Villain seems like a standard reg, no prior history/dynamic - 25/21/3 with a 65% fold to 3bet over ~400 hands. Villain would probably see me as a TAGish reg playing 24/19/3 with a 8% 3bet.

Full Tilt, $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 5 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite. View Hand #9086072

MP: $101.65 (101.7 bb)
CO: $111.90 (111.9 bb)
BTN: $139.40 (139.4 bb)
Hero (SB): $110.60 (110.6 bb)
BB: $100 (100 bb)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K Q
2 folds, BTN raises to $2.50, Hero calls $2, BB folds

Flop: ($6) K 6 K (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $4, Hero calls $4

Turn: ($14) 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $10.50, Hero calls $10.50

River: ($35) 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $47, Hero ?


1st off, thoughts on 3betting pre? Not sure whether there's value 3betting this villain - i was not worried about being squeezed by the BB (a pretty nit/tag player with a very low 3bet%).

2nd, if I flat pre with a hand as strong as KQ, should I be c/r'ing this flop? I could certainly see a lot of benefits c/r'ing here where my range is clearly going to be polarised and might impel villain to call down lightly with his range of bluffcatchers (e.g. medium PPs). I ended up just c/c'ing though. :/

Lastly, river? Totally confused by this, I have not seen him make an overbet before. Dunno what level he thinks on, obv it could be for pure value hoping I have a K and can't laydown or maybe a bluff (although really, what's the point of overbetting?) because my range looks weak-ish (might look like 77,88,99, etc to him when i c/c two streets on this board).. Overbet seems weird here because i'm folding my weaker SDV hands to a normal sized bet anyway, but what about a K as strong as mine?

Thanks for any feedback!

I call and make a note.
You can have some low-medium pp pairs who villain can fold sucessfully (44-55-77-88-99), you are very close to the top of your range. You can have not so many Kx combos (KQ, KJ, KT and a rare AK).

Without more reads I like the pre flop call and the flop call.

if you're calling here, are you saying you would call with any K (KJ, KT, even as low as K9s i'm sure a lot of people would flat pre here vs. a BTN steal)?

because, correct me if i am wrong, once he overbets river, we can assume villain's range is going to be polarised to 66, 22, some K6s/K3s/K2s hands he's opening on the BTN and air right - so he's never overbetting stuff like KQ and KJ? Hence vs. this range, any K will have the same overall equity (i.e. kicker doesn't really matter - so why are we concerned about folding the 'top of our range'?)

Do we think villain can overbet AK here - especially since it is very likely that I do not have AK in my range (I would 3bet it pre of course), so he would beat any K I have?

agree (but i am a station though )

for more opinions

A good villain will know it's relatively unlikely for us to have a stronger hand than KQ here, since boats are unlikely (66 only) and we would 3 bet AK and often KQ itself. Because of this he can overbet AK/KQ for exactly the same reasons he would bet a boat like this - so we can call with Kx and maybe put him on a funky bluff and call with a pocket pair. Who knows exactly what he's thinking if you haven't seen this type of bet before?

As for whether to call with Kx, lets say our range for getting to the river is something like 66-TT, K9-KQ. Since we don't know exactly what his overbet signifies it's often going to be the case that calling 66,Kx pays him off too much whereas calling just 66 makes his bluffs too profitable. Therefore it is sensible to adopt a GTO approach and call 66 and just some Kx. We may aswell pick the stronger Kx to call with (KJ,KQ) for the small but non-zero % of the time he happens to be doing this himself with Kx

shipping is spew, just call

i'm in the call camp.

I'm in the call camp as well.

Does anyone like 3 betting pre? This hand is at the bottom of your 3-betting range, but he's folding 65% to 3 bets, which is probably in situations like this, where he is stealing quite often.

There is 4bbs in the pot when action gets to us. If we assume bb folds and villain folds 65%, then we win 2.6 bbs by 3 betting. If called, the spr will be around 7, which isn't bad for a tpgk hand, which is what we will flop most of the time. Being OOP, we will c-bet most flops and probably take them down...


Wrong thinking???

My sample size is far too small to make any assumptions, but from the sb, I made 1.16 big blinds. Can others give winrates for KQo from the sb?

as played, this is a really easy call imo.

Wandered in from the micros but i have a question, is it possible to put villain on AdJd or AdQd here?

I'm probably folding reluctantly, but i dunno, probably depends what i feel like at the time :P

Certainly these hands are in some peoples ranges some of the time, but putting people squarely on hands is bad. Fact is sometimes he has us beat, sometimes he doesnt and we have to make a rational decision about the ratio of the two events.

call the river.

Fold if you think villain probably needs the money more than you do...

Yeah, I'm calling here.

Like everyone else said: call. But I think one of OP's major concerns is 3-betting pre rather than flatting. How often does he steal, OP?

What' his steal % in late pos? I lke your line. Check call seems +ev.... If he has AK or the flopped boat u have to pay him off. Especially considering you only have 400 hands on villain (and vice versa). IMO he's tryin to get you off a PP and trying to rep the K. Why over bet river and loose value against an unknown? Can he really be certain you wont lay down a KX?????

Calling, expecting to chop a lot =]

Thanks for the replies all. I did the old hero-villain switcheroo to see whether an overbet OTR would fold out the top of villain's range, which judging by the chorus of responses, clearly wouldn't. (I'm not saying villain folded KQ OTR lol, he probably just had A-high or some crap, but I was wondering whether my overbet COULD push people off a K)




I'm fairly sure I was leveling myself in the hand or projecting my thoughts/tendencies onto villain. I know that villain's range is capped at KQ at best and maybe some 66 and 22 if he doesn't 3bet it pre. Once I double barrel, I felt obligated to triple barrel just because he can still have a lot of OOP floats OTR that had picked up enough equity (whether gutshot or FD) on the turn to c/c. When deciding on my sizing I thought either a ~$20 bet (targeting his air that beats me range and his medium PPs that haven't yet folded) or an overbet (if I thought he would fold his entire non-boat range). At the time I thought an overbet actually would have folded out the top of his Kx range purely because overbets are usually viewed as being made for value by seemingly straightforward regs (I would definitely overbet AK here because his bluffcatcher range is folding to any sized bet while his Kx will probably call x% that would make overbetting profitable to a PSB that gets called y%) and also because I didn't think he would put a lot of bluffs in my range (maybe a hand like AQ, 45 etc, but never a 'pure bluff' like JTo because the board is traditionally bad for double barreling air, or a made hand being turned into a bluff because he would just expect me to check back).

Long story short, clearly an overbet as opposed to a $20 bet is burning money judging by how everybody said this was an easy call. Not sure how good my turn barrel was in hindsight since I actually now think villain wouldn't fold a 77-TT type hand OTT - so it's a one cbet and done spot or a triple barrel spot? Maybe 2 barrels and done could be okay if I think villain would float A-high on the flop, but i'm really not sure how I feel



Anyway, yeah I included in my OP whether or not there is value in 3betting KQ in SB's shoes and I think there is plenty personally if I recognise that the player otb is flatting 3bets IP often. I would say my BTN raise first would be about 40%-45% (for those who asked what 'villain's' steal % was lol) and I tend to flat/4b-bluff 3bets from the blinds pretty wide IP (just one of the perks of 2.5x'ing the BTN).

thanks for this reply in particular, it makes a lot of sense


sorry for the wall of text

You wouldn't get an overwhelming agreement regarding K even if a diamond hit.