This is a weekly $115 Buy-in Freezeout. 12,500 starting chips. This is after first break so antes are in play. My first table broke so I sat down at my new table.

Blinds: 150/300/25

Hero Stack (CO): 11,000
V Stack (BB): 50,000
V2 Stack (MP): 13,000

I have played with V on multiple occasions. He plays a lot of hands. Type of guy who limp/calls with AK.

I have been folding a *TON*. I think I have only played one hand at this table for the past 30 minutes or so.

Hand starts off with a single limper from MP (loose, passive). Folds to hero in the CO with AQ.

Hero raises to 800.

Folds to BB who calls. Limper calls.

Flop: 964 Rainbow (no diamond) Pot: 2,775

BB checks. MP Limper checks. Hero checks.

Hero Thoughts: I briefly thought about CBetting this board but it is a pretty bad board for me. I have been playing extremely tight. I have seen a lot of folks at this table call people with some pretty crazy junk cards so I was afraid of getting looked up by a 9 or even a 6 or 4 or maybe even 88, 77. I have no back door possibility and I know that the BB does not generally fold until he reaches the river. Since I have stone nothing, I decide to just check.

Turn: T (Board: 964T Rainbow) Pot: 2,775

BB checks. MP Limper checks. Hero checks.

Hero Thoughts: Nothing changed for me. I still have nothing and it looks like nobody else has anything either.

River: Q (Board: 964TQ) Pot: 2,775

BB bets 2,500. MP Limper folds.

I honestly have no idea what to do here. He is betting nearly pot. I have seen the BB play most of his hands this way. He bets a *TON*. And, more importantly, he plays quite a few hands. I have seen him show up with 84s for rivered two pair to stack people so I know he has a ton of junk in his range. I know that bet sizing in tournaments is generally smaller so against this player I need to just make good hands to call down these massive bets that he makes.

Well, here I am. I made TPTK on the river and he seems to do what he typically does which is make a massive bet.

How would others perceive this type of player? Like, I feel like something I don't quite get is how frequencies play into this. I just look at how often I get dealt "playable" cards and how often I fold and then I watch a player like this and it feels like he is playing nearly everything (if I had to guesstimate an actual percentage, he is playing something like 40% of hands). Do I just shrug-call and if he has the goods then that's that or is there something here to actually evaluate?

river is always a call, its super weak if you fold to this type of player vs single action. He can value cut with worse Qs and just show up with random stuff sometimes. We only need to win 33% to show a profit also

1) Preflop - bet larger when there is a limper in the pot. I raise to at least 900 here, probably 1,000.

2) You could c-bet here. Even though it is 3 way, you cannot have a value only range, you need to develop a bluff range here. Whether this makes into your bluff range or not is a different topic.

3) River. The way this hand has played out, you must call here.

Preflop: Does it change at all if these folks have called 20x preflop raises with K7s OOP after limping in MP? Because that happened. And they smashed QQ when the flop came J77. I feel like inflating the pot too much is a disaster. I could see making it a 1000 though. But, anything bigger than that feels bad to me since we will be playing a big pot and if we don't hit anything, the BB will most definitely call any aggressive lines with just a pair of 9's. I'm convinced both players would call 1000.

Flop: If there was a diamond on the flop, I would bet here since we have backdoor possibilities. But, as it stands in a 3way pot, I feel like betting here is just lighting chips on fire. We will always get called by any pair.

Let's say we did this, though. Let's say we make it 1400 or so on the flop and we get called. The turn is a brick for us and we get checked to. We have about 9000 left behind. What do we do? Rip it in and hope for a fold? From my experience, they will call with a pair of 9's. Especially the BB since the board isn't scary and he is only losing to an overpair (in his mind). Plus, he has a mountain of chips so he can afford to be wrong.

River: I'll discuss what I did later.

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Looking at this flop through a GTO lens is why I might bet this. On this flop with the action preflop, you do not have any draws for a bluff range. 2 overs is about the best draw you will be able to come up with if you sit down and you divide your range in value hands/draws to bluff balance/marginal hands/junk.

So the question is do you rather semi-bluff 2 overs as a draw or total bluff your junk to balance your value hands?

I am not telling you to make it 20x preflop. At these levels, I typically raise 2.5x when I open the pot. Whenever there is a limper I add 1BB for each limper.

Yes I know in these low stakes games you are not going to get the limper to fold, but the larger raises have a better chance at getting heads up against the limper. Here, you kind of priced the BB in to a multi-way pot with almost ATC.

What if I told you that in the CO, I would have raised with 87s or even 75s. So, there are *some* draws there for bluffs.

What I was getting at is that by making it a bit bigger pre would not have iso'd down to heads up. V in the BB had a mountain of chips. He would have called regardless. The gist I get from V is that if he has something that V thinks is playable, he called 2.5x all the way up to even something crazy like 8x. I've seen V do this before.

Have you noticed anything about the player? I understand having to make a crying call on the river but is he the type of oblivious donk who is like 'oh hey, I just made a straight on the river, I'm going to bet it big"? (Or 2 pr) If so, then you could get away from the hand. But if he throws out bluffs now and then and bets his top pairs strong whenever he hits them than you have to call. So unless you've got a read on this player than you need to call.

If they are in your range to raise over a limper, then yeah, use those if there are enough of them, but in my opinion, with a limper, these are hands that should be limped behind to take advantage of the deeper SPR post flop and multi-way pots.

I believe that the optimal range for raising over a limper would be more Broadway heavy in this spot.

If they're calling 20x with K7s OOP then raise 20x for value. I mean, that's sort of joking but it's really not. You're worried about extracting value by people calling too loose? Punish them, don't fear the variance. If they call big, raise your premium hands as big as they'll call.

All fair points. I'm seeing now that I am raising with hands that I shouldn't be when there are limpers in front.

So, I ended up calling and he had 87s for turned straight.

He asked me if the river gave me two pair.

Which is an awkward thing to ask. I wasn't sure if he was just messing with me or he genuinely thought I had something like QTs and I didn't bet the turn. Gist I got was he really thought it gave me two pair.

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I was looking through my hand reading notes two nights ago and I came across this exact situation; player bets the river BIG oop after the turn had been checked. From my experiences that I've tracked, this is more often than not a slow play situation of a BIG hand, NOT a bluff. I reckoned that villains bet the river so big in an attempt to get back the chips that they "lost" on the turn when they got no action.

Their reasoning usually is that since the turn (and possibly also the flop) was checked that a BIG bet on the river would look like a steal.

The only problem here is that a Q is high up there in your chk/chk range (AQ, KQ) so this would be a bad rvr to pull that kind of a bluff on - you WILL get looked up by an AQ/KQ.

If the rvr were a brick such as 2 or pr the brd, which could be used as a scare card, then a BIG bt here might look like a bluff.

P.S. Anytime someone gets chatty at live play, ALWAYS suspect that they are trying to deceive you. One similar example from my live days was on a flop of 622, I think I had rsd pre. I think we were on the turn and it was a 4, and the player bt BIG and asked me if I had a deuce after I had raised (he flopped a set 66).

P.P.S. Your situation was a mildly tough fold, but a good player could make the fold there.

From what you say about him, yeah he might have 94 or something like that but with TPTK you're too strong against a single bet not to call here, especially seeing as it's not like he's putting you all-in.

Post flop is fine I think and call/ fold is probably marginal on river as it's a good bet from the BB

As said by others, raising more pre is where the difference can be made in this hand. The small raise makes it too easy to continue with their entire limping range and offers BB a good price. Raising more gives them both the chance to make a mistake and still go to a flop with an acceptable SPR and you in position

Preflop needs to be like 1500 probably roughly since it's live. We really wanna get our value preflop esp if we have the read they're loose/passive.

We can cbet and if we had gone larger we maybe could've and tried to rep an overpair while blocking the limpers "trapping" aces potentially. But the thing is we can bluff 87s and hands that have backdoor equity and throw in a QJs every once in a while for that backdoor ability to barrel different runouts.

You can sometimes raise probably but yeah I'd call versus a larger polarizing bet.

I don't think you should have 75s but I get where your heads at. I didn't really read all the replies so if someone already said this all sorry.