Hi all,

One ep limp in $25/$25 and hero raises AAT83 with diamonds utg1, two callers. We are $2400 eff. We have one spade in our hand (Ts).

Flop ($300): T52ssc. We bet $250, only limper calls (fun V).

Turn ($850): Kd. Check check.

River: 9h. V asks if we’ll fold for $300, we say bet and find out, V leads $400.

Thanks,
DT

Maybe consider betting the turn - there's a lot of pair + spades we can potentially fold out, and denying equity is great with a hand like yours. On the river I think we have to call - spades missed, not sure what the table talk means if anything but I would expect anyone who's competent with spades to take a shot here. You'll lose a fair amount of the time as that's the nature of 5 card, but you're also towards the high end of your range after you check the turn.

I like checking the turn due to hand strength and no need to protect vs low. Without any reads, on the river I lean towards a call since you block KT and you are relatively high on your range.

Thanks. Can you go into a little more explanation of how you decide whether a hand is high enough in your range to defend? And how the bet size changes that?i imagine you defend a tighter range the bigger the bet.

So for this hand facing around 50% pot we should defend …what portion of our range? And how does AA fit within that?

think about the strongest hands you have by the river that plays this exact same way:

raise pre, makes near PSB OTF, checks back turn HU, and arrives OTR with an offsuit 9

basically since you prob bet all your sets/2p's OTT, and don't really have many straights by the river, your checking range is typically comprised of mostly low draws that missed, some dorky A2 single bot pair combos, and like, AAW/AWJJ-QQ-KK combos. so if AA is the strongest showdown hand you have here with this line, that tells you it's relatively high in your range. again, note that the 9 doesn't improve your single pair hands to straights, sets, or 2p very often.

I don't think it's as simple as "we have AA and thats high in our range and draws missed so call riv" when you start getting into 5 and 6 card Omaha. Blockers are more important the more cards you start with because you can potentially have more blockers than if you are playing 4 card Omaha, so when you don't have them, it's much more likely they are in your opponents' hands rather than the stub.

For this reason, in this specific scenario I think you can fold on the river without any queens or jacks, call with one queen or jack in your hand and consider even raising if you have JJ or QQ or if you river something like tens and nines or weaker 2 pair (to fold out sets) but have one Q or J in your hand.

Villain isn't really repping QJ so I think K is the most important blocker.