PokerStars - 45/90 Ante 14 NL - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 106.12 BB
SB: 77.89 BB
BB: 104.03 BB
UTG: 55.93 BB
UTG+1: 43.11 BB
MP: 40.91 BB
Hero (MP+1): 80.57 BB
CO: 185.72 BB

8 players post ante of 0.16 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.74 BB) Hero has A J

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 2.5 BB, fold, fold, fold, BB calls 1.5 BB

Flop: (6.74 BB, 2 players) 4 K J
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: (6.74 BB, 2 players) 2
BB checks, Hero bets 3.38 BB, BB calls 3.38 BB

River: (13.5 BB, 2 players) 4
BB checks, Hero checks


How would you have played this hand?

I would have bet the flop as LP raiser should have many K and broadway cards. Bet turn around 30-50% of pot and then if BB still in on river, I would probably check back. Hard to believe with my line that BB has 4, but my hand has showdown value so check river if called on both previous rounds.

Why is that a reason for betting?

Highjack is late position and we want to represent our whole range which would include many king combos. BB may call flop bet very often but AJ is strong enough to bet turn as well when checked to.

Checking the flop is fine. You will also check your sets and two pair, maybe AA, so your weaker checks should be the ones the make the most sense, like AJ/QJ/JT. I assume you are cbetting virtually everything else on a K high board.

I would go like 30% on the river. It still makes sense with premium holdings because it seems like he is barely on the hook when he doesn't even lead the turn.

I feel like there is some bad advice here... Check flop is fine, do not check your sets and 2p on this board. Turn bet is okay, we block straight draws and A high FD so I'd be okay checking again to try to induce a river bluff.

IMO

AJ definetly wants to bet this flop, plenty worse to get value from, check back with J10 and J9 type hands maybe. These are definetly spots people lose a ton of value checking too much.

Definitely c-bet this flop vs a BB defend, it connects way better with your range & bet should take it down a high percentage of the time. If we get called we can reevaluate on the turn, but pretty sure we just fire a 2nd bullet on almost any turn. Not sure why playing this passive IP with range advantage would ever be correct.

Yeah I guess this is one of those flops where you bet your entire range for a small amount.

Probably should bet turn again, not sure about sizing, 40-50% pot?

Then check behind on the river.

This should be a very simple spot where we just go 1/3 pot, 1/2 pot, check behind if called down. Nothing complicated.

What worse hands is our opponent calling the 2nd bet with?

Almost 100bb deep some people can get very sticky, there is a few straight draws V can have, potentially a worse J. Or some random low PP. Any competent V will probably call our 1st bet with anything that has some sort of value or potential, since they should be aware that we are supposed to c-bet almost our entire range. Once we fire a 2nd time we should get a lot of folds, if not we can always just check behind on river. We probably won’t get Kx or better to fold with 2 bets, but that’s fine.

Guys you don’t need to bet 100% of our hands on this flop it doesn’t make any sense, and firing otf and ott is basically spew. Check back your mid strength hands that are not vulnerable to turn cards and either make a delayed c bet or you can check back safe turns. For everyone saying this is so simple you don’t seem understanding some of the fundamentals


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I also can't wrap my head around betting this flop. There is no normal circumstance where we bet all three streets, and surely the best street to check is the flop because it makes us look weaker when we bet the turn (maybe river) or comfortably call 2 streets on good runouts.

If you *REALLY* want to be balanced here you need to find other hands to check, not find a way to bet 100% when it doesn't make sense.

Let's consider the BB range and please let me know what you think.
Hands NOT in BB range: AA KK QQ JJ TT as well as AK AQ and KQ as these are probably all 3 bet hands.
Hands in BB range KJ, KT, other Kx, AJ, AT and other Ax QJ, QT Q9 Q8 JT J9 J8 9T all pairs 99 and lower as well as other "junk"

It is reasonable to believe that BB might call a flop and turn bet with many of these combos especially like QTc when the club comes on turn. I would actually expect the BB to have all 4's in their range.

Thus I said that AJ would want to bet flop and turn, if called twice not sure there is any value in betting river.

Yeodan, after BB checks flop and turn, I can understand betting turn with club bringing another draw, why not bet river as well?

My main issue with not betting this flop is that it ruins my balance, caps my range and basically turns my hand up against a competent player.

I'm never checking AK, KQ, KJ or better on this flop.
I'm also never checking a non-value hand on this flop.
So when I'm checking that only leaves hands like bad Kx and Jx and 22-TT.

So every time I check on this flop, villain could just bet big on turn and river and make me fold my entire range on the river.

I'm not sure if there's a way to balance checking this hand on the flop either.
I definitely don't want to be checking stronger hands, unless I know villain is a maniac, but let's assume we don't know anything about villain.

I could just check some of my weaker non-value hands that have very little equity instead, but that just makes my checking range weaker instead of stronger.

Maybe I could check some stuff like QT so I could hit a draw, but those type of hands are way too nice to bluff on the flop.


So betting flop and then checking turn might be a much better and more balanced line.
Even if villain bets large on the river, we can call one bet.
We could still be in big trouble if villain goes for like a 2x pot bet on the river, assuming villain is very good at reading ranges and knows I've capped my range by checking.

Not sure how we fix this issue.
Bet 2x? But I don't feel my hand is strong enough here to value bet 2x


Do you know the definition of a value bet?
Betting on the river is probably very close, but there's really not that many worse hands villain can call with.

You're not capped cause you can just check sets...

You think your range is capped but it isn't and you aren't factoring in your checking range at all also. It's a flop we mostly want to bet for a small size often but this is a perfect hand to check back to let villain bluff or bet a worse jack on the turn.

I lose so much value if I check a strong hand on this flop?
Like I said, I would never check KQ or better on this flop!

I think it is perfectly okay to check flop and cap our range. I'd check here with basically all our Jx of which there isn't that many {J9s,JTs,QJ,AJ} and maybe our worst Kx (KTs). That would get balanced out by check folding some of our worst holdings (suited connectors of hearts, 22, 33). OTT we fold out the worst of it to a BB lead. OTR we fold out our bottom Jx that have blockers to the hands they would pick to bluff with, mainly QJ.

all this is hypothetical, I didn't look at how many hands are in our range and what exactly would make us balanced but this seems pretty close.

Nah, you don't lose value if we're balancing. That's the whole reason of us balancing is that it allows us to maximize profits. What you're describing is playing massively exploitable. Which is fine if no one is exploiting you of course. Just sometimes I want people to bluff into me is all.

Also if you're "never" doing something like checking a strong hand then that's def a leak.