players then I can see 78ss type hands get appealing as far as limp/calling pre goes, but you really can't get away with this profitably vs stronger players. If you're sure villains can't exploit you here then go for it, but I'd warrant that you just cut this type of line out of your play all together. Even if it's not incredibly -EV given this particular table line up, I can't imagine it being that profitable either.

I agree with checking paired rivers, and probably complete bricks as well. Given the Qh binked I like the jam despite the result.

In this particular instance your preflop line sort of undermines the range you're trying to represent. Outside of T9 there's not a ton of combinations that you can show up with here that make sense. You're raising most pairs pre, you're not getting to the river with XXhh often, there's too few 2 pair combos that make sense (limp/calling J8/86/64 pre? unlikely). If you dump it pre you save yourself trouble, and if you want to play it and decide to raise pre, I think you are able to rep a wider range of hands that might have forced folds from most of villains range.

We need to win like 43% of the time given current odds. I don't think we're in good shape vs his range given your description of the situation but we are 200bb's deep + have position so our implied odds make calling+evaluating more appealing. I'd probably flat but it's marginal without more information imo.

I still fold pre. Our hand is just too marginal without initiative+position on our side.

If he's putting you on a straight draw by double barreling turn and river, would he not assume the same if you take the free river card and then raise the river? I'm thinking betting turn and river represent's a more honest range than taking a free card and raising river.

If we think calling and shove are = then I'm more fond of a shove. More aggression and more pressure on our opponents is always good for us/our image, esp if we can tilt our opponents. Even if we do get caught shoving with worse in this spot I don't mind it because we'll get less credit down the road when we do have stronger hands. I like the aggression I just think double barreling gets more respect.

If you're unsure of his range here you could try betting turn and checking back the river unimproved. Forcing him to showdown might be useful. Isn't optimal if we think we're generally behind though.

5/10 must move game, just sat down a few hands ago

Hero 2k
Villain 8k

Villain is a middle aged business retiree looking guy. Apparently has been running good. Played both hands semi aggressively that I've been at the table, he hasn't showed down a hand though. He straddled from utg and now is straddling his BTN.

Hero is in LJ with K K

folds to MP who calls, I raise to $125, BTN calls, mp folds.

Flop ($290): J 6 4

Hero leads for $175. Villain raises to $475.

I think we're generally ahead here, V prob does this with sets, Jx, heart draws, maybe 6x/4x and might be capable of trying to bluff based on my limited impression of him. Problem is he likely folds all of those except sets/Big J's if we reraise, but we also don't want to give free cards with heart draws possibly a decent part of his range. There's $940 in the pot currently, and we have $1700 behind.

How are we proceeding?

If we 3bet it's to get chips in the middle, whichever way you think looks the weakest the (shoving or a little more than min raising.) It sounds like you think most of his range is flush draws and things we're ahead of, so go for it. We might even induce a shove from worse if we min raise. However, I think most of the time he's raising to "see where he's at" and we end up turning our hand into a bluff.

I don't think 3bet folding is ever an option but I could be wrong I haven't run any #'s.

Another option is just to call and let him continue bluffing. I'm not that concerned with giving a free card since the pot is already more than half out stack. If he is making a move this is probably the best line.

Finally, I usually out level and consequently stack myself in these readless, 1 pair, 200bbs deep, single raised pots.

You said he was being aggressive in the 2 pots you saw earlier, how so?

I don't remember exactly, I played for like 9 more hours after this hand. He was just involved in both pots which were raised pre, one by him and one by another player. Iirc he won both with post flop bets, no showdown though.

If we 3b the flop I'm never folding. I'm thinking 3betting or not is close because he probably shuts down with almost everything we beat if we 3b him here. Otoh if we flat we can check/shove brick turns. Hearts, Jx type cards we might want to c/f though. Also if we flat the flop we risk him checking back the turn and I really don't want to let him have 2 free cards.

5/10

Room I've never played at before

Hero 2.2k
Villain 2.5k

My normal room wasn't running 5/10 so I mixed it up and headed to a different room. I recognize a few young regs in the game(s), but this villain isn't one of them. However he has been talking to a couple of the other regs since I've been here, and was talking about going to vegas for the wsop, so he's likely a pro as well.

He's played very few, if any, hands since I've been at the table (about 45 mins). No idea if he's just a nit, card dead, etc. It's also possible he doesn't want to play hands with other regs, but there's several to his right so pots are always opened/fish being iso'd before action actually gets to him preflop. May not have any relevance just a theory.

Anyways UTG1 (another unknown young pro looking guy) opens from utg+1 to 35, folds to me in the SB and I 3b to $115 with

K K

BB thinks for a bit and cold 4bets it to $325. UTG+1 folds.

How do we want to proceed?

just flat and let him play QQ/AA/AK pretty face up , i'd prefer not having a 5bet range unless these spots come up often against new opponents
if i 5bet it's not with the intention of hero folding, ur 57% against QQ+AKo+ currently and if you manage to fold out all AK combos with a 5bet its kinda disaster.

Agreed. I 5b with the intention of calling it off, villain tanked and folded. After I got cold 4b I decided I'd take the easy route and 5b but after pulling the trigger thought it couldn't be best vs someone I don't have history with.

Argument against 5betting: Extremely villain dependent but I'm not sure what range a live pro gets in AIPF this spot. My guess is something like KK+ against an unknown.

Argument against calling: We will be OOP. That's a lot of BB's to be OOP with.

Cinco/diez

Hero 2k
Villain 2k

Hero sat down 1 second ago. This is his first hand.

Villain is a middle aged guy, prob retired, have played with him once or twice before. No big hands but my impression is that he's fairly tight and passive. Was playing 4-5 handed with him the other day at a super dead table, he open limped ATo OTB, I raise from BB with 44, he flats, I double barrel QJ49 board and we c/c the T river. I also 3b him once when he did open raise his btn, I cbet a QQ9 board and he folded. Only 2 notable hands previously played against him.

Hero has 55.

Hero opens utg to $35, Villain 3b's me to 135 utg+1. Folds to me, I call.

Flop ($285): A J J

I check, villain checks behind.

Turn: 4

I lead for $175. Plan is to barrel all rivers except K/Q/diamonds if I'm called.

Villain flats.

River ($635): A

I lead for $400.

1/2NL

eff stack is $500

Villain : Asian dude in his mid to late 30s seems like a bad-reg/nit-reg wearing sunglasses and hoodie moving in slow mow in his actions. He thinks about hands and tries to hand read but seems to have flaws in his thinking. He's been seen nit-rolling 7To vs an old lady on a 5757X board and when he finally called he said he was worried she had quad 5s (so might be seeing monsters under the bed. He's also been seen bet/folding a river vs one of the better players at the table and then be mad at him , ranting about it for the rest of the session.

Ginger : older guy in his 40s, amicable, claims to have just busted out of the $1200 mega stack donkament. Seen call down a river bluff, he had a straight with a 3-flush on the board. So the guy is not scared money and is somewhat competent.

Hero/Donkey : Quiet, plain looking. I have a TAG/winning image in the sense that I am up to ~$500 and haven't shown any bluffs, weak hands or lost any pots. I play select hands but when i play them, chances are I am going to play for stacks.

Button is in the 10 seat.

4 seat limps

Ginger in the 7 seat (my immediate right) makes it $12

Hero calls with TT in the 8 seat

Folds to villain in the BB (2 seat) who calls.

### FLOP (~$35 after rake)

978

villain checks, ginger bets $35, I call, villain calls.
Ginger's sizing is worrying but i think he could still be cbetting AK/AQ besides his PP's so I decide to take one and evaluate the turn. I have position and the board is pretty scary so i expect to know where ginger is on the turn.

### TURN : ($140)
5

NOW villain comes out betting $45 from the BB, ginger thinks for like 10 seconds and folds. I put villain on a hand like 67, 57, 55, basically a hand with low to medium showdown value that has improved a little by the turn and is now trying to either semibluff or block to get to showdown. I call be cause i have position and can still catch a 6 and because **** c/c flop and leading turn.

### RIVER : ($230)
2
Right before the card get dealt villain yelps BLANK!! and after like 20 seconds he bets $90. I still have him on a capped range of mostly 2 pair hands, some lower straights and maybe a low set. While I am thinking he says "we both have around $300 left" I think he has more like $250. After what seems like a couple of minutes I move all in.

Thoughts?

cq, i don't think he folds the river very often, i'd just give up once he calls the turn.

tbad, i would 3bet pf most of the time. if i flat, i would raise flop for value. everything after the flop is spew.

Interesting spot. Flop call seems pretty easy despite I think we're not ahead the vast majority of the time. We're in decent shape to improve and if not, as long as we can turn our hand into a bluff sometimes (vs ginger), then continuing on is an easy decision. Ideally though I'd like to raise his cbet on the flop. We rep a stronger range of hands and the board is so wet that he might immediately dump high PPs, and if not, we can force folds almost always by time we get to the river if we don't improve. We still have equity vs w/e he has so if he's super stubborn we can still just bink.

As played not sure what is optimal. I think your raise can get better hands to fold, ie 2 pair hands, but 2 pair and even sets probably don't make up most of his range given his line. I'd expect a flopped 2 pair or a set to raise this flop, and if those hands don't raise this flop, then calling+leading the turn makes even less sense because the turn is pretty bad for his hand. I'd expect him to have 66/67/65 a lot and I'd expect a river call from him with those hands. If we really had better (JT/T6) we'd put in a raise before we got to the river.

Badr, I would just fold turn. Villain is leading turn in a multiway pot OOP after the flop got a pot bet and a call from you.
You're really playing a guessing game in a pot that is getting way too big for your holding.
I really do not know why you're turning your hand with perceived showdown value into a big bluff on the river when all draws just missed and you were playing your hand like a draw.
Granted you could potentially have flopped a NFD, but it's quite difficult to get credit for that.
Also villain could have been betting small on the turn to induce with his lead, so he could be very strong.
Just fold imo.

Thanks for the replies guys. I think ginger's range was narrow enough that raising him pre and on the flop was not a good idea. In retrospect, I think the turn is where things started to go downhill. Probably a fold but if i decided to make a play I should probably raise turn to setup a more credible river shove ... or, maybe this isn't even a play I should try at 1/2NL.

I really don't think villain is very strong, well he is but not nutted. I guess my biggest mistake is trying to get a 1/2 player to fold the 2nd or 3rd nuts. I really felt he was blocking. His c/c flop and lead turn just seemed like a capped range and he seemed uncomfortable demeanor wise compared to previous hands he played.

Villain ended up taking for like 3 minutes saying "oh man you gotta have TJ, what else could you have, You've had TJ all along, oh my god i'm so unlucky how come u have TJ, I call ... you TJ is good" after which he shows a flopped set of sevens and then gets MAD at me.

Sure my hand seems like a draw when i don't raise flop or turn on such a textured board but then I think does that even matter vs the type of player that would c/c flop and lead turn with a set on such a wet board.

5/10 pretty meh spot

V1 600
V2 2k
Hero covers both

V1 is a rec player, never seen him before. He's been playing 50-80 bbs for a couple hours.

V2 is a reg/young pro. Hyper aggro. Haven't played that many hands against him but he is the villain from a couple weeks ago where we hero called a PSB river jam for $1800 with 2nd pair on a T63Ax 3 flush board and was good (villain had bottom pair). Since then we've gotten it all in pre vs a 5/6 bet jam with AA vs him bb v btn. beyond those hands there's not a ton of history with him so despite him clearly being hyper aggro I don't know his tendencies post flop in pots where he doesn't have the initiative. We really just know that he 3bs often IP and OOP, that he's stacked off pre for 200 bbs
vs us with worse than KK, and that he's 3b us in a straddle pot with 3x and triple barreled IP with bottom pair.


V1 opens to $35 from utg+1 7 handed. V2 flats. I 3b from the BB to $150 with QhQs.

Both players call.

Flop ($455): T 8 6

I lead for $280. V1 thinks for like 30 seconds before folding. I'm eyeing V2 this whole time trying to pick up something and he seems to be pretty aloof, looking around beyond the table, not (trying to) pay attention to me or V1. V1 finally folds and V2 makes it $700 quickly.

Fold/call/jam?

What do you think his flatting range pre to a rec player's ep open is? AQ/22-TT?
You have the Q in your hand so that blocks some combo draws that he might have in his range. Do you think his pre range has some 6X type of hands? maybe also stuff like T8 and 86?
This situation is tricky because if you call he has ~1PSB that he can jam on the turn so it's hard to b/f.

I guess if we think he can do this with plenty of naked FD's and pair+gutshot then it just becomes a matter of a pot odds equation and figure out the number of combos we are ahead of vs combos we are behind of. So then we can c/c some turns and c/f others if always think he shoves turn if we check given how the hand has played out so far.

CQ,

Unless V2 is reverse telling hard, he's gonna win.

hey cq, I think the fact he's aggro pre doesn't give you much assumptions at all about his postflop game, he has to punt quite a lot of draws here for you to get it in, i'd fold

ur equity jumps 8% in your favour if you discount 97o from preflop
having Qh improves your equity by about 3%, because although him being able to have Qh against your dry QQ would
be good for you if it went to showdown it's not that many combinations (i'm not including, say Q2hh) compared to the likes of being up against nfd where you block a heart and when you're trying to suck out against T8o for runner runner with ur 3.5% heart


Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

33,660 games 0.000 secs 6,732,000 games/sec

Board: Th 8h 6c
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 36.322% 35.77% 00.55% 12040 186.00 { QdQh }
Hand 1: 63.678% 63.13% 00.55% 21248 186.00 { TT, 88, 66, AhKh, AhJh, Ah9h, Ah8h, Ah7h, Ah6h, Ah5h, Ah4h, Ah3h, Ah2h, KhJh, Kh9h, Kh7h, Qh9h, Jh9h, Jh7h, T6s, 9h7h, 7h5h, 5h4h, T8o }

He's absolutely aggro post flop. He tripled barreled me in a previous hand I posted for 300 bbs with bottom pair on a 3 flush board. He had initiative and position in that hand though. In this one he flatted/flatted 2 bets pre.

Not sure his range is as wide as you think. Positive he's 3betting AKhh/TT pre. Against me he's probably also 3 betting 88/66/AJhh/bunch of other crap but that might not be the case vs a random fish.

He has also seen your tendency to station it up in that previous hand, which could make it less likely for him to try and bluff you again.
He might have the mindset now that you're the type of player to pau hom off in full now of he hits.
Just to give some food for thought.

Yeah it's def a consideration and he should be capable of adjusting to what he's seen previously. One possible issue with that though is that he 3b/5b/called a 6b shove vs me preflop for 200 bbs with worse than KK. (I had AA, a king peeled the flop and I was good). He may be spewier than he should be.

In the moment I didn't really consider calling the flop raise to ever be an option. I'm only ever planning on folding now or jamming now. If we flat there's so few cards we want to see and if we are good on the flop its extremely unlikely he folds to a jam given what I've seen from him. Thoughts on calling never being an option?

Also theoretically if we assume we're flipping with his range given the price were getting, or perhaps even being a slight dog, thoughts on our play for meta purposes? We're v likely to be playing many hands vs villain in large pots down the road. I'm not sure if folding the top of our range vs him is something we should be doing ESP when that range is pretty face up in this spot. This is a super easy fold vs many other guys simply bc they would so rarely show up with worse. I don't want to be seen as capable of making big folds vs someone who can put a ton of pressure on us in every hand we play vs him.