I open in the HJ with 66's and only the TAG BB calls.

AdAs8c...He checks, I bet, he raises...I think he is polarized between having an Ace or 8 and having air. I would weight it towards the value side. He will barrel all three streets either way. I don't think he is doing any hand reading once he bluff raises.

How are you proceeding?

If I had a bigger pair it would be an easy get to showdown. With a smaller pair I fear that I'll accidentally get owned by the random part of his range. An 8 would kill me.

Against a player capable of having air, I am calling down unless the runout is particularly bad. But a lot of players basically never raise this flop with less than an 8, in which case you can just fold.

Is it bad to call here and decide on the turn/river? This is usually how I play this spot.

If he has air the only truly bad runout would be the board double pairing counterfeiting our pair. If it went runner runner broadway cards would you consider that a bad runout?

I feel like I get owned every time I call down here. Either he has an Ace or 8 or he hits a higher pair along the way. If I had 99's+ it would be a super easy call down. If I had 44's I think I could just fold. 66's feel like a tweener to me.

If you are up against someone who may give up some percentage of the time or when perceptually bad cards hit then this sounds reasonable. Like I said, this guy is gonna keep betting. If you call the flop I think you have to call the turn unless it's an 8.

The problem I have in situations where the plan is to call the turn and decide on the river is I almost always talk myself into a call.

Lets say we decide to call the flop and the run out comes AA8JQ what's the plan? What about AA8J3?

Well there is that 4% of the time you call and hit a full house on the turn. Also I wonder what air means in this situation, because oftentimes that means cards above an eight. If the runout is 2, 3, we can safely call down. And I see no reason why we can’t fold some % of our continuing range on runouts (solvers tell us it’s ok to call with plans on folding on later streets so that our range doesn’t become super condensed.)

Yes -- and particularly runouts with kings in them because I think king highs are the most common airballs that are raising the flop. If you think villain is not thinking about which hands to k/r (semi) bluff with, YMMV.

Does this BB play raises from the BB vs HJ open? If he does, we can snap fold as we have a big advantage in Ax and better pocket pairs but he doesn't seem to care. If we're *sure* he does not, I'd still rather fold some of 77 and 66 as they block what I see as logical bluffs (7x6x in s, d, and c). Runouts depend some on suits.

But mostly just fold to live 20 players. "TAG" doesn't get me close to considering otherwise.

This is definitely not true...in HJ we open maybe A9o and Axs? Villain defends every Ax, whether he 3 bets out of bb or not, he has many more Ax combos than we do (but we have a higher concentration of the stronger ones)

I think you're looking at it from the wrong angle. I'd be more concerned with what your betting frequency looks like from the HJ on AA8r. I find a lot of players over bet this type of flop from the HJ. Also, the BB doesn't need to do much "hand reading" here, since if she's decent, her range will pretty much play itself

To me, the important part is what your check back range looks like. Off the top of my head at game speed, I'm gonna guess you should be checking just over 40% of your overall range? If so, 66 seems a good candidate to slot maybe two combos as checks along with some of the more obvious checks. I don't know. I'm spit balling. But so far, everyone seemed to assume betting 66 was a no brainer and I'm not so sure it is

Once xr'd, obviously call decent turn cards, but be prepared to fold even some seemingly decent rivers at least some percentage of the time against a good gto player imo

Interesting hand

Not sure why you think this. HJ is betting this flop 98%, its effectively an auto bet

I don't think the BB is doing any hand reading on any board texture once he initiates the bluff raise. I've seen him CR and barrel in situations where there is no way his opponent is folding.

I think GTO concepts are overused in live limit games. I get information hiding and having a balanced range, but having a certain percentage of doing this or that seems a bit over the top. I think most situations do play themselves. I think most players aren't paying enough attention for me to take the time to construct GTO ranges. I'll admit I could be completely wrong and be missing out on a way to improve my game.

It has nothing to do with what the other players are doing and everything to do with the fact that you don't know what the right default action is

One reason it is helpful is because it gives you a baseline from which you can make intentional decisions to deviate. This hand works as a pretty good example. 66 is a very low ev calldown in this spot, so much so that even at equilibrium you are mixing in folds, especially on bad runouts. That suggests that when I deviate by saying I am just always going to fold here because villain underbluffs, I am making a very small (i.e. a safe) deviation. Compare that to say, folding KK, which would be a very substantial deviation and we would need a lot more certainty in our read before we make that play.

There are some players who probably try to apply a percentage mix of actions, but usually where something is a mix that's a good place to decide which way to go based on reads, population tendencies, etc. It's about knowing where the best places are to make good exploitative plays, while not playing in such a way where you might be accidentally owning yourself.

And of, course, DD beat me to the punch and was much more concise to boot!

It's also powerful to be able to see what the max exploit actually is. I had some time this morning so I put in your HJ / BB situation and I forced BB to CR flop with Ax, 8x, any pocket pair, any 2 cards above an 8, fold the rest (super simple and spewy). Then I forced him to barrel off on all turns and rivers. What I wouldn't have thought of is that 66 does some bluff raising on the river when it runs out two broadways (also we never fold 66 but we do fold 44 so its clearly not a huge amount of value).

You're saying HJ should be betting an AA8 flop 98% when checked to by BB? That seems far too often to me. But your dream machine > than mine. Also user > clearly better than me lol. I don't have this exact sim, but I'm sure my input of ranges shows there should be over 30% check backs for HJ here. But garbage in garbage out as they say

Well I dunno what to tell you. I just revised my sim to give the BB all the premium hands (that he should really be 3 betting pre) thinking maybe you had him flat all those. HJ still c-bets 97%, this is just a board with a huge range advantage for HJ (65ish%).

I am a no-limitard these days, and what I have learned about NL has made me realize how little I really understood about LHE. But....

If this were a NL hand, and I opened the HJ and the BB called, and the flop came AA8, I would be hammering my range advantage by range betting something like a quarter to a third of the pot. And there are, what 4.5 SB in the pot now? Betting the flop 1 SB with my entire range range sounds just about right.

I think it's kinda hard as the BB to come up with a check-raising range for this board. I don't want to check-raise an ace, because, as mentioned, the BB has more aces in their range than the HJ has in theirs, but the HJ's AX badly dominates the BB's. The BB having AX here is something of a WA/WB situation. I am tempted, as BB, to check-call my entire continuing range.

But BB did checkraise, and so is not thinking like this.

I think I want to bluff-catch with a stronger hand than an underpair to the 8 on the board. There are too many ways the board can run out bad for us. I think we have other hands in our range we can call down with, so we can comfortably give this one a fold.

In NL what you're saying is right (for BB checkraise situation) but in LHE we treat any Ax on this board as kinda "the nuts". BB has more Ax than HJ. He shouldn't be afraid to CR here.