2350 or so effective 5/10 PLO8 hand, 3 handed and game is probably breaking soon. Villain in this hand is a smart long time pro who may read this. I've played mostly fixed limit games with him and he plays split pot fixed limit games well. Thus far I'd say the same for his PLO8. He's probably tighter than most. We're still building levels in our gameplay: historically I've given him credit when he's shown significant strength, but he's made some adjustments to that and I think he thinks I've noticed.

Anyway, this lead up is confusing so OTTH

Villain is button and pots to 35. I make a fairly standard defend with AQ65

Flop (75): Q87

I check, he pots 75.

What's our best course of action for this hand?

Xr is almost always right but stacks are awkward when he calls. I think there is a good case for leading the flop as xc seems too weak for our hand.

Easy c/r, nothing especially awkward with the stack sizes. Check-calling has merit too obv. I have no idea why someone would lead.

Okay yeah I agree this is an easy xr. So let me finish.

Hero: AQ65

Preflop: BTN opens to 35 Hero calls BB

Board: Q87

Flop (75): hero check, btn bets 75, hero xr to 300, btn 3 bets to 975.

Any merit to call and donk shove good turns or should I just be piling the last 1400+ in now?

I see no real difference calling vs GII against a decent player. Maybe you should consider folding though? Always annoying to c/r for value and then fold, but are you sure you have enough equity vs his range?

IMO there are not so many hands we are really behind like A2QQ, but enough hands he may think we are behind like A2KK, but we are not. I wouldn't fold )

Even against monsters like qq23 with 2 diamonds hero still has 37% plus equity, villain can also overvalue all sorts of hands with worse diamond draws. Hero is a small favorite over aa2x.

So folding is preposterous. I also don't know why you dislike leading flop sometimes, game is shorthanded but vs a btn opener in general we can deny equity by leading and benefit the most from folding out better but not nutty lo draws. The other really nice aspect to leading is that hero can 3!, putting villain in tougher spots than a xr presents - we also block top set so even weaker sets can incorrectly fold to this line.

Villain cbet stats are relevant but I think solid players probably checkback over 30% here.

Nonsense. Hero can put money in now with "37% plus equity" to put in more money on the turn with "37% plus equity". I remember explaining the same concept to you several years ago to no avail. By continuing you are effectively putting in ~$2015 into a pot of $675 which means that 37% is not enough, hence I think the question "do you have enough equity to continue?" is very relevant.
Why do you think it matters if game is shorthanded and/or BTN vs BB? You should be leading when you have a range advantage. Here you do not. Plus dynamic board heavily favors IP, so you are just begging for trouble if you start leading hands.

Denying equity is cool, but you need to realize it comes with a price. I agree it's good to put in as much money as possible with strong holdings, but I fear you have trouble seeing the big picture. Even borderline ******ed strategies have a lot of merit if you cherry pick the hands that benefit from it.

I think hero does have a range advantage, and 37 percent is when we are colored. Like I said, villain could easily jam aa2x and we are a favorite over that. At worst our average equity has to be like 44-47%.

Stylistically I think I prefer to lead more often than you - of course, maybe villains make more mistakes when hero starts with a check - I think that for this particular hand hero should mix it up between calling, xr and xc and being able to lead a very strong hand, despite a weaker lo draw is good for our range.

I also think sb flatting range should be viewed as ahead of btn open range by default.

FWIW here's what I thought of the situation:

http://www.propokertools.com/simulat...0%25&s=generic

Are you saying that BB-caller has a range advantage vs BTN-opener on Q87 w/ a fd? Probably not, because it doesn't make any sense. But if you are saying something else, you don't understand what a range advantage means.

I do not know what colored means. Coolered? OK. I think AA2x is a very easy flat for villain and since we are given reads that he is decent, I have hard time seeing him shoving that for no reason (a good example on how IP has an edge on dynamic boards and how he should use it).

Agreed, but OP didn't say we are SB. It's a bit ambiguous, but from the HH I'd assume SB folded. Actually, OP's 2nd post says Hero is BB.

More specifically, hero has a range advantage from having better lo draws for defending from the blinds on average.

And yes, I agree that villain should normally not play for stacks with aa2x on the flop but.. I see it all the time and it can be good strategy in certain situationa.. more importantly villain can easily take agressive lines with good hands and a worse diamond draw

Like ak23 diamonds, or a2t9 with diamonds, etc.. or a2kk with diamonds and so forth and playing these hands fast will often be correct

I'd say BTN-opener is roughly as wide as BB-defender, but we need to exclude the strongest hands from BBs range since he didn't 3-bet.

Yes, so instead of talking nonsense we should just look at villain's range and see how much equity we have. Remember, you were the one saying "Even against monsters like qq23 with 2 diamonds hero still has 37% plus equity" coming to the conclusion: "So folding is preposterous." I'm just saying it's not so clear-cut if Hero even has enough equity to continue, but I'm easily convinced he has if you just show me something.

If he is shipping all those hands on the flop, then you should be shipping your hand. I don't think calling is very useful.

Yeah i mean amok is right that most of my A2 will be trashier A2. Also of note is that a tightish player has potted twice before I've put an aggressive action in, so he's radiating strength as well.


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It's reasonable. I would give villain a few more hands that that increase heros equity a smidgeon, against a more aggro villain we can get up to a 55/45 advantage. 52-54 is reasonable by any standard and why hero can never fold. Even the cooler scenarios aren't that bad.

Leading is probably best. If I'm 3 handed and opening the button and the BB defends I'm checking this board behind a large portion of the time. Def cr after he bets. Almost pot, if not full pot. There's no reason to cr smaller. You're ahead of his range and dominate a lot of his hands.

I don't see any reason to not shove

The way you described the player and the fact that he is willing to get all the dough in makes me think his range is weighted pretty heavily towards 2 pairs w a decent LD, sets and maybe some LD with straight and FD. You have the NFD and that is a pretty large part of a good players get it in for 200bb range here.

Instead of blabbing nonsense, why don't you give a range that you get a 55-45 advantage against. Before that remember to read OPs read on villain.

Why?

Did you even click his link? I ran my own set of sims separately, and since they were reasonably close I don't feel a need to share my work.

Seems like you are mostly posting for the sake of disagreeing with me and struggling with the theory in this spot for some reason - like never leading this flop is completely bananas, as is folding on this flop ever, so the fact that both those points seem alien to you... I don't really understand

And what is even weirder is you allude to hero not having a range advantage under the assumption he would always 3! A certain range (even at these stacks).. which seems like a questionable assumption at best, so what you should really be doing is explaining how your pre-flop strategy led you to conclude hero should never lead the flop.. because never leading the flop is not normal and you are the one who needs to defend that position, not the other way around

Yes, I also replied it: Shoving all hands containing "ddA2" is pretty insane(ly bad) IMO and it is probably quite a big portion of the range OP created. Let me again remind you that villain could also flat hands and play them IP with SPR3.

Even against OPs range Hero has only 52,5% though. I'm sure if we make villain shove a few other mediocre hands that he should never shove we can make Hero's equity 55%. It's OK, you don't need to go through the trouble.

I am mostly disagreeing with you because of what you say, no other reason.

I don't see myself struggling with it, but if you have something you want to teach me I am here. So far you have contributed nothing.

I'll return to that in a bit.

If you were reading my posts, you'd know I never said you should be folding the flop. My original answer to OP was: I'm asking if OP thinks he has enough equity vs the range villain is playing like that. He replied with a range he thinks is correct and Hero has +50%. Then I replied with If there is still something that is hard to understand, just ask.

What I said was: Maybe Hero doesn't indeed 3-bet 100% of his top 10% hands or so, but he should be 3-betting most of them though. Does that matter much? Hands that Hero 3-bets are not in his flatting range, thus weakening the flatting range.

I do not know what your assumptions are regarding BTNs and BBs range, since you don't tell them (except that BB should be flatting some strong hands with these stacks). I have told you my assumptions in the last quoted part. With those assumptions, it's clear BB doesn't have a range advantage and shouldn't be leading, IMO. If you want to tell me why he should, go ahead.

Well, now I have explained it for many posts.

I have no idea why you can call something "normal" so that you don't have to back it up at all, while people with a differing opinion from your "normal" need to explain you things.

If I heavily discount the ddA2 GII plays I'm roughly flipping:

http://www.propokertools.com/simulat...0%25&s=generic

Getting rid of it entirely is 49.6% for me:
http://www.propokertools.com/simulat...0%25&s=generic

Nice work. Of course we could try to make it more accurate by removing some hands that he'd be likely to flat, but there seems to be no way your equity would fall below 2015/4705=42,83% (money left in your stack / final pot). Thank you.