I'd really like thoughts from you all on how you'd construct a range for Hero and Villain in this hand, so I'm writing this without hole cards, if/after I get some responses I'll post the hole cards.

To set the stage:

PLO10. Villain is a thinking, multi-tabling reg, and easily one of the better players at these stakes that I've encountered. He is 33/20 over 3k+ hands, but those numbers skew a bit high because we've played heads up and 3 handed a lot.

Villain has played against me like he has me pegged as either a total fish, or someone who is basically always bluffing. To his credit, he played a lot with me a few weeks ago when I first started on the site, and that observation was pretty much correct. In past sessions, he's called me down light and been right about it quite a bit.

In this ~200 hand session though, I'd been running super hot, both in starting hand values and hitting the board, so it probably looked like I was up to my old shenanigans.

At the point that this hand occurred, Villain had made blind steal attempts against me about 5 times in a row, or at least that was my perception. I'd folded junky hands to all of those.

Villan: SB
Hero: BB

Effective Stacks ~150bbs.

Preflop: Fold around to Villain in the small blind. Villain raises pot. Hero 3Bets pot. Villain 4Bets pot, Hero Calls.

Flop: Q 5 6
Villain bets 1/2 pot. Hero calls.

Turn: T
Villain Checks, Hero Checks.

River: 2
Villain Checks. Hero moves all-in. Villain Mucks.

Not exactly sure what you want out of a response but I'll give it a go. Villain's 4bet range is going to obviously include strong AA, KK double suited combos and a bunch of well connected double suited hands. OTF villain can cbet here with a pretty high frequency using fairly small sizings as he is going to have plenty of flushes here and arguably more flushes than blocker combos as a 4bet range should include way more suited combos of hands than unsuited. After you call and he checks twice he's pretty rarely going to have a flush here, more often a hand that wants to get to showdown or just give up (say if he cbet AKQT W/O hearts as an example). As for your range you're going to have a bunch of flushes, and rarely any bluffs on this river as any blocker floats OTF you'd want to start betting those OTT. I think you'll have a tonne of nut flushes in your range (checking turn to protect your flop calling range for the non flush hands you call flop with) and also some medium flushes that check turn for pot control and want to be able to snap off river bets with.

I mention flushes a lot here because there aren't any other hands that are river value shoves.

Villain

Pre -> 4-betting range (quite a bit wider than "just AAxx" otherwise there's no point in analyzing this).
Flop -> Probably default c-bet size with 2.5 SPR, so a variety of stuff.
Turn -> Mid-strength and weak give-ups, some flushes.
River -> Mid-strength and weak give-ups (slightly fewer weak ones now), maybe some flushes but those are inconsequential.

Hero

Pre -> 3-betting range ! 5-betting range.
Flop -> Good hands with stable equity (sets+). Lots of floats (wraps and stuff with straight draws, some bare Qx) because sets+ are so common but not enough to continue with just "good hands" here.
Turn -> Stable-equity mid-strength stuff that wants to get to showdown, some weak stuff since you can't bet all of it, plus slowplays since there's like one PSB left.
River -> Flushes, some bluffs.

Yours and Rei's responses were exactly what I was hoping for. Thank you very much.

Thanks again Rei and Solar for the responses, basically I was wanting confirmation that my play here wasn't complete spazzing that just worked out because my opponent might have given up too easily. I still question that a bit, but it seems like there are enough reasons to think it could go either way, given the way that you two ranged the hands and how I was reading this Villain.

I had 8753

So now for my thinking through the hand, in case you want to pick any of it apart:

Preflop: As mentioned in OP, Villain had gotten pretty aggressive with his BSAs against me. This hand is weakish/speculative, but I liked it for a resteal attempt, mostly because it plays well enough against his 4betting range if he does decide to 4bet. I definitely think he 4bets me wider than with just AAxx and KKxx hands here, since his perception of me seems to be that I'm kind a maniac/fish. Again, this hasn't been totally wrong either.

Flop: So villain half pots it here. He's not a bet-pot-all-the-time type, so this isn't a definite sign of weakness, but in a 4bet pot with lowish SPRs remaining, I would expect him to want to just GII with me if he really likes the flop. Particularly with the nuts, since he probably expects that I will stack with sets and non nut flushes immediately here. Which I would. So basically, this half pot bet is at least suspect. If he doesn't have a flush, my straight and two pair outs might be live, and more importantly he will have a very tough time continuing after a call unless his hand is very strong, so I call.

Turn: I'm super happy when Villain checks, because it looks like he's given up. Given our history, I think he wouldn't need a flush, nut or otherwise, to continue betting here, because he would rightly suspect that my hand is pretty weak sometimes even when I call the flop. On the other hand, if he had the nuts here, I would expect him to sometimes check the turn hoping that I will shove as a bluff, or with a lesser flush, because he has caught me doing that a time our two. So basically, I'm putting him on a polarized range here, either a give up, or the nuts, or close.

River: When he checks the river after I check the turn, I'm pretty much ruling out high flushes and the nut flush blocker, and heavily discounting any flush. I think he'd expect me to call the flop and check back the turn with low flushes, sets, and two pair hands, and would bet pretty much all flushes for value, and the nut flush blocker as a bluff. Given the x/x action on the turn, I also expect he'd bet a set or the low straight for value, again because he knows I'll be in this pot with a lot of two pairs at this point. But the chances of him 4betting a hand that makes the low straight here are minimal, pretty much limited to AA34 and KK34ds type hands, as he is far more likely to have just called my 3bet pre with 7643/8743 types of hands. There is of course a chance he would check the nut flush one last time hoping I'll give in to the temptation to shove, but on the balance I think it's pretty unlikely he would miss his last chance to bet it for value.

So in the end, after villain checks river, a give-up looks far more likely to me than anything, and I think I'm in a good spot to win with a bluff.

It seems far more common for people here to want to analyze hands where they lost, but I think there is just as much to be learned by analyzing hands that we win, because we're too likely to think we played it great, when in truth our play was flawed and Villain's was just worse.

So I'm very interested if anyone thinks they see any flaws in my thinking or what not. And if you made it through this entire wall of text, I thank you very much for your time.

Since you asked for flaws,

"So villain half pots it here. He's not a bet-pot-all-the-time type, so this isn't a definite sign of weakness, but in a 4bet pot with lowish SPRs remaining, I would expect him to want to just GII with me if he really likes the flop. Particularly with the nuts,"

Why? On boards like these and stack sizes as they are, betting half-pot seems like a quite nice option, since that leaves stacks at around one pot-sized bet. I think that most competent villains will not "bet pot" to GII with nuts and half-pot with bluffs.

"Turn: I'm super happy when Villain checks, because it looks like he's given up."

Or he has the nut flush, (correctly) ranges you at bluffs/two pair/lower flush and is trapping.

"So in the end, after villain checks river, a give-up looks far more likely to me than anything, and I think I'm in a good spot to win with a bluff."

While I agree that it is a good spot to bluff since you will most likely only get looked up by flushes and your bluff needs to succeed something like 30% of the time since you have slightly less than pot behind, I would expect the Villain to show up and call you down with smaller/medium flushes a considerable amount of time. The play is perfectly consistent with something like a 7-T high flush.

Thanks for the reply ReGen, exactly the kind of challenges to my thinking I'm looking for.


Yes, this makes sense. To clarify, I did not mean this statement in the general sense, but about this specific villain, based on my history with him. Not saying this makes you wrong and me right. Just clarifying.

Fully agreed, in fact I mentioned that I was putting him on a pretty polarized nuts/give up range, though after his river check that seemed far less likely to me.

Yeah, I don't think theres any chance he folds a flush of any strength to me in that spot, with a) the stack sizes, and b) it seems hard for him to put me on a flush myself based on action up to the river. Actually that's what has me questioning my play here more than anything: In retrospect I'm not sure what I was trying to rep on this river. But as you say, the bluff only needs to succeed around 30% of the time, and given his play post flop, I think maybe that was about as certain as I could get that it was a good spot for a bluff.

Anyway, thanks for putting your brain on this!

You´re welcome, and FWIW I think you played it good.