Villain is a Russian pro who has been playing in our game for about a month. He is a smart, thinking player but I think he struggled for a while when figuring out live play. Bloated a lot of pots when his opponents just aren't going to fold, tried to isolate too much, 3 bet too much... Just a lot of the things that a good internet player often does when they have less / little experience playing live.

Hero just won a big pot where we got it all in on the flop 4 ways... All of us had but low, but I also had nut flush, so I 3/4 three people at once.

We are dealt Ad As Jh 9s 2c

Effective stacks are $3500. Villain covers by a ton.

Straddle on the button. Villain raises to $30. We make it $90. Straddle calls, villain calls.

Flop: 3 players - $280

Jh 5c 7d
Villain leads for $160. We call. Straddle folds.

Turn: heads up - $600

Jd ... Brings a FD.
Villain bets $300. We make it $1400.
Villain tanks for 2 minutes and calls.

River: heads up - $3400

9d ... Completes flush. We river the nuts, barring 8Td for straight flush.

Villain checks.

We have $1850 left.

Do we auto stick it in here having a little less than 1/2 PSB? Or do we value bet less, like $900 we have the board crushed and there's not much he can have that will call much. If he had J7xxx on the turn, he 3bets all in.

Low stress, I know, but I don't have as much experience playing this deep and I just want opinions.

So... River bet sizing??
Also... Is the raise on the turn OK seeing as it is kind of a semi bluff?

Dunno if I love raising turn (at least sizing that big) as you don't need to protect against that much and you'll just drive away hands that have very poor equity.

On the river just stick it in. If you think you don't have enough bluffs in this spot, re-think your raising range and sizing on the turn.

Don't like turn raise. As played jam river.

The turn is sorta interesting. What does he think of you and how would he interpret a call from you. Would he see you as weak looking to make low. Does he see you as stubborn. Are you aggressive enough for a turn raise here to be a bluff? How wide/often does he bet the flop? Against most I would be using position and call twice here. Sometimes there is a dynamic where I would raise the flop of turn. The rive however seems like an Easy jam I mean it's a half pot bet and some stuff got there and we have the nuts

His flop lead is interesting as there is no real reason for him to have a leading range on that board. What kind of hands do you think he'd lead there?

What hands do you think he has after that flop+turn action? Perplexing.

I think he generally has a lot of wheel cards here, probably with the diamond FD now. Either that or he has wheel cards with a J and a few over cards to potentially boat up with.

he views me as tight and competent, but probably thinks he is a better player than me, and he is probably right.

i do not think he views my turn raise as weak. i think he 100% knows that i am not purely bluffing here.

i do not have any reason to believe he sees me as overly stubborn.

again, he knows my turn raise is not a pure bluff.

he bets flops probably wider than he should. he c-bets more than most people in this game... again, i think this is a mistake in transitioning from online to live poker.

i think river is often an auto all in bet, but because i block most things that could actually call here, and even in a 5/5 game an ~$1800 bet is still a huge bet, even if it is half the pot. but in terms of getting paid off what is still a very large bet in a 5/5 game, would it be better to bet less in hopes of getting a crying call? or even the very rare time where an aggressive player views a $700-$1000 bet as weak and spazzes all in?

Well yeah, but this is after you know how he reacts to your turn raise. The way I see it he is representing a stronger made hand than you have, so you must understand that your raise feels illogical. Also you want him to catch his low to 3/4 him or let him keep the betting lead and bluff to a high card (i.e. not much to protect against).

There are no hands in your range that could be described as pure bluffs. Still, you should have bluffs in every spot. Pick hands that aren't good enough to call but have decent equity against his range if he calls.

The problems come from your unbalanced turn range. I repeat: "If you think you don't have enough bluffs in this spot, re-think your raising range and sizing on the turn." I know that this is way beyond what you need to be a big winner in the game you play, but I'm assuming you want to become a better player. If you'd arrive to the river with the kind of range you should, betting all-in with the whole range would probably be correct.

I think he's never spazzing to a small bet, if he is even borderline decent.

i just don't see what made hands he realistically has here that just totally have me murdered, other than an unlikely A2J7x or A255x. i do not believe he vpips any hand that contains 77.

the game was playing very loose with lots of big bets being thrown around (not necessarily from me though) and i saw this is a good spot to get fat value in a hand that i am very unlikely to lose. especially since there is a lot of draws... flush draw, J w/ over cards, and the very likely low draw that may get a lot of calls.

i think the mistake (although he did call) was betting too big. i think a raise to $850 or something is much more callable more of the time. it just so happens he did call the huge bet this time.

Any A277x? Not even if it's A2377ds? I don't think you should go overboard with that kind of thinking. Made hands need protection, so they are good candidates for donking. That's what I think at least.

Good point. And I guess you're right, he doesn't have zero 77xxx in his range, but extremely little. Maybe only A2377. But I do know he has a very tight preflop range, rarely limps anything (which I think is one of his mistakes). And good players are going to show up with very little 77xxx in my opinion

i spoke with our villain last night about this hand.

i told him that i thought that we had pretty similar hands. he would not tell me exactly what he had but he did acknowledge that i wasn't too far off.

he said that my turn raise was really good (my guess is because he had a high equity hand that hadn't yet materialized and it forced him to call). i said i think i raised too big and should have made it $800-900 because i don't think i get a lot of calls generally and there aren't too many river cards that are awful for me. he disagreed and liked the bigger raise. agree to disagree, i guess.

What is our 3b range pre? If it's all AA2x, AA3Wx, A23Kx, etc, then I'm not a fan of the turn raise since we have more hands of the type that we actually have rather than boats. For him to be calling, he should have something like A2J+2 overs at a minimum which we block all of, if our 3b range is wider than possibly A34J, but i'd think that's unlikely. If he has a boat which considering his lead is very possible, he's likely just gonna rip it in over and you are stuck calling off for a million BB (I still consider this hand around 700bb even though the straddle technically makes it 350. The psychological value of the BB involved for most players will be 5 not 10, so $5 play styles still apply).

If in hindsight you like a smaller turn raise, what do you do if he 3b? I don't think we can avoid getting it in and given stack sizes. I don't think a call is going to generate a ton of EV given the RIO of him 3b+his equity with 1psb left on the river.

As played I like a ridiculously small river bet. There's not much he can call with that didn't rip it on the turn. Even if he is sure he's beat, he's likely still calling 400 on the river with a flush given the insane price. I don't think he's ever calling much more than that. I rarely if ever use 1/8-1/10 pot bets, but when it's two players who can hand read and your range includes no bluffs, betting anything but ridiculously small will never get called.

Good post!

Agnostia, I don't think the villain is a very strong player based on the things you've said (plus the flop lead).

So, were you not raising the flop to set up the turn raise? I'm raising the flop w/ the thinking that we are probably drawing to the same low and I'm leading on the high side. I want more chips in the pot when I'm in this situation.

I agree with this spot in general, but I wanted to point out that we could have bluffs, like on a high diamond.