Freshly back from a long weekend in LA's friendliest. Played a few sessions of 2/4 and recorded a number of interesting hands of which I'll put up a few. The discussion and analysis of the hands is helpful to me and my hope is that it is also useful to you the reader as well. Please feel free to jot down your thoughts as well as any suggestions / ideas for future threads.

LJ Opens, HJ 3bets, BTN smoothie, We cap T8 in the BB and all call.

Flop: AJT
We check, check, HJ bets, fold, we call, fold, call. Heads up.

Turn: 3
We check and call.

River: 4
We lead, call.

Xr the river.


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Check/raise river; don’t love the preflop cap but whatever

pre is probably just slightly bad - the river donk seems bigly bad.

if he was bluffing checking is clearly better.
if he was value betting he's going to bet the river almost every time because you're going to have mostly bluff catchers here that are behind Ax, and his bet/bet value range is generally top pair or better. the only hands that it would be better to donk against are hands like KJs, QJs and you can expect those to check the flop or the turn a lot of the time.

I don't know how you'd go about constructing ranges but against what I would think is a 'reasonable' range for both of you to have this is more than a 0.25BB error. maybe more than 0.5.

I realized I screwed this post up - the LJ called the flop and turn so there were 3 of us on the river. Does that change your opinion on the lead or do you still like a check raise?

I would still check and raise.

Don't understand the preflop cap and I concur the donk river is bad as well for the reason stated by Abbaddaba above...

the third player makes it closer overall but I don't expect there to be many value hands that he'll check back the river, and it's pretty hard for the lojack to call your river donk with Ax or Qx with the hijack yet to act having a value heavy range that almost always beat him. If he's sitting there with A8s and you donk, for him to win now requires that both you are bluffing and the other guy was bluffing earlier - which cumulatively you shouldn't be doing often enough for him to call with a hand that's strictly a bluff catcher.

if he can have all sorts of wonky suited aces then there're a lot of hands he might check back, but I'd expect the guy to lean heavily towards suited broadway hands like AJs, ATs, KQs, QJs, JTs, etc. maybe some lower suited connectors like T9s or 98s and the fact that it's 3 handed makes it way less likely they bet with something like KJ, QJ or T9s. plus if he had them he should be more inclined to fold to your bet in a 3 way pot than in a heads up pot.

So mostly i'd expect to see two pair, a straight or some of the bigger top pairs like AQ or A9 betting the flop/turn. these are highly likely to bet the river and he can't fold a large percent of them to the river raise without having a huge leak that you would probably be aware of and should be targeting in future scenarios.

The river bet is fine in games where people just never valuebet the river when the third flush comes but everyone is right that not checkraising here sucks

OK cool, appreciate the help guys.

I prefer a fold pre.

Really hate river. I’m betting an ace on the river literally 100% and I’m calling the raise; you look like you have KK, QQ, maybe a KJs/QJs/KTs type Hand. I think we will get to bet / 3 bet this river for value almost never.


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Pre is between cap and call guys.


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I can’t imagine folding pre unless you are up against super nitty ranges. What’s the advantage to the preflop cap? I doubt it gets you any fold equity and you are out of position. Range protection?

I wouldn't say it's between cap and call. I'd say it should lean much closer to a call. I don't see what you gain with a cap other than showing you have a wider range. I feel you can accomplish this with more playable hands than this. I also wouldn't mind seeing if the LJ caps.

Punish the cc. Protect range. Generate fold equity later.


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in what way does it punish the cold call? his call 3 cold range is almost for sure doing better equity wise than your hand, as is every other person in the pot.

you don't protect your range. there're plenty of high equity hands that aren't big pairs or big aces you can cap with so your hand isn't anything close to face up when you do. and when you call you can still have pretty much any piece of the board, just not the big pairs or big aces.

you definitely don't generate fold equity. the pot will be bigger making it even more likely that you'll get called down if you barrel off.


what ranges do you assign people here that calling is even that clear cut? given your dead bb and the dead sb you still need 16-8% equity in a 4 way pot, and given the positional disadvantage probably something closer to 18-20% to compensate. if this was at 10/20 the rake would almost for sure be enough to make it a clear cut fold.

Thanks for this you are the best OnTheRail15!

Btw regarding OP.

I would have called pf because I play bad.

On river, c/r > bet 3 bet river > donk call in my biased opinion.

Way too many hand range I chk call on river as HERO that not checking river seems atrocious with rivered flush redraw.

Not strong enough to bet 3 bet river.

I think calling is fine. I wouldn’t fold with the cold caller in there.


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It punishes the cold call because the cold caller is up against two better hands, but it doesn't benefit you. This is actually a perfect example of a spot where you don't want to punish the cold call - you'd much prefer he continues cold calling incorrectly, and your preflop call encourages that.

Exactly. It helps you get more value when you make your straight, flush, two pair+, but that doesn't justify putting in the extra bet now. There's very few boards where you'd prefer to cap now and barrel it off over calling now and playing postflop accordingly.

Your hand is pretty easy to play postflop. Your implied odds are good.

Let me add a bit to the preflop discussion:

I won't pretend to fully understand it yet, however all the lab work I've done pre and post indicates that cap or fold is optimal when it's 3 bets to the BB. This is true if it's a button vs. SB 3 vs. BB situation as well as if it's a LJ vs. HJ 3 vs. BB. The only difference is that the cap range is tighter in the LJ/HJ/BB scenario.

It cooks my noodle a bit to see it capping a hand like 53s in the BB when it's BTN vs. SB 3 bet. Why do we think that is? Clearly 53s is behind the other player's ranges. It is noteworthy that the preflop cap range is weighted towards suited connectors and pairs. An interesting observation is that from the BTN the model does not open 22 or 53s, yet it caps both of those from the BB! Furthermore, a hand like A2o is an open from the BTN, yet it folds up to A6o to a SB 3bet in the BB.

Perhaps there is validity in the idea of creating a large multi-way pot with hands that have potential to flop strong draws or made hands (sets, flushes, straights) and tie our opponents to it with their weaker made hands.

3 ways without a cold caller against GTO bots who know your exact preflop ranges is a completely different situation than 4 ways with a cold caller in a real life poker game

having said this... if villains are sufficiently foldy postflop, it's no longer true

I’ve never played in this game.

i have, but at significantly lower stakes

though when i say "barrel it off", i certainly don't mean regardless of the board