GGPoker - Rush200

We open K 7 8 7 from HJ, CO calls and we see the flop 2 ways. We are 100bb effective. Villain is a regular, but my notes are pretty bad as we played a short HU session once and I thought he played really weird/bad by open raising the minimum from the button. Since then I don't have any notes, but each time I see him I feel he is pretty decent at 6 handed and I feel like he is definitely capable of making some moves, but I need to get better notes on him as maybe I'm wrong.

Flop: 8.5bb T T 6

We lead for 1/3 (2.8bb) and get raises to 10.8bb and we call.

Turn: 30bb 5

We check, villain bets 20.6bb (2/3 pot). We call.

River: (71.5bb) 9

We check, villain bets 40bb, hero has a straight and ?

I've highlighted the river but I think every street in this hand is difficult with a very close decision, and I would be curious to hear thoughts on each street.

This is not a river spot.

This is a flop spot. You need to have very thoughtful range construction on this kind of texture which is the tough part.

I feel like what happened here is you just bet out cause you had a bunch of pieces and took it from there.

What you have to understand about paired boards that unlike many other textures there are not so many hands that you can bomb thee streets. Neither for value (only full houses usually) or as a bluff (after two calls any river bluff will be marginal because you’re up against trips+ too much at that point and can’t get it to fold enough because trips is such a good blocker to call with).

So you need to think of paired board ranges as constructing one or two betting street ranges mostly.

And so with your hand specifically, and now I gotta put the disclaimer I only play 5card plo not 4 so I’m not sure, I guess you can bet the flop and you can call the raise but you’re in trouble vs a turn barrel. I think you have to let it go there. But then you’re folding a pretty nice hand there so maybe the hand makes more sense as a check call, because then the pot is smaller ranges are wider and you can call a turn barrel.

All of this also depends on the player you’re up against. That’s why you have to be so thoughtful about paired boards. And when in doubt I’d argue it’s better to start with a check figure it out than a bet figure it out.

I think when you lead the flop with these sizings you're going to get weaker villain ranges on the turn or more flop raises with bluffs - good opponents should be continuing much wider esp on boards like this. The turn is extremely tricky - are you planning to bluff the river if you miss? The problem with the river is we have all the Tx+, block FDs, and yet he's still firing. I also don't think he'd raise a FD on the flop, so hard to come up with bluffs. I would definitely fold this river for those reasons and maybe the turn - he would have to be getting extremely out of line to justify calling.

Thinking about the flop a bit, we should cbet pretty broadly (40-50%) with our wide advantage in pocket pairs and reasonable (?) frequency of trips compared to the IP cold caller. But TTx feels like it should be the narrower end of that frequency. Having a pocket pair and hearts seem like good factors for betting but the middling pps seem worst (i.e., we either bet bigger ones or smaller ones) and our hearts are strong but not nutty. So this bet doesn't seem like one that wants to play across runouts. I'm entertaining thoughts of a 3bet bluff on the flop (seems silly but...) and just folding vs raise as we have may have enough clearer continues. All told I would err on the side of playability oop.

Turn and river have the same theme, I think. we turn and river equity but are left struggling with our decisions. The poo flinger in me wants to call once we're at the river and at least capitalize on the info we paid for. Good hand to ponder.

I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to this hand, but I knew my reply would take a while and life got really hectic. Hopefully I can find the actual hand history.

Yes, and no. I have thought a fair bit about paired board flops and I have a standard size of B33 (1/3) here oop.

If we ignore this specific hand and talk about paired flops I tend to 100% with Axx (x<T), AAx, KKx, QQx. I try to get around 60%-75% or so frequency on the rest of the flops, but in general I try and bet paired boards at a higher frequency than what I have seen recommended in the GTO based course I have taken as I think most villains, even good ones, are playing these boards very wrong and very straight forward. Maybe I am wrong here.

Now, on boards like 667, 887, etc, I'm probably betting much less often at maybe 25% of the time.

To this specific hand, I definitely remember thinking about my overall frequencies and although I think this is in the mostly check category I felt like all of my coordination with the board turned it into a bet.

I could be wrong about everythign I just said though, as oop I do like checking a lot of flops so I might need to re-evaluate this.

I am definitely in the opposite camp here - at least at GGPoker.

That's the point of the bet size - to encourage interaction and also provide opponents with a chance to make a big mistake by overfolding. I think most opponents, including good ones, are not bluff raising enough in these spots.

I am not planning to bluff the river if I miss, I think that would a bit spewy in this spot.

The river I think is super close, but the turn I think I have too much to just give up.

I fling poo so also lean towards call. I think 3bet/fold flop is something I need to think about more, but feels like poo as a Ten is in a lot of hands he might have preflop.

Sometimes I wonder if I give too many deep insights about the game away by posting in depth strat. This is exactly why I don’t worry about that, most people don’t really listen anyways.